Matthew 1:1
The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah

1 “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:”

Remember those magic eye pictures? You know back in the nineties when they were all a rage? If you don’t, remember they were pictures of a bunch of dots or squiggly lines but if you stopped and stared long enough, you’d spot a 3D image that would pop out at you. But of course if you just quickly glanced at it, you’d just see a bunch of dots and you’d miss the hidden image within. Yes, the things we humans used to do for fun before we had iPhones to stare at. But when looking at those pictures, it was so easy to dismiss them as just a bunch of dots. But if you actually took the time to pause and focus, you’d be pleasantly surprised at what you’d find. Sometimes, when reading the Bible, we tend to get like this. We skim through the mundane parts and just try and read the chapters to just get through it but if we actually take the time to pause and study carefully, we’ll find there’s so much more beyond the surface. I was looking for something to write about for the Christmas season and so I started in Matthew. Matthew gives an account of the Christmas story and so I started in chapter one. However, Matthew starts out not with the birth of Jesus like many of us would think, instead he starts the Christmas story with a genealogy. So, like usual I didn’t have the patience to read through it. I just skimmed it over. Okay, okay I thought to myself, just a bunch of names. This is as boring as reading a phone book. But something inside of me told me to go back and focus more on the details of this genealogy. As I studied it, I began to realize that I was wrong, there’s so much more to it than just a bunch of names. Just from the very first part, where Matthew mentions Jesus coming from the line of Abraham and David, we can discover great truth. Matthew’s purpose was to prove to the Jews that Jesus was the coming Messiah and King prophesied about in the Old Testament. By pointing out that Jesus came from the line of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation and from the royal line of David, shows us, that Jesus was indeed Jewish and was the fulfillment of the covenants God made with Abraham and David. This is relevant for us believers today because this shows us that God is faithful in keeping His promises to us. God made a promise to Abraham and David a long time ago that through their seed would come a holy nation and a royal king who would save His people. It took awhile for this to occur but it was fulfilled eventually through the birth of Jesus. Today, we too may have to wait awhile for His promises but we can count on God that He will fulfill His promises for us today. He is not a covenant breaker, we can trust Him for He is faithful to His promises found in the Bible today. Praise Him for this, He will never lie to us or betray us. He keeps His word. Another observation I noticed in studying this genealogy is that Matthew mentions the names of four women. Now first of all it was not common at all for genealogies back then to mention the names of women. So Matthew was trying to draw our attention to this. The names of the women are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Of the four, two of them Rahab and Ruth are foreigners and Tamar, Rahab and Bathsheba are tainted with sin. I love how this exemplifies the grace of God and how He uses the foreign or the disreputable to carry out His divine plan and He delights in doing so. His mentioning of Bathsheba reminds us of the sin that stained King David’s kingdom. I find it interesting that although David had murdered a man and committed adultery with Bathsheba, out of the line of an adulterous relationship came God’s mercy and kindness through the birth of Jesus Christ. Wow, God is faithful even when we are faithless. He keeps His promises even though we break them, He is a gracious God and an inclusive God. The fact He mentions women in a male dominated society just speaks volumes how God views women. Women were so important to God. The fact two of them were foreigners shows us God doesn’t segregate by your race, God’s gift of salvation is for all. And to think all of that I would’ve missed, if I chose to skip through the boring list of names. Isn’t that funny how in life we tend to do this. We want to fast forward the trivial, the boring, the routine things in life but my friends it’s in the trivial, the mundane, the little things that God can be found. The wise men went looking for Jesus but they didn’t find Him in a palace like most royalty, no He was found in an ordinary house, no glamour, no glitz. Do you find yourself feeling tired of the daily routine of sweeping Cheerios off the floor, picking up the kids from soccer, doing homework with them, spending 40 hours a week in a cubicle working a job that’s mundane and dull? My friends pause and reflect, we all want to escape the dullness of our everyday lives and be adventurous but stop and focus. Don’t just skip through it. I guarantee you’ll start to see Jesus’s face
protrude from the endless amount of dots you find yourself surrounded in. Remember, God is in the little things, He was in the frame of a tiny baby, He’s in the mundane list of names in a genealogy, and His Spirit resides in you and me. Merry Christmas and don’t forget to pause this Christmas and focus on the dots.