The Gospel of Matthew serves as the bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It establishes time and again that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah of the Scriptures, the root of Jesse, David's heir and the lion of Judah. He sets out to do so from the very beginning.
He doesn't introduce Jesus through opinions and beliefs but rather through his ancestry. In ancient Jerusalem the genealogy was important simply to emphasize the purity of the bloodline. We read of many great names in the genealogy of Jesus but we are forced to wonder about the purity of that bloodline. We have murderers, prostitutes, foreigners and what-not and yet Matthew leaves all the gory details in. Only if we take a step back from the details do we realize that such a genealogy can only establish one thing-the holiness of Jesus did not stem from His earthly bloodline but from the divine Father.
At the same time the genealogy of Jesus tells us something else. It allows us a clearer vision of where Jesus fits in the entire story of Salvation that God has scripted throughout the Bible. So bear with me as I attempt to exemplify the bridge that Matthew has created.
The Genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17)
Luke, in his Genealogy given in Luke 3: 23-38 starts with Adam. Matthew starts with Abraham. Who is more accurate? Well actually both are. Abraham is a successor of Adam but what Matthew does is that he focuses on the Jewish covenant that God first formed with Abraham while Luke focussed on the salvation plan laid out in Genesis 3:15. (A belief states that Matthew provides us with the geneology of Jesus from the side of Joseph and Luke, who is more inclusive of the females, provide the geneology through Mary.) Now the Jewish covenant did not come into place till Abraham chose to be separated from his people and follow God. That is where our journey with Matthew begins, not in the manger, not in Bethlehem, but rather in Mesopotamia, in Haran(later called Padam Haran).
Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Gen 12:1-3)
Now since Abram was an old man when he left the country and his wife was barren. She was not just barren of children but also of faith so much so that she offered her maid Hagar to bear Abram a son and that son was Ishmael. We do not find that name in Jesus's family tree because Jesus is not simply a descendent of Abraham. He is the descendent of a promise and according to God's promise Abraham's wife Sarai bore a son at the age of hundred, long after her body had refused to be fertile. Can the female reproductive cycle be a barrier to God's blessings? Definitely not. Now this promised child led to a further promise. When Isaac was a young lad God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son after literally feeding Ishmael and Hagar to the vultures (Don't worry. God took care of them, blessed them and gave him an entire nation). Abraham obeyed and was stopped in the nick of time so that God could provide a substitute. Now what does this sacrifice remind you of... father sacrificing son, substitute... Many years later the cross was supposed to accomplish what Abraham was unable to do. We will come to that later.
Isaac was really blessed. Imagine a young boy lying on a pile of woods waiting for his father to drive a dagger through him because God said so. He didn't struggle or cry out. He obeyed. He was fine with his father finding him a bride from distant lands. He was even forgiving towards the son who tricked him and took advantage of his blindness to get the blessings that was due to another. This brings us to the third person in the family tree and the concept of redemption. Jacob was the younger twin born to Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob tricked his brother out of his inheritance and even cheated him out of his father's blessings. But did that stop God from blessing him? No. And so we get the concept of redemption and reconciliation. Jacob was reconciled to his brother in the end and in the process fathered thirteen children. Now at the time of his death Jacob blessed each of his sons and made a prophetic statement which is again fulfilled in Jesus.
