Where Did the Baby Come From? // One Year Ends, Another Begins
, Part 3

The shepherds who were there when Jesus was born were looking up at the stars, just as Abraham had been all those centuries before, when God made him the most amazing promise. Yeah, they were looking up and also back to that amazing promise, that through Abraham God would bless all the nations.

Christmas Night is, I think, the most amazing night. You know we sing that song, "O holy night, the stars, the stars are shining", and you think of the shepherds and the angels and Mary and Joseph and that baby, Jesus, God in the flesh. Part of me wishes I were there. I wish I was there and could see it and be part of it, and yet there’s another part of me that’s glad I know Jesus the way He always intended me to know Him – that is through the presence of God, the Holy Spirit in me.

When we strip away all the rubbish of Christmas, and please; I don’t mean to denigrate the whole giving presents, families getting together, celebration, holiday – they are all good things. But there’s this dimension to Christmas which is a Santa Claus, which is trying to fool our kids into thinking that these presents were brought by a guy in a red suit and reindeer and down a chimney that we don’t have, and … you know … there’s that sort of big con thing, and all the big department stores, all the shops are on the bandwagon to make money and the whole success of Christmas is measured by the retail sales figures … Give me a break! That’s the part of Christmas that I think: Aren’t we missing the point here? When we strip away all of that rubbish, Christmas itself is the most wonderful of all celebrations.

But it’s struck me how often we skip over the beginning of the New Testament, the very first chapter, the first verses in the first chapter. It begins like this:

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David and the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac was the father of Jacob and Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.

And it just goes on, and it goes that Uzziah was the father of Jotham and Jotham was the father of Ahaz and on and on and on. And Eliud was the father of Eleazar, and I think, "Hang on a minute. If I was going to write the first chapter in the first book of the New Testament, which is about the story of the coming of the Saviour – of Jesus, would I have picked that?" I mean, excuse me, but it’s pretty boring, isn’t it? You and I look at it and we go, "Hang on. Why is it that You start the New Testament – this wonderful story about the coming of Your Son – with a long, tedious list of Perez and Zerah and Tamar and Hezron and … Why do You do that God?" I mean, when was the last time (if you happen to be a churchgoer) you went to church (you know how they have the Bible-reading before the guy or the woman get up and preach), when was the last time you heard someone read through a genealogy?

So here we have it. If we put Matthew and Jesus and Christ together, this is kind of what God I think is saying in this opening chapter. Here’s a gift from God – His anointed Saviour, Jesus, and that got me to thinking: Why a genealogy? What is God saying to us when He talks about Christmas through this long, tedious genealogy? It’s the bit that you and I want to rush over. When you get to a genealogy in the Bible, and there are a few of them throughout the Bible, I mean, I know I don’t tend to read them word for word. I say, "Ok. There’s a genealogy; are there any interesting people there that I know? Ok, let’s move on", but God chose a genealogy to open up the book of Matthew – the first book of the New Testament. What was He saying?

Genealogies, it turns out, were significant to the Jews. They were about the purity of lineage. There were three things that were important: Firstly, land and residency. They wanted to know that a Jew was a Jew; they wanted to know that this person had a right to be a resident and to own land. The second thing they needed to know was where there were priests involved because there were some people in the Jewish nation who were set aside to be priests, and their priestly authority came from their lineage (their heritage), and the third where it was really important was legal standing. Where there was a claim to royal succession, they wanted to know legally that a person was entitled to be the king if that’s what he claimed, and the public records were kept by the Sanhedrin, the sort of quasi-religious/secular ruling body, in the temple in Jerusalem.

So this isn’t just a boring list of names to the Jews, but this lineage is quite fascinating and there are three main characters in the lineage. It begins with Abraham. Abraham is the father of the Israelite nation. Halfway through, it talks about King David – the greatest king that Israel ever had, and then right at the end it comes to Jesus – the son of God. And in the case of Abraham and David, I believe what Matthew is doing is pointing back to the promises that God made to Abraham and David. We’re going to specifically go and have a look at those promises today. Let’s flick back and have a look at what God said to Abraham. If you have a Bible, open it at Genesis 12:1. This is what God said to Abraham:

The LORD said to Abraham, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 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. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse’.

And here’s the blessing in the tail of the blessing:

And in you, all families of the earth shall be blessed.

So, about 1,950 years before Jesus was born, God makes this initial blessing to Abraham – that in him, through his lineage, through his seed, all of the nations in the world will be blessed. Man! You know, Abraham was an old man. He was seventy-five when that promise happened; he didn’t have his first kid until he was a hundred years old. Here was this man: His heart was aching for the land that God had promised him and the son that God had promised him, and … he was just aching. And just a few pages on, if you go to Genesis 15:5, God brings Abraham outside and says:

’Look towards the heaven and count the stars if you’re able to count them.’ Then He said to Abraham, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And Abraham believed the LORD, and the LORD accounted that to him as righteousness.

What a beautiful picture! What a beautiful, tender encounter with God. Here’s this man Abraham who got a promise from God that he cannot begin to understand how it will be fulfilled, and he’s standing under the same sky, the same stars that were shining on that night two thousand years later in Bethlehem, and the Jews knew about that promise. It was the beginning of their belief in a Messiah, someone that God would send to set them free.

There was another key promise. Halfway through that genealogy in Matthew, he talks about King David who is part of Jesus’ lineage, and the crux of that promise happens in 2 Samuel 7:12-16. This is what it says:

 ‘When your days are fulfilled’ (says God to David) ‘And you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom’ (so here God is promising him a son; that son was Solomon). ‘He shall build a house for My name’ (which Solomon did; he built the temple, but have a listen to this) ‘And I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever’ and ever and ever – for all eternity. ‘I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me. When he commits iniquity’ (which Solomon did), ‘I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use’ (with blows inflicted by a human being) ‘But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before Me; your throne will be established for ever.’

That is an eternal promise, and remember: When Israel was looking forward to the first Christmas (which they didn’t really know was coming), they had just spent half a millennium without a king; without the promised king, so they were looking for this promise to be fulfilled. They were looking for their king back – God’s anointed Messiah, which is how kings were referred to in Israel.

So here are two promises together: A king who will rule forever, who will be a blessing to all the nations. So, what happens next? Well, we talked about it. We talked about it last week if you were with me. Solomon was a good king, but he went off the rails, and after him, Israel split in two. There was the north, which was called Israel; there were ten tribes. There was the south, which was Judah and Benjamin, and they worshipped idols and they did things that were wrong and God sent prophets to call them back – to warn them of a coming judgment. They gave Israel this message: Come back to your God. Remember the covenant (the promise): I’ll be your God; you’ll be My people. I will establish your throne for ever and ever … Do they listen? No. You look around the world today, and God is calling people back to Him; a lot of them, do they listen? No.

So, as we talked about last week, in 586 BC, the Babylonians came (the world-power); they destroyed Jerusalem; they took the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, into exile; they virtually annihilated the north Israel, and the monarchy was destroyed – this line, this line of kingship, where there had been a promise to David that his son Solomon will have a line that is established for ever. Well, Zedekiah was the last king. The Davidic line was broken. What happened to the promise? There was a lot of confusion and fear. "Has God failed? Has He left us? What’s going on?" and 70 years later they come back.

But after the Babylonians, the Ptolemaits and the Seleucids, and then a brief period in 167 BC. After Antioch had desecrated the temple by sacrificing pigs, there was a Maccabean revolt, and for 127 years they were free – free for the last time until 1945. The Romans rolled in, 40 BC; Herod the Great was there till 4 BC, then Herod Antipas in Galilee … I mean, all these other people were ruling this free nation of Israel that were God’s people. They were supposed to be living in the promised land. For a half a millennium they have no king. For us, that’d be like having no democracy. They have a Roman emperor; they have a false king Herod; they have the Sanhedrin, which is a corrupt body of religious leaders that are in bed with the Romans; they have a governor, and this messy corrupt Malay, full of religious political corruption.

We see it when Jesus was ultimately put on trial. He went first to the chief priest; then to the Sanhedrin; then to Pilate; then to Herod Antipas; then back to Pilate again. Brutal, corrupt regime.

God’s people who were meant to be free, who were brought out of Egypt to be free, are oppressed, but they remembered God’s promises to Abraham and to David. They remembered the Red Sea; they remembered the freedom they were supposed to have, so what do you think they were looking for? They were waiting for the promised Messiah. What did He look like? Well, John the Baptist tells us in Luke 3:15:

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John whether he might be the Messiah (so, John the Baptist who came before Jesus, people were thinking maybe he’s the one, and John said no, hang on) ‘I baptise you with water, but there is One more powerful coming after me, one whose sandals I’m not fit to tie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.’

And again as we looked at last week:

Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Who do people say I am?’

And some said, ‘Well, John the Baptist. Maybe you’re Elijah. Maybe you’re Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.’

The people expected a Messiah! They desired one! They were waiting for one! They were hoping for one, but it’s a bit like the end of the world today; it was kind of mixed up. What would He look like? How would He come? There were lots of Jesuses wandering round. There were lots of people wandering round at the time, claiming to be the Messiah. There was a lot of hype. Pick the right one. Which one is the one that God has chosen for us? And then, then we have Matthew’s gospel, written about 60 or 70 years AD, after Jesus, and there was a whole tussle between Jews and Christians. He wasn’t the Messiah; yes He was, no He wasn’t, yes He was … So Matthew is writing into this situation, 60 or 70 years AD, and he decides to begin with a genealogy – a genealogy that establishes that Jesus is descended from Abraham, down through David, down through Mary, and Jesus.

"So you don’t believe me?" says Matthew, "Go and check it out. Go to the temple; go and check the archives; look at what’s on the public record", because it was a matter of public record. The record of generation to generation to generation was stored by the Sanhedrin in the temple.

So here, Matthew is writing down this genealogy to a bunch of people who could have gone to the temple and disproven him, and interestingly, while Matthew writes the genealogy of Jesus through His mother Mary (we’ll talk about that specifically in a minute), Luke writes His legal or royal succession entitlement. He writes it through His father Joseph. Now, we know that Jesus wasn’t fathered by Joseph, but legally in that society, it was a patriarchal society, so if Jesus claimed a right as a king, then that right had to be established through His patriarchal line – through His father which, to people, was Joseph.

So the genealogy is about establishing on the reliability of the public record that Jesus is descended from Abraham, through David, through Solomon, and has a right to claim to be the Messiah. The genealogy links Jesus back to God’s promises – God’s vast plan. God is saying to us through the genealogy: "He is the One that I chose; that I predicted through My prophets; He is the One"!

Well, so what? So what for you and me, here today? There are a couple of answers to the so-what question. The first one is this: God keeps His promises, but not always the way we expect. In this huge historical sweep, as we read the list of prophecies – you know, all the prophecies that were made; I read a few of them out last week, here are a few of them: That He will come from a woman’s womb; that He will be born to a virgin; that He will be born in Bethlehem; that murder will surround His birth; that He will be given the name God is with us; that He will be given gifts; that He will be taken to Egypt and that.

All of these things were prophesied centuries before His birth, just like the promises to Abraham and to David, and all of these things came to pass. O holy night, the stars, the stars are shining … As the people who were there when Jesus was born were looking up at the stars, as the shepherds were looking up at the stars, they were looking up, back to the promise that God made to Abraham 1,950 years before: That through him, God would bless all the nations, and here we are two thousand years after the birth of Christ, four thousand years after that promise was made to Abraham, and we are the ones who are being blessed through Abraham – through his lineage; through his Jesus who came to die for you and me, to give us eternal life.

The promise is fulfilled in Jesus here and now, to you and to me, and God makes some more promises. He promises that if we believe in this Jesus, we will have eternal life. We’ll be marked with a seal of His Holy Spirit; with the presence of God in us; with God’s power; with a God who is with us. He will never leave us. He will never, never leave us, and He will come again – Jesus. They are all the promises that are yet to come, and we can look back through this lineage, back to the promises made through the prophets; through Abraham; through David, and say, ‘Hang on a minute. God is a God who fulfills His promises. God is a faithful God’!

This isn’t blind faith; yes it’s a leap; yes, ultimately we have to take a step of faith, but we can take that step of faith by looking at the promises that God delivered on … through this genealogy; through what He began the New Testament with, and when the devil comes to accuse you and me, we can say to the devil, "Read this and weep, because I am standing on the promises of God in Jesus Christ". There are so many things that cry out and say, "I am the Messiah!" and by beginning Matthew’s gospel with this genealogy, God is saying, "No you’re not. This is My Messiah. This Jesus is My Messiah".

And the other part of this genealogy that is really profound is that, as you look back in the names in this genealogy, there are some people in there that were prophesied about. There were some people who were even unknown – sixteen of them. There are kings, there are paupers; there are Jews, there are Gentiles; there are good, there are bad, but there is no distinction because all sin and fall short of the glory of God. I mean David, King David was a good guy, but he committed adultery and murder.

Interestingly there are five women in this genealogy. Now women were never, never listed in genealogies. You and I know that the most reliable form of genealogy is the matriarchal genealogy because you always know who someone’s mother was, but you may not always know who someone’s father is, but Israel was a patriarchal society, so genealogies were always expressed in terms of men. Women were almost considered to be chattels. It’s sad, but it’s true. They had no legal rights; they couldn’t own land; they couldn’t inherit anything; they couldn’t testify in a court of law, and they were never, never listed in genealogies, and yet, Matthew lists five women in the genealogy of Jesus, and they are remarkable for what they weren’t. The first one in verse 3 is Tamar. Well, she pretended to be a temple prostitute. She was Judah’s daughter-in-law, and she went to bed with him. She committed adultery with him. You can read about it in Genesis 38.

The second is Rahab (in verse 5). Well, she was a prostitute from Jericho. You can read about her in Joshua 2:1-7.

The third one (in verse 5 here in Matthew) is Ruth. Well, she was a Moabite. She was an enemy. Have a listen to what the Old Testament says about Moabites. Deuteronomy 23:3:

An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall ever enter the assembly of the LORD for ever.

So Ruth was an enemy of the state, and she’s in Jesus’ genealogy.

Verse 6: The next one is the wife of Uriah, who was Bathsheba. Bathsheba was notable because King David committed adultery with her. He had Uriah murdered; his first child with Bathsheba died; David’s second child with Bathsheba was Solomon – the next king of Israel. It’s a testimony of God’s grace. You can read about it in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.

And the last woman is Mary in verse 16 – this woman who has conceived a son out of wedlock. I believe, firmly, that that child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but in that society, that brought enormous shame and scandal on her.

So here are these five women – women of immorality, women of scandal each one of them, and yet they’re in Jesus’ genealogy. Jesus is the only person who could choose His ancestors, who could choose when He would be born and how He would be born, and He chooses these five women in His genealogy. What is God saying to us in all of that? I believe He’s saying this: There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, no black or white, because all are one in Jesus Christ.

Have you ever felt as though you are not good enough to be part of Christ’s family? I have. We need to think again. This genealogy is not only a genealogy of authenticity – of who Jesus is; it is a genealogy of grace. It is a genealogy of inclusion. It says to us that Christmas is for everyone; for each one of us, for you and for me. Listen to me:

Every Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God (listen again). So that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work.

This genealogy is far from boring; this genealogy is food for my soul. This genealogy is Christmas brought alive! This genealogy is a feast for my heart, because it says to me that Jesus is the Christ. You and I can stand on the historical record and know He is the Christ.

This genealogy says that God keeps His promises – to Abraham, to David, to you and to me, over millennia, and this genealogy lets us tell the difference between false Messiahs and our Jesus. Ain’t boring is it? Pretty exciting. It’s a message about Christmas. It’s a message about the exciting new thing that God has done in the person of Jesus Christ. My prayer for you is that this genealogy will be a message that sets your heart on fire for God. I pray that in Jesus Christ’s name.