The Hopes and Fears of All the Years
Matthew 1:1-17
In our regular exposition of the Gospel of Matthew, we have just finished Matthew 5 and we are ready to move forward to Matthew 6. But because Christmas Day is next Sunday, I thought we should take a break from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to remember what scripture says about our Savior’s birth. Yet, I could not tear myself away from the Gospel of Matthew. So, I want us to back up to Matthew 1 and see the story of our Lord’s birth again from the beginning.
I’ve titled this sermon, “The Hopes and Fears of All the Years”. Of course, that phrase comes from a popular Christmas Carol that was written over 150 years ago. In 1865, the year the American Civil War ended and President Lincoln was assassinated, themes of peace and quiet would probably have been welcome to Americans. Families of the north and south were decimated by the carnage of the most brutal war America ever knew. Half the country lay in ruins. Battle-weary veterans from both sides had laid down their arms and trudged home. Many were still mourning the deaths of their fathers, brothers, and sons.
In that year, Pastor Phillips Brooks took a trip to Israel and was in Bethlehem for Christmas. He rode on horseback through the fields around the ancient village and attended the Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve. These memories eventually inspired him to write the Christmas hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem. In contrast to some other Christmas hymns that emphasize the glory of God as seen in the grand chorus of angels, Brooks’ hymn focuses on the obscurity, quietness, and mystery of Christ’s birth and how little the larger world paid attention.[1] The first verse reads,
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
Every generation experiences hopes and fears that are common to mankind and those that are unique to their time. As we think about Christmas this year, I want us to reflect on “the hopes and fears of all the years” that were met in Bethlehem on the night of the Savior’s birth. That phrase nicely sums up the opening two chapters in the Gospel of Matthew. And it relates to our own hopes and fears as well.
As we saw last May when we began our study of Matthew, the opening two chapters include Jesus’ genealogy (Matt. 1:1-17), the virgin birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:18-25), the visit of the magi (Matt. 2:1-12), the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:13-15), the massacre of the innocents (Matt. 2:16-18), and the return to Nazareth (Matt. 2:19-23). All of this, Matthew shows, is in fulfillment of prophecy from the Old Testament scriptures. All of this makes the point that Jesus is the Christ, the promised King. In these birth narratives, we have miracles, wonder, and worship. Yet they also involve conflict, suffering, and death. Bethlehem was brimming with both hope and fear. As Phillips Brooks wrote, “The hopes and fears of all the years, Are met in thee tonight.”
Although we briefly covered the opening verses of Matthew seven months ago, I want us to look more closely at Jesus’ genealogy this morning as we think about Jesus meeting the hopes and fears of all the years.
Matthew writes with a distinct purpose. He lays out his thesis statement in the first sentence, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” (Matt. 1:1). “Book” is the word biblos from which we get our word “bible.” It meant something written on paper, thus a scroll or book. The word “genealogy” is the word genesis meaning origin or source. The Greek version of Genesis uses this exact same phrase to translate the tolodoth headings in Genesis 2:4, “This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created” and Genesis 5:1, “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam.” Matthew also refers to Jesus by the title, “Christ” (Matt. 1:1, 16, 17). Christ is the translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, both meaning “anointed one.” So, Matthew, in his first words, connects Jesus Christ to the first book of the Old Testament. Just as Genesis told the beginnings of the heavens and the earth and the generations of the first man, Adam, even so, Matthew is writing about the new beginning for the heavens and the earth through the second Adam, Jesus Christ.[2]
Matthew then declares that Jesus Christ is the Son of David to emphasize His royalty because the kingly line comes from David. The genealogy which follows (Matt. 1:2-17) clearly turns on “David the king,” a phrase he repeats for emphasis in Matthew 1:6. Matthew designed his opening genealogy to document Jesus’ credentials as Israel’s Messiah and King, and the rest of the Gospel fills out this theme.
In this opening genealogy, Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is the promised Messiah-King:
1. In Fulfillment of Prophetic History [3]
To prove to the Jews that Jesus is the Messiah, it was essential to prove it first by His genealogy. Pedigree was everything to the Jews. The Old Testament is full of genealogies. Tribal identification was essential for dividing the land of Canaan in the conquest in the book of Joshua. The priesthood was determined by being a descendant of Levi. And the kings were to come from the tribe of Judah through David.
According to Luke, Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem while she was “great with child” (Luke 2:5 KJV) to register to be taxed in their ancestral home, the city of David “because he was of the house and lineage of David” (Luke 2:4). The Jews loved their lineage. These records were kept in the temple in Jerusalem and until the records were destroyed in 70 A.D., every Jew could tell you their lineage and which tribe they came from.
To prove that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised King of the Jews, Matthew first shows Jesus to be “the Son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). Abraham was the great patriarch of the Old Testament from whom the whole Jewish family came. He was originally called “Abram”; and he was a childless man, who lived in a heathen land, in far-off Ur of the Chaldeans. But God called him to come by faith to the land of Canaan. Genesis 12:1-3 tells us,
Now the LORD had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3).
God made several remarkable promises to Abram. He was promised that he would inherit the land that God was showing him. He also promised that, even though he was then childless, God would make of him a great nation. And He promised that through that great nation from Abram, God would bless all the earth.
I believe that this promise of blessing reflected another promise, the promise God first made back in the Garden of Eden after our first parents sinned. God said to the serpent; “. . . I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Gen. 3:15). All mankind had suffered in Adam’s fall because of the work of the devil but God promised that the Seed of the woman would arise to crush the head of the serpent and reverse the terrible curse sin had brought on mankind. God promised Abraham in Genesis 22:18: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:18). God promised Abraham that he would have a son, a descendant, through whom all nations would be blessed.
Now in one sense, that son was Isaac. Matthew 1:2 reminds us, “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers.” Isaac was the promised son, a miracle child. His mother was barren, and both his parents were in their nineties when he was born. And yet Paul in the New Testament shows us that this promise was ultimately fulfilled in Christ. We read in Galatians 3:16: “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.” As we saw when we studied Genesis, “the miraculous birth of Isaac in the Old Testament foreshadows the miraculous birth of Jesus in the New Testament. And so, Matthew’s genealogy both begins and ends with the miraculous birth of a child in fulfillment of God’s promises.”[4]
The first fourteen generations in Matthew’s genealogy take us from Abraham to “David the King” (Matt. 1:6). David was the greatest king in the history of Israel. God had removed the first king of Israel from power – Saul – and had replaced him with David, “a man after His own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14). And God made this promise to King David;
“When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-16).
Israel longed after the fulfillment of this promise for centuries; longing for the coming of the promised King in the lineage of David. And Matthew makes clear to us that Jesus is not only the Son of Abraham but is also the Son of David. The New Testament declares Him to be “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” (Revelation 5:5). This genealogy shows us that our King’s coming to this earth was in fulfillment of prophetic history.
2. In Accord with Divine Sovereignty
The genealogies in scripture are important, if for no other reason than because they prove to us that God works providentially through something over which no one but Him has control–that is, the people from whom other people are born.[5] None of us can choose our ancestors—God has already determined that by His sovereign providence.
Notice in Matthew 1:17, the author indicates the structure of his genealogy: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations.” He purposefully structures his genealogy in three sections of fourteen names. Matthew was deliberately selective in his genealogy. He is more interested in highlighting certain characters and showing a pattern than in providing a precise family tree.
These three sections represent three eras in the history of the nation of Israel. The time from Abraham to David was a time of rising power as God’s people multiplied and came to the Promised Land and the kingdom was established. The time from David to the exile was a time of declining power as the nation of Israel was divided and rebelled against God and was eventually dispersed in the exile. The time from the exile to Christ was a time of rebuilding as a remnant returned to the land and the sacrifices at the temple were reinstated and the people waited for the coming Messiah.
The number fourteen was very significant in Judaism. Hebrew letters were assigned numerical values, and every good Jew would know that fourteen was the numerical value of King David’s name. (D = 4, V[W] = 6, D = 4). Fourteen is also double the number seven which is the number of completeness in Scripture. So, three groups of fourteen equal six groups of seven, which would mean Jesus was born at the beginning of the seventh seven, a fitting and climactic place for the Messiah’s birth.
Ray Fowler concludes, “In other words, for Matthew, three times fourteen equals God’s sovereignty. Matthew is showing that God was sovereign over all the persons and events leading up to Jesus’ birth, and that Jesus is the climax of Israel’s history. It all leads to Jesus.” [6]
Another place where we see the sovereignty of God in this genealogy is in the person of Jeconiah. You find him in Matthew 1:11-12. Jeconiah, also called Jehoiachin or Coniah, was the grandson of good king Josiah. He was carried off to exile in Babylon. In Jeremiah 22 the Lord says this about Jeconiah through the prophet “”As I live,” says the LORD, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off; … Thus says the LORD: ‘Write this man down as childless, A man who shall not prosper in his days; For none of his descendants shall prosper, Sitting on the throne of David, And ruling anymore in Judah.’ “” (Jer. 22:24, 30). Do you see the problem? None of Jeconiah’s offspring will ever sit on the throne of David. That was the curse on Jeconiah.
So, if Jesus is a descendant of Jeconiah, He could never sit on the throne of David. He would be under the curse. But notice Matthew 1:16, “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.” Matthew introduces the virgin birth of Jesus here and will develop it in more detail starting in Matthew 1:18. But notice that all the way through this genealogy Matthew has used the same formula, “the father begot the son, who begot the next son” and so on through all the names. But here the formula changes. Joseph did not beget Jesus. He was born of Mary. Joseph is not Jesus’ biological father, he is Jesus’ adopted father, his legal father. So, through Joseph Jesus inherits the legal right to the throne of David and avoids the curse of Jeconiah.
How God solved this great problem is a marvel! If you look at Matthew’s genealogy, you see that Joseph was born from David in the lineage of David’s son Solomon (Matt. 1:7). But the Gospel of Luke has a genealogy that is traced down to Joseph from the lineage of Joseph’s father-in-law Heli (Luke 3:23). Matthew, in other words, is giving us the legal or royal genealogy of our Savior through Joseph, and Luke is giving us the biological genealogy of Jesus through Mary. Mary was born from David in the line of another of David’s sons, Solomon’s brother Nathan (Luke 3:31). Both were sons of David but Solomon’s lineage was under a curse through Jeconiah, and Nathan’s was not. Isn’t it stunning how God guarded every detail and solved this problem with the virgin birth?
The reason for the genealogy is to present the fact that Jesus Christ is the One who has the right to reign. Jesus is the Messiah-King in accord with divine sovereignty.
Finally, we see that Jesus is the Messiah-King:
3. In Union with Fallen Humanity
As you examine this genealogy, you can’t escape the fact that the people in Jesus’ historic lineage were a part of fallen humanity. There are many names that are all too familiar to us, because of the Bible’s story of their sin.
Just look at some of these names. You’ll find a reminder of the shameful story of Judah, the son of Jacob who begot Perez and Zerah through incest with his daughter-in-law Tamar (Matt. 1:3). You’ll find Rahab who was a harlot (Matt. 1:5). You’ll find that David begot his son Solomon through his adulterous affair with “her who had been the wife of Uriah” (Matt. 1:6). You’ll find Solomon, whose heart was drawn away from God into idolatry by his many foreign wives (Matt. 1:7). You’ll find Rehoboam, whose pride and arrogance caused the nation of Israel to be split in two (Matt. 1:7). You’ll find Uzziah, who died in shame as a leper because he dared to enter the temple of God and offer an unlawful offering (Matt. 1:9). You read of Ahaz who fell into gross idolatry (Matt. 1:9). You read of the murderous Manasseh, who so filled the land of Israel with bloodshed that God cast him out of the land (Matt. 1:10). You read of Jeconiah, whose rebelliousness led to the people of Israel being carried off in captivity to Babylon (Matt. 1:11).[7]
The Bible teaches us that, because of the sin of our first parents, we are all born into the human family in a condition of sin. And because of our sinfulness, we can never earn God’s favor by obedience to God’s commandments. But as the apostle Paul tells us, “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son . . .” And do you know how God sent His Son? “. . . In the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin . . .” (Rom. 8:3). Praise God that we have a Savior/King who was born into this world in union with fallen humanity – so that He could die on the cross for us as one of us.
Understand this–No human being is beyond the reach of Christ’s saving arm or sympathetic heart. Our sins may have been as many and as vile as any who are named in this chapter, but they shall never be remembered against us by God if we trust Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He wants you to know that Jesus is the King. He wants you to know that Jesus is the Messiah. He wants you to know how you should respond to this King.[8] Turn from your sin, believe in Jesus Christ the King who died for your sins upon the cross and was raised to give you eternal life.
We have a Savior who entered a royal line of humanity at a time when the throne had been lost. Love came down to the lowest of lows in order to save us from sin, death, and hell. The hopes and fears of all the years, including our own, are met in Christ.
————————————————————————
[1] Tiffany Shomsky, https://hymnary.org/text/o_little_town_of_bethlehem. Accessed 12/16/2022.
[2] Richard Sipes, Introduction to the Gospel of Matthew, https://www.newcovenantgj.org/introduction-to-the-gospel-of-matthew/
[3] Greg Allen, The Lineage of Our King, https://www.bethanybible.org/archive/2004/022204.htm accessed 12/16/2022. I adapted Allen’s outline and some of his points in developing this sermon.
[4] Ray Fowler. Everyone has a Past. http://www.rayfowler.org/sermons/matthew/everyone-has-a-past/ accessed 5/5/2022
[5] Allen, ibid.
[6] Fowler, ibid.
[7] Allen, ibid.
[8] Bro. Rory at FBC Spur, Texas. The Right King at the Right Time (Matthew 1:1-17). https://fbcspur.org/right-king-right-time-matthew-11-17/ accessed 5/8/2022
