Begat Who? December 24, 2017 (morning) :1-17

I have been soooo looking forward to this sermon. In preparation for this morning, it gave me permission to spend my own money and take that ancestry.com test. With the advent of the internet and cheaper DNA tests, many of us are really wanting to know where we come from. There have been those reality TV shows where celebrities take the tests and then travel back to their ancient lands. Our ancestry tells us where we come from – the physical area on earth. Our ancestry tells us something about our culture – I’m an German, Scots/Irish American. Others of us were brought here under chains and that forms who we are. We are who we are because of where we come from. We’ve been looking behind the scenes at the birth of and today we’re going to look at how we got here. The book of Matthew doesn’t start out with a story of a baby shower, instead, we get a genealogy. We get Jesus’ ancestry.com report. This list leads to the ultimate revelation that he is the Son of God.

This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of and of : 2 Abraham was the father of . Isaac was the father of . Jacob was the father of and his brothers. 3 Judah was the father of and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar). Perez was the father of . Hezron was the father of . 4 Ram was the father of . Amminadab was the father of . Nahshon was the father of . 5 Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was ). Boaz was the father of (whose mother was ). Obed was the father of . 6 Jesse was the father of King David.

David was the father of (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah). 7 Solomon was the father of . Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Abijah was the father of Asa. 8 Asa was the father of . Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram. Jehoram was the father of . 9 Uzziah was the father of Jotham. Jotham was the father of . Ahaz was the father of . 10 Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Amon. Amon was the father of . 11 Josiah was the father of Jehoiachin and his brothers (born at the time of the exile to Babylon).

12 After the Babylonian exile: Jehoiachin was the father of . Shealtiel was the father of . 13 Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud. Abiud was the father of Eliakim. Eliakim was the father of Azor. 14 Azor was the father of Zadok. Zadok was the father of Akim. Akim was the father of Eliud. 15 Eliud was the father of Eleazar. Eleazar was the father of Matthan. Matthan was the father of Jacob. 16 Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. 17 All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah.

Shew … aren’t you glad you didn’t have to be the scripture reader? It is very easy when we are devotionally reading the or when we are looking at the Bible in our Sunday morning worship services to skip over this section of the Bible. I mean 17 verses of names that are difficult to say – it’s easier just not to read it, besides, why does it matter. But, it is really easy to miss why Matthew even puts this genealogy in here in the first place if we skip it.

Matthew opens with the words, This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah. Now that word translated in the NLT translation as ‘ancestors’ and in the NIV as ‘genealogy’ really is so much more powerful than our English language allows. In the original Greek, it is most accurately translated as genesis. The phrase should say something like, This is a record of the genesis of Jesus the Messiah. Genesis means origin or ancestry like it is translated, but the word genesis also carries some heavy imagery, doesn’t it? It is the name of the first book of the entire scriptures and it starts with – in the beginning. This is the story of origin of all things. By using this word, Matthew very carefully saying – here is the family tree, an ancestry, and the origin story of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus doesn’t just happen to appear in 0 AD or more likely 3 bc as a little baby. No, this story of God – this story of Jesus – THE MESSIAH began at the very beginning.

John’s gospel introduces us to Jesus with something similar when John says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.” Of course, if Hollywood were writing this story Matthew’s gospel would be called Genesis II: The Fulfillment. As a Jewish scholar, Matthew ‘s purpose in writing this gospel is to spread the Good News primarily to the Jewish world. He wants every Jew to know that Jesus isn’t a stand-alone character. He wasn’t just a good guy or just a rabbi. He wasn’t a who popped up in ancient and that is it. Jesus is the fulfillment of the entirety of the scriptures that came before his birth. Matthew was a scholar of what we call the Old Testament – he knew it intimately, and when Matthew sits down to write his gospel, he wants everyone to realize that this Jesus is what was discussed throughout the Old Testament. This here, this story of Jesus the Messiah that we are celebrating today, is the fulfillment of who God is from the very beginning.

JESUS IS THE FULFILLMENT OF EVERYTHING THAT CAME BEFORE. “This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1 NLT)

Matthew continues with the words, This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham: This is as powerful an opening as – It was the best of times… or Call me Ishmael, or Four score and seven years ago or We the people. By saying that Jesus is a descendent of David and of Abraham he is proclaiming the penultimate pedigree. This is like saying you are the offspring of George and Martha Washington. Or of Julius Caesar. For Matthew to trace Jesus’ roots back to David and Abraham, Matthew is making clear that Jesus has the absolute perfect pedigree. Matthew leads with the important information and ends with the important information. Another reminder that Jesus isn’t born into a vacuum. He isn’t just a random guy out of Nazareth, no, this guy has roots all the way back to Abraham.

Just in case you didn’t get it, Matthew actually counts it out for you in v. 17 – fourteen generations from Abraham to David. From the founder to the nation’s greatest king. Fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian exile when it all seemed lost until God provided deliverance yet again. And fourteen generations from Babylonian exile to the Messiah. Now when you only get so many words to write a gospel and writing something down in the ancient world was a task unto itself with homemade ink and papyrus for paper – the question for the passage becomes why 14. Those Jewish listeners would have immediately known. 7 is considered the perfect number. And then to a multiple of 7 by 7 by 7 by 7 – Matthew is setting up that this just wasn’t a good time for Jesus birth, but this was the perfect time. Everything before, each generation, each problem and exile and sin, has all led to this moment – the birth of Jesus the Messiah in a little town called . God has been planning and preparing for this moments for 14 upon 14 upon 14 generations. This Jesus brings about a new era, a new generation – He brings the Kingdom of God. This Jesus, this birth, this Christmas day 2000 years ago marks a new thing, a new time, Jesus’ time.

WE NOW LIVE IN JESUS’ TIME. All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah. (Matthew 1:17 NLT)

This is the fulfillment of God’s promise and it means that the sufferings and the ills of this world are only temporary. To live in Jesus’ time is to reject that this what we see all around us is all there is. Today, 300 children will die of starvation and war is still raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are facing a future uncertain with conflicts like North Korea and political instability in Niger and Zimbabwe. There is genocide in Myanmar. These are horrible evils and suffering in this world. And on this of the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth – it is all the more overwhelming. But because Jesus was born and lived and died and rose again – we have a hope. We have a new genesis – a new kingdom to look forward to. It means that those ills and that suffering and that evil will not conquer in the end. This is a record of the genesis of Jesus the Messiah, these are words of hope. Telling us – not just reminding us – that Jesus is indeed the Messiah.

And between verses 1 and 17, we get some hiccups? The first one comes in v. 3, 3 Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar) Then there’s Rahab, the mother of Boaz. And Solomon whose mother was the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Except for Mary, whose scandalous story enough to rock a neighborhood, if you look up all those other women in the scriptures – you get some great reading. You find a woman who did what she had to do to carry on the family lineage, a woman of the night who saved the entire nation, a Gentile who was so faithful she left her own homeland and a woman whose name isn’t provided in these verses because she is known as the wife of someone else when she became part of this family tree.

In Jesus’ time, lineage was everything. Genealogies were faithfully kept and were considered to determine who you could become in life. Herod, the king of the Jews at the time, was known to have Edomite blood. To wipe the record clean, he had all of the ancient genealogies destroyed so he could assume power. For Jesus the Messiah to be recorded as having an ancestry that included prostitution, defiance of God, seduction/lust/greed and then foreigners – was something that should, have by all worldly standards, be destroyed. And instead of hiding Jesus’ colorful past, Matthew lays it out there with the idea of the genesis and the perfect time. Matthew doesn’t hide the skeletons in Jesus’ ancestry and instead lays it out there for everyone to see. Matthew doesn’t just want to have a good gossip line for people to remember, he wants to be very clear that if Jesus the Messiah claims these ancestors then absolutely everyone is welcome in this new perfect time that is being built.

WE ARE INVITED. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar) … Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab) … Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth) … David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah) … Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. (Matthew 1:3, 5, 6, 16 NLT)

Jesus breaks all the barriers, foreigners/gentiles are welcome in this new kingdom. Females, sinners, unwed mothers, women of the night and courageously bold women who saved the nation are welcome. Jesus’ birth means that there are no longer distinctions between who is welcome and who is not. There isn’t an elect for certain holy types. And now, because of this fulfilment we are all welcome. We are all part of the royal family tree.

WE ARE FAMILY.