Introduction And Intertestamental Age

God's Providence Over a Busy, Eventful Age 1:23

Well, of course not. Of course not. In fact, if you were to study just the secular history of this area, you'd see it was an incredibly busy time, very eventful. This time, and we're going to call it the intertestamental time because that's what theologians call it, the intertestamental time between the Old Testament and the New Testament ran about 400, 450 years, and it was chock full of all sorts of political intrigue and battles and rulers and emperors that would rise and empires that would fall.

You had the Persians, which fell. You had the Greeks, which would rise. And then you had the Romans, who took care of everything that was left. During the intertestamental time, there were many heroes and many villains.

Alexander the Great lived during this time. Judas Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes, who if this was a silent movie, we would all hiss and boo because he was one of the great villains of this age. From Jerusalem to Rome and all points in between and beyond, the intertestamental age, this block of time, 400 to 450 years or so, was incredibly filled, filled to the brim with significant people and events.

And yet, and yet, even as all this stuff happened on the world stage, even as all these people's lives and events unfolded, the God who would decree how they unfolded was uncharacteristically silent.

Why God Was Silent: He Had Said All He Needed to Say 2:43

Silent. For 400 years, God had not sent the nations a prophet or a word. Now, was that unusual? Yes.

Look through the major prophets and the minor prophets, and as you can see, He regularly, consistently spoke, but now, now, He was silent. Why? Why was He silent at this time? Well, there have been a lot of attempts to answer that question over the years.

I think the simplest answer is this. God, up until that point in time, had said all that He needed to say. That's the simplest answer. I know it's the right answer because if God needed to say anything else, you can rest assured He would have.

God had said everything that He needed to say at this time.

The Silence as a Spotlight on the Coming Christ 3:27

With that said, I think that the silence had the effect, like the calm before a storm. I think the silence had the effect of casting a bright spotlight on whoever would come next. In other words, much like if you dim the lights in a theater before someone takes the stage, something was about to happen in redemptive history that everything else had been leading up to.

And every single prophet had been pointing towards the arrival of this someone that God had cleared the stage to prepare for. Specifically, we're going to see later in our study of Matthew 1 that a child was about to be born in the most unlikely of places, this tiny Jewish hamlet, and this child who would be born, this one who would take the stage, this one who would come, this one that all of history had this pregnant pause, holding its breath until its arrival, this one would become the catalyst for every major world event that's happened since.

This one would come, and when He did, the entirety of the globe would change to such a point that even the way we number the years turns on the hinge of His birth. This one has had more of an effect than anyone across the face of humanity, and so I don't think it's any surprise that God was silent for a season, as if the entire universe was holding his breath until his arrival.

And when He arrived, He would open His mouth, and He would teach. And as He taught, centuries of silence were shattered by the greatest proclamations, truth, and wisdom that the globe has ever seen. So this intertestamental age, this pregnant pause, it came to an end with the advent and ministry of Jesus Christ.

And it's that ministry that Matthew's gospel is devoted towards.

The Genealogy of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham 5:07

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.”

— Matthew 1:1 (NKJV)

All right, let's consider this further as we return to verses one through six of the text. You're going to bear with me. I'm going to trip over some of these names today as we go through the genealogy, but we'll start verses one through six and then we'll work our way through the balance.

Verse 1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. As a side note, that's not his first and last name. It's not Jesus Christ like Gardner Fisher, Toby Holt, or Mike Barr, what have you. Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah.

So the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram. Ram begot Abinadab, and Abinadab begot Nahshon.

Nahshon begot Salmon. Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king.

David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah.

Matthew the Tax Collector: An Unlikely Gospel Author 6:05

All right, take a breath here. You know, as a side note, one of the most embarrassing times I ever had in ministry. Very early on, I went to do pulpit supply at a church, and I preached there a few times. It was in Sydney, Nebraska, and that particular day, they were reading through the Bible as part of the worship service, just doing Old Testament readings, and that particular day, I had to read the genealogy of Esau.

That was the thing I had to read, and I butchered, I think, every third name. Anyway, when we encounter genealogies, wherever we find them in Scripture, for you and I, they don't tend to impress us quite as much, which is ironic given all the tools we have, Ancestry.com and all these things. But this stuff usually doesn't impress us as much as it does other cultures and especially Israel.

Genealogies often bore modern readers of Scripture. However, let me suggest this to you. If Matthew's objective in the very first verse of his gospel was to get the attention of his fellow Jews, there was no better way to accomplish that than what he did here, than what he did in verse 1. Verse 1 would have stopped a first century reader in their tracks, would have melted the brains of some, and I'll explain why in just a moment.

But before I do, let me back up just for a second and talk about Matthew. We don't want to skip past him. If it's called the Gospel of Matthew, before we move on, let's remember a little bit about Matthew. Who was Matthew?

Well, we know Matthew was a tax collector. We usually remember his vocation. He was a tax collector who was called by Jesus. Now, elsewhere in the Gospels, he's sometimes referred to as Levi.

You might encounter that name, and that's also a reference to Matthew. Now, Matthew would have been just the most deeply unpopular man of his age. And the reason why is because he was an IRS agent, but an IRS agent for a foreign government. He was a tax collector that was empowered by Rome to collect taxes from his fellow Jews to send to Rome, who was, guess what?

Oppressing Israel, putting them beneath their foot. So if you're an Israelite, who is the least popular guy? Who is the least likely guy you wanted to invite over to dinner parties or come over to your house? You know, perchance he might tax you just by walking in the door.

Well, it was this guy. It was Matthew. He was an unlikely, unlikely disciple for sure, and a terribly unlikely gospel author, and yet this is the man that God called upon to write this book, write this passage. With that said, we also know that by virtue of his vocation, Matthew was a smart guy.

He was well-educated. We know that because he had to be able to read and write in multiple languages as part of his work, taxing people on the trade routes. He also had to be good at math. He had to be good at arithmetic because he was an IRS agent and he was collecting these taxes.

We know he was well-educated, and if he was well-educated, then he knew his Jewish history. He knew of genealogies, and he knew of their importance to his own people.

Establishing the Messiah's Credentials for a Jewish Audience 8:56

And he knew that there was no better way, if you were to write a gospel to a Jewish audience, which Matthew was written to, there's no better way to start than this, by giving them the bona fides for Jesus, by giving them the LinkedIn profile, so to speak, by explaining this is who he is, and this is where he came from.

This is his credentials. This is his birthright to the very office and role that he has occupied. So Matthew starts with the genealogy because he's writing to Jews to whom that would have impressed them. They wanted to know that if anyone was to be the Messiah, that he came from Abraham.

They wanted to know that if anyone was going to presume to be a king, he came from who? From David. And so he tells them that right out of the gate. He tells them that that's the case.

Now, if you go one book past, if you go to the book of Mark, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, you go to Mark, does Mark begin with a genealogy? No. And the reason he doesn't begin with a genealogy is why? Because he's not writing to Jews. He was writing largely to Gentiles and Romans.

And guess what? The Romans couldn't care less about the Jewish ancestry and his bona fides coming from David and Abraham. That didn't matter in Rome, but it did matter in Jerusalem, which is why the guy who was the author of the gospel to the Jews starts here, starts with this genealogy. It was essential if he was going to make the case to the very people that he wanted to turn to this one, to turn to Christ.

So he says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, or Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham, all of that would have immediately got the attention of the Jews because they knew those names.

The Meaning of the Name Jesus Christ: The Lord Is Salvation 10:33

They even knew the name Jesus Christ, what that implied. They certainly knew Abraham. They certainly knew David, but they also knew what Jesus Christ implied. Jesus in Hebrew means the Lord is salvation.

Okay, the Lord is salvation. That's what Jesus means. Well, what does Christ mean? Well, it means the Messiah, the chosen one, the Savior.

So his first name means the Lord is salvation, and the next one effectively says this guy is the Savior. That's all that's encompassed in the words Jesus Christ, and that's why I said it would have melted their brains. He says this is the one, the genealogy of the one we've been waiting for, for centuries and centuries and centuries.

This is the one that all of our forefathers pointed forward to, this guy. And yes, he's a son of Abraham. And yes, he's a son of David. He's everything we expected and desired and more.

Jesus Christ. We take that for granted like it's our first and last name. Again, it was not. It was loaded with implication.

It reeked of salvation from one syllable, one letter to last. It's like if you encounter a musician named Johnny Guitar, fits like a glove. You can encounter a baseball player named Home Run McAwesome. You're going to go, that guy is set up to be an all-star.

This name would have stopped them in their tracks. They would have known exactly what the reference is to. Now, he's just getting started once he names Jesus Christ.

The Davidic Covenant and the Promised Seed 11:46

He goes on to talk about David. In fact, David, he names even before he names Abraham, which is interesting because Abraham was the first Israelite, the first Jew. He starts with David because he's a son of David, and that was critically important because God had made a covenant to David that a king would rise, that a Messiah would rise, that the seed would ultimately come from his lineage.

And so Matthew, writing to Jews, says, guess what? You remember that covenant God made with David that ultimately the Messiah would come from his lineage? Guess where this guy came from? He's the son of David.

Then he goes on again to express that he's the child of Abraham, which made you a legitimate Jew, which was very important in this time and age and culture. And then in verses 2-6, he goes on to mention the other patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob in particular, and he does so in a block of 14 names.

There's three blocks of 14 names that he's going to go through. They do not represent every last generation between Abraham and Jesus, but they are representative of different eras of time, and I'll get to that in a few moments. And in verse 6, they culminate with King Solomon. Let's look ahead now, verses 7-16.

Again, bear with me as we do. Verse 7. Solomon begot Rehoboam. Rehoboam begot Abijah.

Abijah begot Asa. Asa begot Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat begot Joram. Joram begot Uzziah.

Uzziah begot Jotham. Jotham begot Ahaz. Ahaz begot Hezekiah. Hezekiah begot Manasseh.

Manasseh begot Amon. There's a lot of villains in this too, just so you're aware. And Amon begot Josiah. Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers about the time they are carried away to Babylon.

And after they were brought to Babylon, Jeconiah begot Shealtiel, Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel begot Abiud, Abiud begot Eliakim, Eliakim begot Azor, Azor begot Zadok, Zadok begot Achim, Achim begot Eliud, Eliud begot Eleazar, Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob. And Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

He ends with the same word, Christ, Christ, Christ, from the start to the end. That's who this one is. This is the Messiah, was what he was saying.

Harmonizing the Genealogies of Matthew and Luke 13:59

This is the genealogy of the Messiah. You know, I once encountered a guy who was just convinced that the Bible was wrong. And I'm open to people having questions or doubts or even critiques. I'm open to those sorts of conversations because I know people have them.

However, I don't like it when it's sloppy. This was a sloppy critique that this individual offered to scripture. He says, you know, I can't believe a word that book says because there's two different genealogies for Jesus. There's one in Matthew, there's one in Luke, and they're different.

Therefore, it can't be an inspired and errant book. And back in my head, you know, then an implosion was taking place because, of course, you know, in seminary I learned the 10 different ways to explain this particular issue. It's not the conflict or contradiction that he thought it was. And so I gathered myself and explained, look, this is why these genealogies work the way that they do.

Now, most scholars or many scholars believe that the genealogies that you see here in Matthew and the one in Luke, that they differ on the basis that one is paternal and one is maternal. One is the father, one is the mother. And there's some argument to be made that that's true. There's also a case to be made that the genealogy that's given here in Matthew focuses on a royal line, and it is selective.

Not every generation, again, is mentioned here. And I think there's some possibility that that's the case as well. This is a focus on a royal line. It's a different data set than what Luke was working with.

Also, there's some thought that Luke's focus may have included a concept we call a levirate marriage. You may recall that if a man died and he didn't have any children, that his brother could marry his wife, his widow, and raise up children in his name. And if this was the case, then the family tree, the family line, would look a little bit different.

So depending on the data sets you choose, in terms of doing any genealogy, you'll come up with a different data path, and that's the reason why there are differences between Matthew and Luke, a different data set or presupposition or objective from the jump street. Whatever the case is, the Jews were fastidious in genealogy, so it's no surprise they would have had multiple genealogies.

They were far more careful about this than we ever tend to be. The records are far more precise. Just look what I just read. They are far more precise, and it would not be a surprise for there to be multiple paths to be able to trace an individual, including being paternal or maternal.

Whatever the case, Jesus is writing to people who are just absolutely fastidious and diligent about genealogy. You and I might not be. They were. And so he gives it to them.

He says, you want the proof? Well, here's the proof. Here's the credentials of this individual.

The Incarnation Anchored in Real History 16:31

And what it had the net effect of doing for them and for us is it anchored the person and work of Jesus Christ to real history. Do you understand that? Even in our own day and age, there are some who discount Jesus as if, yeah, there probably wasn't a Jesus. Dear heavens, dear heavens, there's more eyewitness to this guy, more documentary evidence for this guy than any other guy who's ever walked the face of the globe.

Matthew wanted his audience to understand exactly where Jesus came from, and it has the benefit for us of realizing this is a real person, a real time and space who had a real family line. He was born just as prophecy said He would in the very circumstance that God had told people that He would be.

A Rejected Messiah: Redefining Deliverance from Rome to Sin 17:10

Now, you would think that would be somewhat compelling to many of the Jews. The reality is, maybe, maybe not. You know, if you were to stop Matthew's contemporaries and say, hey, hey, you know, you got on the street corner and say, hey, come on, come on, come on. And you talk to Jews in the first century and you say, hey, are we waiting for, I don't know, a Messiah to come and deliver us?

People would have said, absolutely. In fact, when is he going to get here? We want that Messiah. We want that Deliverer.

However, what they had done is they'd redefined deliverance. They wanted to be saved, right? But what was it they wanted to be saved from? One word starts with an R, Rome.

Rome. The main problem, if you're a Jew, was not your sins. You weren't like sitting there just at night going, oh my, my sins. That's not what you're doing.

You were complaining and moaning and praying about Rome. That was your issue. So the great irony is that Jesus Christ was born just as God anticipated and prophesied that He would. He was the singular focus of all of redemptive history up to that point.

Every prophet was like a neon arrow looking ahead to him, including Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament. It all pointed forward to him. But when He showed up, they didn't recognize Him. Why?

Because He didn't do what they expected or wanted Him to do. They wanted him to come on in, to enter into Jerusalem, riding a chariot, a giant steed, marching in to deal with Rome, to stomp on Rome. That's what they wanted a deliverer to do. You know, Jews, Maccabees, that's the sort of thing he did.

They were looking for something like that. But instead, what they got was a deliverer who came in on a donkey. And he came in humble. And not one who went to aspire with the great religious elite or sit in the fine places, but rather one who sought out broken, hurting, lost individuals.

They didn't expect it, and because they didn't expect it, they rejected Him when He came.

The Hour of Visitation: Why Jesus Wept Over Jerusalem 19:04

“Because they did not know the hour of my visitation.”

— Luke 19:44 (NKJV)

Jesus, a very great cruel irony is that Jesus, when He entered into Jerusalem for the last time at the start of his Passion Week, remember everyone's crying, Hosanna, Hosanna. They're laying down palm branches and all that. They didn't know what they were doing. They had religious fervor but no understanding, and we know they had no understanding because of Jesus' reaction when He came to the city and He looked upon it.

What did Jesus do when He looked at the city for the last time from the hillside as He was about to go into His passion week? What did He do? He wept. He wept.

Why? Well, He tells us. Scripture flat out says, Jesus flat out says, He said that the reason He wept when looking at the city was this, because they did not know the hour of my visitation. They were expecting someone else.

They wanted some other deliverer. They had reinvented what the word Messiah meant to be something entirely other than what this book said that He would be. As they showed up, they wanted nothing to do with him, irrespective of the fact that He fulfilled His prophecies and irrespective of the fact that his lineage and everything else about Him pointed to His person and His divinity.

With that said, Matthew, as he's writing this, he can't change all that. Remember, when he's writing this, it's all done. That's done. Jesus has been crucified, He's been resurrected, and He's ascended.

So he can't change the fact that his contemporaries contributed to the death of Jesus in collaboration with Rome. He couldn't change that. However, he could teach them, which he's attempting to do in the book of Matthew, he could teach them, in retrospect, looking back at Jesus, something that they had ignored when He was right in front of their faces.

He could teach them that this one that we killed, this one that was nailed to a cross, this one who hung, He was later resurrected, and He was the fulfillment of everything we've been looking forward to all those centuries, even if we knew it not when He was here.

Four Gentile Women in the Line of Christ 21:03

Before I look at the last verse in our genealogy, let me offer one other observation. As these names come up, as I butchered every third one of them, but as these names come up, you'll notice there's something interesting, or at least unusual, in this list. Matthew did something that Luke didn't do at all.

Matthew highlighted four women, four Gentile women. He actually talked about five women altogether, but four of them were Gentiles. This included Ruth, Bathsheba, Tamar, Rahab, along with Mary. Now why?

This was not the norm when giving genealogies. Why did he do it? More to the point, why did God do it through him? Why did God do this?

Why did God give us this? Why did God highlight these particular individuals? Well, there's a lot of theories more than we have time to do, but among the things that I'm sure we can learn from their inclusion in this list are these four things. Number one, women have played an integral role, integral role in God's history of redemption over the ages.

Number two, women are esteemed by God in His word as co-heirs, co-laborers, and co-contributors to God's work. Number three, Women are actively enfolded into God's plans and purposes since eternity past. And number four, if all of that was true back then, it has not changed in the present. If it was true in Israel, it's true in the early church, it's true in our church as well.

Three Blocks of Fourteen Generations: A New Season Inaugurated 22:29

Let's look at our last verse, verse 17. Verse 17, so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David until the captivity in Babylon are 14 generations. And from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ, the Christ, the Messiah, are 14 generations.

All right, what can we observe as we wrap up the genealogy? Next week we'll get into the birth story, but as we're wrapping up the genealogy, what can we learn from this last verse? Well, first off, notice that Matthew is categorizing three blocks of time. It's not an accident.

He did this on purpose. He has broken down that laundry list of names into three categories, three blocks of 14 names apiece. And again, he didn't include every generation in between. That was not his objective.

Rather, his goal was to recite key names from the three primary Jewish ages. And he identifies those ages, just to be clear, as from Abraham to David, that's number one, if you're a Jew looking back at your own Jewish history from Abraham to David, that was the first iteration of time. Number two, from David until the Babylonian captivity.

So from David's reign all the way until things got really bad and the Babylonian captivity in about 586. And then the third block of time, the return from exile during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah up until Christ's day. So he says there's three blocks of time in our own history, and then he gives us 14 names across each of them.

This genealogy, if you've ever studied the Westminster Confession of Faith, you know the Westminster Confession is longer, but then we have something shorter, more bite-sized. What's it called? The Shorter Catechism, right? We have the Shorter Catechism.

It's more bite-sized. This is the equivalent of the Shorter Catechism for genealogy. He doesn't give every last possible name, but he hits the highlights. He recites things in order to make his overall point, which is that Jesus is the one that has been promised from long ago, and he is the ultimate seed of Abraham's hope.

Now, one last point on verse 17. If you were a Jew at that time and you noticed something, you noticed that, okay, so there's three blocks of time of 14 names apiece. There's three seasons in our history categorized by these 14 individuals. The last one, the penultimate one being Jesus Christ Himself.

What is your natural inference if you're a Jew or Gentile based on hearing that? Well, the natural inference is that if these are three seasons, each of this 14 blocks to name, then that meant that with Christ began, inaugurated a new season, which is exactly what happened. Jesus was the penultimate figure here, and by his advent and his ministry, a new season and a far better season for Israel and for us had begun.

The Church as the Fulfillment of Israel, Not Its Replacement 25:16

“You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”

— Romans 11:18 (NKJV)

All right, with our remaining time, let me share something important with you that I think will help in our upcoming study through the book of Matthew. Remember, Matthew is a gospel written to a primarily Jewish audience. It has more references to the Old Testament than any other New Testament book. And because of that, it's a bridge.

When you read Matthew, you can pick up and learn a lot of things about how God dealt with the Jews and how their story is our story. How their story is our story. So let me offer this observation as we wrap up today. Over the years, sometimes the church and sometimes Christians have been accused of saying that the church is the replacement plan for Israel.

That is emphatically not the case. The church is not a replacement of Israel or Israel's hope. It is the fulfillment of that hope. Christians are sometimes accused of saying the church has kind of bumped Israel out of the picture and relegated Israel to just, you know, a blip in the rearview mirror.

Again, not the case. Not the case. If you think that's what happened, if you ever heard someone say that's what happened, they're wrong. That was not the view of Matthew.

That was not the view of Paul. It was not the view of any of the New Testament authors. It was not the view of Christ Himself. To a man, to an individual, each one of them, each one of the gospel authors, the authors of the epistles, saw Jesus Christ and saw the church not as a replacement for Israel but as the fulfillment of Israel's hope and its past, and pointed towards a more glorious future.

Paul said as much in Romans chapter 11. In Romans chapter 11, Paul talks about the relationship between the church and Israel, and he said this. He said, did God reject His own people? He's talking about the Jews, right?

And so he asked a rhetorical question. He says, did God reject them just because they rejected Jesus? Did God reject them? And then he answers his own question, and he says, by no means.

By no means. And then he says, I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. See how genealogy was important? God did not reject His people whom He foreknew, so too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.

There was a remnant. Look at Anna, look at Simeon in the New Testament story. If some of the branches have been broken off and you, meaning the Gentiles, meaning the church, meaning people like you and I, and you, though a wild olive shoot have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap of the olive tree, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches.

If you do, then consider this. You do not support the root, but the root supports you. God has only ever had one people. Full stop.

God has only ever had one people. In the economy of God. He only has one set of children. Now, they might not all share Abraham's ancestry or ethnicity per se.

They might not all share Abraham's ancestry, but they do all share Abraham's hope. They do all share Abraham's faith. In our study, in the weeks coming, the book of Matthew, the author himself, Matthew, is going to attempt to unpack and to explain that to his audience and to us as well. He's going to attempt to explain all of this to his Jewish contemporaries, the ones he was writing to, and to the church that have been engrafted among them.

Let's pray.