The Genesis of Jesus, Part 1

When you sit down and read the first book in the New Testament, the opening of Matthew's gospel might surprise you.

And candidly, it might even bore you. In the opening of his account, Matthew provides a list of complicated names that sounds more like a phone directory than the genealogy of Jesus. This Wendell helps us appreciate the beauty of this passage and the reason behind it. And Chuck does so in a way that's easy to grasp.

Originally presented before Christmas, Chuck titled today's message, The Genesis of Jesus. It's time to worship when you are not here at this place. The nights may very well be clear. The stars may shine.

Cool, crisp days will bring a gust of wind across your face. Pause in the beauty of the earth and the glory of the skies and give God thanks for his presence, for the hope that he brings, for the truth that he's revealed. The psalmist writes, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament reveal his handiwork. It's a beautiful thought. He's made it all. And whether you pause to enjoy it or worship him through it or not, it's still there.

Take time. Take time to worship. He has put it all together to reveal his greatness, his glory. I'll be reading for you from one of the least interesting chapters in all the scriptures. Some of you earlier began to read through it, and I saw some of you closing your Bible rather quickly. And you may have thought, I'm so glad I'm not preaching today so that you wouldn't have to come up with something. Well, that's been my opportunity all this week, and I'm so excited about what it has to say for us. I'm anxious to hear what I'm going to say about these 17.

Just kidding. There's truth here, even in a genealogy. I'd like to read for you a section of it. Once you find Matthew Chapter one, please stand for the reading of the scriptures.

I've selected eight of the verses that we will tie together a little later, along with the others. I'm reading from the New Living Translation. This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. Jesse was the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah. Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Ammon. Ammon was the father of Josiah. Josiah was the father of Jehoiachin and his brothers, born at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the Babylonian exile, Jehoiachin was the father of Shealtiel.

And finally, verse 16, 17. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. All those listed above include 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian exile, and 14 from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah. How faithful of God to provide the record of His magnificent Son, who was born of Mary. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now let's resume the message titled, The Genesis of Jesus. Imagine this, you are driving down the road, caring about little other than the beautiful scenery around you and realize behind you is a car with a light that's going around and around and it's a bright red. Well, I have news for you. When the cop walks up to your window, he is not coming to admire your car. I've never had a policeman say to me through the window, wow, great chrome wheels.

That looks so great. And they're not there to ask you about the last Sunday afternoon's ball game. They'll never walk up and say, how about them cowboys? That's not what they're going to ask for. They're going to ask for the most boring piece of information you have in your wallet and in your glove box. That's all they're going to want to see. They're not going to care about what you're wearing.

Nothing else matters but that uninteresting tiny font. It's called your driver's license and your proof of insurance. Because that is all that is important at that moment as they desire to know your identity and the validity of the documents you're carrying with you.

That's all that matters. If it's all valid, everything looks right and it squares with what they check with in their car, I never know what that is. Not that I've been stopped that often, but I do admit I know the drill now. And they're back there checking all of this out and then the bad news comes.

After they get all of that taken care of, once they find out that you are who you say you are and that this vehicle is in fact yours and you should be driving it. That's the one thing that's important. The information you hand over may seem dull and uninteresting.

You may not have looked at it three times since you received it, if then. But that is the basis of everything by way of information that they need. So it is in the story of Jesus. What appears to us to be of little interest and frankly rather boring information is in fact the most important thing about him to the reader who was originally a Jew. And to the Jew, the single most important thing about the one claiming to be Messiah is the pedigree.

Does it hold up? Is it valid? Is this identity one I can count on? One man writes it this way, It is important not to think that this is a waste of time. For many cultures, ancient and modern, certainly in the Jewish world of Matthew's day, this genealogy was the equivalent of a roll of drums, a fanfare of trumpets, and a town crier calling for attention. Any first century Jew would find this family tree both impressive and compelling. If you have your outline handy, you will observe I have left you some room there to mark down some things that are worth noting.

I call those things valuable points worth remembering. And so I repeat, by way of valuable points, it's written by a Jew whose name is Levi. Jesus gave him the name Matthew. This is the only gospel where the word Matthew or the name Matthew appears.

All the others call him by his given name Levi. He's a Jew, and the second important factor is that he is writing to Jews. Because you and I, for the most part, are Gentile, we have only passing interest in things like a list of genealogical or what we would call a family tree. So the third factor we need to remember that's important is that purity of lineage is all important. If any man who claims to be someone shows any sign of mixture in the bloodline, he has lost his right to be called a Jew, a member of the chosen race.

It went even further. Another in my research I found writes this. A priest, for instance, was bound to produce an unbroken record of his pedigree stretching back to Aaron. And only Aaron. If he married, the woman he married must produce her pedigree for at least five generations back. These genealogical records were actually kept by the Sanhedrin. This may seem an uninteresting passage, but to the Jew, it would be a most impressive matter that the pedigree of Jesus could be traced back all the way back to Abraham, the father of the Jews. Finally, among the things that are worth noting, by tracing the pedigree through David, you will notice he's mentioned in verse 6, through tracing it back through David and all the way to Abraham, Jesus' royal lineage is established. You see, we who sit in this congregation and for the most part believe what we read in the Bible are not represented mainly by those who read Matthew's Gospel in his day. They were not people like we are.

They were people who saw him in a whole different light. For example, look at the 13th chapter of the same Gospel. Matthew 13. We'll show you a little of their opinion. Verse 54 of Matthew 13.

We'll start at 53. When Jesus had finished telling these stories and illustrations, he left that part of the country. Notice he returns to his place where he's reared. He returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles?

Then they scoffed. He's just the carpenter's son. And we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.

That's a rare list. People who claim the perpetual virginity of Mary have never taken Matthew 13, verse 55 seriously. In fact, it says in verse 56, even all his sisters. We know all his brothers. We know all his sisters.

They live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things? They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

That's the mentality of the first century Jew. He was raised among us. He played soccer with our kids.

He was on the same team as our son. Who does he think he is standing there in the synagogue, coming off as if he's Messiah? Now back to Matthew 1. So let's begin with a serious mentality. This may read as boring list to people like us, which only reveals our ignorance and lack of involvement with the day in which Jesus lived his life.

Let's take it seriously. Right off the bat, look closely at verse 1. The book of the Genesis of Jesus the Messiah. Christ is the word for the anointed one. We render it often as Messiah.

They are synonyms, Christ and Messiah. This is a book. Byblos means a record, an account. So this is a record.

This is an account. This is a written document called a Byblos. We get our word Bible from it. Geneseos is the word for genealogy. I call it literally from the word Genesis. It means the beginning or the origin of someone. These opening words represent the Genesis of Jesus. Matthew is actually making a profound announcement. This birth is what Israel has been waiting for for 2,000 years.

He is the one. He is Messiah. The anointed one therefore, in order to be qualified, must come from the tribe of Judah, the royal line. Jesus must not only be a Jew, he must come from the loins, ultimately going back through David all the way to Abraham. Interpreting what this means, you can be certain that he is the one if you track your way through the generations that begin at the beginning of the Jews, Abraham, not the beginning of life, Adam, but beginning of the Jews, Abraham, you go all the way back there and then you trace it forward, you come all the way to Jesus. Let's return to my opening illustration, the importance of documentation.

It has to square with the truth. Your license plate must be your license plate. Your driver's license must have your picture on it.

It must have your current address. The proof of insurance must tie in with the document that is produced alongside it. It all fits together, otherwise you are in a heap of trouble.

You could in fact even be arrested because you are not who you claim to be. Think of this list as that kind of documentation and all of a sudden the boring part will fly away. There are three segments of history worth noting and if you have not observed them, you can rush to the end and find them listed for you at verse 17. All those listed above include 14 generations, here's the first segment, from Abraham to David and then there are 14 generations from David to Babylon or the Babylonian exile and then 14 from the exile to the Messiah. Those may not mean much to you because you're not Jewish.

You're not a student of Jewish history most likely. Because Matthew was and because anyone who would write a record of his life certainly needed to be, those things are important. In fact, as you work your way through, you will see a building of emphasis moving toward the Lord Jesus.

Let's go to the three. First, from Abraham to David, that's verses 2 through 6. You see it for yourself. Abraham, the father of Isaac, all the way down, verse 6. Jesse, the father of the one who was to be king, the most significant king in the history of Israel. They named the city, the king, the city of David. They still call the flag, the flag of David. The symbol is the crown of David, still the most significant. We call, and we might write this in our notes, the period of the patriarchs. And they are all named for, or many of them are named for us here. It's a period of wandering and enslavement in foreign land, a period of deliverance from slavery, of covenant making, law giving, a period of conquest as well as victory and defeat. The names are here, familiar to every well-taught Jew. By the end of the era, Israel has become a powerful nation.

Under David, they were in fact that. If you love music and if you can read a musical score, you're familiar with the crescendo symbol. It looks like a long arrowhead that moves in the direction of increased volume.

It begins at pianissimo or double pianissimo as quietly as you can play, and it builds toward fortissimo or triple fortissimo where it reaches the climax. That's the way these first verses are. It begins quietly with a life first lived in Ur of the Chaldeans, and then it moves out of Abraham and his wanderings through Isaac and then Jacob and then Joseph and then on all the way down to where you reach the climax, at least for this first section, in the patriarchs with David. Because we are not Jews and because we don't study Jewish history all that much, the significance of a life like David is lost in the morass of our lives.

I love the way G. Frederick Owen describes it. David quelled the armies about them. He satisfied the people throughout Israel. He quieted the Philistines for all time to come. Then in the midst of the peace and plenty wrote many psalms and praises to Jehovah, still writing about David. The elderly king gathered vast stores of stone and iron and brass and cedar for the erection of the temple of God.

He gave his parting charge and closed the most successful royal career recorded in the annals of history. David turned everything over to his successor. What he turned over was the most powerful kingdom of Western Asia, the fruit of the labors of Saul and Samuel and David and Abner and Joab, bounded by Lebanon and the Euphrates on the north, the Euphrates and the desert on the east, Egypt on the south, and the Mediterranean on the west. Israel was then exceedingly fertile and sustained a large population. Its hills were crested with fortresses and covered with cedars and oaks.

The land was favorable to both tillage and pasture, abounding in grapes and figs and olive and dates and every species of grain. One wag puts it, there was not only a chicken in every pot, there were grapes on every vine. And by the time David said farewell to this earth, it was a kingdom that was enviable in the eyes of all other kingdoms and along King Solomon to take it up from there and to lead it into its ruin. Still waiting, still no Messiah. As great as David was, he was not Messiah, nor were any of those in his progeny mentioned in verses 2 through 6. And so David through Bathsheba give birth to Solomon. Solomon then is the father of Rehoboam who oversees the beginning of a divided kingdom. Jeroboam fighting with Rehoboam and now we see a decline, the period of the kings. We call the first one the period of the patriarchs. Call this next 14th generation era the period of the kings. There is infighting, there is competition, there is a civil war of all things.

The divided kingdom now comes in place of the United Kingdom. What was once strong under David now is weakened through the multiple wives of Solomon who led him astray and from that come these warring figures, those of the north and those of the south. And there is a decline, there is degeneracy, there is apostasy, there is idolatry. You reach the end of this time which is called the time of the exile and you realize that it's a national disaster. So weak that when Babylon marches in there's hardly a fight to defend itself. And the city of David falls and the temple of David is in ruins.

It is a horrendous tragedy that can hardly be put into words. This entire genealogy would crescendo with the reality that Jesus was Israel's reigning king and the one they'd been waiting for. You're listening to the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. We're in the first chapter of Matthew today and Chuck titled his message, The Genesis of Jesus. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Even though Insight for Living went on the radio in 1979, this is the first time Chuck has presented a verse-by-verse study through all 28 chapters of Matthew. And as you take this journey alongside Jesus from His birth in Bethlehem to His Great Commission, we're confident your love for the Lord will intensify. Now concurrent with the rollout of this brand new series, we're pleased to inform you that Chuck's commentary on Matthew was recently released as well. Actually, because of its scope, the commentary comes in two hardbound volumes.

And they're ready for purchase today. Chuck's accessible commentary will serve as a natural complement to what you'll be hearing on Insight for Living in the weeks and months ahead. So to purchase Swindoll's Living Insights commentary on Matthew, go to insight.org slash store. If you prefer, you can call us.

If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888. As the brand new year begins to unfold, we're looking forward to walking alongside you each day. This daily program and the ministry behind it are designed to help you cultivate a deeper walk with God as you learn more about His Word and its relevance to your life. It's all made possible, of course, because people just like you give voluntary donations.

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If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org. Chuck Swindoll continues to describe the Genesis of Jesus, Tuesday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, The Genesis of Jesus, was copyrighted in 2014 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.