December 6
“The scepter will not depart from Judah or the staff from between his feet until he whose right it is comes and the obedience of the peoples belongs to Him.” Genesis 49:10
“Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.” Isaiah 11:1
The New Testament begins with the genealogy of Jesus. We can also find a genealogical account in Luke 3. At first glance this may seem like just a list of names of people who lived a long time ago. However, Matthew and Luke took painstaking effort to trace Jesus’ lineage so it must be important. If we examine the four Gospels, we find that they each have different purposes. They share the same stories, but from a different perspective. The book of Matthew is written to the Jews. The purpose of the book is to prove that Jesus is their long-awaited Messiah. By tracing Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham, Matthew is showing the Jews that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies about the Messiah being a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and David. Two of those prophecies are found above. They would have understood the significance and importance of tracing Jesus’ roots back to the Father of their faith.
The purpose of the book of Luke is very different. Luke was a Gentile writing to Gentiles. He emphasized the humanity of Jesus and His perfection as a human. His genealogical account traces Jesus back to Adam to link Him not only to the Jews, but to all mankind. He shows that Jesus is the Savior of the world. It is generally believed that Matthew’s account traces Jesus’ lineage on Joseph’s side and Luke traces His lineage on Mary’s side. Between the two accounts we have Jesus’ biological genealogy and His legal genealogy. Since Jesus was not Joseph’s biological son it is important to trace his biological ancestry through Mary to prove that He is in fact the promised Messiah, but legally He bore Joseph’s name so it would be important to the Jews that His ancestry could be traced back through His surrogate father, Joseph. As we can see by tracing both sides of His family, He meets all the criteria and fulfills all the prophecies regarding the lineage of the Messiah legally and biologically.
Also of interest, there are 5 women listed in Jesus’ lineage. This is highly unusual. Ancestry was traced through fathers, not mothers. And these 5 women were definitely not ones you would expect to find in this list. Tamar was the widowed daughter-in-law of Judah who disguised herself as a prostitute in order to trick him into getting her pregnant. Rehab was a prostitute and Gentile living in Jericho who protected the Jewish spies in the promised land. Ruth was a Moabite widow who chose to remain loyal to her mother-in-law instead of returning to her family after her husband died. Bathsheba became King David’s wife only after he committed adultery with her and had her husband killed. And Mary was an insignificant teenage girl who became pregnant out of wedlock. If you were going to pick people to be in your family, it probably would not be these 5 women and if they happened to be in your family line you probably wouldn’t tell everybody about it. I think they are included to show that everyone is welcome in Jesus’ family. Jew or Gentile, woman or man, sinners, outcasts, the poor and needy are all precious to Jesus. He came to save everyone who believed in Him then and now. No matter where we come from, what we have done or who we are, we are loved and accepted.
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