Sermon Tone Analysis

Levi’s Genes

 

Christmas Day

 

Matthew 1:1-17

*/Focus:/*/ Jesus’ genealogy shows that God’s love is bigger than the Jewish race, yet it reaches out to redeem individuals./

*Introduction: Important “Begats”*

Everybody knows the genealogies are the biggest yawn in the Bible.

“Rehoboam begat Abijah, and Abijah begat Ralph”—I mean it warms your heart about as much as reading a phone book.

What’s not often said right out, but what’s understood, is that it’s probably best to skip over “the begats” and not to get bogged down in all those funny old names.

Yet, at the same time, we pay lip service to 2 Timothy 3:16, which says, /“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching and reproof.”/

If that’s true, that includes the begats.

And so this morning, join with me as I launch my very first message ever on the genealogy of Jesus.

What’s obvious from the prominence given these names at the opening of Matthew’s Gospel is that what we consider to be the most boring, least interesting part of the Christmas story was of the utmost importance to the original audience.

Genealogies become important to us at certain times of year, like this time of year.

Recently the /Wall Street Journal /said there is a good chance you are direct descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims (if you are American, of course).

Historians say that 26 of the 102 people who traveled in the Mayflower across the Atlantic in 1620 and celebrated the first Thanksgiving had children who had children who had children.

Today, twelve generations later, the Mayflower passengers may well have had 25 million descendants, which means there’s a one-in-ten chance that you are a direct descendent of those who came over on the Mayflower.

Regardless of how that may make you feel, in Jesus’ day one’s pedigree was a source of tremendous pride.

In order to own land in Israel, you had to show the public documents documenting your genealogy that gave you the right to a piece of the Holy Land.

Privileges were reserved for certain tribes.

For example, to be a priest you had to be of the tribe of Levi and (are you ready for it) have /Levi’s genes /(which, of course, means being a /blue/blood).

Most of all, they expected the Messiah to come from a certain family of the house and lineage of David.

And what’s interesting is that in the Gospels, even Jesus’ bitterest critics never once quarreled with him about his descent from David.

It must have been a matter of public record that Jesus was the heir to David and Abraham, and that as such, he was the inheritor of the promises of Israel.

So let’s read this passage.

Please turn in your Bible to Matthew chapter 1 and I’ll begin reading at verse 1: \\ ”/This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of King 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.

\\ Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (their mother was Tamar).

Perez was the father of Hezron.

Hezron was the father of Ram.

\\ Ram was the father of Amminadab.

Amminadab was the father of Nahshon.

Nahshon was the father of Salmon.

\\ Salmon was the father of Boaz (his mother was Rahab).

Boaz was the father of Obed (his mother was Ruth).

Obed was the father of Jesse.

\\ Jesse was the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon (his mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah).

\\ Solomon was the father of Rehoboam.

Rehoboam was the father of Abijah.

Abijah was the father of Asaph.

\\ Asaph was the father of Jehoshaphat.

Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram.

Jehoram was the father of Uzziah.

\\ Uzziah was the father of Jotham.

Jotham was the father of Ahaz.

Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah.

\\ Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh.

Manasseh was the father of Amos.

Amos 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.

Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel.

\\ Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud.

Abiud was the father of Eliakim.

Eliakim was the father of Azor.

\\ Azor was the father of Zadok.

Zadok was the father of Akim.

Akim was the father of Eliud.

\\ Eliud was the father of Eleazar.

Eleazar was the father of Matthan.

Matthan was the father of Jacob.

\\ Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.

Mary was the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah.

\\ All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to King David, and fourteen from David's time to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah.”//

/

 

And yet, more than telling us simply who was Jesus, these verses really are telling us who is God the Father.

What Matthew is doing between the lines here is preaching an eloquent three-point message on the nature of God.

It’s typical of a modern Jewish author that he would glorify God without even mentioning the name of God.

You get the sense that there’s more than meets the eye going on when you come to verse 17: /“So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ fourteen generations.”/

So here are three paragraphs with fourteen names each—fourteen generations, three times.

Think of these three paragraphs as a kind of line graph, sort of like a stock market report charting the fortunes of Israel in the Old Testament: up, down, up.

It’s in the shape of an N. It begins with verse 2, in that first paragraph of names, with Abraham, and it rises up to King David.

That line represents the mercy of God.

But then from King David, it plummets downward and bottoms out into the Babylonian captivity we find described in the second paragraph.

That shows the judgment of God.

And then Matthew ends by showing us the faithfulness of God by rising up out of the Babylonian captivity to the birth of Jesus the Christ in the third paragraph.

This morning I’d like for us to walk through each of these three paragraphs and, in doing so, for us to discover three dimensions of the nature of the God who came to us in Jesus Christ: the mercy of God, the judgment of God, and the faithfulness of God.

 

*I.

The Mercy of God*

Let’s begin with Abraham to David.

We’ll talk about the mercy of God.

The most striking thing about that first paragraph is the mention of the names of four women.

It was very unusual to mention women in a Jewish genealogy, and if one did mention women, it would mention women for the purpose of enhancing the purity and the nobility of a lineage.

For example, with Matthew mentioning women, we’d expect him to mention some of the grande dames of the Old Testament, for example, Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel, the wives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After all, their husbands are mentioned here, and they would lend a certain prestige to the lineage of Jesus, much as the Mayflower descendants would to our family tree.

And yet, instead of mentioning those three great women, look at the women who are mentioned in that first paragraph.

There we see mentioned Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—two of whom aren’t Jewish at all.

Rahab was a Gentile prostitute, and Ruth was a Moabite woman.

Matthew chooses women who do not in any way enhance or bring credibility to the untarnished Jewishness of Jesus, but quite the reverse.

He chooses women who show how contaminated Jesus’ bloodline was.

And yet, that’s the very first point of the sermon Matthew is preaching to us this morning.

He wants us to know that God’s love is bigger than the Jewish race, that Jesus is the Savior of all people, that Jesus is the light to the Gentiles, that he is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham: /“Through you shall all the nations of the world be blessed.”/

God is not a sexist.

God is not a racist.

Red, brown, yellow, black, and white—/all/ are precious in his sight.

Matthew wants us to know that the blood of two Gentile mothers coursed through the blood of the Savior of the world.

Yet that does not begin to compare with the audacity that Matthew shows as he continues on in this paragraph, because not only were two of these women Gentiles, three of these women were notorious sinners.

With the exception of Ruth, none of these women had morals that were anything to write home about.

We do not in our youth group hold up Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba as role models for our young women today.

Tamar tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into having a child by her, and the child from that incestuous relationship became a grandfather of the Messiah.