Genealogy Full of Mercies

 I’ve already talked a bit about the importance of Jesus’ lineage. Not a single person listed was a mistake, they were all apart of God’s plan. But the genealogy that Matthew provides at the beginning of his gospel can teach us other things as well, specifically about the heights of God’s mercy—what Dane Ortlund calls God’s most natural work. In his book, Hidden Christmas, Tim Keller describes three insights we can glean from what appears to be a simple list of hard-to-pronounce names.

Jesus’ genealogy reads like a résumé. Keller writes, “The purpose of a genealogical résumé was to impress onlookers with the high quality and respectability of one’s roots. But Matthew does the very opposite with Jesus. This genealogy is shockingly unlike other ancient genealogies” (p. 29-30). Jesus’ lineage highlights some of the most scandalous events and dysfunctional relationships in the Bible. And it was out of these families that the Messiah came.

Yet this shows us something singular about God’s plan. From prostitute to king, male and female, Jew and Gentile, the moral and immoral—they were all sitting down to the table of grace as equals. Keller says: “Equally sinful and lost, equally accepted and loved. Indeed, in the King James Bible, this chapter is filled with ‘the begats’—‘so and so begat so and so . . .’ boring? No. The grace of God is so pervasive that even the begats of the Bible are dripping with God’s mercy” (p. 33).

The second thing we can learn from Jesus’ genealogy is a reminder that God’s timing is not like our own. It is a theme we see in Scripture on a regular basis, but one that we so easily forget. In this snapshot of names, we can see clearly how long it took for God’s promise of a Messiah to be fulfilled. Back in Genesis 12, God said to Abraham that the whole earth would be blessed through his descendants. Back further still, in Genesis 3, God provided a prophecy himself: One was coming who would crush the head of Satan and defeat evil. Thousands of years later, Mary sang,

“He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful
 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
(Luke 1:54-55)

Keller emphasizes, “You cannot judge God by your calendar. God may appear to be slow, but he never forgets his promises. He may seem to be working very slowly or even to be forgetting his promises, but when his promises come true (and they will come true), they always burst the banks of what you imagined” (p. 34)

The third thing we can learn from Jesus’ genealogy is one of those deep dives into Old Testament symbolism. As modern Christians, we don’t often stop to consider the importance of numbers in Scripture, yet for the first century readers, especially the Jews Matthew was writing to, this would have made so much sense.

As the final name in His genealogy, Jesus mirrors God the Father and sits in enthroned as Rest personified. He is the ultimate rest.

Keller helps us break this down: From Abraham to David there were fourteen generations, fourteen generations from David to the exile in Babylon, and fourteen generations from the exile to Christ. That’s six sets of seven. Jesus was the beginning of the “seventh seven.”

If you know a bit about the number seven, you know that it is highly significant in the Bible. We first see the number seven when God rested on the seventh day after Creation. He called it a sabbath day.

Further on, in Leviticus 25, we learn about the year of jubilee. After the seventh period of seven years—the forty-nineth year—Israel was to have a year of celebration and rest.
Keller explains, “In that year all the slaves were to be freed and all debts were to be forgiven; all the land and all the people were to have rest from their weariness and from their burdens” (p.39). Sound familiar? It brings to mind Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 61, and it reads almost like a job description for Jubilee Jesus:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
    and provide for those who grieve in Zion…
(Isaiah 61:1-3a)

Matthew loved the details. I can just imagine him geeking out at these equations. In God’s plan, even mathematics declares His glory and provide us with this truth: rest will only come to us through Jesus Christ.

The Insignificance of Bethlehem

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose coming forth is from of old,
    from ancient days.
Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in labor has given birth;
then the rest of his brothers shall return
    to the people of Israel.
And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD,
    in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth.
And he shall be their peace.
- Micah 5:2-5a

Bethlehem.
A logical next step after talking about Ruth… and David.

Why was it so significant that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Why wasn’t he born in Nazareth where Mary and Joseph were living at the time?

Throughout Scripture, we see that lineage is important. It was important to the patriarchs and remained so at the time of Mary and Joseph. Matthew even took great pains to accurately record Jesus’ ancestry at the beginning of his gospel.

An easy answer is that the prophecies said so. This passage, Micah 5:2, but also
2 Samuel 7:12-16, Jeremiah 23:5-6, and finally the familiar Isaiah 11—where it talks about a shoot from the stump of Jesse—all refer to a righteous king who will come from David’s line.

But why did God choose Bethlehem? I think one answer lies in the picture we see emerging from the beginning of Micah 5. Paula Gooder writes, “The word that Micah uses to describe Bethlehem literally means ‘insignificant’ or ‘youngest’ and seems to be a deliberate reference to David, who was himself the most insignificant and youngest of the brothers. True kingship, Micah seems to be saying, lies in the humble, insignificant roots of David, not in the arrogant, power hungry courts of the king (p. 70)

The Messiah, though a king, was to have humble beginnings, a Shepherd even. He was to be a ruler like David. But the Davidic line was tied directly to the lowly place of Bethlehem, the “house of bread,” not the royal courts of Jerusalem.

Paula Gooder concludes, “This prophecy is not so much a romantic reminder of the special place of Bethlehem in God's plan, as it is a radical proclamation of the unsettling truth of God's plan for the world; a plan that insists on justice, steadfast love, and on walking with God in humility” (p. 72).

Jesus could have been born on the side of the road between Nazareth and Joseph’s hometown, but God loves weaving a rich plan of redemption too much for the symbolism of Bethlehem to go to waste.

In Bethlehem we see the birth of a servant king. It is the manifestation of Immanuel—a Savior—that God had been planning since the beginning. And along the way, He handpicked “young” and “insignificant” players such as we, to join in the telling. Thanks be to God.

Stopping in Bethlehem

Have you ever stopped to think about the significance of Bethlehem?

At the beginning of time, when God was planning all things, did He select Bethlehem as the place where Jesus would be born, and then arranged the Old Testament to match up? Or did he just so happen (wording from the book of Ruth) to choose people from Bethlehem to become Christ’s earthly ancestors?

It doesn’t really matter. . . what does make all the difference is that all-knowing God did not leave a single minute detail unconnected. From the very first breath of creation, until the Second Adam returns in glory, God’s story is ever moving towards the reconciling of all things to Himself (Colossians 1:20).

On Moody radio last week, I heard a pastor say, “Jesus was not born from the line of David; He was born into the line David.” It was not a birth-right that Bethlehem was home-base. It was chosen; selected; picked. For hundreds upon hundreds of reasons. When Christ inserted Himself into human history, into a historical lineage (of expectation), into the womb of His mother Mary, into the arms of His father Joseph—He was exercising His will and humbling Himself before the Father’s master plan.

Bethlehem wasn’t just a nice place to stop because Mary was about bursting with child. It was the stopping place because God made it so. He made it a stopping place for Rachel to be buried. For Ruth and Naomi to rebuild their lives. For Samuel to find the would-be-king shepherd boy David. And He makes it a stopping point for us, this Advent.

May we pause and consider the lineage of Jesus. The course of human history that brought Mary and Joseph to that place. The way God miraculously made bent roads straight, valleys rise up, and mountains kneel low.

² But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old,
    from ancient days. ³ Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in labor has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return
    to the people of Israel. ⁴ And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth. ⁵ And he shall be their peace.

- Micah 5:2-5