The Pedigree, Part 2

If you were telling the story of your family's past, do you think you might be tempted to leave out the unflattering parts? Why bring up one of Israel's darkest scenes? David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. Why not write by the widow of Uriah? Because by then she was a widow and remarried.

Why say wife? Because Israel's messianic line is filled with sinners and then you get to their Savior who will die for it all. One thing the Bible doesn't do is sugar-coat the facts. You've certainly noticed this as you've read the Bible for yourself. When we look at the genealogy of Jesus, what we find there is a long line of sinners.

It's made up of people just like us. But as Stephen Davey points out, it's sinners that Jesus came to save. He didn't come because we were worthy of Him. He came because we needed Him. Jesus is God's indescribable gift to us.

And that's the theme of our current series here on Wisdom for the Heart. Today, Stephen concludes a message he began yesterday entitled, The Pedigree. Most evangelical scholars believe that this genealogy is divided into three sections with 14 names each to aid the memory of those that would want the record of their Messiah. They didn't have a copy of Matthew like you do.

We have three or four copies more than likely in our homes and offices. But if you wanted to have a copy of his pedigree, you would be compelled to memorize it and then write it down. This was the way you could stay on track, 14 names in each of the three sections. So the first section, your Bible may have it in paragraphs, which is helpful, of Christ's genealogy follows the history of Israel from Abraham all the way down to David, the king, in verse six. The second section takes you from David all the way to the captivity of Israel in Babylon, verse 11, and it ends with this tragic historical reminder of their deportation to Babylon. And then the third section takes you from the captivity to the birth of Jesus in verse 16, who is implicitly the ultimate deliverer. Now, in case you missed any of those three divisions and you're just a type A and you think I'm going to quiz you next week, all you have to do is read verse 17.

Look there. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14, and from David to the deportation to Babylon 14, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ 14 generations. So now you know where I got my outline. Thank you, Matthew. All right? So first and foremost, this genealogy is going to validate the royalty of Jesus Christ.

So just think of it. This humble adopted son of a carpenter, this miracle baby boy of a virgin is actually going to prove he's the heir to the throne of David, and that's startling. Secondly, this genealogy will not only serve to validate the pedigree of Jesus, it will also serve as a demonstration of the providence of God. Let me take you back a little bit in history. Something devastating you may already know about occurred in Jewish history some 1900 years ago when Titus, the Roman governor, finally said on the authorization of the emperor, we're tired of this rebellious little city. Go wipe it out.

And he did. He marched into the city in AD 70 and completely destroyed it, and he destroyed the temple. And with it and more tragically and lastingly to this day, those records inside the temple were destroyed as well. In fact, to this day now we have no genealogy existing that can trace the ancestry of any Jew living today back to their tribal roots. No Jew today can prove he's from the priestly tribe or the royal tribe.

It stopped. There's only one genealogy still available that traces a first century Jew back to his tribe in print, back to royal lines. And here's where it gets interesting. For those Jews today in the 21st century who are looking for the Messiah to come today, that Messiah would be unable to establish his lineage back to David because those official records have been destroyed. But by the providence of God, Matthew, this converted tax collector with his pension for record keeping was inspired by the Spirit of God to record the details of the lineage and the pedigree of Jesus, which means Jesus can validate his tribal connections and his royal pedigree because his genealogy escaped the destruction of Israel via inspired Scripture. You're holding a copy of thousands of copies available today, which means, I'm getting to the good part, Jesus is the last verifiable claimant to the throne of David. If a man showed up today and said he's the Messiah, he wouldn't be able to prove it genealogically. Jesus is the last claimant who could prove it.

There's another factor, by the way, in this second point, this providence of God. It's tucked inside this genealogy. In fact, if you go to verse 12, you discover the troubling news that Joseph is in the line of Jeconiah, a wicked king. In fact, if you go back to Old Testament records, you find that because of Jeconiah's wickedness, God declares that no descendant of Jeconiah's shall sit upon the throne of David, Jeremiah 22, verse 30. That means that since Joseph is descending from Jeconiah's line, a descendant of Joseph can't claim the throne, but we know that the Messiah is going to sit on David's throne and he has to have a legitimate claim to it.

So now what? Well, if you compare Matthew's genealogy with Luke's, and we won't take the time today, Luke chapter 3, they both track back to David, but through different descendants. That's because Luke is tracing Mary's natural father, Eli, and his line tracks all the way back to David through his son, Nathan. Matthew is tracking Joseph's line all the way back to David through his son, Solomon. The lines converge at David through different sons. See, Matthew is tracing Jesus' adoptive father, Joseph. Luke is tracing the lineage of Mary. I know this is a little tedious, but hang with me. The result is wonderful.

And by the way, let me do a little sidebar here. It's interesting to consider the fact that both Mary and Joseph can trace their lineage back to King David. So you think about the fact that this migrant carpenter and his teenage bride have royal blood coursing through their veins.

Now here's why the providence of God shines so brilliantly. If Jesus had been the natural born son of Joseph, he would have been disqualified from David's throne because of this curse on Jeconiah and his descendants. No blood descendant of Jeconiah can sit upon the throne of David. But Jesus wasn't a blood descendant of Joseph, was he? He was adopted.

He was born of a virgin. And from the virgin Mary, he receives his bloodline back to David because she's related to David too. And from his adoptive father, Joseph, he receives the legal right passed down, father to son, which was significant as well. You see, there's only one way, only one way for Jesus to circumvent the curse of Jeconiah to be related to David legally and yet still somehow be related to David by blood, which was required. You see, what God did providentially when he brought Joseph and Mary together, he knew he was giving Jesus Christ, God the Son and the flesh, the bloodline from Mary, the legal line from Joseph so he could rightfully claim the throne. His parental lines converged to give him his royal pedigree and the royal privilege to claim Israel's throne perfectly. And he's the last to be able to claim that.

The line ended with him. Now, you can't help but notice by the way how Matthew carefully makes sure you understand that Jesus is not in the bloodline of Jeconiah. Look at verse 15.

Now follow it with me here. And Eliad, the father of Eliezer, and Eliezer, the father of Matan, and Matan, the father of Jacob, and Jacob, the father of Joseph, and Joseph, the father of Jesus. Oh, wait.

Notice the shift? And Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. We want to make sure nobody misses that. The genealogy served not only to validate the pedigree of Jesus and demonstrate the providence of God in just those two illustrations.

Let me give you one more. Genealogy, thirdly, was given to illustrate the principles of grace. If you want to study each entry of this genealogy, go back into the Old Testament and find out this lineage. You'll discover that Jesus descended from a line of kings, obviously. Matthew's going to name 15 of them and all from David to Jeconiah. You take a closer look sometime and you'll discover that half of those kings were godly. That is, they followed after God, like David, Hezekiah, Josiah. But even still, some of those guys were pretty, well, all of them were pretty bad sinners, right?

And they were the good guys. The other half of the list of kings were utterly and openly and unrepentantly and they didn't care about its sinners, like Ahaz, and Rehoboam, and Manasseh. In fact, the Bible says of Manasseh, he was more wicked than all the pagan nations around him.

How's that for a reputation? And he refused to repent of his unbelief. Instead of God, you know, cleaning up his family tree, he includes these guys. He claims them as his forefathers.

But you need to keep in mind here that Jesus doesn't come to praise his forefathers. He comes to save them, right? And all their sin looked forward to that sacrifice of Christ upon the tree as we, to this day, look back in faith. He came to save them. He came to die for them.

He came to pay the penalty for their sin. Now, still more shocking than any inclusion of a king, either godly or wicked, was the fact that Jesus would inspire the inclusion of women into the public record of his royal genealogy. They didn't have rights in these days.

They were considered property. So this would be highly controversial. And again, this is the hinting of the gospel, where men and women are equal in the eyes of God in relation to their salvation. They come to Christ just like men do. Sinners forgiven by the grace of God.

But this would be highly controversial. In fact, add to this scandal of grace, all four women just so happened to be Gentiles. There were a lot of Jewish women he could have thrown in here. But now that he has their attention, he chooses four Gentile women. So Jewish, and by the way, again, Jewish genealogies typically bent over backward to show their pure Jewish lineage. If there is anything murky, well, we'll just forget about that second cousin or whatever. But Jesus openly admits what every Jew already knew. They already knew it. The royal line is mixed with the blood of Jew and Gentile already. By the way, so is the church. We're all mixed up, aren't we?

What a demonstration of grace. So who does he choose? Let's look quickly. Tamar is the first one mentioned in verse three. Look there in Judah. He's the fountainhead of the royal tribe. Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.

And you're thinking, no, no, no, no, no. Put a period after Zerah. You don't need to mention Tamar. She's a blemish on the reputation of our forefather Judah, the fountainhead of the royal line. Her story unfolds in Genesis chapter 38 where she marries the son of Judah. Her husband dies. She marries again. That husband dies. She wants a child and so she dresses like a temple prostitute with a veil covering her face. She sits near the place where her father-in-law Judah is tending sheep.

She catches his eye. Nine months later, she has twins by him and the firstborn joins the lineage of the Messiah and exposes Judah in the process. I mean, do you really want a hint at that episode? Let's clean the family tree up. Let's get that little branch taken care of.

No, no, no. Frankly, if we were God, we would have switched tribes at that point, wouldn't we have? I think Tamar is specifically mentioned to remind Israel that the very fountainhead of this royal line, that he's a sinner, that he needs a savior too. The second woman is mentioned in verse 5. Look there. None other than Rahab.

We're going from bad to worse. Trouble with Rahab, she's a little bit like Tamar, only unlike Tamar, prostitution was her profession. She lived in the city of Jericho, if you're old enough in the faith to know some of this.

She ran a brothel out of her house, built into the wall. She had already become convinced that Israel's God was the true and living God. She has a wonderful testimony of faith delivered in Joshua chapter 2 in verse 11. And God graciously allows her path to intersect some rather frantic Israeli spies who've been spotted inside the city.

They'd come to scope out for Joshua. They evidently dart into her brothel and kind of mix in. She hides them and she basically saves their life and she effectively becomes the first Gentile convert in Canaan. Now some have come along and they've tried to soften the edges of this story by saying that the Hebrew word for harlot can be translated innkeeper. Although inns and prostitution, you go back in history, even in American history, were one and the same.

Why hospitality was so critical for those who traveled. But the word used by the writer of Hebrews in chapter 11 is the same word used by James as they speak of her. Typically she's translated simply or identified as Rahab the what? The harlot. It's the word pornei. It's our word pornography.

It's typically translated in the New Testament fornicator. Rahab did not run a bed and breakfast. She ran a brothel. And let me say this.

Why soften the story? This is the point of God's grace. He's going to demonstrate his grace to an unlikely sinful woman who's probably the most unlikely person you'd ever believe would be the first convert in the land of Canaan who will become a living demonstration of faith in the true and living God. Isn't God great?

She's going to stake her entire future on this God, trusting that he will accept her. And he does. He does. By the way, do you have a past? Would you like to have it in print?

Probably not. And we all do. I would imagine that Rahab didn't necessarily want hers in print either. You look at her past. Oh, but Jesus is showing us her future. She is inducted into the messianic line of the Messiah himself. If you know her biography, she's rescued when the walls fall down.

She and her family. It isn't long before a godly Israelite man by the name of Salmon meets her and he's impressed by how and why she believed and what she risked and what she gave up and her courage and her faith. And he says, that's the woman I've been waiting for all my life.

And he proposes and she accepts. And he just so happens to be one of the princes of Israel. He's a member of the royal messianic line of Judah.

How do we know that? We know that because she has a baby boy and they name him, anybody know? Boaz. Boaz grows up watching his faithful Jewish father and his converted gentile mother and his little heart is prepared to do the same because he's going to grow up and fall in love with a gentile woman that nobody wanted either. And her name is Ruth. In fact, she's the next woman mentioned. Look at verse five.

Ruth. See, you dig into her history and you discover that Matthew's not only choosing gentiles, but now he's really digging deep. She is a Moabitess Gentile. The Moabites are so despised that they are disallowed entrance into the temple. Deuteronomy 23 and verse three. And it all tracks back to the rather unfortunate and sordid sinful history when Lot fled Sodom and Gomorrah with his two daughters as the judgment of God fell upon the cities. Along the way, he had to abandon his wife who disobeyed God and tried to return and by the judgment of God, she was turned into a pillar of salt. The next you read, Lot is hiding out in a cave with his two daughters whose morals evidently matched the cities they had left because each of them got their father drunk each one night and both of them had relations with their father. Both of them conceived and the oldest daughter's son's name was Moab. Of all the people to put into the family tree of Israel's prince, I mean, let's clean that off the record, right? Good night, Matthew.

What are you trying to do with this genealogy to run everybody away? We're not even past verse five. The blood is boiling.

They know it's true. Jesus is exposing his mission statement. I didn't come to call the righteous.

I came to call sinners to repentance. A Gentile who left her past nation of idolaters behind, trusted by faith in the God of Israel, not just the God of her mother-in-law, Naomi, along with this former prostitute named Rahab and before her an adulteress named Tamar. Look at their past.

Look at their future. One more woman is included here in this pedigree of the prince. Verse six tells us, look at it, David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. Again, Matthew, too much information. Just tell us that David was the father of Solomon, period. Why bring up one of Israel's darkest, most revolting scenes? Why not keep it hidden? I mean, if you were dictating the genealogy of Jesus, you'd get to this story and say, okay, enough is enough. We're going to keep this one to ourselves, shall we? But it's like God says, Matthew, don't just include the name of the son. In fact, I want you to add a little editorial comment. It was unnecessary for the pedigree.

Look at it again. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. Why? Why not write by the widow of Uriah? Because by then she was a widow and remarried. Why say wife?

Because Israel's messianic line is filled with sinners and then you get to their savior who will die for it all. Here's the good news. If Jesus Christ was not ashamed of his ancestors, he will not be ashamed of his descendants. That's you and me. Is he ashamed of you? He loves you. He's already robed you. In the mind of God you're already seated in the heavenlies. We're just limping through, confessing daily because we disappoint him and sin against him.

But he's not ashamed. This genealogy is nothing less than a declaration of grace to the world. And by the way, think about this truth too. The family tree of Jesus Christ is still being written, right?

You're in it if you've come by faith to the savior. I mean, his descendants effectively are still being added every day. We're going to co-reign with him.

We have the right. He's given us as adopted sons and daughters the right to reign with him. It's the only family tree I know of like this that you can become part of by invitation. He offers it to you today.

If you haven't accepted, he's offering it again. For as many as received him, Jesus, to them he gives the right to become children of God. The genealogy has served to this day to validate the pedigree of the rightful heir to the throne of David, serves to this day to illustrate the providence of God. His purposes have been and will be fulfilled. It serves as an illustration of the grace of God. It doesn't matter who you are or what you've done. In fact, there's going to come a day when Jesus Christ will open the book, the registry of the family tree.

He's going to take one last look. We call it the Lamb's Book of Life. The most important thing for you and me, for the rest of eternity, is that our names have been included. We have joined the family tree of the Messiah.

Thanks for joining us today here on Wisdom for the Heart. Our daily Bible teacher, Stephen Davey, is the pastor of the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. In addition to equipping you with these daily Bible messages, we also have a magazine that we publish monthly. The articles each month focus on a particular theme and explore various topics related to the Christian life. Stephen's son Seth writes a daily devotional guide.

Using that guide each day will help you remain grounded in God's Word. The magazine is called Heart to Heart. We send Heart to Heart magazine to all of our Wisdom partners, but we'd be happy to send you the next three issues if you'd like to see it for yourself. You can sign up for it on our website, or you can call us today. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253.

Call today. I want to take a few moments and share with you a note that came into our office. It's from Miriam, who listens to Wisdom for the Heart in Lexington, South Carolina.

She said, I have been listening for about 12 years or so, beginning when we moved to this area. And certain series that you've taught have meant a lot to me. Over the summer you taught through the life of Joseph. That's my favorite story in the Old Testament. My favorite in the New Testament is the prodigal son. I was a prodigal daughter for several years and came back. God's grace is abundant for all situations in our lives.

We lost our only child just over three years ago when she was 55 years old. What an encouragement it is to listen to these lessons from God's Word and apply them to my life. Well, thank you, Miriam, for writing to us. Your note illustrates our belief that God's Word has the power to change our lives, our thoughts, and our feelings.

We're glad that's true in your life. Friends, if you have a comment, a question, or would like to send Stephen a note, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email if you address it to info at wisdomonline.org. You can also visit the connect section of our website and send us a message right there. We're always encouraged to hear from you. Well, that's all for today. Please join us again tomorrow right here on your local BBN station. We'll see you next time.