The Covenants (Matthew 1:1-17)

When you live in a small town, maybe especially when your family has lived there for a few generations, you really form an attachment to the place. You have roots. You can live in a big city and have roots, but there’s a difference in knowing 80% of the population vs. 10%. You have a deeper desire to see things get better, not worse. You’re more willing to volunteer if you’re dedicated to a location. You have ownership. 


There’s even a trend now of population increase in rural areas. The Census Bureau showed that between 2010-2020, cities exploded. But between 2020-2021, rural populations increased more than urban populations for the first time in a century. Data is just data, and it always has to be interpreted, which is what makes drawing conclusions so difficult. But people talk with their feet. There is a definite trend toward going smaller.


Having multiple generations in a town makes raising children easier. It makes forming a livelihood easier. It should take the stress of daily striving a little easier. You have some support always on hand. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and when those things are missing, you realize how quickly they can be taken for granted. 


And we are not the first generation to notice that. People have always cared about their families, where they came from, and what life was like before them. Up until about the age of 12, we idealize everyone and everything. Then as we become more self-aware and aware of the sins and faults of others, we grow nostalgic, not for the way things were, but for the way we understood them. So we can apprehend why we get sentimental for the past, why we romanticize it, and why we want to learn more about it. We can understand the desire for a more bucolic, pastoral way of living.

Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Matthew’s not being nostalgic, he’s not romanticizing the past, and he’s not a grumpy old man who wants to tell the kids how much better things used to be. In a stroke of divinely inspired genius, Matthew presents the entire gospel in a single sentence--


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


Matthew then expands on that gospel sentence in what might be misconstrued as an usual way. He talks about fathers and their sons. “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,” on and on. For our King James fans, “Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah and his brothers,” on and on. 


What could possibly be the point of doing a 23-and-Me when we’re trying to understand the gospel? Do we really need to start with an ancestry of Jesus? What could Matthew be doing?


If you know much about the Bible, you know that genealogies are common. They’re all over the Old Testament, and they make brief appearances in the New Testament, as well. Both Matthew and Luke make them important parts of the early sections of their gospels. Luke goes into even greater detail, going all the way back to Adam. So what’s the point of tracing Jesus’ lineage through all these fathers and sons? Matthew is practically screaming at us:


God is the keeper of his covenant.


God made important covenants with both Abraham and David, the two men around whom this genealogy is centered. A covenant is an oath guaranteed with blessings and curses. When we get married, we make a covenant to stay together in sickness and in health, riches and poverty, for better or worse. We know that if we break the covenant without cause, there are consequences. We might not pronounce blessings and curses when we enter a marriage covenant, but the biblical covenants definitely do.


Christ is the centerpiece and organizing principle, or simply, just the reason, of Scripture, around which all of the Bible is written. And the covenants are the means by which we understand who Jesus is, which is why Matthew identifies Jesus as the Christ, the son of David and the son of Abraham. There are many covenants in Scripture which progressively reveal God’s plan of redemption.


When Adam fell, God promised to bring about redemption by sending an offspring from Eve who would crush the serpent’s head who deceived her. The next covenant, the covenant with Noah, made the promise that the earth would remain until God had accomplished all his redemptive plan. The covenant with Abraham promised a nation who would bring about the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head and bless the whole world in doing so. The covenant with Moses gave that nation laws by which they would be governed. If they were faithful, they would stand in the land. If they broke the covenant, they would be exiled. Spoiler alert: it only took a few hundred years to be kicked out. The covenant with David further identified the seed of the woman as a king who would rule forever. The new covenant with Christ brought the covenant of Moses to an end but brought about an expansion by grafting the branches of the nations into the vine of Israel, thereby giving birth to Christ’s church as Abraham’s spiritual children.


So why did Matthew see this genealogy as necessary to start his gospel? It’s essential to see God has never stopped fulfilling his promises. Jesus is the promised son of Abraham, the seed of the woman who would bless the world. Jesus is the promised son of David, the king of the whole world. Matthew was also initially writing to the Jews, which the first verse makes clear. Throughout the whole gospel, Matthew is regularly quoting or alluding to the Old Testament, where the promises of God began. 


The Jews of Matthew’s day had misunderstood the Old Testament prophecies by holding to certain expectations of what this promised seed of the woman, the Messiah, would be like. They wanted a conqueror to push the Romans out of their land and re-establish the theocracy, or where they were independent and ruled by God and a king from the line of David. Jesus was a stumbling block, a rock of offense. If they had only considered the facts of Jesus’ life, they would have seen and understood how he was exactly who God had promised. But more than once, Jesus accused their religious leaders of not knowing the Scriptures and the power of God. 


By rooting Jesus deep in Israel’s history, back to David and further to Abraham, we cannot conclude that Jesus is a surprise on the scene. Jesus is not a random accident. He’s fulfillment. In our nation, where we don’t inherit offices (ideally), it can be difficult to wrap our heads around the importance of tracing Jesus’ line back hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s not only fascinating but important. If the skeptics of today would only consider the ridiculous odds of Jesus tracing himself back not just a few generations but to the founding of God’s people, they would lose much of their enthusiasm. Phenomenons are unaccounted for; they come out of nowhere. But that’s not Jesus. He’s from the Godhead who writes history and arrived at the fullness of time, “declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done” (Isaiah 46:10). 


Scripture itself is that record of God fulfilling his purposes in Christ. God has had a plan and purpose to give a kingdom to the Son before the foundation of the world. If that’s not a wonderful story, I don’t know what is. That means that this world is not about me. It’s not about you. You and I have no thrones to sit on. There is one throne in the cosmos, and it belongs to Christ. It always has and it always will. In a world bent on idolizing ourselves, Matthew takes a wrecking ball to our inflated sense of self with the words, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” 


Throughout the books of Moses, the history books, the books of wisdom, and the writings of the prophets, God repeats his promise to redeem us through the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ. As Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 1:20,  “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” 


That’s not just some promises, not just the promises to Abraham or to David, but every promise of God. Every covenant promise is a glowing sign, a blaring speaker, reminding us that God is fulfilling everything through Christ. God will send deliverance through him. 


That promise was first made in the garden immediately after the fall of man. The first man and woman ate the forbidden fruit, being deceived by the serpent into believing they could be like God. They were already his image and likeness, but they were all too easily convinced that wasn’t enough. So they gave in to the temptation to sit on a throne of their own making. When they realized their sin, their guilt and shame, they hid like children. God called them out of hiding to deal with them. Instead of dying, they were shown mercy and covered by God’s gracious gift of animal skins. 


God punished them, but he cursed the serpent who deceived them. He said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). That promise would be the first declaration that God redeems the lost, loves his enemies, he raises the dead. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). That covenant promise is then expanded upon with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally brought to fulfillment in Christ. 


The author of Hebrews begins by saying, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Through dreams and visions, the words of the prophets, angelic messages, and in many ways, God declared the gospel message before the incarnation of Christ. But now that we have the revelation of Jesus Christ, God’s plan of redemption has reached its culmination. In these last days, we wait for his return to bring an end to this age, separate the righteous from the wicked, and inherit the kingdom from the Father while his enemies are made his footstool.


The Covenant with David
God makes a covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7. He promises many things. God will make David’s name great, he will make sure Israel lives peacefully, he will discipline David when he sins, but David’s offspring will reign after him. The covenant promise ends with God saying, “Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16b). 


David’s sin was great, as was his offsprings’, and they did earn God’s discipline. Nations did invade the land and remove the people, taking many into exile. But God’s promise is a covenant promise which he will not break. The prophets are told of a descendant of David who would return to the throne and reign forever. Isaiah describes the lineage of David like a tree that’s been cut down after the king’s sin removes the people from the land. All that’s left is a stump. But there’s still life in the tree, and a small shoot starts to rise up. He writes, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse (David’s father), and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit” (Isaiah 11:1).


The angel Gabriel tells Mary, the mother of Jesus, “And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33).


Then Jesus himself tells John at the end of Revelation, “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” (Revelation 22:16).


The son of David reigns now and forever. It is a promise.


The Covenant with Abraham
The covenant with Abraham is found in three places: Genesis, 12, 15, and 17. God promises to take this one man and turn him into a great nation, turn his name into a great name, and to make him a great blessing to the whole world. Then, Abraham’s offspring will go into slavery before they are rescued miraculously and taken to the promised land. Lastly, God promises kings will be in Abraham’s offspring. 


Paul the apostle tells us later, "Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ" (Galatians 3:16).


The covenant with Abraham was the narrowing of all mankind to set our sights on a single descendent from Abraham who would fulfill all God’s promises. There would be one who would bring an end to the curse, rescue his people from slavery to sin and death, bring in his people from a multitude of nations, and take them to the heavenly country. 


The three major world religions all claim to have their roots in this promise. Of course, Judaism claims that Abraham was their patriarch, which he was and is. But the Judaism of today looks nothing like first-century Judaism. Islam also claims Abrahamic lineage. 


But Paul again writes in Romans 9, “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ That means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring” (vv.6-8).


If you’ll remember, Abraham and his wife Sarah were unable to have children. But God promised them nations and kings and land. So God made another promise, that they would bear a single son, who would be Isaac, through whom those things would come. Abraham grew impatient and bore a child, Ishmael, with Sarah’s servant.. But there would be no messiah from that natural offspring. Through Isaac would come the fulfillment of that great promise. 


Abraham has physical descendants, but he also has spiritual descendants. Not all who belong to Israel are Abraham’s spiritual offspring. Those spiritual offspring are born again through Christ. In Romans 11, Paul uses the imagery of Israel as the root of a tree, and individual branches have been broken off in order to make room for wild olive shoots, you and me, to be grafted in. Israelites who did not believe in Christ were removed, or broken off like branches. And Gentiles, wild olive shoots, were grafted in to become a part of the same root, to be nourished by the root like the natural branches. 


In the book of Revelation, there are instances where the author John hears something, but when he turns to look, he sees something else. It’s supposed to show us both sides, to fill out our understanding of the truth. For instance, in chapter 5, he is told about a roaring lion, and the root of David, and a conquering king, but when he turns to look, all he sees a gentle lamb that appears to have been slain but is alive. Jesus is the lion of Judah, the son of David, the king, but he is also the lamb who was slain.


But in chapter 7, for our purposes, John hears of 12,000 people saved from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, or 144,000 people. But when he turns to look, what does he see?


“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10).


These are Abraham’s spiritual descendants, the children of the promise. In that way, there is no Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. For all are one in Christ Jesus, the son of Abraham, the son of David, through whom we receive the redemption of our souls.


Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. God is the keeper of his covenants. He has promised redemption for all those who place their faith in Christ. And as surely as Christ is the son of both David and Abraham, so are all those saved who rest in him. 


We even see Gentiles in his genealogy. And not just Gentiles, but women, who were not often used to prove a certain lineage. The fathers represented the family line. But all these women were written into history by God at moments that wound up to be major turns.


Tamar was a prostitute who disguised herself and slept with her father-in-law as a way of getting back at him. The children from that illicit activity would be the forefather of Boaz, who would marry Ruth.


Ruth was a Moabite Gentile who made herself very available to Boaz, basically wore him down, and married in to the Jewish line. Their descendent would be king David who had an affair with Bathsheba.


Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, who was one of David’s most loyal soldiers. David couldn’t hide his affair or the child that came from it, so he had Uriah killed in battle. That child also died, but David and Bathsheba’s son Solomon would eventually take the throne and continue the line toward Jesus.


One line running between all these women is the suspicion and questions around their childbearing. But we get to the last woman in the genealogy, Mary. Matthew makes sure there is no question or suspicion surrounding the birth of Christ. 


There are two ways of reading this genealogy. The first way is to see a selective reading of history that really does quite little for the Christian message. Why would it possibly matter who begat who?


But the second way of reading this genealogy is to see God’s hand of providence throughout the entire line. Most of these men and women screwed up and sinned and worshiped idols every chance they got. But that did nothing to halt God’s purpose. Even in the midst of murder, adultery, and scheming, God remains sovereign. The only way to read this one is to see God’s hand of grace and power all along the way.


So maybe on this Father’s Day, a special word to the men. God keeps his promises. This means if you are following him and leading your family into greater devotion to him, and even when you don’t, then you will see God’s grace and power all along the way. So don’t get discouraged when things fall apart, when children make you doubt your sanity, when things aren’t easy with your wife, and when your job disappears. All along the way, God’s grace and power to preserve you are at work. 


You can only imagine what each of these individuals thought throughout their lives about their circumstances. Abraham didn’t quite believe God’s word so he took matters in his own hands. Did this mess up God’s plan? Judah slept with a prostitute who he couldn’t even pay and found out he just fathered his own grandchildren. How could God set that right? Rehoboam split Israel in two. How could God reunite two kingdoms of people who hated each other? Israel went into exile for generations of idolatry. Why would God do anything good for them?


God’s jealousy for his own name and his grace and mercy toward us lead us toward Jesus Christ. Every step and every generation is in God’s hands. He keeps his covenants, now and forever.