Word of Salvation – Vol. 39 No.46 – December 1994

 

From Abraham through David to Christ

 

Sermon for Advent by: Rev. M.P. Geluk on Matthew 1:17

Readings: Revelation 11:1-14 Matthew 1:1-17

 

Congregation, beloved in Christ,

It might not seem that way but our text, verse 17, speaks about the coming of Christ into the world.  That, of course, is what Christmas is all about.  And with the words of our text, Matthew was aiming to comfort the church with the coming of Jesus Christ.

Matthew, the former tax collector, wrote his gospel in the second half of the first century after Christ's birth.  So that's somewhere in the years 60-100 AD.  And anyone who is a little bit familiar with the history of the church, will know that this was a rather difficult time.

For example, in the year 60 AD emperor Nero reigned and he cruelly persecuted Christians.  It was also the time when the apostle Paul was proclaiming the gospel and from his letters to the churches, as well as from the book of Acts, we know how fierce that persecution was.  Paul himself was imprisoned a number of times.  Not long after, he was killed in Rome because he would not stop proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.  Anyone who believed and confessed Jesus as the Son of God, would not worship the emperor as a god.  Hence the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperors.

It was also around this time that the apostle Peter was killed.  By the year 100 AD the Christian church had already gone through much suffering from persecution.  It was now the turn of emperor Domitian to shed the blood of many Christian martyrs.  Things became worse for the church as time went on.

Such were the circumstances in which Matthew wrote his gospel.  There was no peace for the church.  Christians could not regularly worship.  Bible studies were done in secret.  There were no public rejoicings about the birth of Christ as we are used to.  The Christian church of Matthew's time was not respected by the authorities and certainly did not benefit from any form of protection.  On the contrary, it was a church hounded and persecuted, a community of believers who saw their leaders being put to death by stoning or the sword.  It was a church whose members barely survived the first wave of official persecution and then had to brace itself for another wave which was even more severe than the first.

Now we know that Matthew, a Christian Jew himself, aimed his gospel at the Jews in particular.  Luke, who was a Greek, wrote his gospel in order to convince the gentiles that Christ is the Saviour for the world.  But Matthew very much wanted the Jews to realise from their own history and experiences with God that the Messiah whom they had always been expecting, had indeed come in the person of Jesus Christ.  Those Jews who believed this were hated and oppressed by those Jews who rejected Christ.

So the Christian Jews copped it from two sides.  The Romans persecuted them and they were treated with great contempt by their fellow Jews.  And so these Jews who became Christians were not given any freedom to belong to the church, nor to express their new found faith in a Christian life-style.  They wanted to obey God in the new way through Christ, but they were under pressure from all sides not to do it.

The writer of the Hebrew letter had these suffering Jewish Christians in mind when he speaks in chapter 11 of believers being tortured, jeered, flogged, chained and put in prison.  He says that some were “stoned, sawn in two or put to death by the sword.  They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and ill-treated, the world was not worthy of them.  They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground” (Heb.11:35-38).

Now it is this context that Matthew wrote this gospel to Christian believers.  They knew from experience what it meant to share the sufferings of Christ.  As Christ was treated so also will His followers be treated.  That's what Jesus predicted and it became true for these believers in the first century.  Matthew wrote his gospel so that they in this life could be comforted and that they, when death would put them before the judgement seat of God, could also rest secure and safe in their Saviour.

But now what does Matthew do?  Well, he fills up the first chapter of his gospel with a long list of names!  'Abraham, the father of Isaac....  Isaac, the father of Jacob...' and on it goes, 42 names in all.

Most of us skip over this part when we read the Bible for ourselves.  In fact, we wonder why all these names are there at all.  And what comfort would those early Christians derive from this long list of meaningless names?

Yet Matthew mentions them!  And when he has finished mentioning all these names, he even counts the generations!  From Abraham to David – 14 generations; from David to the exile in Babylon – 14 generations; and from the Babylonian exile to Christ – 14 generations.  Yes, why these names?  And why three times 14 generations?

In fact it doesn't even quite add up when you verify these names with Old Testament history.  It appears that Matthew has overlooked the names of three generations.  They happen to be three kings, Ahazia, Joash and Amaziah, all from the line of David from whom Christ was born.  So Matthew has given the names and the number of generations but it seems he has done it incorrectly.  And is this the stuff that the persecuted church of Jesus Christ is to take comfort from?  And is this the kind of passage and text that we want to hear around Christmas time?  Isn't it all a bit boring?  Hopefully, some of you will have begun to wonder already why God would have inspired Matthew to put a chapter like this in the Bible.  Some of you may have concluded that God's reason for including all these names in the Scriptures is to show how God preserved His people through all those centuries in order for Jesus Christ to be born.

That's fine, but why would Matthew list these names in such a way that he comes up with three lots of 14 generations?  Obviously Matthew saw an order in these names which he felt was of great comfort to the church in those troubled and difficult years.  Yes, we are now assuming that Matthew saw comfort in the way all those names are listed in three lots of 14 generations.  This assumption is open to challenge and if you were to read up on other theories as to why Matthew divided these names into three lots of 14, then you may want to disagree with what you will hear in this sermon.

However, all of Scripture is inspired to teach us something, so there must be some valuable explanation as to why Matthew grouped these names in the way he did.  It is our assumption that Matthew had in mind the difficult situation of these Jewish Christians.  He was aiming to comfort these believers.  And, of course, not just them but God's church in every age.  So what then is the Holy Spirit saying to us here in this portion of God's Word?

What we think Matthew had in mind may at first seem too complicated but we must not overlook the fact that the early Christian Church, especially those believers who were Jews, heard about Christ against the background of the Old Testament.  There were many Jews in the first century who took the Old Testament writings seriously.  And why shouldn't they?  It was their history.  More than that, it was God's history which involved them, and it went all the way back to Abraham.  It was to Abraham that God spelled out the promises of His covenant of grace which would benefit all Abraham's descendants, if they believed in God like Abraham did.

And the Jewish believers would know about the glorious reign of king David.  Many of the material benefits of God's covenant with Israel had come true during David's reign.  Israel's lamp burned brightly then.

But then came bad times as various kings of Israel and Judah led God's people into idolatry and caused them to forsake their obligations to the covenant relationship.  Finally, Israel's lamp was all but extinguished as they were deported to Babylon.  Then after the exile, notwithstanding some brief periods of light, Israel came under the domination of foreign powers.  It made the godly people long for a Saviour.  So when Christ came, many believed Him to be the Messiah and they were not disappointed.  But whilst they enjoyed the good news about Christ, their outward circumstances were full of trials.

A book like Revelation provided them with much comfort.  The message of the book Revelation is about the powerful Lord Jesus Christ protecting His church from the attacks of many enemies, Satan being the greatest antagonist.  Many times the message in Revelation is set against the background of the Old Testament.  For us the book Revelation is often difficult to understand, but for the Jewish Christians of the first century it made much more sense.  They understood the symbolism in it much better than we do.  It was familiar to them because of their similar cultural background.

So for Matthew to list three lots of 14 generations with names that came right out of their own history, must have made a great impression on the early Jewish Christians whose roots were in the Old Testament.  Yet, the Old Testament is important for all believers because it is primarily the history of God's dealings with the people He saved through Jesus Christ.  And the dividing of this Old Testament history into three lots of 14 generations obviously suggests an order which has valuable meaning for all believers.

Why, for example, does God reveal Himself as the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  There you have an order of three in one.  That is not without meaning and in time the church began to express its faith in God the Father and our creation, God the Son and our redemption, and God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.  With this order the church did not just want to be systematic and make up neat summaries.  No, the church came to speak of a triune God because they discovered that God revealed Himself that way and it helped the church to understand better the way God saves sinners.

Thus one finds order in God's work of creation.  The Bible clearly shows God to have made the heavens and the earth in six days and then God rested on the seventh day.  That is God's week.  It consisted of 6 and 1.  So there is order here as well.

This order is referred to again in Hebrews 4, but there it is given a new meaning.  The six days have now become the passage of time from creation to the second coming of Christ and the seventh day now becomes the eternal Sabbath on the new earth.

The number 7 has also a special meaning in Scripture.  It points to fullness and completion.  There are lots of sevens in the book of Revelation: 7 golden candlesticks, 7 stars, 7 churches, 7 angels, 7 seals, 7 trumpets and 7 bowls.  When we apply the meaning of fullness and completion to the number 7 then each of these sevens points to a totality.

But what period of time does that cover?  It covers the period of time from Christ's first coming to His second coming.  Scripture speaks of this time as ‘the last hour' or 'the last days'.  The book of Revelation refers to it as 1000 years.  Revelation also describes this time as 42 months.  (11:2; 13:5) The context makes it clear that these months are not meant to be taken literally.  Notice that Matthew also speaks about the number 42.  He writes that the time from Abraham through David to Christ is made up of 3 times 14 generations.  3x 14 is also 42.

There is, therefore, a parallel between the time up to the first coming of Christ and the time up to the second coming of Christ.  Not time as we calculate it in terms of days and years, but time as God reckons it.  It is the time in which God fulfils His plan of salvation.  Both the Old and the New Testament use the same number 42.

Matthew looked at Old Testament history and God inspired him to see three great epochs: from Abraham to David, from David to the exile and from the exile to Christ.  And God made Matthew count 14 generations in each epoch.  That this did not tally up exactly with the historical details of the Old Testament was of no great concern to Matthew.  He was more interested in coming to the number 42.

Christ had revealed the number 42 in the book Revelation.  It is possible that Matthew could have known this because the book Revelation appears to have been written before Matthew wrote his gospel.  But in any event we would have to say that the Spirit inspired Matthew to describe the time of the Old Testament church in terms of three lots of 14 generations which gives us the number 42.  And John, the author of the book Revelation, was equally inspired to describe the duration of the New Testament church in terms of 42 months.  The number 42 is not so important.  What is important is that both old and new dispensations are periods of time which reached a fullness and after each fullness there is a coming of Christ.

For Matthew all this was not just some coincidence, some fancy calculation.  In the three lots of 14 generations he has seen the order in which God works.  And so when Matthew sits down to write his gospel about Christ, about His birth, death, resurrection and ascension, he does not straightaway begin with Zechariah and Elizabeth, or with Joseph and Mary.  No, he first wants to point out to his fellow Jewish believers how God has worked all through their history.

After the 42 generations which makes up the history of God's Old Testament people, there came a fullness.  It was Jesus' first coming.  It was a time of completion.  The Old Testament people of God should have known this.  They had the 7th day, the 7th month and the 7th year of Jubilee.  Seven was a special number.  It was the fullness after 6 days of work, after 6 months and after 6 years.  Every time 7 came around there was a special time, a time of celebration, of rest, of holiness.  And so when Jesus came, it was a time of fullness, a time of rest, of holiness and of celebration.

When Matthew reflected on the birth of Christ against the background of Israel's history, then he discovered that Jesus' coming was right on time.  Yes, God was right on time when he fulfilled his promise of salvation.  God is a God of order and not of confusion.

For centuries nothing important happened.  Generations came and went.  Then some most unusual happenings began to take place.  The star appeared, the wise men came from the East, the angels visited the shepherds, the virgin conceived and gave birth.  And so Matthew, as he writes his gospel, discovered that there were 14 generations from Abraham to David and another 14 from David to the exile.  So how many then to Jesus' birth?  He discovered that it was 14 again.  And so Matthew was absolutely convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Immanuel, the fulfilment of the covenant promise.  It could not be otherwise.

Now this discovery did not bring Matthew to faith and it is unlikely that it will bring an unbeliever to faith, although we have to leave that to God.  But it greatly strengthened Matthew's faith and God inspired him to write about it in his gospel.

We see the gospel in our text even more when we remember that Matthew wanted to comfort his fellow Christian Jews.  He knew of their trials, of their ceasing to be a nation, of their scattering through persecution, of their blood and tears.  And so he wrote about their history.  But not history as men see it, but history as God sees it - a history about God's dealings with His people.

And so he begins with Abraham, the father of Israel and goes on to David.  Yes, how did God's people ever come as far as David?  Look at all the troubles they had.  There were many enemies who tried at different times to destroy them.  But there were also their own failures and sins.  They had so often broken their part of the covenant.  Yes, Satan never let up during those first 14 generations.

But God made the time of David arrive and David's kingdom was a clear indicator of what Christ's kingdom would be like.  Yes, David when he ruled well, was a type of Christ.  But even David committed adultery and murder.  And Solomon after him served heathen gods.  Then came a line of kings in Israel and Judah who were unbelievably evil.  God even vowed to end the house of Ahab because of excessive evil.  And that is where those three generations went missing.  They were relatives of Ahab whom God punished to the third and fourth generation because the sons were as evil as their father.  The second lot of 14 generations ended with that dreadful exile to Babylon.  But it was not the end.  Somehow God continued His covenant and the remnant returned and then after another 14 generations Christ was born.  As Galatians 4:4 puts it: But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son...!

From the Old Testament we see that the history of God's people was filled with tragic events.  But Matthew discovered that God's work of redemption went on.  God did not break His covenant.  He remained faithful even when His people were faithless.  Time and again, the Lord stepped in to save His people from extinction.  He purified and did not destroy.  And so with all these names from their history, Matthew shows his fellow Christian Jews that God does not give up on his people and that was a big comfort to them.

But in his gospel Matthew not only looked back he also looked ahead and wrote about Christ's second coming.  He reminded his fellow believers that they had to prepare for that and be ready.  There are many parables in Matthew's gospel about the return of Christ at the close of the age.  And at the end of his gospel Matthew could not have written more fitting words than those of Jesus who said, 'And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age' (28:20).

We trust then that these names which Matthew recorded and the order of three lots of 14 generations is not so dreary and dull anymore.  What a powerful message about God's faithfulness to His covenant people!  And what a God of order when He brought Christ into the world after 42 generations.

There will soon be another fullness of time, the completion of the 42 months of the New Testament period.  Then Christ will come again.  The book Revelation warns of persecution, of terrible trials and of Satan's powerful attacks.  In our part of the world it is still peaceful compared to other parts where Christ's church is openly persecuted.  Yet we face subtle and hidden resistance to the gospel because many in Australia are secular, humanistic and given to of New Age thinking.  Let us never lose our vigilance for the truth of God's word.  Attacks are made upon this truth not only from outside but also from within.  From the outside our anti-Christ culture tempts many a member of God's covenant people and some leave the church for the world.  But even from within the wider Christian church there are constant attempts to put the focus on people instead of on Christ, on experience instead of faith, on personal peace and happiness instead of biblical truth and it is all done with persuasive appeals to what they believe the Bible is saying.

But we do not lose heart.  God's kingdom marches on.  Our Lord will triumph.  We are still in the struggle, but in the fullness of time there will be another coming of Christ.  It will bring all God's people into that perfect rest of the eternal Sabbath on the new earth, into the perfection of holiness, into the glorious freedom of the children of God and into the wonderful presence of God.  Yes, the best of the celebration is yet to come!  And God will once more be right on time!  And thus we can go on from faith to faith, from strength to strength.

Amen.