¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
-Matthew 1:19-21

With Mary pregnant, Joseph faced a dilemma. What does he do? 

They lived in a small town. Inevitably Mary was going to start to show. 

I live in a small town. Word gets around. 

And so a pregnant Mary would make it appear as though either Mary had been unfaithful to Joseph, or that Mary and Joseph together had violated the betrothal custom and conceived a child together. Which wasn’t true. 

Now in our day, we live in a society with very relaxed sexual mores, to our detriment. But that was not the sensibility of first century Galilee. Jewish teaching at the time essentially forbade marrying someone to whom you were betrothed who had been unfaithful. 

So take all of verse 19 together. 

 ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 

I think that’s honorable. 

Joseph did not want to cause a huge public embarrassment for Mary. He didn’t want to make a spectacle. He didn’t want to humiliate Mary. 

A just man

But he was a just man. What does that mean? 

In this context, it meant that he could not ignore her apparent sexual sin. Because he was a faithful Jew who adhered to the law and teachings of the Old Testament. 

So Joseph initially does not see it as an option to marry Mary. But he doesn’t want to shame her either, so he just wants to try to make the breaking of the betrothal as painless as possible for both of them. 

Quick side note. 

Sometimes people will note that Mary’s apparent adultery would have been a capital offense and she faced stoning. 

That is partially correct. It’s true that death was the penalty for adultery in the Old Testament, but by the first century and under Roman Rule, it seems that this would have been uncommon in practice. Even when the Jewish leaders sought to crucify Jesus, they had to take their request before the local Roman government. 

They couldn’t just do it on their own. 

Back to Joseph. There appears to be a sensible course of action until Joseph is greeted with the most unexpected news. 

An angelic messenger appears to Joseph in a dream. 

Verse 20:  But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes the Lord can quickly change our plans. As Matthew’s gospel heralds the news of the Christ coming into the world, he records several angelic encounters, specifically in dreams. 

Angelic encounters in the Bible are often these glorious, terrifying, awe-inspiring events. But in Matthew, the angelic visitations are always merely to communicate a divine message and that is all that Matthew focuses on. 

The angel identifies Joseph as the Son of David. That will be the only place in this gospel that anyone other than Jesus is called the Son of David. 

It also reminds us of the significance of Joseph’s lineage in the incarnation. Because it is Joseph who is the descendant of David. 

Luke 1:27 says that Joseph was of the House of David. It is through Joseph that Jesus is connected to David. And Joseph is told not to fear taking Mary as his wife. 

The reason he needs to be told not to fear is that the religious and social expectation would be that Joseph would not take Mary as his wife. 

For the town gossips in Nazareth, the explanation that Mary is pregnant with a child that has been conceived via divine conception is not exactly the easiest story to believe. So to marry Mary is to also have to deal with the social ostracism of marrying an apparent adulteress. 

But Joseph is told not to fear.

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Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit
-Matthew 1:18

So we first meet Mary.

Of the four gospels, Matthew and Luke both give these stories about the birth of Jesus. Luke’s gives a lot more information on Mary, Matthew’s has more of a focus on Joseph. 

Betrothal

The passage says that Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Betrothal is a formal engagement. It’s still practiced today in some circles of Christendom and Judaism. 

I’m going to talk for a moment about what betrothal looked like in the first century.

In his commentary on Matthew, Grant Osborne gives some helpful notes on betrothal. Betrothals were arranged by families. The engagement period lasted a year. Something that’s very different from our society is that the bride was usually around 12 at the time so it’s likely that Mary was very young.

During the betrothal period, the bride would still live with her parents. 

Joseph was probably around 18. The groom was older in order to be a little bit more established. 

Certainly very young people by our standards. But it’s important to remember that it was a different time and culture. They had a different concept of adulthood and coming of age. And life expectancies were shorter. 

As I said, betrothal was more formal than engagement. 

In our society, if two people are engaged, someone can basically break it off at any time for any reason. Not so in first century Judea. To break off a betrothal, you had to have a formal writ of divorce. You couldn’t just decide you didn’t like someone or had found someone else better. 

It was a binding commitment to marriage.

The text says that before Joseph and Mary came together, she was found to be with child. 

That is clearly a reference to before they had consummated their relationship, Mary became pregnant.

Matthew says: she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit

Now it’s pretty amazing. 

Up until the resurrection, the virgin conception is the most significant event in human history and Matthew mentions it almost in passing. 

Nothing fanciful in Matthew’s language. He let’s the event speak for itself. There’s no need to oversell it. 

Luke’s account

Before we move to Joseph, I wanted to talk for a moment about Luke’s account because it does give some additional details. 

I don’t have a slide for this, but Luke 1:26-35 also describes Mary’s pregnancy and her response to it: 

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 

³⁴ And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 

³⁵ And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 

In Luke’s gospel, Mary is told about this child that she will carry. 

She asks the obvious question. “How is this all going to happen since I’m a virgin?” 

Both Matthew and Luke say how it’s possible that Mary could be with child. The child has been conceived of the Holy Spirit. 

God is at work in this. Humanity could not have made its own savior. It needed the intervention of God. 

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In this passage, we see a young couple who have been given the most amazing piece of news anyone had ever been given. Despite being a virgin, Mary is going to carry the Christ child. In this passage, we see Joseph and Mary while Matthew points to a prophecy for the virgin birth of Jesus given hundreds of years before. We also see in this section who Jesus is and what Jesus does.

Message preached at Christian Bible Church in Cissna Park, Illinois by Pastor Josh Benner.

Sermon transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M8qxaEJXUvNGy6ZNHDNoknh3YOGm9ayhOLNgCrZfE8A/edit?usp=sharing

¹² And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, ¹³ and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, ¹⁴ and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, ¹⁵ and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, ¹⁶ and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. ¹⁷ So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. 
-Matthew 1:12-17

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy that is in three sections. It leads from Abraham to David, then from David to the Babylonian exile, and finally from the Babylonian exile to Jesus. 

The third group is the most cryptic. The first two sections are full of familiar Biblical names, but in the third section, most of the named people are mentioned nowhere else in the Bible. 

The Babylonian exile

After generations of sin in Israel and numerous prophets who had warned Israel and her kings, the two kingdoms fell. First the Northern kingdom. But Matthew’s genealogy focuses on the southern kingdom which was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. 

It was a divine judgment from God upon an unfaithful Israel. 

The Israelites lose the kingdom, they lose Jerusalem, the temple is destroyed. The people are deported to a foreign land. 

The darkest days in the history of Israel. 

But what this genealogy reminds us of is that even though the monarchy did not reign and the land was lost, that the line was not forgotten. When Jerusalem fell, that might have looked like it was the end. But God was still at work. 

That’s what all of this shows us. That God has been at work throughout time and history. 

When Jesus went to the cross. When the disciples saw their beloved teacher brutally crucified, they thought that it was all over. 

But it was only just the beginning. 

Throughout church history, people have tried to persecute the church, ban the Bible, kill Christians. Yet God’s word has been preached. His church has persevered. 

God continued to work through this line because the Lord is faithful to his promises. 

He was faithful to his promise to Abraham of providing offspring. He was faithful to to his promise to David by providing a future king whose kingdom would never end. 

And that’s what this third group reminds us of. 

In Matthew 1:12, the genealogy mentions Jeconiah, the last king before the exile. Shealtiel and Zerubbabel. 

Zerubbabel is significant because he would be appointed as a governor over the Israelites at the end of their exile and when they returned to the Holy Land. He’s found in five different Old Testament books. 

He’s also significant because he’s the last of the names in the genealogy that we know anything about until you get to Joseph. 

None of these people after Zerubbabel are named in the Old Testament. 

New testament sources

So where’d Matthew get the final names in the list from? 

There were genealogical records for at least some Israelites. We know this because such records are mentioned by ancient historians such as Josephus. 

Given the prominence of this line, it’s certainly plausible that they had records. 

Matthew ends this third genealogy by finally arriving at Joseph and Mary and then to Jesus. 

Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. 

42 generations to get from Abraham to the Lord Jesus. 

We see the sovereignty of God. The faithfulness of God. We see the plan of God. 

And we see that the Messiah has come into the world. 

All throughout history, God has been at work. We see him at work in this genealogy that leads to the Lord Jesus. 

But that also points us to his mission for the world which is God’s redemptive purposes and gospel through Jesus Christ to redeem sinful and fallen. 

It is a major theme in Matthew’s gospel. It’s a major theme in Matthew’s Christmas story. 

But it’s also a major theme of the Bible itself. The Lord God working to restore fallen humanity. 

Christmas is a reminder of that. As God’s only Son, Christ Jesus came into the world. He came for a purpose. To go to the cross and to die for the sins of the world. 

And so it’s important to understand what God has done throughout history but also what God is doing in the world today. The Old Testament points forward to Christ. The Old Testament points forward to the king from the line of David. The gospels are the fulfillment of those promises in Christ.  

The church’s job today is to share that good news with the world. 

And so we look at this genealogy at the beginning of the New Testament. 

It’s not just a bunch of names to skip over so we can get to something more interesting. 

Rather, it’s a bunch of chapters in God’s story leading up to Christ and in his work of bridging redemption to the world.

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And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, ⁷ and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, ⁸ and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, ⁹ and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, ¹⁰ and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, ¹¹ and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. 

-Matthew 1:6-11

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy which leads from Abraham to Jesus. The middle section traces the kings from David until the fall of the Israelite empire in 586 B.C. 

Even for people well-versed in the Bible, this is often not a person’s most familiar part of the scriptures. But it’s a colorful and fascinating family history. The Davidic Monarchy could be its own HBO drama. 

King David

David is the great king of Israel. Solomon his son is his successor. You read about them and the rest of the monarchs of the Davidic Dynasty primarily in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles. There are also appearances in some of the prophets. 

When Matthew mentions David in the genealogy of Jesus, it says: And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 

David seduced a married woman. Her name was Bathsheeba. But the one thing to highlight is that Matthew doesn’t actually name Bathsheeba. But he actually calls Bathsheeba the wife of Uriah. 

Why? 

I think Tim Keller is onto something when he suggests that it’s less about downplaying Bathsheeba and more about reminding us of Uriah. The husband of Bathsheeba whom David had killed. 

It mentioning Uriah, it confronts us with David’s great sin. David had a son with the wife of another man. 

The genealogy does not hide from the sins of the people in the line of Jesus. The same is true for the first section, but it’s seen on an even grander scale in this current passage. 

But an important lesson for us all is that we aren’t defined by what we come from. For good or for ill. If we come from greatness, that doesn’t transfer to us by birth. We have to live our own lives. And if we come from infamy, that does not doom us. It can feel that way sometimes. It can be an unfortunate result often times. But it doesn’t have to be. 

Jesus is descended from killers, prostitutes, and adulterers. We’re going to elaborate on the kings and quickly go through some of these. It might be easy to assume the Kings of Israel would be pretty good. But it’s often not the case. There are a few good kings amid some truly wicked and evil kings. 

Let’s look at some of these other kings in the Davidic Dynasty. 

Verse 7:  and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph,

So Solomon is the son of David. The wise king of Israel. But he spent lavishly on big projects for Israel. 

His son, Rehoboam had similar lavishness and had to continue raising taxes. Things got so bad that during his reign, Israel was no longer a unified nation. Within two generations of David, Israel had split with the Davidic monarchy ruling the smaller portion in the south, and ten of the 12 tribes in an independent Northern Kingdom, never to be reunited. 

Abijah would end up making similar blunders. 

Asaph was a relatively decent Israelite king. 

Verse 8:  and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 

Jehoshaphat was another pretty good king. Grant Osborne describes his reign: “Jehoshaphat was known for godliness like his father and brought further reform and even sent out priests to teach the people the ways of the Lord. Even the surrounding nations began to fear the Lord.” 

Joram was next. He was not as good as his father. 

The Queen of Israel

This story gets very interesting here. As a reminder, Israel was divided in two kingdoms. Joram marries a woman who was a princess from the other kingdom. Her name was Athaliah. 

When Joram dies, he’s replaced by his son Ahaziah. Ahaziah is actually not listed in Matthew’s genealogy, but that’s the next king. 

When Ahaziah is king, both he and the king of the northern kingdom are murdered in a power takeover. The aforementioned Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother seizes the throne of the southern kingdom and becomes the ruling monarch in Jerusalem. 

Ahaziah had been her only son and so she has the immediate family members who have a claim to the throne to be executed. Including her own grandson.  

That’s in the Bible! It’s wild stuff. You thought your family was dysfunctional! 

Athaliah had a grandson who was saved and protected by a family member. The protected grandson was named Jehoash. He’s also not listed in the genealogy. When Jehoash becomes king, his grandmother is deposed and executed. 

The son of Jehoash was Uzziah, who was a pretty good king of Israel. 

Uziah’s son Jotham was a decent king, but then Jotham’s son Ahaz failed to listen to the Prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah, Ahaz does not listen to the prophet, fails to trust in God, tries to exercise his own control and makes diplomatic blunders which will seal the fate of Israel’s final governmental collapse. 

Manasseh was one of the most wicked Israelite kings. He builds pagan alters in the temple courts, practices sorcery and divination. He also sacrifices one of his own sons. 

Josiah mentioned in verse 10 was a good king. He did a lot to restore order and stability to Israel and also reinstated the Passover celebration which had fallen out of favor. 

Jeconiah is the last king listed in this second section. Jeconiah is the king when Jerusalem falls, which is why he’s noteworthy. He’s the final king of Israel’s southern kingdom to rule in the Promised Land. 

Again, that was a very brief cross-section of some of these kings. Quite the rag tag group. Matthew ends verse 11 by talking about the deportation to Babylon. Now everything in this genealogy has been centered around people. But the beginning of this third group of names focuses around an event. 

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