I HAVE thought it might be profitable to take up the first of the Gospels, and to trace, as simply as the Lord enables me, the general outline of the truth revealed there. It is my desire to point out the special object and design of the Holy Ghost, ascertainable from its own character and contents. This may furnish those who value God’s word with such hints as tend to meet some of the difficulties that arise in the minds of many; and also may put in a clearer light great truths that are apt to be passed by too lightly, It seems but little to assume that the Spirit of God has not given us these accounts of our Lord liable to the mistakes of men, but that He has, on the contrary, kept His mighty unerring hand over those who wrote them, in themselves men of like passions with us. Assuredly, the Holy Ghost has inspired these amen in order that we might have fall certainty that He is their author; inasmuch as they are the truth stamped with His own perfection. As He has been pleased to give us various accounts, so He has had a divine reason for each of them. In short, God has sought His own glory in this, and has secured it.
Now there can be no question, to anyone who reads the Gospels with the smallest discernment, that the first is beyond the rest remarkably adapted to meet the need of Jews; and that it brings out the Old Testament prophecies and other scriptures, which found their realization in Jesus. Consequently there are more citations of scripture, as applying to our Lord’s life and death, in this Gospel, than in all the others put together. All this was not a thing left to Matthew’s discretion. That the Holy Ghost used the mind of man in carrying out His own design is clear; but that He was pleased perfectly to guard and guide him in what he was to give out, is what is meant in saying that God inspired Matthew for the purpose.
Besides presenting our Lord in such a way as best to meet the right or wrong thoughts and feelings of a Jew; besides furnishing the proofs more particularly wanted to satisfy his mind, it is evident, from the character of the discourses and parables, that the rejection of the Messiah by Israel, and the consequences of it to the Gentiles, are here the prominent thoughts in the mind of the Holy Ghost. Hence there is no ascension scene in Matthew. The Jew, if he had understood the Old Testament prophecies, would have looked for a Messiah to come, suffer, die, and be raised again “according to the scriptures.” In Matthew we have His death and resurrection, but there He is left; and we should scarcely know, from the facts related by him only, that Christ went up to heaven at all. We should know it was implied in some of the words he gives us to know that Christ spoke; but, in point of fact, Matthew leaves us with Christ Himself still upon the earth. The last chapter describes, not the ascension of Christ, nor His session at God’s right hand, but His speaking to the disciples here below, and His ever-abiding presence with them sent on their great mission to all the Gentiles. Such a presentation of Christ was peculiarly that which the Jews needed to know. Needful for all, it was more appropriate to them than to any other people on the earth.
And who was the agent employed, and with what fitness? One of the twelve who companied with our Lord from the beginning of His ministry till He was taken up from them. So far, of course, he was an evidently competent witness for the Jew, and far more suitable than Mark or Luke would have been, who were not, as far as we know, personal companions of the Lord. Undoubtedly there was this peculiarity― that Matthew was a publican, or tax gatherer, by profession. Although a Jew, he was in the employment of the Gentiles, which position would make him specially odious to his countrymen. They would look upon him with more suspicion even than upon a stranger. This might make it appear, at first sight, the more extraordinary that the Holy Ghost should employ such a one to give the account of Jesus as the Messiah. But let us remember that there is another object all through the Gospel of Matthew. There is not only the inspired record of Jesus as the true Messiah with the amplest testimony to Israel; but throughout, it marks His rejection by Israel, and the consequences of their fatal unbelief: ― all the barriers which had hitherto existed between Jew and Gentile thrown down; and the mercy of God flowing out to bless the despised Gentile as readily and as fully as the Jew, during Israel’s unbelief. Thus the admirable propriety of employing Matthew, the tax gatherer, and its consistency with the scope of his task, are apparent.
These few remarks may help to evince that there was the utmost fitness in the employment of the first of the four Evangelists to execute the work appointed for him. If it were our object now to examine the rest, it could just as easily be made manifest that each had exactly the right work to do. As we proceed through this Gospel, you will be struck, I doubt not, by the wisdom which chose such a one to give the account of the suffering Messiah, rejected by His guilty brethren after the flesh. But I confine myself at present to stating with what propriety Matthew introduces such an account of the Messiah.
Many, no doubt, must have been more or less arrested by the prefatory record of names in chapter i., and may, perhaps, have asked, What profit is there to be had from a list like this? But let us never pass over anything in Scripture as a light, or even doubtful, matter. There is a depth of blessed meaning in the account Matthew gives us of the Lord’s genealogy. Let me then expatiate a little on the perfectly beautiful manner in which the Spirit of God has here traced His lineage, and direct attention briefly to the way in which it harmonizes with this divine account of the Lord Jesus for the Jew, apt constantly to raise the question, whether Jesus was really the Messiah.
It will be observed that the genealogy here differs totally from what we have in Luke, where it is not given at the beginning, but at the end of chapter 3. Thus, in the latter Gospel, we learn a great deal about the Lord Jesus before His genealogy appears. Why was this? Luke was writing to the Gentiles, who could not be supposed to be equally, or in the same way, interested in His Messianic relations. But when they had learned in some degree who and what Jesus was, it would be highly interesting to let them know His lineage as man, tracing Him up to Adam, the father of the whole human family. What more suitable than to link Him with the head of the race, if the object were to show the grace that now goes out toward all mankind, the salvation-bearing grace of God that appears unto all men? One might put that word in Titus 2, as a sort of frontispiece to Luke’s Gospel. It is God’s grace in the person of His Son, who had become man, connected as to humanity with the whole family of man, though that nature in Him was ever, only, and altogether holy, as of course the divine could not but be.
But here we find ourselves on a narrower ground, circumscribed to a certain family, the royal seed of a certain nation, God’s chosen people. Abraham and David are mentioned in the very first verse. “Book of Jesus Christ’s generation, son of David, son of Abraham.” (vs. 1.) Why are these two names thus selected; and why put together here in this brief summary? Because all the hopes of Israel were bound up with what was revealed to these two persons. David was the anointed head of the kingdom, the one in whom the true line of Messiah’s throne was founded. Saul was merely the fleshly king whom Israel sought passingly for themselves out of their own will. David was the king God chose, and he is here mentioned as the forefather of the Lord’s Anointed― “son of David.” Abraham, again, was the depository of promise, in whom Jehovah said, all the families of the earth should be blessed. Thus the opening words prepare us for the Gospel as a whole. Christ came with all the reality of the kingdom promised to David’s son. But if He were refused as son of David, still, as son of Abraham, there was blessing not merely for the Jew but for the Gentile. He is the true Messiah; but if Israel will not have Him, God will, during their unbelief, bring the nations, in many respects after an exceptional sort, to taste of His mercy.
Having given us this general view we come to particulars. We begin with Abraham, tracing Jesus not up to him, but down from him. Every Israelite would begin with Abraham, and would be interested to follow the stages of the line from him on whom they all hung. “Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah and his brethren.” (vs. 2.) This comprehensive notice, “Judah and his brethren,” seems to be of importance, and in more ways than one. It does not consist with the notion that our evangelist in this part of the chapter, or in others, simply copies the records kept by the Jews. We may be sure that men never register in this fashion. Yet it is evidently in the strictest harmony with this Gospel; for it gives prominence to the royal tribe of whom was the Messiah (Gen. 49:1010The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. (Genesis 49:10)), while it, reminds the most favored that others too long out of sight were not forgotten of God, now that He is giving the genealogy of His Messiah.
“And Judah begat Perez and Zerah of Tamar.” (vs. 3.) What is the reason for bringing in a woman, and especially for naming Tamar here? There were women of great note in the lineage of the Messiah― persons whom the Jews naturally looked up to as holy and honorable. What Jewish heart would not naturally glow with strong feelings of respect in hearing of Sarah and Rebekah, and the other holy and well-known women recorded in Old Testament history? But there is no mention of them here. On the other hand, Tamar is mentioned. Why is it so? Grace lay underneath this, severely repulsive to self-righteousness, but most precious in its way. There are four women, and only four, who appear in the line, upon every one of whom there was a blot. It is not that all the sources of reproach, or shame, were of the same kind. But to a proud Jew, with all these women there was connected a very humbling story― something that he would have kept in the dark. O wondrous way of God! What can He not do? How striking that the Holy Ghost does not here attract attention to those who brought honor in the eyes of Israel! nay, that He singles out these that a carnal Israelite would have held in contempt The Messiah was to spring from a line in which there had been varied shame and dismal sin. And where all that is in man would try to hide this, that it might be forgotten, the Spirit of God brings it plainly out, so that as it stands in the eternal records of the Old Testament history, it shall here be rehearsed to all the world. These, on whom there were such foul blots in the judgment of men, are the only females brought specifically before us.
What is man? and what is God? What is man that such things should ever have taken place? And what is God that, instead of being ashamed to record it, He should have drawn the story out of obscurity and set it in full revealed light, emblazoned, if I may so say, on the genealogy of His own Son! Not at all as if the sin were not exceeding sinful; nor as if God thought lightly of the privileges of His people―still less of the glory of His Son, or of what is due to Him. But God, feeling the sin of His own people to be the worst of all sin, yet having introduced in this very Messiah the only One who could save His people from their sins, does not hesitate to bring their iniquities or scandals into the presence of the grace that could, and would, put it all away. Did the Jew think that this was a dishonor done to the Messiah? From that same seed their Messiah must spring, and from no other line. It was narrowed to the house of David, and to the line of Solomon, they who beyond question were in the direct line of Judah’s son, Perez. No Jew could get out of the difficulty.
What are we not taught by this! If the Messiah deigns to link Himself with such a family — if God is pleased so to order things, that, out of this stock, as concerning the flesh, His own Son, the Holy One of Israel, was to be born―surely there could be none too bad to be received of Him. He came to “save his people from their sins,” not to find a people that had no sins. He came with all power to save: He showed grace by the very family whereof He was pleased to be a―or rather the―Branch. God is never confounded; neither, through grace, is he that believes, because he rests upon what God in Christ is to him. We never can: be anything for God till we know that Christ is everything for us, and to us. But when we know such a God and Father as Jesus reveals to us, on one side full of goodness, and on the other, no darkness in Him at all, what may we not expect from Him? Who might not now be born of God? Who is there that such a God would reject? Such a hint in Matthew opens the way for the wonders of grace which appeal afterward. In one sense, no man has such a position of ancient privileges as the Jew; yet, even as to the Messiah, this dark blot is of set purpose in the account that the Holy Ghost gives of His lineage. If no flesh shall glory in the presence of Jehovah, what evil unfits for His mercy?
But this is not all. “Perez begat Hezron... and Salmon begat Boaz of Rahab.” (vs. 3-5.) And who and what was she? A Gentile, and once a harlot But Rahab is taken out of all her belongings―separated from everything that was her portion by nature. And here she is, in this Gospel of Messiah written for the Jew―for the very people who despised and hated Him because he would look upon a Gentile. Rahab was named for heaven already, and no Jew could deny it. She was visited of God; she was delivered outwardly and inwardly by His mighty grace, brought into, and made a part of, Israel on earth―yea, by sovereign grace, part of the royal line out of which the Messiah must come, and out of which, in point of fact, Jesus, who is over all God, blessed forever, was born. O what marvels of grace dawn upon us, while we dwell even on the mere list of names that unbelief would disparage as a dry, if not incorrect, appendage to the word of God! But faith says, ‘I cannot do without the wisdom of God.’ Certainly His wisdom shines in all that He has written here. He that glories must glory in the Lord.
Might it be thought that Rahab was called in at some distant epoch? But no: “Salmon begat Boaz of Rahab, and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth, and Obed begat Jesse. And Jesse begat David the king.” Ruth, faithful and loving as she was, came from a source peculiarly odious to a Jew. She was a Moabitess, and thus forbidden by the law to enter the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation. Even the Edomite, or the Egyptian, were held in less abhorrence, and their children might enter in the third generation. (Deut. 23:3-83An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever: 4Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee. 5Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee. 6Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. 7Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land. 8The children that are begotten of them shall enter into the congregation of the Lord in their third generation. (Deuteronomy 23:3‑8).) Thus was given a still deeper testimony that grace would go out and bless the very worst of the Gentiles. Whether the Jews like it or not, God has Rahab, the once immoral Gentile, and Ruth, daughter of Moab, but meek and true, brought into, not the nation only, but the direct line from which the Messiah was to arise.
“And Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon of her [that had been the wife] of Uriah.” (vs. 6.) With only a few generations intervening, we have these three women, who would, for one reason or another, moral or ceremonial, have been utterly despised and excluded by the same spirit which rejected Jesus and the grace of God. It was then no new thought―the divine mercy that was reaching out to gather in the outcast of the Gentiles, that would look upon the vile effectually to deliver and make them holy. It was God’s way of old. They could not read the account He gives of their own Messiah’s stock without seeing that there it is so. And that this was the divinely prescribed channel no Jew could deny. They must all own that the Messiah was to come in no other line than that of Solomon. O the grace to us who know what we have been as poor sinners of the Gentiles! what wretchedness was ours, and this because of guilt and sin! “Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
Hence the first words which introduce the Messiah give the same blessed truth, if there was an ear to hear, or an eye to see, what God had in store and was now pointing to in them. In the case last mentioned there was something more humbling than in any other. For though, in early days, Tamar’s story was evil and wretched enough, yet were there other features, false, and lustful, and violent, which met in her case that had belonged to Uriah. And this was so much the more dismal because the chief guilt was on that man’s part whom God had delighted to honor, even “David the king.” Who knows not that it has drawn out the deepest, and most touching, personal confession of sin ever inspired by the Spirit of God? Yet here again we know that he who had to do with this complication of horrors, and whose utterance had been this psalm of sorrowful contrition, was the direct forefather of the Messiah. So that, if the Jew looked to those from whom the Messiah had sprung, such must He be according to His earthly ancestors. But God records the blessed display of His ways, both for the winning of the hardest, proudest, and most sinful, and for the unfailing comfort and refreshment of those who love Him, that no flesh should glory before God—but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
Need I enter particularly into the names that follow? We might see sin upon sin, stain upon stain, interwoven into their various histories. It was too continuous a tissue of that which would cause a Jew to blush―what a man never would of himself have dared to bring out about a king that he honored. God, in His infinite goodness, would not permit these things to slumber. Not a word is said of women who came after the scripture record terminated; but what Jew could gainsay the lively oracles committed to them? To leave out what a Jew gloried in, and to bring in what he would have concealed through shame, and all in tender mercy to Israel, to sinners, was indeed divine. We may learn from this that the mention of these four women is particularly instructive. Man could not have originated it: our place is to learn and adore. Every female that is named is one that nature would have studiously excluded from the record, but that grace has made most prominent in it. Thus the truth taught thereby ought never to be forgotten, and the Jew who wanted to know the claims of Jesus to be the Messiah, might learn here what would prepare his heart and conscience for such a Messiah as Jesus is. He is a Messiah come in quest of sinners, who would despise no needy one — not even a poor publican, or a harlot. The Messiah so thoroughly reflected what God is in His holy love, and is so true to all the purposes of God, so perfect an expression of the grace that is in God, that there never was a thought, feeling, word of grace in His word, but what the Messiah was come now to make it good in His dealings with poor souls, with Jew first, and also with Greek.
This, then, is the genealogy of Christ as given us here. There are certain omissions in the list, and persons of some learning have been alike weak and daring enough to impute a mistake to Matthew, which no intelligent Sunday scholar would have made. For a child could copy what was clearly written out before him: and certainly Matthew could easily have taken the Old Testament, and reproduced the list of names and generations given us in the Chronicles and elsewhere. But there was a divine reason for omitting the particular names of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, from verse 8 — three generations.
Why is it, we may be permitted to ask, that the Apostle Matthew drops, of course by inspiration, some of the links of the chain? The Spirit of God was pleased to arrange the ancestry of our Lord into three divisions of fourteen generations each. Now, as there were actually more than fourteen generations between David and the captivity, it was a matter of necessity that some should be discarded, in order to equalize the series; and fourteen only are therefore recorded. Indeed, anyone who examines the Old Testament scriptures, must perceive that it is not at all uncommon in genealogies to drop some of the links of the chain. More than twice as many as in our verse are omitted in one place (Ezra 7:33The son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth, (Ezra 7:3)); and it was Ezra himself who wrote that book, who, of course, knew his own descent far more familiarly than we do. If any of us, by comparison with other parts, can find out the missing links, much more could he. Yet, in giving his own genealogy there, the Spirit of God is pleased by him to omit no less than seven generations. This is the more remarkable, as no one could exercise his rights as a priest, unless he could trace his line up to Aaron without any question as to the succession. I have no doubt that there were special reasons for the omission elsewhere, no less than in our Gospel; but the motives for it are a very different question. One of them has been named. There were more than twice seven generations in at least the second division; and this may have been a reason why the writer should omit several of them.
But why omit these in particular? Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, king of Israel, and wife of Jehoram, had thus entered by marriage the royal house of David; and a sorrowful hour it was, indeed, for Judah. For Athaliah, enraged at the premature end of her son, king Ahaziah, was guilty of a too successful attempt to destroy the seed royal. But it could not be complete: for that family was selected out of all the families of God’s people, never to be entirely extinguished till Shiloh came. There was but a single youthful scion whom Jehoshabeath saved by concealment in the house of Jehovah. The light was covered with a bushel for a time; but it was not put out. The then son of David appeared. It was a time when Judah had fallen into manifold and ever-deepening evil. But as surely as that young Joash was brought out of his concealment, no less truly the priest was there to anoint the king; and the union of the two things accomplished the then purpose of God. Just so it will be when the years of man’s rebellion against God are full. He will come forth who has been long hidden and forgotten, and all the enemies shall be trampled down; and then will Judah flourish indeed under the King, the true Son of David. For all this was the type of the reappearing of the true Messiah by-and-by. My design, however, is not so much to dwell on this now, as to inquire, and suggest briefly, why it is that we have those few kings omitted. The answer seems enough, that they sprang from Athaliah. Hence they were completely passed over. We find God thus marking His resentment at the introduction of that wicked and idolatrous stock from the house of Ahab. Athaliah’s descendants are not mentioned even to the third generation. This appears to be the moral reason why three persons were left out at this particular point.
Then in verse 11 we read, “And Josiah begat Jechoniah and his brethren at the time of the removal to Babylon.” It is evident that the method is summary, Jehoahaz whom the people made king, and who reigned for but three months, not being specified, and Jehoiakim being often called by the same name as his son Jechoniah.
But the minuter features of the genealogy need not detain us now. The word of God is infinite; and, no matter what we may have learned, it only puts us in a position to find out our ignorance. When persons are altogether in the dark, they think they know all that is to be known. But as we make real progress, we acquire a deeper sense of how little we know; and, at the same time, more patience with others who may know a little less — or, very possibly, somewhat more. Spiritual intelligence, instead of puffing up the loving heart, produces an increased feeling of our own littleness. Where it is not so, we have reason to fear that the mind outruns the conscience, and that both are far from being subject to the Holy Ghost.
“And after the removal to Babylon, Jechoniah begat Shealtiel; and Shealtiel begat Zerubbabel; and Zerubbabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; and Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; and Eliud begat Eleazer; and Eleazer begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob (called James often elsewhere in the New Testament); and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” [Messiah.] (vss. 12-16.)
The generations, we have seen, are divided into three different sections. (vs. 17.) The first is from Abraham to David, the dawn of glory for the Jews. When “David the king” was there, it was noontime in Israel — sadly checkered, it is true, and clouded through sin; but still it was the noon of man’s day in Israel. The second division is from thence till the deportation to Babylon. The third is from that captivity until “the Christ.” This last was clearly the evening history of Israel’s past. But that evening is not the close. It ends with the brightest light of all — type of the day when at evening time there shall be light. Just as the prophet Haggai speaks of the house of God, as it then was, being as nothing in comparison with its first glory, and says, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith Jehovah of hosts;” so a greater than Solomon was here. Although there had been the decline of the splendor of Israel, and Israel was now broken and subject to the Gentiles, the recorded decline ends in the birth of the true Messiah. Throughout the lingering on of the captivity no persecution could destroy that chosen family; because Jesus, the Messiah of God, was to be born of it. The moment that Jesus concludes his career here below, the chain may seem forever broken as regards the earth, but it is only to be riveted to the throne of God in heaven. Jesus is there, the Living One, who became dead, but is alive for evermore. And Jesus comes again, and the Jews will see and weep, even those written in the book: and Jehovah their king, even Jesus, will reap in joy what He sowed in tears, yea, in His own blood.
But let us turn for a while to the remaining view given us of our Lord Jesus in this chapter. Joseph is made very prominent. The genealogy itself is that of Joseph, not of Mary. On the other hand, Mary is the principal figure of the two in Luke, and there it is, beyond just doubt, her genealogy. Why is this? For a Jew, it was of necessity that Messiah should be the heir of Joseph. The reason is that Joseph was the direct lineal descendant of the royal branch of David’s house. There were two lines that came down unbroken to these days; the house of Solomon and the house of Nathan. Mary was the representative of Nathan’s family, as Joseph was of Solomon’s. If Mary had been mother of Jesus without legal connection with Joseph as husband, there would, not have been a right to the throne of David. It was necessary that the Messiah should be born, not merely of a virgin, nor of a virgin daughter of David, but of one legally united to Joseph, i.e. in the eye of the law really his wife. This is carefully recorded here for the special instruction of Israel; for an intelligent Jew would at once have asked that question; and everything must be fenced round with holy jealousy. Let people calumniate as they may, Mary must be espoused to Joseph; else the Lord Jesus could not have a proper title to the throne of David; and, therefore, the stress here is laid, not upon Mary, but upon Joseph, because the law would have always maintained the claim of Joseph. On the other hand, had Joseph been the real father, there could have been no Saviour at all. As it is, the wonder of divine wisdom shines most conspicuously, making Him legally the son of Joseph, really the son of Mary, who in the truth of His nature, is God, being the Son of the Father. And all three met and merged in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He must be the undisputed heir of Joseph, according to the law; and Joseph was espoused to Mary. The child must be born before Joseph ever lived with Mary as his wife; and this we are carefully shown here.
“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was thus: for his mother Mary being espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph her husband, being righteous and unwilling to expose her, purposed to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, an angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a dream,” &c. (vss. 18-20.) Here the angel appeareth to Joseph in a dream. In Luke the angel appears to Mary. It is thus in Matthew, because, Joseph was the important person in the eye of “the law” and yet the Messiah must not be, in point of fact, son of Joseph. All the wit of man could not have understood these ways beforehand: all his power could not have arranged the circumstances. If the law demanded that Jesus should be heir of Joseph, the prophet demanded that He should not be son of Joseph. God humbling Himself to save through the sacrifice of Himself, was the need of man; man exalted to glory on high was the counsel of God. How was this, and far more, to be united and reconciled in one person? Jehovah Jesus is the answer.
“An angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto [thee] Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” (vs. 20.)
God meets the scruples of the godly Israelite, and makes known that most distinguished honor which He had put Upon Mary, under a guise which for a season had clouded her and distressed him. She was the very virgin God had predicted hundreds of years before — “She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus.” (vs. 21.) Here, again, Joseph was to be the one who publicly acts; while in Luke (chap. i. 31) Mary names. The difference arises from the point of view the Holy Ghost gives us of our Lord’s person in the two Gospels. In Luke He is proving that Jesus, though divine, was very man; a partaker of humanity, apart from sin. In our case, it is sinful human nature — in His ease, it was holy. Accordingly, in speaking of Him simply as man, it is said in Luke, “Therefore, also that holy thing, which shall be born [of thee] shall be called the Son of God.” So He was most truly and properly a man — the child of His virgin mother; and as such too He is called the Son of God. In that Gospel one great point was to prove His holy manhood; showing how fully and fitly He could be a Saviour of men, and take up the woes and wretchedness, and on the cross suffer for the sinfulness, of others — Himself the Holy One. He was the Son of God, who had actually taken human nature into His own person, Himself perfectly and really a man as much as any of us, but man absolutely without sin, holy, and not merely innocent. Adam was innocent, Jesus was holy. Holiness does not mean mere absence of evil, but inward power according to God, and so power to repel evil. When Adam was tempted, he fell. Jesus was tried by every temptation, and Satan exhausted his wiles in vain. All this, however, is most suitable to the Gospel of Luke; where it is accordingly seen that the proper humanity of Jesus flowed from His birth (i.e., from His mother). Even the Talmud acknowledges that Mary was daughter of Heli, as she was wife of Joseph, son of Jacob. His legal right to the throne of David was from Joseph to whom Mary was then betrothed; and Joseph accordingly is the prominent personage in the Gospel of Matthew.
But He had a title greater than any which Joseph could transmit even from David or Abraham; and this was to be attested in His name, His despised name of Jesus, Jehovah the Saviour. “Thou shalt call his name JESUS; for he shall save his people from their sins.” (vs. 21.) Jehovah’s people were His people; and He should save them, not merely from their enemies, but from their sins. What a testimony to Him and for them Blessed for any sinful soul to hear, how especially needed by a people then inflated with boundless hopes of earthly aggrandizement in their expected Messiah!
Here, too, alone in any part of the Gospels, it is that we hear of Jesus as “Emmanuel.” This is equally instructive, significant, and beautiful; and the more because the Jew was too apt to forget it. Did he look for a divine Messiah — for One who was God as well as man? Very far from it. Comparatively few of the Jews expected anything so astonishing as that. They craved and looked for a mighty king and conqueror, yet still a mere man. But here we find that the Holy Spirit, by their own prophet Isaiah, besides speaking of Him as man, takes care to announce that He was much more than man, that He was God. (vss. 22-23.) “Behold, the (not “a” as in A.V.) virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” Matthew alone brings out this clear testimony of the great evangelical prophet — “God with us.” So perfectly did God provide for the stiff-necked Jews, and develop the neglected seeds of their prophecies, and reflect light on the obscure parts of their law; so that if a Jew rejected the Messiah, he did it to his own eternal ruin. Besides being the son of David and Abraham, then, He is God with us, Jehovah saving His people from their sins. Such is the true Messiah, and such the witness produced to Israel. Could they reject Matthew’s history, if they received Isaiah’s prophecy? in vain they worshipped God, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
“And Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of Jehovah had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her [firstborn] son; and he called His name JESUS.” (vss. 24, 25.) Some of the best authorities (the Sinaitic, Vat., &c.), omit “her firstborn,” and so present simply “a son.” But there is no doubt that these words are genuine in Luke 2, whence they may have been introduced here. The shorter form appears to be sufficient for the purpose of our evangelist.
We have been tracing what ought to have been of peculiar interest for a Jew; but may we also find the blessing of these truths for our own souls! Whatever exalts Jesus, whatever displays the grace and truth of God, puts down the pride of man, and is pregnant with blessing for the believer. By the blessing of God pursuing these lessons still farther, we shall find how the wisdom of every word of His is justified as we wait on this most illustrious testimony to Jesus the Messiah, to His rejection by Israel, and to the blessings which thence flow out to us, once poor Gentiles, now not only in the kingdom of heaven, but members of the Church, the body of Christ exalted on high.