The Seed Of Abraham Series

INTRODUCTION

By a show of hands, how many of you have done the Ancestry DNA testing? I did it a few months ago, and they recently updated their database, and with the updated results, I have some questions. I know my family tree goes back to Italy on my mom’s side, and Germany, Ireland, and Sweden on my dad’s side. So, just last week I got to look at the updated results and imagine my surprise when I saw that Spain somehow ended up in there, even though it’s only a small percentage. And then I saw that Greece and the Balkans ended up in there, at a much larger percentage. (18%) . So, obviously, I’ll be doing more work on my family tree to see how accurate these DNA results are.

As surprised as I was by these results, this pales in comparison to some of the other shocking discoveries people have found through Ancestry.com. For example, I read about one woman who traced her family tree back to the 1600’s and realized that one of the guys in her family tree was John Proctor, the first man that was named a witch and was executed during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Then there’s story after story about people finding secret half-siblings as a result of one parent’s infidelity. Then there was one story of a woman who came to discover that she’s a descendant of King Edward III of England and all the royalty who came before him.

It really is fascinating how this practice of genealogy has become so popular. Some people have found a source of pride in realizing they come from a great family tree, and others might feel ashamed at what they find in their family tree. And whether or not we feel that this kind of genealogical research is of any value, the truth is that there’s one family tree that is extremely important: That is, the family tree of Jesus.

TRANSITION

This morning we’re beginning a new series for the Christmas season that we’re calling, O Christmas Tree!

Throughout the series we’ll be looking at five of the characters in the family tree of Jesus, some of the important people in Jesus’ ancestry, as well as well as some of the more surprising characters in his family tree, from murderers and adulterers to liars and idolaters. And this morning we’re kicking off the series by looking at the Father of the Jews, Abraham.

Now, from a biblical perspective, the family tree of Jesus is the first thing recorded in our New Testament, in the very first verses of the Gospel of Matthew. If you’ve read through Matthew before, you may have even skipped the long list of genealogies in the first half of Matthew 1 so you could get to the second half of Matthew 1 where the Christmas story begins. But what might, at least initially, seem boring to us, was vitally important to the original audience. See, the Gospel of Matthew was written primarily to the Jews: Matthew makes the case that Jesus of Nazareth is the long-awaited Messiah that the Old Testament writers prophesied about—the One whom the Jewish people longed for. And what you need to understand is that to the Jewish people, family trees were so important. A person’s lineage gave them certain rights and responsibilities. Land was owned by families and passed along the family tree, and certain families held promise: To the descendants of Levi fell the responsibility of caring for the temple; to the descendants of David a promise was given that an eternal king would arise from their ranks.

BACKGROUND

So let’s look at the beginning of Jesus’ family tree—let’s see how Matthew begins his Gospel (verse 1):

"1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."

Right off the bat you see that Matthew is showing the connection between Jesus, David, and Abraham. Matthew wants us to know that Jesus is the King from the line of David and the promised Messiah from Abraham. And by the way, Jesus’ last name isn’t “Christ”: Christ simply means Messiah, or the Anointed One. All throughout the Old Testament there were promises of a coming Anointed One—a coming Messiah—One Who would bring ultimate deliverance to God’s people. And Matthew’s saying, “This Jesus—this Yeshua—is the Christ…He is the Anointed One… the One we’ve looked forward to—to deliver the people of God. He’s here! The son of David is here. The son of Abraham has come.”

Then in verse 2, Matthew begins the genealogy of Jesus with Abraham:

"Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,"

Abraham tops the list and this is what we’ll focus in on today: Why is it important that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham? Why does Matthew make it a point to trace Jesus’ lineage all the way back to Abraham? Well, the answer to these questions goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 12.