Matthew 1:1-17 - Homiletics

The introduction.

I. THE TITLE .

1 . It is a book ; but it is not, like other books, the product of human thought. It presents to us a life not like other lives. That life stands alone in its beauty, purity, tenderness, in the glory of its unearthly holiness, in the majesty of its Divine self-sacrifice. It stands alone in its claims; it claims to be the great example, the one pattern life, the Light of the world. It claims to be a revelation of a new life; it offers a gift of power and Divine energy—a power which can lift men out of darkness into light, out of worldliness and selfishness into the life of holy love, into the clear light of the presence of God. The conception of that life is unlike any of the ideals of perfection to be found in ancient writers; there was never anything like it before. It has changed our estimate of various moral qualities; it has raised some that the world thought little of to a very high place of dignity; it has depressed others that once stood high in the thoughts of men to their proper level. That life has affected the modes of thought and feeling even of those who will not accept it as a revelation from God. It formed a mighty epoch in the history of thought; men cannot divest themselves of its influence; they cannot think now as they might have thought had that life never been lived on earth. It is impossible for us to put ourselves back into the mental attitude of those who had never heard of that life; it has exercised an influence so widespread, so deep-reaching, over the whole field of thought and feeling. But we can see that that life could never have been conceived by any human genius, least of all at the time when the Gospels were written. Compare it with any efforts of human imagination; there is not one that can even seem to endure the comparison. This history is unique. It has the stamp of genuineness, the ring of truth. Fictitious it cannot be; there never was man that could have invented it. Compare it with other religious writings of antiquity, whether Jewish or Christian; compare it with the apocryphal Gospels, or with the books of the sub-apostolic Fathers: this book stands absolutely alone; there is no other book like it; the gulf that parts it from all other books is wide, deep, immense. It is the book, the Bible—the book that speaks to the heart of man as no other book can, because it is God's book; it comes from him, and it speaks to the heart which is his handiwork, to the man whom he created in his own image, after his own likeness. It bears in itself the evidence of its Divine origin; we feel , as we read its sacred words, that it has a message for us, that it is God's voice calling us, telling us all that we need to know of himself, of his will, of his redemption of the human race from sin and death.

2 . The subject of the book. It is "the book of the generation of Jesus Christ," the book which tells us of his birth, of his history. It opens with a tab!e of genealogy. He is" the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." In him was fulfilled the promise made to Abraham: "In thy Seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." In him was fulfilled the faithful oath which the Lord had sworn to David: "Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne." The book gives us the history of a Person. Christianity presents to us not simply a code of morals, a system of theology, but a Person. The book describes his character, it relates the circumstances of his life upon earth. It is a history, but it is more than a history. "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." It sheds a light upon the way that leadeth to Christ; it shows us where to find him. For this history is not like other histories, merely a record of past facts of more or less interest. It is the revelation of a present Saviour. It has not done its work for us unless it is leading us to Christ himself, to a personal knowledge of the Lord. We may know the Gospel through and through, its language, history, geography, archeology,—that knowledge is of deep, absorbing interest; but if we advance no further, we miss the very end for which the Gospel was written. Indeed, it is no Gospel to us, no glad tidings, but only an ancient book, unless by its guidance we find Christ. The deepest biblical scholar, if he fails to find Christ, knows less of the real meaning of the Gospel than the humblest Christian who is living in the faith of the Son of God. It is not the knowledge of the facts of the Lord's history, but the living, personal knowledge of himself, that is eternal life. We must learn to abide in him, to live in that fellowship which is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Without this spiritual know]edge the Gospel is written in vain for our salvation: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The mere external knowledge of the Scripture can only increase the condemnation of those who have not sought by prayer and the gracious help of God the Holy Ghost to penetrate its inner meaning. That inner meaning, revealed to our hearts by the Holy Spirit of God, and brought to bear upon our inward and outward lives, giveth life, because it brings us to him who alone is the Life of men. The promise was that all the nations of the earth should be blessed in the Seed of Abraham; not in his history, not in the record of his life and teaching, but in that holy Seed himself, in his grace, in his abiding presence, in union with him.

II. THE GENEALOGY .

1 . It begins from Abraham. St. Matthew was writing for the Jews in the first instance. He proves that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah whom the Jews expected, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. He was descended from the father of the faithful, born in the covenant, himself admitted by the rite of circumcision into the conditions of the ancient covenant. He fulfilled all righteousness, all the requirements of the Law. He lived as a Jew, he preached to the Jews. "I am not sent," he said," but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But even as he said tose words he healed the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman; it was an earnest of the world-wide range of his redemption. He died, "not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." Therefore through him the blessing of Abraham hath come upon the Gentiles. As St. Paul teaches us in Galatians 3:1-29 ., "The Scripture preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." "There is neither Jew nor Greek; for if we be Christ's, then are we Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Thus the first verse of the First Gospel preaches faith. Christ is the Son of Abraham, who "believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." They which are of faith are the children of Abraham; they share the blessing of Abraham. Christ is theirs, and they are Christ's.

2 . The genealogies in Genesis descend from Adam ; this ascends to Christ. God made man in the likeness of God. Adam begat sons in his own likeness, after his image. The sting of the serpent infected the race: "Original sin is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam." The Spirit of the Lord indeed strove with man from the beginning; he was not left to die in his sin and misery; the first promise of a Redeemer follows close upon the first sin. God was never without a witness; in Cain and Abel we have the first sight of the field in which the wheat and the tares grow together unto the harvest. But corruption soon spread widely among the descendants of Adam; all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. As man receded further from the Divine origin of the race, the deeper became the taint of sin; the traces of the image of God grew ever fainter, the poison of the serpent deadlier and more loathsome. It repented God that he had made man upon earth; the Flood destroyed the ungodly. Then God established his covenant, first with Noah, afterwards with Abraham. The promise became clearer and more definite. The generations had descended from God; now they begin to ascend towards God again, towards the Christ, who is the Son of God, himself God incarnate. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ; he saw it and was glad. Generation after generation looked for the promised Saviour; Simeon was "waiting for the consolation of Israel." The Jews inquired of John the Baptist whether he was the Christ that was to come—the Christ was to restore all things. In Adam all died, in Christ shall all be made alive; for the last Adam is a quickening Spirit, even the Lord from heaven. He came to restore the almost lost image of God. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we must also bear the image of the heavenly." God hath predestinated his elect to be conformed to the image of his Son. As they draw nearer and nearer to Christ, imitating his blessed example, looking always unto Jesus, they are being renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created them. The generations ascend towards the Christ; so must each Christian strive in his own spiritual life to rise ever nearer to the Lord.

3 . The variations of rank in the genealogy. The generations begin with patriarchs; they rise to kings; they descend again to private men. From Abraham to David the king; from David the king to Joseph the carpenter. Human ancestry, however illustrious, could add nothing to the dignity of the Son of God. But both his blessed mother and Joseph, his father by adoption, were descended from David. Apparently the Lord Jesus was, according to the flesh, the representative of David, the lineal heir to David's throne. But he lived in obscurity for the first thirty years of his earthly life. He was meek and humble in heart; he prided not himself on earthly rank. Indeed, what was rank to him? The difference between the greatest monarch and the humblest beggar is altogether inappreciable compared with the infinite descent from heaven to earth. When once he had emptied himself of his glory, and taken the form of a servant, it was as nothing that he chose the carpenter's shop rather than the royal palace. His earthly ancestors varied in rank. There were kings, there were private men; the reputed father of the Lord, the husband of his mother, was a carpenter. Honours, like wealth, are vanity; the one highest honour, the one loftiest title, is theirs to whom he hath given power to be called the sons of God.

4 . The variations in moral and spiritual character. In the genealogy there are holy men like Abraham, there are wicked men like Ahaz, Manasseh, Amen. There is a Moabitish woman, pure indeed, and lovely in character, but of heathen blood. Others there are whose lives had been defiled with sin—Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba. The Lord indeed was born by a miraculous conception, without stain of human corruption; but sinners as well as saints are reckoned in his genealogy, lie was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, though he was without sin. His ancestry was not uniformly holy, any more than uniformly royal. The poorest have an interest in him as much as the noblest; the sinful have an interest in him as well as apostles and saints.

5 . The genealogy , like all genealogies , shows the transitoriness of all things human. " Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah." Man comes, and man goes; a man is born into the world; man goeth to his long home. Each man represents a long line of ancestors, a line which each generation lengthens, a line stretching back into the remotest past. Most of us know very little of those who have gone before us, not so much as their names. They are gone, and we must follow; we shall soon be but names in the memory of posterity; soon our very names will be forgotten. But God hath said, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Then the dead of ages past are living still; we speak of them as the dead, but they live unto God. Their number is incalculable; the world of the dead is infinitely more numerous than the world of the living. But they are all known, every one of them, to the all-seeing God. We shall soon be gathered to that countless multitude. It matters little now to them what their rank, their wealth, was in life. The patriarch, the king, the carpenter, are distinguished now only by their faith, their holiness. Many that once were last are first now, and the last are first. So will it be with us who are living now. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven;" "Seek first the kingdom of God."

6 . The genealogy shows the true manhood of Christ. According to the flesh he is descended, like ourselves, from a long line of human ancestors. His birth was miraculous; but on his mother's side he came out of Judah, Judah from Abraham, Abraham from Adam. He represents human nature; he is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; he was made in all things like unto us, yet without sin.

7 . The genealogy shows his Divine birth ; for "Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." He was born of Mary; he was not the Son of Joseph; he had no earthly father. Joseph was the husband of Mary, but not the father of Jesus; he was born of her. The first mention of his birth points at once to other than a human origin. He who is the Son of Abraham is also the Son of God.

8 . The numbers. The three fourteens are probably intended to assist the memory, but they may possibly contain a mystical meaning. Seven is the signature of perfection; two, of human witness; three, of God. The history which we are approaching is the history of One who, though he appeared in the form of man, was in truth God. It is related by human witnesses; it is perfect, sufficient for all our needs. "These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his Name." The book which we are opening is " the book of the generation of Jesus Christ," the book which relates the redeeming work of "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Reverence, awe, and adoring love are the tempers of mind meet for such a study.

LESSONS .

1 . Search the Scriptures; they testify of Christ, and Christ is our Life.

2 . Receive the word as the word of God; it has a message for you.

3 . Believe in him; do his will. The study of the Scriptures must not end in knowledge; it must lead to faith and to obedience; it must lead to Christ.

4 . Life is short; eternity is long. Set your affections on things above.