Gospel of Matthew Chapter 1 -- John Karmelich
1.
How does one write a
book about Jesus and introduce him?
a)
Let us say you are one
of the original 12 disciples, and you decide you are going to write a book
about Jesus’ life and death. Where does
one begin?
i)
First of all, you think
about a purpose for writing the book.
ii)
It is not just a bunch
of rambling notes of “things I remember about the guy”.
iii)
You organize it based on
your purpose.
b)
Matthew’s purpose for
writing this book was to convince people that Jesus is the promised king to the
Nation of Israel.
i)
This is a major
task. For the most part, Jesus has
already been rejected by the Jewish nation by the time this book was written
roughly thirty years after Jesus death and resurrection.
a)
The word Messiah
literally means “king”. Although the
Nation of Israel had many kings in their history, “the” king would be
one who would rule for forever.
b)
Other than a relatively
small group of Jewish followers, most of the believers of the first century
were non-Jewish (also known as “Gentiles”).
ii)
Another problem for
Matthew is he had to change people’s pre-conceived notion of just what
is the Messiah as much as who the Messiah.
a)
The Jews were expecting
someone to rule and reign from Israel and overthrow the Roman Government.
b)
I’m fairly certain that
if Jesus accomplished that task, he would have been accepted by the Jewish
nation as their promised Messiah.
(1)
He did not overthrow
Rome at that time. Jesus was more than
capable of doing this if he choose, but that was not His purpose.
(2)
The Old Testament does
promise that Jesus will one day rule from Jerusalem. I touched upon that in the introduction lesson and I’ll take it
on more of that issue as I work my way through Matthew.
c)
Matthew’s purpose was to
show people that Jesus is the promised Messiah because he fulfilled all the Old
Testament predictions made about Jesus over the centuries.
(1)
Once Matthew could do
that fact, then he could explain the purpose of the Messiah to
pay the price for everyone’s sin prior to a coming day when the Messiah would
fulfill the Jewish’s expectations of a ruling king.
c)
OK, John this is old
news for me. Why should I keep
reading? Glad you asked! J
i)
One thing for us, as
veteran Christians to see, and to constantly remind ourselves is that God is constantly
working in our lives to change our preconceived notions about God, Jesus
himself and our own expectations and make us more dependant upon Him!
a)
We can think, “I already
understand about Jesus, just like the Israelites had their pre-conceived notion
of who is the Messiah, therefore I don’t have to review this stuff”. You are missing a key point of bible study!
b)
We need to remind
ourselves that God is in control. It is
too easy for us to focus on our lives, our own problems, or to depend upon our
own resources and forget the source of all of our blessings as well as
our hope.
c)
As believers, it is so
easy to become dependant upon our own financial savings, the freedom we have as
Americans, and our own intelligence. We
pray to God, but still fail every now and then to remember that we are fully
dependant upon God for all we do.
d)
One of my favorite bible
teachers once quipped, “I’m convinced God stays up nights thinking of new ways
of asking me, “Do you trust me? Do you
really trust me?””
(1)
He meant that he was
constantly getting into new dilemma’s and problems in which he would have to fully
depend upon God in order to get through that situation.
2.
Remember that Matthew
gave up everything to follow Jesus.
a)
He was a tax collector
for the Roman Government.
b)
That means he turned his
back on his Jewish people to “sell out” to the Romans.
c)
He gave up his heritage
and was an outcast in exchange for the financial reward of working for the
Romans.
d)
Yet Matthew gave all
that up to follow Jesus.
i)
Even as a former tax
collector, he now no longer had any financial stability.
ii)
Further, reading between
the lines of the gospels, I doubt Matthew was ever accepted back by the
Jews. To follow Jesus meant to be an
outcast by the Jewish nation. If anyone
understood what it was like to be an outcast, an outsider, one who gave up everything
to follow Jesus, Matthew would be the guy.
iii)
He is a perfect model
for us to follow.
a)
For us to be a follower
of Jesus, we must be willing to give up everything to follow Jesus. For many in the world, that meant their
standard of living, their friends, and often their lives.
b)
It “kind of makes you
wonder” who in the United States would still call themselves a Christian if it
meant poverty, isolation or your life.
c)
That thought scares me
as well as it probably does you!
(1)
As you get older, it
isn’t so much that you would do it for yourselves, because you walk in maturity
to realize that Jesus means everything.
The hard questions would you be willing to do that for your spouse and
children who financially depend upon you?
That is what trusting Jesus is all about.
(2)
That is an example of
what Jesus meant by the statement:
(a)
“If anyone comes to me
and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers
and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
(Luke 14:26 NIV)
(b)
It’s not about hating
your family, it’s about trusting Jesus more than the love you have for anyone
or anything else.
e)
On that somber note, let
us get back to Matthew.
i)
Last time I checked the
title page, this is a study of Matthew 1. J
3.
Matthew
Chapter 1 is a genealogy of Jesus from the beginning of the Jewish nation to
his birth.
a)
The
last part of the chapter focuses on some of the facts surrounding Jesus’ birth.
b)
For
many people, the first seventeen verses of Chapter 1 are a boring thing to
read.
i)
It’s
just a bunch of names of Jesus’ genealogy from Abraham to Jesus.
c)
It
is important from a Jewish mind:
i)
A
religious Jew knows that the promised “Messiah” is a descendant of David.
ii)
Therefore,
Matthew lays out the verses to show a Jewish audience that Jesus does fulfill
the “royal blood issue” that he was a direct descendant of David.
iii)
One
of the great issues I’ll get into later in the chapter is, “If Jesus is adopted
by Joseph, does that still make him a “descendant” of David?
a)
Many
people are aware that Jesus was a descendant of David from both his mother’s
side and his father’s side. His father
(Joseph’s) side is by adoption because of the Immaculate Conception.
b)
So
why does Matthew emphasize Joseph’s side and not Mary’s side to prove his
linage? If it were me, I would use
Mary’s side, but hey, I’m not in charge.
J
c)
Part
of the answer is you have to “think Jewish”.
(1)
In
that culture, the emphasis is on the male.
(2)
It’s
not that Jewish culture was anti-women; if anything, women’s rights in that
culture were far superior to the surrounding nations.
(3)
The
view is that God called men to lead and the “leading roles” in this pedigree of
Jesus were almost all men. There
are a few women mentioned for specific reasons, but the emphasis is on the man.
(4)
Joseph’s
line is chosen as there were expectations of a promised male-king. Joseph’s family line was the “kingly”
descendants of David, and that was the line people were watching for the
Messiah.
(5)
Mary’s
“line” was a descendant of David, but not the line where the kings came
from. People were primarily looking at
the “kingly” line for the Messiah.
(a)
Since
that is where people were looking, that is where God put Jesus! He was a direct descendant of the
“king-line” of David through his stepfather Joseph, as well as a direct
descendant of David through another branch of the family line via Mary.
4.
With
all of that stated, I want you to think about the genealogy and how it applies
to our lives.
a)
If
you know your Old Testament, this genealogy has more embarrassing moments than
it does proud moments.
i)
If
you heard Jesus being introduced this way by Matthew and you knew what the
bible actually says about these ancestors, you would be saying, “Matthew, did
you really have to mention those people? This is actually kind of embarrassing”.
ii)
One
of my favorite Jewish commentators, Dennis Praeger, said it best: “God picked the biggest bunch of losers to
be his chosen people.” Dennis Praeger,
who is a devout religious Jew, was insulting his own heritage. If you read the history of the characters of
the Old Testament mentioned in the lineage of Jesus, you would read of every
type of immoral sin one can imagine.
iii)
The
question to ask is, “Why would God pick these people to bring “The
Messiah” in the world”. If I were to
make up a story of God becoming man, I would make his ancestors great hero’s
who never had any significant faults.
a)
When
you read this list, their personal life stories included adultery, incense,
murder, cheating, and idolatry in the worse form. Their isn’t a commandment of the Old Testament that isn’t broken
somewhere in this line. Yet, God choose
them to bring Jesus in the world.
Why?
(1)
Here’s
a clue: “Instead, God has deliberately
chosen to use ideas the world considers foolish and of little worth in order to
shame those people considered by the world as wise and great. … so that no one
anywhere can ever brag in the presence of God.”
(1st Corinthians 1:27, 29, The Living Bible).
(2)
My
paraphrase of this verse is, “Jesus can’t brag about his pedigree”. God allowed some rotten people to be part of
the line of the Messiah. This way, no
one can brag about their accomplish-ments other than what God has
accomplished through them.
(3)
This
leads of course, back to you and I. We
are not “more special” than others because of our faith in Jesus. We may look at this “long list of losers”
and say, “I was never that bad”.
God, who is a perfect God, expects perfection from us. Although our faults are not on public
display like this ancestral list of Jesus, our faults are wide open in God’s
eyes. These people can only be
saved in God’s eyes by trusting in God for forgiveness. They were there to bring forth a coming
savior. They were part of a bigger
purpose that they may, or may not have understood. We serve God for the same reason. This is God’s world and not ours. We may not fully understand our purposes and roles in life. If we serve God and live for Him to the best
of our abilities God can and does use us for his ultimate glory.
(4)
Gee,
I hate to stop when I’m on a roll, but I need to break down and start Verse 1
before I finish today’s lesson. J
5.
A record of the
genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
a)
If you have to pick the
two most famous people in the history of the Jews, these two are it.
b)
Abraham was the father
of the Jewish nation. He was
specifically called by God to start the Jewish nation. A promise was made to him “In your seed
all the nations of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 22:18, NKJV).
i)
In fact, Paul picks up
on this in Galatians 3:16. Paul notes
that the word “seed” is singular, referring to the fact that one particular
person (Jesus) would come from Abraham to be the promised Messiah.
c)
The other person picked
is David.
i)
As I mentioned in the
introduction last week, King David, who came hundreds of years after Abraham,
was the Jewish king to whom God told that a Messiah would come from his
descendants. David is listed first as
the term “Son of David”, to a religious Jew, refers to the Messiah.
d)
My favorite commentary
on the opening verse of the New Testament comes from the book: The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip
Yancey (Zondervan Publishing, 2002).
i)
To paraphrase he said,
“The mistake the Jews make is they fail to see Jesus as the Son-of-David,
(i.e., their Messiah). The mistake the
non-Jews make is they fail to see Jesus as the Son-of-Abraham.” Mr. Yancey ‘s point is that Christians often
fail to see the “Jewishness” of Jesus in his life, role, purpose and ministry
and simply focus on Jesus as one who paid the price for their sins.”
a)
Jesus has a role to
fulfill in our (non-Jews) lives as one who paid the price for our sins and
further as one who lords over us who we look to daily as our guidance on how we
should live our life.
b)
What many Christians
around the world fail to see is his “Jewishness”. He is an unconditional promise to the Jewish nation. The Bible explicitly calls on Christians to
respect the Jewish aspect of Jesus and to respect the Jewish nation. God’s promises to the Jewish nation are not yet
fulfilled as God the Father unconditionally promised David that the Messiah
would rule from David’s throne, which is in Jerusalem. Right now, Jesus is sitting at the right
hand of God the Father, or “The Father’s Throne”.
6.
Verse 2: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the
father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
a)
I have good news for you
the reader. I am not going to do a
detailed analysis of every person in this genealogy. J I can’t
accomplish this in 10-12 pages and I don’t believe it is Matthew’s purpose for
writing this chapter.
b)
I just want to get some
“big picture idea’s” across and some things to contemplate that affect our
lives as Christians.
c)
The emphasis here is
strictly on the direct descendants from Abraham to Jesus.
i)
Nothing is mentioned of
Abraham having another son by his maidservant Hagar.
ii)
Isaac
himself is the only son listed, as he is the “son of the promise” by God.
iii)
Jacob’s brother’s get a
brief mention, only because those 12 brothers in all began the 12 tribes of
which the Israelites were typically divided.
a)
The emphasis of this
whole genealogy can be summarized by the statement “God’s promises come
true”. God made a different
promise that the descendants of the 12 sons of Jacob inherit the Promised Land
(Israel) and therefore, I believe that little tidbit was included for that
reason.
iv)
Judah was one of the 12
sons of Jacob. He wasn’t the oldest,
nor was he his father’s favorite.
a)
He was simply picked by
God among the 12 to carry on the Messianic line.
7.
Verse
3: Judah
the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of
Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4 Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon,
a)
Here we have another
embarrassing moment in the Jesus’ pedigree:
i)
Judah
had a daughter-in-law named Tamar.
Judah’s son, (her husband) died.
ii)
Tamar,
who didn’t have any children, disguised herself as a prostitute and had sexual
relations with her father-in-law Judah to produce the twins Perez and
Zerah. The whole story is told in
Genesis Chapter 38.
a)
I
warned you Jesus’ pedigree had some embarrassing moments! J
iii)
This
is one example that Matthew “snuck” in the story simply to show that God’s plan
to have a descendant of Abraham, via David led to the Messiah. God’s will got accomplished in the strangest
of fashions!
b)
The
rest of the genealogy of this section Matthew got from 1st
Chronicles Chapter 4.
i)
The
Scripture gives little details about these other people.
8.
Verse
5: Salmon
the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose
mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of
King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's
wife,
a)
We get a few other
little “embarrassing moments” tucked away in here as well.
b)
Matthew went out of his
way in Verse 5 to mention that Boaz’ mother was Rahab.
i)
Rahab is a prostitute
mentioned in Joshua Chapters 2 and 6.
She lived in Jericho and was part of a city that God ordered the
Israelites to destroy as punishment for centuries of idolatry.
ii)
When the Israelites
first spied out the land, Rahab helped the Jewish spies by lying to the leaders
of Jericho and saving the lives of the spies.
iii)
In a way, she was one of
the first “Gentile converts” because she trusted in the God of the Bible more
than she trusted in her own “gods”.
iv)
The fact that God used a
lying prostitute is a good sign that God can use anyone.J
c)
The
information about the genealogy from Boaz to David comes from Ruth Chapter 4.
d)
The
other little “dig” that Matthew snuck in here is about King David.
i)
The
Bible has more verses dedicated to David than anyone else other than Jesus.
ii)
Yet,
the one fact Matthew choose to mention is David having an affair with
Bathshiba. Bathshiba got pregnant from
David, and David had her husband Uriah murdered to cover the event. (See 2nd Samuel Chapters 11-12).
iii)
The
key point (in my humble opinion J) is simply to see that God ‘s plans get
accomplished even through the mistakes man has made.
a)
It
doesn’t excuse those mistakes. We read
a lot in the bible about the punishments those individuals suffered for their
mistakes.
b)
It
is simply that God uses those events for the greater good.
c)
That
affair with Bathsiba eventually leads to marriage and to the next king, which
was Solomon.
d)
The
application to you and me is that God doesn’t expect perfection from us, just
trust in Him. God can and does use us
despite our faults.
9.
Verse
7: Solomon
the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of
Asa, 8 Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father
of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9 Uzziah the father of
Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 Hezekiah
the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah,
11 and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at
the time of the exile to Babylon.
a)
In four verses, we have
all the kings of Israel from Solomon (a son of David) all the way until the
time the Nation of Israel went into captivity.
b)
To be technical, after
Solomon, beginning with his son Rehoboam, Israel split into two nations, with
the Northern alliance calling themselves “Israel” (the capital was Samaria) and
the Southern Alliance calling themselves “Judah”. The kings of Judah are those listed here.
c)
The Northern alliance
was conquered by the Assyrian Empire and were scattered all over that
empire. The Southern Alliance (Judah),
the list shown above, lasted another hundred years in tact, was eventually
captured by the Babylonians. After a
series of rebellions, the Babylonian king completely destroyed Judah and
everyone was taken prisoner into captivity.
The land was desolate for 70 years.
d)
If you know your Jewish
history, or ever read 1st and 2nd Kings, you will know
that this list continues the embarrassment of this lineage.
i)
Most of these kings were
described as wicked idolaters. Other
than a few good exceptions (e.g., Hezekiah, Josiah), most of these guys were
bad news.
ii)
In fact, by the time we
get to Jeconiah, it is so bad, God put a curse on Jeconiah through the
prophet Jeremiah:
a)
This
is what the LORD says: “Record this man (Jeconiah) as if childless, a man who will not prosper in
his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the
throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.”
(Jeremiah 22:30, NIV)
b)
This
curse/prediction by Jeremiah means that no direct descendant of Jeconiah will
be the Messiah.
c)
God
“got around that problem” by the virgin birth.
d)
You
never read anywhere in the New Testament of Mary’s huband Jesus being
the father of Jesus. Joseph is only
recorded as the husband of Mary.
(1)
Jesus
genealogy through Joseph is through adoption. That is key.
e)
We as Christians are also adopted
into God’s family.
(1)
“But
when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we
(Gentiles) might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5, NKJV).
iii)
In
fact, there is a hint in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be both
born and adopted. It is from
Isaiah 9:6 (NIV translation)
a)
“For
to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his
shoulders.” (Isaiah 9:6 NIV)
b)
Notice
the first phrase says, “child is born”, as in being-born.
c)
The
second phrase says a “son is given”.
Now how can a son be both “born” to someone and “given” to
someone? Gee, how about a virgin birth
(from Mary’s perspective), which is the “born-part” and adoption by Joseph
which is the “given-part”?!
10.
Verse
12: After
the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the
father of Zerubbabel, 13 Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of
Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim,
Akim the father of Eliud, 15 Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of
Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of
whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
a)
Here we have the
genealogy under the period of captivity.
i)
After 70 years of all
the Jews being out of the land of Israel, their captors, the Babylonians, were
conquered by the Medo-Persian Empire.
They permitted the Jews to return to Israel. Only a small percentage of the Jews choose to make that journey
back to Israel. Most of the Jews
remained in the Medo-Persian Empire.
ii)
For the next 400 hundred
years (more or less) the land of Israel was in turmoil.
a)
First, it was under the
jurisdiction of the Medo-Persian Empire.
b)
Then the Greeks
conquered them. For several hundred
years, different factions of the Greek Empire fought back in forth, with the
territory and nation of Israel stuck in the middle of a war zone.
c)
Finally, the Romans
conquered the territory prior to the birth of Jesus.
b)
Just where and when
Jesus’ ancestors returned to Israel after Babylon is a mystery.
i)
In fact, there is
nothing recorded in the bible about these people between Jeconiah and
Mary/Joseph. So how do we know this is
correct information?
ii)
Only outside history
gives us a clue.
iii)
The first century Jews
were meticulous record keepers. Even
the historian Josephus (a non-Christian Jew, first century, pro-Roman) wrote
about how the Jews kept records of their ancestry.
iv)
One reason they did this
was because the Jews were looking for a Messiah. They knew that whoever it was, was a
descendant of David. Therefore, they
kept very good records of David’s descendants.
c)
In the year 70AD, about
35-40 years after Jesus death and resurrection, all of these records
were destroyed. The Jews were rebelling
against Rome and the Romans decided to destroy the Nation of Israel, the temple
and from 70 AD until 1948 there was no Jewish state of Israel.
i)
That is important,
because with that destruction of Jerusalem was the destruction of all ancestry
records of who was a descendant of David.
ii)
From the year AD 70, no
Jew can prove whether he is, or is not a “Son of David”.
iii)
Despite the horror of
this event where millions of Jews were killed:
a)
It validates that
Matthew was written prior to 70AD.
b)
It helps to validate
Jesus as a direct descendant of David and proof of his “Messiahship”.
c)
It is another example of
how God allows horrible sins to be used for his glory. It doesn’t excuse what the Romans did. They are eternally punished for the crimes
they have committed. But God used that
event for his Good.
d)
Notice in that set of
verses how Joseph is not called the father of Jesus, but just the
“husband of Mary”.
i)
Matthew is emphasizing
how Jesus is not a direct descendant through Joseph,
but gets his title (via his father’s side) by adoption.
ii)
Jesus is also a direct
descendant of David via his mother.
That is covered in Luke Chapter 3.
11.
This now wraps up the
genealogy section of the Gospel of Matthew.
The rest of Chapter 1 focuses on the virgin birth story.
a)
Chapter 1 of the Gospel
of Matthew can also be summarized as two facts:
i)
1) Jesus is “fully man”
(a “seed of David”) and
ii)
2) Jesus is “fully God”
(the “virgin birth”).
a)
In the second section,
we read of the “seed of God” being planted in Mary to produce Jesus.
iii)
You and I cannot fully
comprehended how Jesus can be “fully man and fully God” at the same
time. It is a mystery as the Trinity is
a mystery.
a)
There are some aspects
about Christianity that are beyond explanation. We are simply asked to accept them by faith.
b)
“A God we can fully
comprehend is not a God that is worth worshipping”. (Source unknown).
iv)
Romans Chapter 5 is a
good source for additional reading on this topic. To paraphrase, one man (Adam) was created by God with free
will. He brought the disease of sin
into this world. Another man was
brought into this world who was God himself, incarnate as man. That perfect sacrifice of Jesus was needed
as the cure for disease brought into this world.
b)
One
question I pondered for awhile is, “Why not bring Jesus into the world right
after Adam and Eve ate the bad fruit?
Why all these years in between?
Alternatively, why didn’t God wait until the modern era of satellite
television for Jesus when he could have worked more effectively?
i)
That’s
a complication question that requires a lot of explaining!
ii)
The
most important reason is through history, we learn of the failure of man on our
own to deal with the problem of sin.
a)
First
man tried “without the law” (i.e., prior to the 10 commandments) and failed
miserably. God needed a flood to clean
up that calamity. J
b) Then God tried to give a set of rules for a group of people to follow. That was the lineage of Jesus.