The History of Jesus (Matthew 1) - Harvest Kuala Lumpur

Resource by Eric Weiner

Last week we said that God’s people had to wait 400 years between the close of the OT and the opening of the NT. But, you just had to make it 7 days because this is our first week in the NT this year if you want to make your way to the beginning of Matthew.

It’s hard to put into words just how important family is…We treasure our families. We honor those who came before us for the sacrifices they made. And we trust that those who come after us will honor us for the difficult things we faced and the tough decisions we made that contribute to their story.

But family can also add so much pressure. Adding kids into the equation is what really made me feel this. Because there are so many decisions I make that directly impact their lives and who knows how many generations after them. We want to set them up for success. We want them to have more than we had. A better future. And that’s pressure.

So, if you ever feel stuck by that, if you ever feel stuck about where you are in life or how things are going, I want you to know that the biggest decision you can ever make is still right in front of you. It hasn’t passed you by.

It doesn’t matter what bad choices you’ve made, how poorly your life has gone, or how insignificant you feel. The biggest decision you can make is still right in front of you. And I promise you, it will have a lasting impact on your family’s story.

And that’s the decision to trust in Jesus Christ alone to save you from your sin and to give your life over to Him. To do whatever He calls you to do for his glory. Because he never lets the life of anyone who chooses to trust Him go to waste.

The opening lines of Matthew’s gospel give us a genealogy. A family line. So-and-so was the father of so-and-so. And maybe these names seem irrelevant to you.

But in ancient times, a family record was so much more than a family history. It was like a CV. It was a way of saying this is who I am and this is what I’m qualified to do.

Jesus’s genealogy speaks directly to his identity and mission. From the opening words of the gospels, we get the genesis of Jesus.

That’s what Matthew 1:1 says: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Those words are packed with identity and purpose. And understanding Jesus’s identity and purpose is so crucial because knowing Jesus is so crucial. Especially in a place like Kuala Lumpur where there are so many people from so many different religious backgrounds who pay tribute to him.

It seems like everyone I meet will tell me they believe in Jesus. He’s a prophet who speaks God’s message. We can learn from his teachings. I’ve even heard Hindus say Jesus is a teacher worthy of respect.

And these are fair statements to make if we only evaluate him as a man. But the gospels just don’t leave us with that option.

What we believe about Jesus is what makes the Christian faith so distinct from all the others. What we believe about Jesus causes division. It divides because either you’ll profess that Jesus is God or you’ll deny him.

So before we jump into Matthew 1, I want us to look at the opening of John 1.

Matthew tells us that Jesus’s identity and mission have strong ties to the promises of Abraham and David (and we’re going to get there). But first, John’s gospel says Jesus’s story goes back even further than Abraham.

The history of Jesus starts at the very beginning.

1. Jesus was before the beginning.

[John 1]: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

[14] – And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John gets in your face, right from the start. Genesis 1 recounts the days of creation when God spoke life into existence. John testifies that Jesus was there the moment all things began. Nothing that has come into being exists apart from the work of the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The biblical claim is that Jesus is God. Paul says in Colossians 1:17 that Jesus “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” John’s saying that Jesus is the eternal, incarnate Word of God.

Let me break that down for us:

Jesus is Eternal – He has always been and always will be. He is the first and the last.
Jesus Incarnated – The infinite became finite. The immortal became mortal. The Author writes himself into the story. The One who has the power to hold all things together was held in the arms of his nursing mother. He is fully God and fully man. Verse 14 says God put on flesh and lived with us.
He’s the Word – God’s words have always been effective. During creation, God spoke and everything came into being. And God’s Word has always reflected his character and always accomplished his purposes.

If Jesus is just a man, then as respectable as he is, all his teachings and miracles are up for debate because some of them just don’t make sense. But if Jesus is the One who made all things, then you have no other option than to surrender to Him. If he’s the One who holds all things together, if all of history is directed by his word, then everything is on the table.

Because if Jesus created all things, then there’s no reason to doubt that he can’t recreate all things according to the Father’s saving purposes.

God coming to dwell with man is like the show Undercover Boss where the CEO of a company pretends to be a new hire. So the employee – who doesn’t have a clue – is telling the most powerful person in the organization what to do. But once the Boss’s true identity is revealed so is his power and authority. He starts making the necessary changes to put the company back in order.

Jesus is very God of very God who lived among us. And through His life God’s voice is still speaking into the hearts of men today. Do you hear it? Awakening us; bringing people from darkness into his marvelous light. Jesus was before all things.

Now, as we turn back to Jesus’s genealogy in Matthew we learn that–

2. Jesus comes as God’s ‘Yes’ to all His Promises

The genealogy of Jesus tells us that God is the great promise keeper because every promise of God is yes and amen in Jesus Christ.

Two of the most significant promises God makes in Israel’s history are made to Abraham and David. And these promises are so relevant to what God is doing in Christ that Matthew puts them front and center.

Jesus is the son of David; the son of Abraham.

FIRST – God’s promise to Abraham. If you remember, God told Abraham to leave his homeland for the city that God would build. He promised in Genesis 12: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

And then later in Genesis, God tests Abraham’s faith in this promise. He wants to know, “Abraham, do you really believe me? Do you really believe I can do this for you?” So God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son on the altar only for God to provide a ram in the thicket to sacrifice in his place.

From the opening of his gospel, Matthew is declaring that Jesus is the son of Abraham who wouldn’t be spared. He would die for the sins of the world, and through his sacrifice, all the nations of the earth are blessed. Because through the Cross of Christ there is forgiveness of sins. And God has called every Christian to help spread this news to all the nations of the earth.

SECOND PROMISE – in 2 Samuel 7 God promised to establish a forever kingdom in David’s name –[12] When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

Matthew shows us that Jesus is the son of David not only because he wants us to connect Jesus to the royal line, but also to announce that Jesus will be the forever King God establishes in David’s name.

Jesus will be who the prophet Isaiah described as the Prince of Peace who will rule in peace and whose government will never end. All power and authority on heaven and earth belong to him.

See, these are the major promises. These are the hardest ones to keep. So, if God can keep these promises, we can trust he’ll be faithful to all the rest. He’s Promise-Keeper.

3. Jesus’s family line shows that the gospel is for anyone.

Matthew’s goal is not to record all the people in Jesus’s family. That’s not what he’s doing. Instead, he creates a specific structure to make a theological point. Which makes the names of the people he did choose all the more interesting.

I have family members that have taken great interest in our family tradition, and you know what they’re hoping to find? Do we have any kings or queens in our family? Are we connected to any major historical events? Do we have family members responsible for any major contributions to the world?

But while Jesus’s family tree does connect him to some of the great kings and patriarchs of Israelite history, it also connects him to some of the low points of their sinful past.

If you want to show that you’re someone of importance, you would include the great men of renown. But watch this: even the names in Jesus’s genealogy have been soaked in God’s grace. Just look at some of the names:

[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,…

If you want to show you’re worth something you don’t include women. Now just to be clear – I’m not saying that and the Bible’s not saying that. Ancient culture is saying that you wouldn’t include women. Matthew includes 5.

Let me tell you about Tamar. The story of Tamar takes place back in Genesis 38. Without getting into all the messy details, Tamar was married to one of Judah’s sons (one of the 12 sons of Israel), but her husband died before they had kids. According to the Mosaic Law, if a man died and left his wife with no kids she would become the responsibility of the next oldest brother.

Well, the next oldest brother didn’t want to have kids with her – men, take note – so the Lord struck him dead, and at this point, Judah’s not feeling so good about giving his final son to Tamar. Because now his future rides in the balance. No sons = no grandchildren = no future.

So since Judah does wrong by her Tamar decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and lures Judah to sleep with her and she gets pregnant with twins. And at this point you’re like, “Why are you telling me this story?”

Because Matthew says these are the kind of people that make up the family of God.

Some of these people aren’t even from Israel. They’re foreigners. Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute who lied to help the spies get into Jericho.

Ruth was a Moabite woman who was faithful to her widowed mother-in-law.

Even King David, the guy who would make anybody’s CV look strong, Matthew portrays in the most humbling ways. David was the man after God’s own heart. He’s the handsome shepherd boy who slays Goliath. The King of Israel who unites the people. The poet who crafts all these beautiful psalms.

But Matthew says, “David, the guy who slept with his friend’s wife and then sent him to the frontlines to be killed in the heat of battle.” That David.

Jesus’s family line is soaked with grace. It’s for the humble. He’s got liars and adulterers in his line. He’s got people who would’ve once been religiously and ethnically foreign inside his family.

Jesus’s family shows us that the gospel is for any one of us. There is no mistake you’ve made or sin you’ve committed that the Lord can’t heal and bend back toward his glorious purposes.

We said this last week – broken marriages, broken idols, broken lust. Whatever it is. What if my marriage fails? What if my kids grow up, leave, and never talk to me again? What if I can never break this cycle of addiction?

Listen, the One who made all things says, I can redeem that. I can heal that. I can put that back into place. I can adopt you. My Law is love and my gospel is peace. Come to me you weary soul, let me give you rest.

4. Jesus came to give you rest.

[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.

This may sound like an odd point to make but it’s actually a big deal. Matthew structures his genealogy to give an account of the history of God’s people from Abraham to Jesus. He intentionally structures the genealogy with three sets of 14 generations.

I’m not trying to do anything crazy here, but 3 sets of 14 is the same thing as 6 sets of 7. 7 is the biblical number for completion. It signifies rest. On the 7th day, God rested. Under the Law of Moses, Israel was supposed to give rest to the land so that it could be replenished.

And then on the 50th year, which is the 7th 7th year, was the Year of Jubilee – which sounds like what is; a year of celebration. A year when people’s debts would be forgiven and servants would be set free.

IOW – Matthew is saying Jesus is the 7th 7 who comes to give you rest. Jesus’s arrival brings the Lord’s favor. It’s freedom for those enslaved to sin. He breaks open the prison doors. Those who’ve been stuck in the dungeons of despair are free to come out and see the light of day.

See, some people approach Christianity just like they approach any other religion. They renounce their former way of life only to enter back into the same practice under a different name. If you do that, Christianity will feel like any other religion. It will feel burdensome. It will feel tiring. You’ll grow weary and discouraged.

You’ll never feel like you’re doing enough and you’ll always question God’s love for you. But Jesus says, I didn’t come to make you weary. I came to give the weary rest. I didn’t come demanding greater works. I came to pay your debts and set you free.

We don’t do things for God to earn his love. For those who are in Christ, we live all of life from this place of I am loved and accepted by God in Christ.

5. God does some of his best work in the overlooked places of life.

Jesus’s history teaches us that nothing in history is ever wasted for God. We tend to worry that what happens on the world stage is what dictates our fate. Or that the leaders controlling our national governments are the major players in the world. And if you’ve been paying attention to the news you probably don’t feel too great.

There’s stuff going on in the Middle East. Russia and Ukraine. Civil wars. Refugee crisis. Presidential elections. You can go down the list. But while these things seem big and consequential to us, they don’t surprise God. They don’t worry him. Because he can turn anything toward his glorious purposes. And sometimes he does his best work in the places where no one is looking.

Let me give you an example of this:

After World War I, things were in flux in Europe. Which was a perfect opportunity for an extremist group like the Bolsheviks to take over the Russian government. So they staged a coup and ordered military advances into other parts of Eastern Europe. Well, a country like Lithuania was still trying to get things back in order when the Bolsheviks came knocking.

You know, one of the reasons why my family was open to ministry in Kuala Lumpur is because it’s so accessible for English-speakers. We all know about the British influence. But the reason why I’m an English-speaker is because I was born in the US. Shocking, right?

But the reason why I was born in the US is, in part, because the Bolsheviks invaded Lithuania, which led my great great grandparents to flee to the US.

And that feels like such a small scale thing, but there’s a million more stories like it. Who knows what God is producing in the grand scheme of redemptive history for his glory. Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”

See, you don’t need to fear. God is the one who’s ordering your future. One sign that we’re growing in Christian maturity is that we’re no longer tossed to and fro by the waves of world events. The fear and insecurity starts to decrease as the contentment and quiet confidence starts to increase because Jesus as King is not an abstract idea anymore. It’s the future of the world. And a reality that Jesus has invited his church to live in today.

This is how God operates. He works this way even in how he orders his own entrance into the world. If you look at Jesus’s birth story, he wasn’t born to people with money in the capital city. He wasn’t given a coronation ceremony. He was born in a feeding box in the underdeveloped places of the world to parents who nobody had heard of. They were poor. They didn’t matter to the major players of the world.

Maybe you think God has forgotten me. He doesn’t notice me. He doesn’t care about my lowly place in this world. And even if he did, my life is a mess. Just think about Joseph. Mary tells him she’s pregnant and he’s not the father. Just think about the shame and disappointment he must have felt. V. 19 says he “resolved to divorce her quietly.”

Joseph could say, I’m nothing more than a carpenter from Bethlehem. God, I don’t know what to do. And then God appears to say what’s happening here is not at all what you think it is. You feel like life is falling apart, but I’m telling you it’s just starting to come together. You think this is a meaningless event in the course of human history, I’m telling you it will change the world.

Because anything done in Jesus’s name will have lasting effect. Earlier I said I want you to know the biggest decision you can ever make is still right in front of you. It’s still right within your grasp.

This morning we’ve been looking at the history of Jesus. He’s the one who was before the beginning. All things exist by him and for him, including you. God entered the world as a baby. And in Jesus, he came to make good on every promise. He’s promise-keeper. He’s chainbreaker. He frees sinners through the forgiveness of sins. He’s been directing the steps of those who came before us. He’s directing your steps. All of history is moving toward his glorious ends.

And I’m telling you, you can make that decision to give your life over to him today. He wants to heal you. He wants to set you free. He wants to give you a new name.

Jesus didn’t just predate the history of the world. He’s at the center of it all.

In the genealogy of Jesus we see his identity and mission. And when we take on Jesus’ identity, we also take on his mission.

You can’t separate the two. And the same is true for his followers. You can’t really separate your identity as a follower of Jesus from his mission. If Christ is King, then we should desire his kingdom to advance. If the gospel is true, then we should proclaim it trusting that it’s the power of God to save.

We can’t save anyone. But God can and does. And for those who do come under Christ’s rule, you are invited into a life of discipleship. Come and join the church. Come walk with us as we learn together what it means to follow Jesus. Give your life over to the One who writes a better story. He will never let it go to waste.

^[1] Works Consulted:

“When the Expected Happens in an Unexpected Way” – Greear
“The History of Grace” – Keller
Matthew: An Introduction & Commentary – France
The Gospel According to John – Carson

Other videos in this series: