Why Matthew Starts with Genealogy - Matthew 1:1-17 (Session 1)

Why would Matthew begin his Gospel with a genealogy? In the very first verse, Matthew identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the son of David, and the son of Abraham. Those names are not accidental. They connect Jesus directly to two of the great unconditional covenant promises God made in the Old Testament. 

In this first session of our verse-by-verse study through Matthew, Glenn and Steve examine the Davidic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, and why Jesus’ ancestry establishes His right to the promised kingdom. We also look at some of the unexpected people Matthew includes—such as Ruth, Rahab, and Bathsheba—and what their presence reveals about God’s grace and faithfulness.

Finally, we examine the structure of Matthew’s genealogy, including the three groups of fourteen generations, why generations can be omitted in biblical genealogies, and why these lists should be used for their intended purpose rather than as a precise method for calculating historical dates.

Matthew 1:1–17 | The Book of Matthew — Session 1

Questions discussed in this session include:

• How did Jesus fulfill the Davidic and Abrahamic covenants?
•  What are the purposes for the genealogy and what can it tell us? 
•  Can we trust God to keep His promises? 
•  Are God’s promises to Israel still in place? 
• Can we use the Biblical genealogies to calculate the age of the earth? 

Transcript

Welcome And Free Resources

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. Today we're going to start the book of Matthew, and we would encourage all our listeners to check us out on our website, reasoningthible.com. On our website, you'll find resources there. And we always have free resources for our listeners. One of the things we have are lessons plans. In case you wanted to teach, or if your church wanted to teach books like Matthew or any of our other books, you can listen to our podcast and you can go and use our lesson plans. So please pass on that message to the people in your church and tell others about us. But today we're going to be starting a wonderful study. So I hope you'll stay with us. Matthew

Matthew 1:1 Sets The Theme

SPEAKER_00 0:55

chapter 1, verse 1 says this the record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Now, Steve, what is the significance of this phrase here, the son of David?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

So David was the most famous king of Israel. He was noted by God as a man after God's own heart. He wrote most of the psalms that we have in the what we call the Old Testament. And so he was a key figure in the history of the nation of Israel. He has also been promised that a line from David, kingly line, was going to continue on. So there was an expectation from the people that there would come a king from the line of David that would rule over Israel.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

And this was a particular covenant that was made with David. It's one of the important covenants in the Bible that did exactly what you just said. So here in Matthew, when it says the son of David, it's here for a reason. And it's because there was this covenant with David. And I'd like to read that covenant, if I will. It's found

The Davidic Covenant Explained

SPEAKER_00 2:02

in 2 Samuel chapter 7, starting in verse 12. And this is God speaking to David, and it says this: When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men. But my loving kindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established forever. If you notice in those passages, this was God speaking to David, and he says, I will, I will do these things. And Steve, did you hear any conditions in that? Were there any if-thens? No. No, there's not. This is God promising, I will do these things. And how long was that supposed to last? Forever. And when he says house there, he's talking about there's descendants. A descendant of David is supposed to be on the throne of Israel forever, according to the Davidic covenant. And one of the things the people of Israel were looking forward to was this great king that would come along, that was a descendant of David, that would give them peace. But at the time this was written, of course, who was the world power at the time?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Rome. Israel was actually under Roman occupation at this time.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

And were the Romans really nice guys?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

No, they weren't. Their empire we called in extended all the way from what we now date now call Europe, even up into uh Britain, all the way down into Israel and over in Assyria and even down into the Egypt area.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

If you were in Rome at that time, there was no doubt who was in charge. The Romans were in control. When it says here, the son of David, the people of Israel were looking forward to this Davidic king. King David came up with a mighty military power and drove out all of the enemies. And the people of Israel were looking forward to that. They wanted a son of David to come along and be the great military king.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

David had also established where the temple was going to be built. He had bought the area. God had instructed him to buy the area, the threshing floor where the current temple was. And of course, he wasn't able to build the temple, but his son Solomon was. So he's very connected to Jerusalem, to the area there and where the temple is.

Abraham And The Promise Line

SPEAKER_01 4:42

There's a second name that's also in that first verse. Says Abraham. Abraham. We've talked about in our previous studies in the Old Testament that the nation of Israel had been promised through the very specific lines of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob's name was changed to Israel. Ishrael had 12 sons, and that's where we get the tribes of Israel and the name of Israel as a nation. But it says there, the son of Abraham. So as we go through the lineage here in these next verses, David is not a direct son of Abraham, meaning the next generation. He's in the lineage of Abraham. His actual father is Jesse. There's a lot going on in this first verse.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

The two big covenants, or two of the biggest covenants that were meaningful to the people of Israel, were covenant with David and the covenant with Abraham. The covenant of David, as we just said, meant that a descendant of David would rule over Israel forever. And this was an unconditional promise that God made to David. And then the other one, of course, was Abraham. So give us a quick summary of what is the covenant of Abraham and why is it relevant?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

So the covenant of Abraham, he had been called out of the land of the Chaldeans, and he's a worshiper of Yahweh before there was actually a nation of Israel. Like I just said, the nation of Israel came out of Abraham. And Abraham believed in God, and we have that story depicted in the Old Testament. But he had promised Abraham a land. He had given the boundaries of that land and made that covenant with him. That was an unconditional covenant. And with Abraham, it was also noted by God that all the nations of the world would be blessed through the seed of Abraham. It's very significant that Matthew starts it out with these two key people in the history of the nation of Israel and these two key covenants, the Davidic covenant and the Abrahamic covenant that stands behind the meanings of this first verse.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

In the Davidic covenant, 2 Samuel 7, one of the verses in there says, I will correct him with the rod of men and the blows of the sons of men. What happened to Jesus when he was on his way to the cross? He was beaten with a rod and he was punched by the soldiers. This was literally fulfilled. And in that passage on the Davidic covenant, three times in there, it tells us how long it's going to last. How long was it? Forever. Forever. In Matthew 1, we're going to get to in just a minute, it gives this genealogy. And the genealogy is there for what reason?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

In order to prove that he was from this lineage.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

There's going to be this king that is a descendant of David. Is there anybody today that could stand up and make the claim that they were a descendant of David? No, because they don't have the genealogy. Jesus is the only one that can do it because he has the genealogy, and that's what this is for.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

By the way, Glenn, if you get a good lawyer, can forever actually be forever? Can't that be overturned if you get a very good lawyer to make the case that forever is not forever? You could try it before men, but not before God. And that's the kind of the point I'm making. We think these days that a covenant is kind of like a contract. And oh, well, our thinking is uh contracts are made to be broken, get you a good enough lawyer, and you can get out of a contract. This is an unconditional covenant that God has made with Abraham and David.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Right here in chapter 1, verse 1, the first thing he mentions is that Jesus is the Messiah and he's the son of David. Now, the son of David is a key theme that gets picked up several other times in Matthew

Son Of David And A Real Kingdom

SPEAKER_00 8:28

and the other parts of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Matthew 12, 3, Jesus healed the blind, the deaf, and the demon-possessed. And the crowd said, Could this be the son of David? Several times the sick cried out to Jesus and said, Have mercy on me, son of David. Matthew 21, 9, the triumphal entry, where they're waving the palm branches. Hosanna to the son of David. Mark 11, verse 10, triumphal entry. Blessed is the kingdom of our father David. Matthew 21, 41, the Pharisees admit that the Messiah was to be the son of David. Luke 1:32, the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary. The Lord will give him the throne of his father David. Romans chapter 1, verse 3. Jesus was born the seed of David. And the one that really speaks to me, Revelation 22, right at the end of the book of Revelation, verse 16. I, Jesus, am the root and offspring of David.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

And the kingdom of David and the Son of David, it all speaks of an actual physical kingdom that is an expectation for the Son of David to rule over something that's going to be here on earth. That's the part of the picture of the son of David.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

That includes ruling over men's hearts, but it's not just an internal spiritual state, it's also a true kingdom. There's nowhere in 2 Samuel 7 that it is some sort of a figurative sense. This is a literal kingdom, and this is what the Bible presents. It mentions David, mentions Abraham. Abraham was another one of the unconditional covenants. So can we trust God to keep his promises?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

There was a long time in between Abraham and David, and a long time between David and Christ. Could be God just got busy and forgot. I'm being silly, but you get the point. Just because it's been a long time from today since Christ came the first time, does that mean this kingdom's not going to literally happen?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

You bring up a good point, and I do want to point out because you said, can we trust God to keep his promises? There

Can God’s Promises Be Replaced

SPEAKER_01 10:39

is a view that says that God is no longer dealing with the nation of Israel, that what we would call the church today, the believers in Jesus Christ, that we are the new Israel, and that God is no longer going to deal with Israel, that we have replaced it. Therefore, there's nothing to do with Israel or the Jewish people anymore. This was used throughout history. That was the theology was that God doesn't have anything else to do with the Jewish people. And that's still predominant today in many, many circles, is that God is not dealing with Israel anymore, that they've rejected Jesus, therefore they're cursed. So in my mind and reasoning, that's basically saying, how could we trust that we have eternal salvation if God says with David, your kingdom forever, with Abraham forever, then how can we say salvation forever? To me, it's very critical to understand that no, God does not forget and God does not break the covenants. When he says forever, it means forever.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

These two covenants, Abrahamic covenant and Davidic covenant, were both unconditional. If you remember the story when he made the covenant with Abraham, Abraham split the animals, and it was nighttime, and there's this real dramatic scene where God walks through the middle of the animals with the smoking oven and the fire, and it was all these things. What was Abraham doing? He was asleep. God put him to sleep. So who made the promise? It was God. It's all on God. And the verses we just read in 2 Samuel 7, I will do these things, no conditions on it. Not like the Mosaic covenant, where there was clearly conditions. Look at the end of Deuteronomy. If you do these things, you will be blessed. If you don't do these things, you'll be cursed. So Mosaic covenant was most definitely conditional. Abrahamic covenant, Davidic covenant, unconditional, solely God's promise. As far as the timing, in between Abraham and Jesus, it was 13 or 1400 years. And in between David and Jesus was a thousand years. Thousand years is a long time.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

And as we are coming on the scene here with Matthew starting out with telling the gospel of Jesus, there's been a period of about 400 years since the last prophet Malachi has come along. So the interaction with God, we're not at least we don't have any recording of it. 400 years have gone by, and now all of a sudden, here's somebody that comes on the scene.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

First Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish. And us as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

We've been waiting 2,000 years, roughly, since Jesus has ascended. There's a promise that he's going to come back. So there's been 2,000-year interval here at least, waiting for uh him to come back, and we have that assurance that he is going to come back at some point.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

I'm sure glad he didn't come before I was saved. So what do we do if we don't see God fulfilling his promise for a very long time? God is faithful. Romans 3:4, let God be true and every man a liar. He's been true in the past, he'll be true in the future. We can place our trust in God because he's been faithful. Then there's this long genealogy starting in verse 2

Unconditional Covenants Versus Moses

SPEAKER_00 14:00

and going through verse 16. I'm not going to read it all, but it's there. And why this long genealogy? There's over a dozen verses here of all these names. Why do we have this? We alluded to it earlier. Right. It's to prove that he has the right to the throne, that he has the right to the Abrahamic covenants.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

And it's something to be recorded so that later on through the years, people go, oh no, he didn't have rights to the throne. He wasn't in the Davidic line. Well, no, it's recorded here. Here's his genealogy and lineage.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Now we can dig a few things out of this genealogy, though, that I think we could have some value. Verse 2 says, Abraham was the father of Isaac or begot Isaac. The Abrahamic covenant was through Isaac, the son of promise, not through Ishmael. So just because you were a descendant of Abraham does not make you a child of the promise or a child of Israel.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

And God reconfirmed that covenant specifically with Isaac.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Verse five says, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. Ruth was a foreigner, a Moabite. Even though she was not of the race of Israel, she had trust in a loving God and had a wonderful redeemer in Boaz. So she was brought into the genealogy of the king. Verse 7 says, David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. It's interesting that he puts in there by the wife of Uriah. Now, what's the real quick? What's the story of David and the wife of Uriah?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Well, her name is Bathsheba, and she was bathing on top of her house. He saw her, he had lust for her. I mean, that's what you have to basically say.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

And he committed adultery.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Committed adultery with her. And not only that, but he also arranged for Uriah to go on the front lines and to be killed in battle.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

I would ask myself, why would it mention when it could have skipped it? It could have just said David was the father of Solomon, but it mentions by the wife of Uriah. So if I ask myself why, the answer that I could come up with is David's horrible sin followed him. It wasn't the wife's fault, it was David's fault. He can be forgiven of the guilt of the sin, but the consequences of the sin is gonna still follow. And it's the same thing with us. I can be forgiven of my sin, but the consequences of the sin are gonna follow me for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Do you find it curious that as you go through here, most of the names are the lineage through the fathers, but there are some specific Bathsheba is called out, Ruth is called out, Rahab is called out. So we see these names of the women that are Gentiles that are through here, and I find it curious that they're called out by name. They showed all of those examples, or at least with uh Rahab and Ruth, showed examples of faith in God, Yahweh, even though they were Gentiles.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

All those women were caught up in bad circumstances. Rahab had a hard life as a prostitute. Ruth was not even an Israelite, she was a foreigner, Moabite, Rahab was a foreigner. Bathsheba was taken advantage of by the king and had her husband killed. They were all in bad circumstances, but a loving God saw fit to redeem them, show them love, give them special privilege, and they will be remembered and blessed forever because they were allowed the privilege of being in the line of the king.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

As we are starting out this book, we're seeing already that things are being laid bare. There's not an attempt to cover up or look over bad things that had happened in the past, as you were mentioning in regards to Uriah.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Now, this genealogy in Matthew, there's another genealogy over in Luke. The one in Matthew starts with Abraham, the one in Luke goes back to Adam. If we follow the names in them, they're not all the same names. They both go back through David, but from David down to Jesus, between Matthew and Luke, are different. So the question sometimes arises about that. There's an obvious answer to that. It's nothing mysterious or anything. Especially if we look at Luke, we can pick up the clues. He tells us he got these things from Mary. Mary treasured these things in her heart. So it's basically saying, said Mary, or I'm quoting Mary. He had access to Mary. He said he checked these things out with the eyewitnesses. What's Matthew's basic purpose again? He presents Jesus as the king. So he had to give the king's genealogy. The king's genealogy came through the father. But who was the real father? Did Jesus have Joseph's DNA in him?

Why Outsiders Appear In The Line

SPEAKER_00 18:36

No. No, he was virgin born, but he had to be through the Father, which is where in those days the rights to the kingdom came. Over in Luke, it gives us a clue. Luke chapter 1, verse 2 says he got it from eyewitnesses. 251 says Mary kept all these things in her heart. Luke 323 is really the clue to these two genealogies. Jesus was, quote, as was supposed, the sons of Joseph. The language here literally means he was not the biological son of Joseph. That's where we come. Luke just merely presents Mary's because he had access to Mary. Matthew presents the kingly line through the father. And they both go back through David. So it really doesn't make much of a difference.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

So one thing uh before we proceed, I want to go back to verse one again and talk about two other things in that first verse. It says the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah. So Jesus is a transliteration of the Greek word Jesus. The actual Hebrew name was Yeshua or Yeshua, which the English translation of that is Joshua. Second thing is of the Messiah. So the Messiah, this is the anointed one. This again was another expectation that the Jewish people had that there was going to be a Messiah, an anointed one from the line of David that was going to bring about and rule over this kingdom of Israel once again. Matthew, in the very first verse, is talking about Joshua, which means God saves. And we have the equivalent of the book of Joshua and all of these symbolism that were related to that that we spoke about in our sessions of Joshua, and that the Messiah, the expected one, the anointed one, to establish this kingdom once again.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

The ancient Hebrew scholars that translated the Old Testament into Greek, a version they call the Septuagint. The ancient Hebrew scholars, when they translated Joshua's name, they used the Greek word Yesus, which is the same name as Jesus here. The Hebrew word, as you said, means God saves. If you were with us for the book of Joshua, there's a lot of parallels between Joshua. He was a type, is what the theologians call it. And so if you haven't listened, I would encourage our listeners to go back and listen to our series on Joshua that was very rewarding. And there's a lot of parallels between salvation that Christ provides and what Joshua was doing. So then if we look down after the genealogies, verse 17, there's this little verse here at the end of the genealogies that talks about these three groups of 14. It says, so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations, from David to the deportation of Babylon, 14 generations, and from Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. So these three groups of 14, I think if we really look at these, we can draw a kind of an interesting conclusion here. First thing is if you look at Matthew 1 8, it says Joram begot Uzziah. Well, if you go back to the Old Testament, 1 Chronicles 3, verse 11 to 12, we find out there's three generations in between those two people. Well, Matthew, it just says Joram begot Uzziah. Back in 1 Chronicles. What Matthew wrote is true. Joram did begot Uzziah, but he did it four generations later. And if we cross-reference Lu's chapter 1, verse 5, it talks about John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth. It calls her the daughter of Aaron. Well, Aaron lived a thousand years before he was Moses' brother. He's Moses' brother. So we have here some interesting clues as to what these genealogies are for and how they were treated. In Matthew 1, verse 11, one of the names, Jeconiah, is counted twice. If you go through the three groups of 14, have you ever counted them? The first group, there is 14. The second group, there's 14. The third group, there's 13. The only way to make it work, and there's some very interesting language in there, this one name, Jekoniah, is counted at the end of the second group and the beginning of the third group, because the way it phrases it is it goes down to Babylon and then starting at Babylon forward. So this guy,

Matthew Versus Luke Genealogies

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Jekoniah, was the Babylonian captivity. He's counted twice. So we have here in this genealogy some names are left out, and at least one of the names is counted twice. And we have to ask ourselves why in the world would he do that? Then he has this verse 17, 14, 14, 14. So I think it's fairly clear that the reason is so he could have three groups of 14. And the reason for that is so they could be memorized. This was a culture that we didn't have copies of it on our portable electronic device, and we didn't carry a scroll around in our pocket. There was one scroll across town at the synagogue. If I wanted to remember it, I had to use memory techniques.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

You couldn't use copy and paste to put from uh take from one scroll to another scroll?

SPEAKER_00 23:47

No, they were made by two different uh software manufacturers, and the file types were too different. They used memory techniques to memorize things. So that's part of what's going on here is they organize things. And if you start looking for these, you can see them in the scriptures. There's many places where they use these memory techniques. There's lots of examples of this in the scriptures where the outline of the book or different things are used so people could could help remember them.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

And this isn't something new, right, Glenn? I mean, they memorized the Old Testament, the Torah. Oh, yeah. They they were to memorize the Torah itself in order to know what was there.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

In the modern Western world, we don't have to remember things because we've got all these devices around us that helps us remember, so we don't realize the power of our memories. But this is nothing new. People did this, and their memories are quite amazing. Now, another thing we notice is back in the Hebrew, there is a word for father and son, but there's not a word for grandfather. And there's not a word for great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather. It's just father. And there's not a word for grandson or great-grandson or any of these. There's just not a word in the vocabulary for that. So when they say so-and-so was so-and-so's son, or this person was the father, we don't know by just the term whether they're doing like what Matthew did here with skipping generations. It just says he begat. Well, that was true, but we don't know how many generations down the line was it, simply because there's not a word for great grandson or great grandfather. That's why sometimes you'll see so-and-so was son of, who was son of, who was son of.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

And we see that in verse one where it says David, son of Abraham. David wasn't the direct son of Abraham, the next lineage that was Isaac. It goes to prove what you're just saying.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Now, one more little illustration, and then we'll draw a conclusion about these genealogies. There's a purpose here. Back in the Old Testament, Moses' grandfather was named Kohath. And if you follow the story, Kohath came over with Jacob when they first went to Egypt. Genesis 46, 11. Kohath leaves with the group and they go to Egypt. Moses' father and grandfather, Amram and Kohath, only lived a total of 269 years. Exodus chapter 6, verse 18 to 20. Yet Israel was in Egypt for 430 years. So the math doesn't work. If we just add up what it says, literally what it says, is that Kohath and Amram and Moses, their ages

The 14-14-14 Pattern And Warnings

SPEAKER_00 26:21

that it gives, does not add up to enough to make the 430 years. And again, I don't think this is a problem simply because there's not a term for grandfather, grandson. And we do have situations here where they skip generations for a purpose. So what are the conclusions we could draw? I don't think we can use the genealogies to calculate dates. I think it is an unwise move to try to use biblical genealogies to calculate dates such as the age of the earth. That's not what they're for. That's not what we're given. And there's enough of these questions to where if we really start trying to explain all of these things by making it a literal date of the earth, it becomes what the logicians call ad hoc explanations. You just keep adding on, well, it could be, could be, could be, could be, and it gets a more and more unreasonable and more and more unreasonable. When really, why are the genealogies here to show that he's a fulfillment of the Davidic and Abrahamic covenants, not to give an age of the earth?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

So you're saying it's an example of taking something and not using it for its intended purpose. Correct. Trying to make something of of what the intended purpose is to, like you said, show the lineage of David and Abraham. It's not to calculate dates or to calculate times. So trying to do that, you're taking it and misusing it.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

You're using it for a purpose that is not not for. That's not why they're here. And there's enough of these little quirks in the genealogies to where I just think it's very unwise to try to use these to calculate dates. Now, if you compare what I was just explaining to other places, such as Luke chapter three, verses one through three, I challenge anyone to read that and come to a conclusion that it's not trying to set a date. Luke three, one through three gives a series of very precise things. So you can get a date. But all these genealogies going back thousands of years, there's enough quirks in the languages and how they use them to where I just think it's very unwise to use it to try to calculate dates. And it's certainly unwise to try to separate between Christian brothers based on the age of the earth. It's just not that clear. Not from the scriptures, anyway. So we would be wise to pay attention to the literary structure of these books to help draw out the meaning that the author placed into the text. And I think that's probably a good spot to wrap it up for today. We'll pick up next time. We're going to start with Matthew 118. We're going to start really learning about Joseph and Mary and how they're engaged and the actual birth of Christ. So we'll learn about that next time on Reasoning Through the Bible.