A Family Christmas

It’s Christmas morning. Families around the world will take up a tradition passed down by generations and read the story of Jesus’ birth. Some will go to Matthew 1-2, others will go to Luke 1-2. Whichever gospel one chooses, both contain passages most will likely skip over: the genealogy of Christ. Luke’s genealogy is easier to avoid; he waits to include his until after the introduction of John the Baptist’s ministry. Matthew, on the other hand, places the genealogy at the start of his gospel—and at the start of the whole New Testament. 

Does that seem like an odd decision to you? A long list of hard to pronounce names doesn’t make for the most exciting read, especially to wiggly children who’d rather open gifts. It’s just a little harder to see the significance or the excitement in a genealogy, isn’t it? I promise you, it’s still there. Of all the ways Matthew could have opened his gospel, he knew exactly what he was doing to lead with a genealogy. Come alone with me as we seek to see what he saw. 

1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king. 

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. 

12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. 

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 the Christ fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:1-17)

The Bible is huge. Sixty-six different works, spanning several genres, written by dozens of authors over more than a thousand years—it’s hard to take all that in at one time. Fortunately, there’s a few places you can go to in the Bible that will give you a quick overview of the story so far which serve as built-in Cliff Notes. Here’s a short list of great summary passages. 

• Joshua 24:1-13 gives a summary of the first five books of the Bible 
• 1 Sam 12:1-15 catches up through Joshua and Judges 
• Ps 105-106 offer a poetic recap from Abraham to the exile, summarizing 1-2 Kings 
• Nehemiah 9 gives a summary of the fall of Israel, the exile, and the return to Jerusalem 

If you’ve fallen behind on your “Read the Bible in a year” plan, you’ve still got a week left; read those four chapters and you’ll be good on the Old Testament. We’ve got a few summary passages in the New Testament, too. In Acts 7, Stephen’s sermon to the Sanhedrin recaps all of the Old Testament and shows how it points to Christ. Hebrews 11 is perhaps the most famous example. It tells the story of redemptive history through the lens of faith. All these saints from Abel to John the Baptist live and die as they trusted God with the promise that he was with them. 

Matthew 1:1-17 does the exact same thing. This genealogy is the story of God with us, and every name is a chapter. There’s three ways we can see God with us in the story this genealogy tells: God with us as author, God with us as friend, and God with us as savior. 

God with us as Author 

Let’s first see God with us as the author of this story. This is the bird’s eye view, the macro scale, the big picture. This genealogy is split up into three sections; Matthew tells us this is intentional, we’ve got three sets of fourteen names. It’s almost as if these are three acts in the drama of redemptive history. So let’s review the drama God has written. 

Act 1: Abraham to David. In Genesis 12, God reveals himself to Abraham, a childless, old man in Babylon, and promises him three things: God will give him a son, he’ll give him a land, and he will bless the whole world through him. God leads Abraham and his family out of Babylon into Canaan, into Egypt with his great-grandson Joseph and out of Egypt with Moses, into Canaan again with Joshua, then finally after centuries of syncretism and civil war, God raises up David who seems to fulfill the promises to Abraham. He’s directly descended from him, he establishes peace in the promised land, and he blesses the nations (David’s ancestors include gentiles like Rahab and Ruth). 

That’s act 1, and if the story ended there it might feel pretty satisfying—but it doesn’t. There’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is, the story is about to take a dark turn. The good news is, God’s story of redemption is much much bigger than David. 

Act 2: David to exile. Act 2 opens with a grim reminder that David is not the son Abraham was waiting for. We’re told David was the father to Solomon by “the wife of Uriah.” We know her name, Matthew could have said Bathsheba—but Matthew again is being intentional. Uriah was a Gentile, he was a Hittite from the north; rather than blessing him, David steals his wife and has him killed. By his own sin, he wrecks the kingdom God established under him. Yes, he brought peace to Israel, but that peace was short-lived. Just two generations later the kingdom will split under Rehoboam, and after centuries of wicked kings leading the people into sin they are again torn from the land. Act 2 ends where Act 1 began, back in Babylon. It seems as though God has left his people, and the story will end in tragedy. But God’s not finished yet; the story continues. 

Act 3: Exile to Christ. The amazing thing is, God blesses Abraham’s children in Babylon. Just like in Egypt, they are fruitful and multiply; God delivers them from radical persecution; they rise to the highest levels of power, and eventually, God brings them back to the promised land. God has remembered his people, he is still at work fulfilling his promises to Abraham. Matthew shows us in this genealogy that God is with us as the author of history, he’s in control of the whole story. 

Here’s why that’s important. I imagine if we could go back in time and ask Eliakim or Matthan on a random Tuesday how God was with them as the author of salvation they might answer with a shrug, “I really don’t see what God is up to here.” Maybe if I asked you the same question you’d give the same shrug. But when we zoom out, we see God with his people every step of the way—through good times and bad, through ups and downs, through all the twists and turns. Matthew shows us in this genealogy that God is in control. 

God with us as Friend 

That’s a beautiful reality we see in every recap of redemptive history in the Bible. But there’s something uniquely beautiful in telling that story through a genealogy. It’s not just the bird’s eye view, the big picture—it’s every single individual through all of history. God isn’t just at work through events, he is at work in names—in people. 

Consider Abraham. Abraham wasn’t just a figurehead or a pawn in a greater story. Abraham is given this amazing title throughout the Bible as “the friend of God.” He knew God personally. As the old him goes, “he walked with him, and he talked with him, and he told Abraham he was his own.” That intimacy, that trust, is what guides Abraham by the hand out of Babylon into a foreign land. 

We could talk about how God was with Isaac and Jacob and Judah and on down the line, too, but let’s skip ahead to David. God wasn’t cold or distant with David; he walked with him through his whole life. He tells David in 2 Sam 7 “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went.” David wrote songs and poems to the God he knew as his shield, his father, his master, his ally—his friend. Each of the names in this genealogy is a person who had their own connection to the living God. 

Do you believe God is personal? Do you know God in this way? That’s the God of the Bible, and he’s inviting you right now to know him as a friend. This genealogy speaks to two kinds of people. There are some of us who believe in God and know he’s at work out there—he’s running the show, he’s writing history—but we really question whether or not we can know him. We might think he’s too busy worrying about the big picture to pay attention to us. If that’s you, slow down the next time you read this genealogy. This is a God who knows names, who walks with us and talks with us. 

There are others of us who are all on board with calling God friend, but we don’t really concern ourselves with the story he’s writing. This is the “spiritual but not religious” kind of person who might say “I’m looking for a personal connection, for higher fulfillment, for a transcendent experience—but I don’t care too much about the church or the Bible or whatever God’s doing out there; it’s just me and God on my own terms.” If that’s you, you need to zoom out. God is doing so much more than assisting in your self-care plan. He’s writing us into the greatest story ever told and connecting us to a family of believers spanning literally every generation of humanity. 

This genealogy offers us both. It gives us the personal connection we long for with God and it shows us the story he draws us into. And at the heart of that story lies our Savior, Jesus Christ. 

God with us as Savior 

Let’s close our time looking at God with us as savior. Redemptive history is the long story of us waiting for the son of Abraham to appear. At first we think it might be Isaac, but he doesn’t fulfill the promises. He falls into the same sins as his father. Jacob, too, leaves us waiting. David seems like the closest, but he too falls short. Through all the kings, through exile, and even through their return, God has remembered his people. He hasn’t abandoned them and constantly reassures them that he is still at work fulfilling his promises to Abraham.

The return from exile is a miraculous confirmation of that, but it doesn’t solve every problem. In fact, the last details we’re given in the Old Testament is Nehemiah praying for God to forgive the people because they’ve gone right back to the sins that drove them into exile in the first place. That’s just three generations into the third act, and it implicitly presents us with the open question “Will God remain with us? Will he keep his promises to Abraham and to David?” 

The miracle of Matthew’s gospel is found in the very first verse: we’re given an answer. “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Here is the one we have been waiting for all along! God wasn’t cold and distant. He came in history, in the flesh as a real man with a real genealogy. Jesus is the one who will bless the whole world—he will reconcile all people, both Jews and Gentiles to himself. He is both David’s son and God’s son, God himself as the king who will reign with justice and establish everlasting peace. He has come to free us from our sin, to break the chain of rebellion that has cursed our ancestors from the start. He is the savior of Abraham, the savior of Isaac, the savior of Jacob, the savior of Judah. And name after name after name, up to himself, and even up to every believer here today. He is the savior of Elizabeth McLean Smith, of Sarah Elizabeth Taylor, of John William Taylor, of Mary Elizabeth Kurth, of Betsy Irene Quinn, and of Patrick Bondurant Quinn.  

I can trace my family history back at least five generations on my mother’s side, and all of these women and men looked to Jesus as their savior. Who are your spiritual ancestors? Every single believer can trace their faith all the way back to Christ himself. Maybe it’s your parents, but it might not be. Maybe your spiritual ancestors start with your old college roommate, or a pastor or the author of a book. Whoever it is, friends, take time today to consider your genealogy of faith. Be encouraged that God has been with you as the author of salvation through all history, and is with you now as your friend and savior. 

And if you are reading this and you don’t yet know Christ as your savior, please—look at him. Spend some more time this Christmas morning reading past the genealogy into the rest of Matthew. See who this savior is, what he has done for you, and why he is worthy of worship this Christmas. He is with us now and invites you to join this family of faith.