I recently found out about another branch in my family tree. I discovered that I am part Iroquois. But I am not really a great genealogy tracker. I guess it’s because I’m afraid I might find (to my shame) more ancestors swinging on or hanging from our family tree than actually contributing to its greatness.
This genealogy that God has Matthew compile doesn’t turn out to be a flattering testimony to the lineage of Jesus Christ. It would not be something you would necessarily be proud of or post for everyone to see. But the inclusion of those He has listed in this genealogy of the Messiah shows us the heart of God. It is a living testimony to the grace that is available in Jesus Christ.
This is a very unusual genealogy indeed in a number of ways. Women were mentioned. The regular practice was to present an all-male genealogy. Also, genealogies would often note the great exploits of the family, not the sin.
Since the destruction of the temple in AD 70 there is now no way for an individual to trace his lineage back to King David. No one seeking to prove himself the Messiah today could trace his ancestry to David. Jesus is the last verifiable individual to come from David’s lineage and therefore the only one who could claim the position as Messiah.
I. Tamar—Jesus Christ came to save sinners (v. 3)
In verse 3 we see, “Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.” The story of Judah and Tamar is recounted in Genesis 38. Judah found a wife for his oldest son Er. Her name was Tamar. Because of Er’s wickedness the Lord took his life. As was the command of the Lord, Judah’s second son Onan married Tamar in order to raise up children for his brother Er and preserve the family line. However, Onan refused to raise up children for his brother and so the Lord slew him.
Judah told Tamar to go back to her father’s house and wait until his youngest son Shelah was old enough to marry and then he would allow him to marry her. Well, Judah really had no intention of allowing Shelah to marry her. He thought, “This woman’s bad luck. I’ll just ignore her and maybe she’ll not bother us.” Time went on and Tamar realized that Judah wasn’t going to keep his word. Judah’s wife passed away and Tamar heard that he was taking a trip. Since he wasn’t going to allow her to marry his youngest son she concocted a plan to have a child with him. She knew where he was going and so she thought she’d disguise herself and allure him by dressing as a prostitute. The plan worked and he contracted with her for a sum, but he didn’t have any cash with him, so he left her with the ancient world’s version of his photo ID. His plan was to bring the cash for her services later and retrieve the items he’d left as collateral. However, she left the place with his ID and no intention of returning it. She planned to use it for her protection. She knew in a few months when her pregnancy began to show that she would be charged with prostitution and be killed. When Judah was told about the situation and sought to have her killed she brought out the evidence of his complicity in the matter. Judah saw what he had done and declared that Tamar was more righteous than him. This incident revealed the true condition of his heart. He wasn’t just talking about this one action but how he operated in his entire life. He hadn’t disciplined his first son: he was wicked and the Lord had to slay him. He hadn’t taught the principles of responsibility to his second son and he too ended up dead because of his selfishness. He lied to Tamar about her provision for a husband and then had sexual intercourse with a woman who was not his wife (and even worse, his daughter-in-law, though he didn’t know it).
He finally came to grips with the sinfulness of his heart. When a person says that a prostitute is more righteous than himself, he has come to genuinely acknowledge his sinful heart.
The principle this verse teaches is that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. These were the kind of people in the line of the Messiah. They were sinners like you and me. It was from this line that Jesus sprang because He came to save sinners. He came to give them eternal life. The apostle Paul said this in 1 Timothy 1:15. He noted, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost (the worst) of all.”
Religiously Paul was a well-respected man but he knew that he was merely an angry man, a murderer with hatred in his heart. He knew God would rightfully condemn him no matter how religious he was because he hadn’t had his sin problem resolved. It was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that paid for our sin and provided His righteousness as a gift.
Judah and Tamar and their son Perez were firmly planted into the line of the Messiah to show us that even sins like sexual immorality can be forgiven at the cross. God wants to forgive you and give you eternal life. But He calls you to repent of your sin and call upon His Son to save you through the payment He made for your sin when He died on the cross.
II. Rahab & Ruth—God desires all be saved; God honors faith
Next in verse 5 we see two women mentioned. The verse says, “Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab, Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth.”
Rahab the harlot: she too prostituted herself, but for a living. She and her family and the entire city of Jericho were devoted to destruction. Her people had followed a path of debauchery and deception for hundreds of years. She followed in that corruption. And God’s judgment was severe. Her city was to be leveled and every inhabitant was to be killed. No one was to be left alive, not a man, woman or child. The consequences of sin were serious and they were about to be meted out. God had given the land of Canaan hundreds of years to repent of their sin, but their civilization only grew worse.
Then something amazing happened in the heart of Rahab. She heard of God, the true God, the living God. He was not like the gods of the Canaanite nation who were just like them. They were corrupt; they called for human sacrifice, immorality and murder. She heard of this great God and the signs that He performed in Egypt and how He dried up the Red Sea. She made a confession to those who had come to spy out the city as she declared who the true God was. She said, “The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.” Rahab trusted in the Lord and she was saved from destruction. Her means of deliverance was a scarlet thread hung from her window. The spies promised her that when they saw it they would leave her and her family alive. Her faith saved her that day.
Then we turn to the Moabite woman, Ruth. Her husband and his family had come from Israel into Moab during a famine. Her father-in-law and her husband had both died, and her mother-in-law was heading back to Israel to seek some solace by dying in her own country. But Ruth was simply a cursed Moabite woman (The Lord had cursed the Moabites because they sought to curse Israel.). Moses said that no Moabite could enter the assembly of the Lord until the tenth generation. But Ruth too, like Rahab, had a conversion experience. She acknowledged with her mouth that the Lord was her God and that the nation of Israel was her people. She put her faith in the living God who is able to save, and God blessed her for it.
There are two principles (two wonderful truths) we learn from these women and their inclusion in the Messianic genealogy. First, God desires ALL to be saved, Jew and Gentile, even a gentile prostitute and a cursed Moabite woman, as Paul declares in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” I don’t care what your background is or where you are from or what excuse you may have to think that God will not receive you. God has made provision for you through His Son. Don’t reject the gift that God has for you. And as for you who have received Him, don’t think that something in your past has made you a second-class Christian. In Romans 8:31-32, Paul says, “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” God has made a great sacrifice to bring you to Himself, and He did not do it half way. He paid for your cleansing and your restoration.
The second truth we learn from these women and their inclusion in the Messianic genealogy is that God honors faith. He took Rahab’s faith in Him and not only saved her life and the lives of her relatives, but because of her faith, He placed her into the line of the Messiah.
Every one of us was devoted to destruction. Our end was to be cast into the Lake of Fire that burns forever and ever. Yet, to everyone who understands that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, He has provided a means of escape from the coming destruction through His blood. As Rahab hung the scarlet thread from her window for her deliverance, so is the blood of Christ deliverance to everyone who confesses Him as Lord and believes that God has raised Him from the dead.
III. Bathsheba—God can turn tragedy into triumph if you repent
In verse 6 we see another woman mentioned: “David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah (the Hittite).” You may be familiar with the story found in 2 Samuel 11. David, who should have been with his army, was relaxing instead. He was taking it easy in his palace when he spied a beautiful woman taking a bath on her roof. She was not doing anything improper but the high view of David’s palace allowed him to see what others could not. Instead of turning away he gazed and thought that she should be his. When he was told that she was a married woman he disregarded the righteous advice of his counselor and was intimate with her. When the result of that encounter was made known to David, he tried to hide it by bringing her husband home from battle, hoping that he would sleep with her and no one would be the wiser. But when Uriah’s sense of duty prevented him from returning home, David arranged to have him killed in battle. After Bathsheba mourned for her husband’s death, David married her. How convenient.
The matter became known, not just in Israel, but in the surrounding nations. (It’s amazing how gossip travelled even before telephone and internet.) It caused the enemies of God to blaspheme the name of the Lord: “Wow, look at how the King of Israel and that righteous nation conduct themselves. I guess their God isn’t so righteous after all. I wonder what else they are covering up.” Because of this and the disgrace it caused to the name of the Lord, God took the child home to heaven. God would not allow the child to becoming a stumbling block to cause people to fail to seek Him.
When King David was confronted about his great sin, he acknowledged it before the Lord; he repented of it and turned back to the Lord. It was because of David’s repentance that the Lord continued to use him. Of course there were consequences of his sin that still plagued him. But what came from David’s repentance? In 2 Samuel 12:24-25, the Scripture says, “She gave birth to a son, and he named him Solomon. Now the LORD loved him and sent word through Nathan the prophet, and he named him Jedidiah (beloved of the Lord).”
It was not in his sin that David was blessed of God but in his repentance, and his repentance provided another vital connection between Abraham and the Messiah. The truth found in this verse concerning David, Bathsheba and Solomon is that God can turn tragedy into triumph if you repent. If you acknowledge your sin and admit that God is the righteous one and you are the sinner, He will forgive and He will bring about a blessing in the midst of your life.
But don’t think that you can have your own way and still have God’s blessing. This brings us to the truth of the next verse we want to look at.
IV. Jeconiah—You cannot derail God’s Work through the Messiah, but you may lose a blessing
In verses 11 & 12 we read about Jeconiah: “Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. After the deportation to Babylon: Jeconiah became the father of Shealtiel.” Jeconiah was a corrupt king. Though his grandfather Josiah (who is left out for organizational reasons) was a godly king and sought to bring about many reforms and desired to bring the nation to repentance, Jeconiah was wicked. He was so wicked that not only was he one of the causes of the deportation to Babylon, but he was written off by the Lord. According to Jeremiah 22:30, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Write this man down childless, a man who will not prosper in his days; for no man of his descendants will prosper sitting on the throne of David or ruling again in Judah.’”
He was rejected by the Lord to become an ancestor of the Messiah. You might ask, “How can he be listed in this genealogy if the Lord rejected him?” The truth is that this is the genealogy of Joseph’s line. It is not the line of Mary. It is not a description of the physical line of Jesus (the maternal line), but of the paternal line of which Jesus was not a physical descendant. You see, this genealogy legitimizes his ability to rule (as seen from the Jewish person’s perspective) because any authority to rule would have to come through the father’s side (his stepfather Joseph). But since Jeconiah was rejected by the Lord, Jesus could not have physically come from Jeconiah’s line. Therefore in Luke 3 we find Mary’s genealogical line traced back through David, allowing Jesus to fulfill the promises to David about having the Messiah come from his descendants.
What does this mean? What is the principle here? You cannot derail God’s work, but you may miss a blessing. You can go your own way and try to circumvent God’s plan by neglecting the truth of His Word, but God will still carry on His work and you will miss the blessing of serving the King of kings. You can hear what God is speaking to you. You can hear day after day and reject it, and you are the one who is going to lose.
You can fit all these others things into your life and not set Jesus in His place as Lord, but you are going to miss all that God has for you if you put your trust in His Word and follow it.
Let me say it this way: If you are a Christian and you are living for yourself instead of for Jesus Christ, I feel sorry for you. I am grieved for you. You can have the best life (as the world considers it—good family, job, etc.) and yet live only for yourself, and you will miss the blessing of the Lord saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Instead (as 1 John 2 says) you will stand before Him when he returns and shrink back in shame instead of standing before Him in confidence. Faith, genuine biblical faith, sees this life as temporary and fleeting and the next as permanent. If you live as if this was the permanent life and the next temporary you will miss what God has for you. The description “self-absorbed Christian life” is oxymoronic.
Let me also say that if you are not a Christian, I feel sorry and am grieved for you. If I know you, rest assured that I often pray that you will not reject Christ any longer. Sometimes I weep for you. But let me say, you can have the best life (as the world sees it) and still be cast into the Lake of Fire for eternity because you did not chose to call upon Christ and receive Him as your Savior and Lord, because you regarded the passing pleasures of sin as more important than your soul.
How can I not feel sorry for you? God’s plan will stand regardless of your decision to be faithful and serve Him or to live for yourself. To receive Him or reject Him. What God has decreed concerning the Messiah can never be overcome. You may lose a blessing or you may lose life itself.
V. God Is Always Faithful to Fulfill His Promises (v. 17)
The final truth in this passage is seen in verse 17: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.”
Now in case you haven’t noticed, in order to arrange his groups into sets of fourteen he leaves out some names. He does this because of the importance of the number fourteen to his point. His ancient Jewish readers understood what he was doing, even if the casual reader today may not. The Jewish readers of that day were familiar with a system called gematria, the application of numerals to letters in the alphabet. Each letter had a corresponding number associated with it. For example, a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, and so on. One example that perhaps many people are familiar with is found in Revelation 13:18. John describes the antichrist and may give people a clue as to his identity when he arrives. In that verse John says, “Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.”
Matthew was showing that King David was central to the message of the Messiah and the promises that God made to him. The sum of the three letters in the Hebrew name David equal fourteen. As Matthew begins this gospel of Jesus Christ, he wants us to be aware that God is always faithful to fulfill His promises. Matthew is going to present many promises (or prophecies) from the Hebrew Scriptures that show Jesus as the rightful King to Israel. And though (to some people’s view) God may be late, Matthew is going to show that God is faithful and right on time. He didn’t miss anything, He wasn’t delayed because of people’s opposition, and the Messiah was coming just when God said He would. In this gospel, we see that Jesus is going to return in the right time and according to all of the Lord’s promises just as He said.
The questions that the faithfulness of God leaves you with is, “Will you be faithful to trust them? Will you believe what God has said and receive the fruit of your faith?” There are many serious calls to genuine faith in the Messiah in this gospel. Christian or non-Christian, your question is the same. To the non-Christian, are you going to receive Him as your Savior? To the Christian, are you going to trust Him fully as your Lord?