Amazing Grace Baptist Church, Hamburg Bible Study Material on Matthew 1:1-17
Text: Matthew 1:1-17
Introduction
Have you experienced grace before? The Bible has much to say about grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favour given to us because God desires us to have it. The more you learn about grace, the more you realize that grace is indeed amazing. In these few weeks, we shall consider the amazing story of the birth of Christ, a story filled with pure grace of God from Matthew chapter one.
The Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew the tax collector. This gospel is written to demonstrate the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the predicted Messiah, the King of the Jews, who was rejected by his own people, who was accepted by the Gentiles, and who someday will return to reign as King of kings and Lord of Lords. It is the story of the King who comes. If a king is to be heralded as a king, then it must start with the proof that he comes from the royal line. Matthew is doing that in Matthew 1:1-17. The Jews were tenacious about their pedigrees. And if anybody was going to be presented to them as a king, it was essential that he has the pedigree to prove it.
The Foundation of the story of Grace
Matthew chapter one begins with a genealogy of Jesus. It is a recollection of the lineage of Christ. In the first place, the genealogy is a way Matthew shows his readers that Jesus fulfils the Old Testament storyline. The Christmas story is usually seen and read from the gospel narratives, but the foundation of this story began from the Old Testament. One of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ has to do with the many prophecies concerning His birth in the Old Testament. Jesus indeed fulfils the prophecies about the coming messiah in the Old Testament, Gen. 3:15; 12:1-3; 17:19; Num. 24:17; 49: 10; 2 Sam, 7:12-16, Isa 7:14, etc.. Jesus Christ fulfilled so many prophecies concerning his birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection. Of a truth, the main subject of the Old Testament is Christ Jesus. Mathews sought to establish the fact that Jesus is the one the Scriptures have spoken about.
The Genealogy of Grace
Presenting the genealogy was one of the most interesting ways Matthew could begin a book for a Jewish audience, because a person’s family line proved his or her standing as one of God’s chosen people. He began by showing that Jesus was a descendant of Abraham, the father of all Jews and a direct descendant of David. This was recorded by Matthew to show that Jesus is the true Messiah.
In these 17 verses, we meet forty-six people whose lifetime span 2,000 years. All were ancestors of Jesus, but if you take a character study of all these people, they varied considerably in personality, spirituality and even experience. Some were heroes of faith, some had shady reputations, some were just ordinary people, some were evil. Names of people with sordid past like Judah who engaged in incestuous rape with Tamar, David, the King who was adulterer and murderer, Jeconiah the wicked and accursed, etc. appears in Jesus’ family tree. One would expect that the Messiah’s genealogy would be that of a people who are blameless and of high reputation before God and men, utterly righteous.
In this family tree, we read of women. For one, it is not common for genealogies in patriarchal societies such as Israel to mention women. It is more astonishing that one of them, Rahab was a prostitute, and Rahab and Ruth were Gentiles and two of them, Tamar and Bathsheba committed adultery. By human standards, they were terrible women, even social outcast. These women were not people with beautiful testimonies and yet they are in the family tree.
Application and Conclusion
The line-up of names in the genealogy tells more than who Jesus’ ancestors were, it is more like an abridged tribute to God’s grace throughout redemptive history. God’s work in history is not limited by human failures or sins, and just as God used all kinds of people to bring his Son into the world, he works through ordinary people to accomplish his purpose.
God through the genealogy of Jesus Christ sends a message to us that a remarkable gift can arrive in an unremarkable package. Men and women, notorious for their evil character, lie in the direct line of his descent. This was permitted that He might fully represent our fallen race. Charles Spurgeon say, “Jesus is heir of a line in which flows the blood of the harlot Rahab, the rustic Ruth and others; He is akin to the fallen and to the lowly and he will show His love even to the poorest and most obscure.”
It again reminds us of God’s power to work beauty from ashes, to bring redemption from an imperfect family line to the whole families of the world.
All the people in Christ lineage were only recipients of the sovereign grace of God. It shows that everyone can experience God’s grace, no matter who they are and what they have done.
They were in no way qualified nor deserving of the honor of being brought into the redemptive plan of God and be used by Him for His glory. Outside the grace of God, we have no merit or ability.
In a genealogy dominated by men, these women Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba are exceptional illustrations of God’s grace. The family tree of Jesus provides an excellent opportunity to proclaim how the incarnation means all our stories can be rewritten in Christ Jesus. I hope you can see how the genealogy of Jesus is immeasurably more than a list of ancient names; it is a beautiful testimony of God’s grace.
Questions:
Why did Matthew take time to list Jesus’ family tree?
What message does the different personalities in the passage reveals?
What is the significance of the names of the women in the genealogy of Jesus?
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