Matthew 1:1

Posted by DJL on Dec 2, 2013 in Advent Devotions | 2 comments

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Why in the world does Matthew start his story this way? With a genealogy of all things? I mean, talk about an archaic literary device! If you’ve ever heard this passage read from the King James Version, you’ll remember all the “begats”: “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas…” and so on and so on until you were lost, confused, bored or all three.

So what in the world is he up to?

Well, as a matter of fact, he’s up to something rather grand. Matthew, you see, isn’t trying to write a novel, or even a history – not as we might think of them, anyway. Rather, he was writing a gospel – a story that is told not with an eye toward the profitable goal of catching the reader’s interest or even toward the noble goal of historical accuracy, but rather is told with the goal of sharing news – good news! – that is bigger and better than any story ever told.

Matthew, that is, is telling us the story of how God sought to keep all of God’s promises to Israel and through Israel to the world by coming to us in the person of Jesus. And to know who Jesus is and to understand how he stands at the center of the larger story of God, Israel, and the world, we need to know where he came from. And so Matthew begins his story by telling us about Jesus’ ancestors, because only by knowing the story of his family will we really understand Jesus.

Aren’t we all a little bit like that? It’s only as friends see us with our family that they really understand us. So also, Matthew seems to say, with Jesus. To know and understand his story you need to know a bit about the story of the folks he came from.

And, as we’ll see, that story contains some rather colorful characters!

Prayer: Dear God, reveal to us the depth of your love through the story of your Son. In Jesus’ name, Amen.