Those who were used of God to group the books of the New Testament have done wisely in placing Matthew’s the first of the four gospels, because it is more intimately connected with the Old Testament than any other. To him it was given to draw the portrait of Christ in the manner best suited to meet the difficulties of the Jewish Christians, and to show them that every prophecy of the Old Testament had its perfect fulfillment in Him. Hence the quotations from the other Scriptures are far more numerous in this gospel than in any of the others, and we get, moreover, far more trouble taken in the description of the manner of His rejection by the Jews than in the remaining records. He is shown forth as their Messiah, presented to them as such; rejected by them, and only then reveals God’s counsels as to what should be the result of this rejection. This gospel has, likewise, simply been divided by another into three portions.
1-3. Christ is presented as the Bethlehemite of Micah 6.
4-20. The Light from Zebulon and Naphtali. Isa. 9
21-24. The King of Zech. 9
We observed, I think, that there was neither a genealogy in Mark or John—in Mark, because the thought there is a divine servant doing God’s will from first and last, and consequently the introduction of a genealogy is unnecessary. John, on the contrary, gives us the heavenly aspect of the Lord Jesus, and consequently it would be impossible to trace the descent of the one who “was in the beginning with God,” and who “was God.”
Here, and in Luke, the case is different. All the Old Testament Scriptures had converged to prove that the Messiah should be “born of a woman”; and more than that, that He should belong to the house of David as well as of the seed of Abraham; for to Abraham and to his seed were the promises made, and David’s was the royal line, therefore we find the genealogy most suitably traced up through David to Abraham. To go further was unnecessary where the thought in the mind of the Spirit was to present the Messiah. In Luke, where He branches out into the wider glory of the Son of Man, the genealogy naturally goes back till it comes to “Adam, which is the son of God.”
This; then, is “the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.”
To Abraham it had been promised, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:18), and this seed is “Christ,” as Gal. 3:16 tells us. And again to David the promise had been made, “I will raise up thy seed after thee, and I will establish his kingdom.... I will be his father and he shall be my son” (1 Chron. 17:11-14), and this prophecy is applied (Heb. 1:5) to Christ.
Hence the Spirit of God takes care to prove the Messiah’s descent from these two heads of the Jewish race.
The introduction of the names of four of the mothers into this genealogy is not a little remarkable, and when we consider what the Scriptures reveal to us about them, surely we may say we get an indication that it was only on the ground of grace that the Jews get any blessing, and more than this, that the blessing was not about to be confined to them, but would flow out towards the Gentiles. Tamar and Bathsheba teach us the former lesson—the latter we learn from Ruth and Rahab.
The genealogy is divided into three sections—
From Abraham to Royalty in David.
From royalty to the captivity in Babylon.
From the captivity to Christ.
And here we may notice that between vv. 8, 9, three kings are omitted, not an uncommon thing in Jewish genealogies, to make the numbers even. This account differs from that of Luke, he, consistently with his line of things, giving the mother’s line or human pedigree, Matthew the father’s or legal. Mary was descended from Nathan; Joseph, from Solomon.
In like manner Joseph is the prominent figure here, and the one to whom all the directions are given. Mary is selected in Luke. Surely God’s ways are wisdom itself, and all harmonize so completely one with another.
The manner of the conception is recorded in Luke, the fact here. The angel of the Lord anticipates the action, the tender conscience of Joseph dictated, addressing him as the “Son of David,” he thus reveals that Christ is David’s Son, and not merely that, but, as His name Jesus indicates, “Jehovah the Saviour,” whose office should be to save the Jewish people from their sins. But more than this as if to complete the circle of Jewish glory, He should be, as duly written of Him, “Emmanuel, God with us” thus this mysterious babe was everything that Jewish faith could desire.
The Son of David,
Jehovah the Saviour,
God with His people.
The reception He met with at their hands we learn from the next chapter. Let us close with noticing admiringly the beautiful but simple faith of Joseph who, under trying circumstances, acted in simple obedience to the commandment given by the angel of the Lord.