The largest part of Matthew chapter 1 is a list of names. We might ask whether there is any profit in reading such a list. But Matthew included them for a reason. Matthew has an agenda. He has a message that he believes is of great importance. Also, Matthew knows his audience. Matthew, also referred to as Levi, was a Jew. He belonged to what we call the Children of Israel. He was once a tax collector for the Roman authorities. He had joined himself to this foreign power for personal profit. Tax collectors were notoriously corrupt, taking more than was due, and they were despised, particularly by the religious Jews and those who considered their own lives to be more morally upright. But Matthew was a changed character. One day he was sat in a customs toll-booth when he met a man like no other. This man had no goods that Matthew could tax but he had something about him that directly appealed to Matthew. Mark’s gospel account (Mark 2:13-17) records only two words spoken by this man to Matthew. He simply said, ‘follow me’. The man was called Jesus.
Matthew left his corrupt ways and ‘got up and followed him’, becoming a disciple of Jesus. Matthew invited Jesus for a meal, along with his former colleagues and, as Mark says, other ‘sinners’. The religious Jews were shocked at the company that Jesus chose to keep and asked his other disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus overheard the criticism. He replied with some profound words. ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’
Matthew appears to have two main aims when he writes his gospel account. One is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. The Old Testament writings are like a long letter from Yahweh, or Jehovah, the Lord, the God of Israel. They contain details of someone who is promised to be coming; someone who will rescue Israel. Matthew’s second main aim is to prove that the Messiah came specifically to rescue a people of a particular character.
The religious rulers were also waiting for the Messiah. But they had misread God’s letter. They thought that the Messiah would be a powerful ruler who would rescue the nation of Israel from foreign rule. They thought that the Messiah would come principally for good people; moral people, like themselves. Matthew says the opposite. In verse 21 of our chapter he records the words of the angel to Joseph, about the son that Mary was to give birth to. ‘You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ Matthew was writing in the Greek of his day. We translate the name Jesus from that language. In the Hebrew, it is ‘Joshua’, or ‘Yah-shuah’. It means Yah saves, or Yahweh (the God of Israel) saves.
Through Jesus, God saves.
And God saves sinners. Let us consider again the long letter that the Lord had written to Israel in the Old Testament. Matthew quotes from it over sixty times in his account. He uses phrases like we find in our text, ‘all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet...’ He wants people to understand that the letter from God was detailing the credentials of the Messiah, and that Jesus had all those credentials. Jesus was the perfect match. Imagine that you received a letter from British Gas. They inform you that someone is coming, at some point, in the next couple of months. This person has a job to do. They are going to service your boiler. The gas company tells you that they are aware that there are fraudsters about. They don’t want you to be mistaken. The person who they are sending will have certain credentials. They will be in a British Gas van and will wear the blue uniform. A lanyard will be around their neck with an identifying document. You hear a knock at the door and you answer it. The man at the door tells you that he is from British Gas and that he wants to come inside. You remember the letter and observe. He is wearing a string vest and shorts. He doesn’t have any identification. His vehicle is a twenty five year old, faded green Vauxhall Corsa and, instead of an engineer’s tool bag, he is carrying an axe. Hopefully, you would make some excuse and politely decline entry. Or, you may do what I would do, and slam the door and lock it and then hide in the bath! Why? Because the man just doesn’t look right. He lacks credence. Very evidently, he hasn’t been sent by British Gas. However, Matthew’s firm belief is that Jesus had been sent. The credentials of Jesus match the Old Testament prophecies. It is as if Matthew is saying, ‘you don’t need to worry, this is the right person.’ Jesus was sent from God and he had a job to do.
This account starts with the word ‘genealogy’ in its first sentence. It is similar to the words ‘gene’ or ‘genetics’, which are the links between family members. I got my genetic information from my parents. They got theirs from their parents. This list of names is an abbreviated family list. In that first sentence, Matthew mentions two of them, Abraham and David. There is a reason for this. Both of these men had received promises that the Messiah would be one of their descendants. Last time, we considered that promise given to David, in 2 Samuel 7, ‘I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever’. The Messiah would have a ‘kingdom’. This is also important to Matthew. He realised that this could prove to be a problem for people studying his account. It had proved to be a problem for the religious of Matthew’s day. Jesus did not look like a king. How could he then qualify to be the Messiah? The only possessions he had were the clothes that he wore. He looked like a pauper, not like a prince. But his kingdom was not earthly. His promised throne was not in a palace. Time and time again, Matthew emphasises this in his account. Have you ever read the phrase, ‘the kingdom of heaven’? Where? You may say, ‘the bible’, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But, actually, we can be more specific than that. The answer is Matthew’s gospel. This phrase appears nowhere else in the whole bible. To Matthew, it is vital to his message. That’s why he doesn’t mention it five times, or ten times or twenty times, but more than thirty times! Jesus is the kingly Messiah, and his kingdom is heavenly. So, if Jesus is the king, then who are his subjects? Who did Jesus come to rule over? We have already considered it briefly. Jesus came to rule over sinners. Look at the person that the Lord, in his wisdom, chose to write this account. A corrupt person; someone who took advantage of his fellow man. Matthew was an outsider, despised by others. He would not have been popular. Then there is the family that the Lord chooses to be joined to. What a family! Look through that list. Even the better ones have a history recorded that clearly shows their flaws and their failings. Among the men listed, there are adulterers and murderers. There is David, who was both. There is King Manneseh, a deeply insecure and violent man, who ‘shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end’ and who led the nation of Judah ‘astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites’ (2 Kings 21:9 & 16). If you were to look at genealogies from this time period, one thing would generally be missing – women. The records were written by men for men, and women were forgotten. God’s word doesn’t forget them.
Matthew doesn’t forget them. Women are really important to the message that Matthew is seeking to get across. There are five women mentioned in chapter one. All of them are characters that would get harsh judgement from large sections of society. Not just in Matthew’s day but every day. Tamar was unjustly treated by her father in law, Judah. Eventually, in order to preserve the family line, she disguises herself as a prostitute and has sex with that man. This brief union produces children; twins. One of them is Perez. Tamar, along with Judah and Perez are in the family line that God chooses. You might not choose this family. I might not choose this family. But God does. Then there is Rahab. Unlike Tamar, who resorted to prostitution for a specific reason, Rahab was a prostitute. That was her job. She sold her body to men. She wasn’t even an Israelite. What right did she have to join the family of the Lord? Every right, it turns out. Simply by believing that Israel’s God was who he claimed to be she entered into relationship with him (Hebrews 11:31). Then we have Ruth. Again, not from Israel but a despised foreigner, born an enemy of Israel. Her mother in law was an Israelite. A point in time came where Ruth was faced with a choice. She could have stayed an outsider forever but she made the wisest choice. Ruth said to her mother in law, ‘Your people will be my people and your God my God’. When Matthew gets to Solomon he says, ‘whose mother had been Uriah’s wife’. This was Bathsheba, who David forcibly stole from that righteous man, Uriah. And finally, we have Mary. How would society judge her? With the background details that we have, we can view Mary favourably. But society all too often judges by what it sees on the surface. How would it judge Mary? A displaced person who was pregnant by God knows who. What a list Matthew gives us! Outsiders, the abused and the abusers, their failings all on public record. Some of these failings brought ruin to these people and to those around them. It’s a catalogue of disaster. And the Lord chooses this family as the one he wants to be part of. Was this by chance? Did it just happen that way without design? I don’t think that Matthew gives us this record just to convey the bare facts of who preceded who. The make-up of this family is important. The character of its members is significant. They are representative of the whole human family, which has been corrupted by sin and consequent failure through every age. In our text, Matthew refers to Mary’s pregnancy, and highlights one of the Old Testament prophecies that give credence to Jesus as the Messiah.
‘All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means ‘God with us’).’ Us. People just like us. People like those in the list of names. As Jesus said about Matthew and his like, ‘not... the righteous, but sinners.’ It is sadly possible for human beings to be ashamed of their families. Jesus isn’t ashamed of his. Hebrews 2:11 speaks about his true family, the family of believers. It says this, ‘Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters’. Jesus came to save. When he was born in Bethlehem, he was born for a mission. It was a mission to save. He came to unite with people and to rescue them. He came to bring them back to God. He came to be their heavenly king. Those whose lives were previously troubled can now contemplate ‘the peace of Christ’ ruling in their hearts, as Colossians 3 instructs us. So, if our background, our character, doesn’t disqualify us from a relationship with God, through his saving Son, what does actually qualify us? Five verses back from the end of the bible we are reminded of an amazing truth. It’s as if the bible calls out and implores us not to finish it and still remain unsure. Revelation 22:17 says this, ‘Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.’ Do you wish to take the free gift of Jesus the Messiah? As a sinner, do you thirst for a way back to God? Then you qualify. Let’s go back to the illustration that I used earlier about the letter from British Gas. What if we opened the door and the person standing there had arrived in a British Gas van, and they had the uniform and the identifying lanyard. Would we let them in? I think we would. Revelation 3 uses an illustration of a knock at the door. In the illustration, it is Jesus knocking at the door. It says this – ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ This is useful for those who are seeking. Have you heard the message about Jesus? Are you convinced by what you have heard? Do you accept Matthew’s argument that Jesus is the one promised in the Old Testament? Do you believe that Jesus came to save a family of people who were rotten to their core? Then open the door! Jesus promises that he will come in. He will enter your heart. He will guide your life. Actually, these verses have ongoing relevance to believers. They were directed to the church at Laodicea. Those believers were sliding away from God due to their circumstances. They were in great danger spiritually and the Lord graciously gave them a warning. The Laodiceans had become rich and, consequently, complacent.
In their minds, they had become less dependent on the Lord. This had started their spiritual decline. It may not be the same circumstance that will threaten us with spiritual decline, but there will be things that come into the lives of believers that threaten to overturn our faith. The circumstances may differ but the answer will always be the same. Jesus stands at the door and knocks. Let him in. Always. Matthew’s account contains truth that never changes. It is always, and it is for ever. He opens with the amazing truth that Jesus is Immanuel. Jesus is God with us. The message of Christmas is the extraordinary message of when God ‘appeared in the flesh’ (1 Timothy 3:16). But equally wonderful is how this story of ‘God with us’ ends. Matthew finishes his account with some of the final words of Jesus before he ascended to heaven. Jesus lovingly reassured his disciples and commissioned them to tell all people about his saving power. Matthew’s final words are these words of Jesus Christ the promised Messiah. ‘And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ If we open the door to him then he is ours always and to the end. Matthew 1 is the story of a family. It was a family that contained ugliness, bitterness and ruin. But, Jesus came into the story of that family’s life and changed human history for ever. It was written by a man who had been corrupt. But Jesus came into Matthew’s life and had the power to change that man and change the outcome of his life’s story also. And, in the story of ruin and failure and heartache, so often found in the story of our lives, Jesus has that same transforming power. He has the power to change the outcome and to change that outcome for ever. Jesus is ‘God with us’. Jesus says, ‘Surely I am with you always’.
Photo by Drahomír Posteby-Mach on Unsplash
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