MATTHEW 1 – The King’s Pedigree
Jesus, David, and Abraham, that is quite the trio. You may be tempted to skim through genealogies, but in Matthew’s day, genealogies were very important and this one was striking. People didn’t have ID cards; you were known by your bloodline, and if your bloodline was unknown, you didn’t matter. In the first century, genealogies were not lists of "this person was the father of this person," but they provided identity; they revealed your right to an inheritance and a place in God’s story. Matthew reveals that Jesus’ identity and inheritance can be traced directly to the two most significant characters in the story: David, the greatest of Kings, and Abraham, the father of the nation. By opening with “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” Matthew ties Jesus to the covenant with Abraham (blessing to all nations) and the promise to David (an eternal throne).
Matthew could have gone back all the way to Adam, as Luke does, but as significant as our first parents were, to the Jew, there were expectations associated with the Messiah. These were tied to David’s kingship and kingdom, as well as to Abraham’s covenantal promises of land and of being the chosen people. While we may associate the early chapters with Christmas and the Advent season, Matthew is not providing a sentimental Christmas backdrop; he is revealing a coronation. He is naming a King, tracing a covenant, and confronting any version of “Christianity” that wants Jesus without His authority, His holiness, or His costly grace.
Spurgeon catches the force of it:
“This genealogy of Jesus Christ proves him to be the heir to David’s throne.”
Ancient genealogies often highlight noble ancestry, maintaining social boundaries and ethnic purity. Yet Matthew’s genealogy does the opposite. Matthew does not hide the messy branches of Jesus’ family tree. He puts them front and center — on purpose.
He includes women.
He includes Gentiles.
He includes people with reputations.
He includes stories Israel would rather forget.
Matthew shows God has included the outsiders, the pagan gentiles, the shameful sinners, and is just as concerned with the women in the bloodline of Jesus as the men. No other genealogy from that time period included women; it is with purpose. Matthew brings to light some of Israel’s most scandalous stories. Instead of highlighting matriarchs like Sarah, Rebekah, or Rachel, he highlights women whose stories are tangled with adultery, prostitution, exploitation, abuse, and moral complexity. What we would hide, he highlights.
This is deliberate.
Matthew forces us to see that the Messiah did not come from a sanitized line — He came through the very kinds of stories He came to redeem.
Tamar (Genesis 38)
Tamar is first married to Judah’s son Er, whom the Lord kills for his wickedness; his brother Onan then uses her sexually while deliberately preventing her from conceiving, and God judges him too. Judah promises his youngest son to Tamar but has no intention of keeping his word, leaving her trapped as a vulnerable, childless widow under his authority. Seeing Judah’s hypocrisy, Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute, sleeps with Judah himself, and conceives twins by her father‑in‑law. When Judah hears she is pregnant, he demands she be burned alive for “prostitution,” until she proves he is the father by producing his signet, cord, and staff, exposing his double standard and forcing him to confess, “She is more righteous than I.”
Matthew includes Tamar to show:
Jesus steps into stories where sin, hypocrisy, injustice, and abuse of power have crushed the vulnerable.
Rahab (Joshua 2)
Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute in Jericho whose house sits on the city wall and functions as a place where men, including the Israelite spies, can come and go without attracting attention. When Jericho’s king orders her to surrender the spies, she hides them on her roof, lies to protect them, and asks for mercy, staking her life and her family’s survival on Israel’s God. God spares Rahab and her household when Jericho falls, and she is brought into Israel’s community, later being named in Jesus’ genealogy and in the New Testament as a model of faith.
Ruth (Book of Ruth)
Ruth is a Moabite widow from a people once barred from Israel’s assembly because of their opposition and shameful history, including the incestuous origins of Moab. After losing her husband, she clings to her Israelite mother‑in‑law Naomi. She follows her back to Bethlehem, embracing Israel’s God while living as an impoverished foreigner and outsider, gleaning leftovers in the fields. Under Naomi’s guidance, Ruth approaches Boaz at night on the threshing floor in a culturally charged scene of vulnerability and potential sexual misunderstanding, appealing to him to act as kinsman‑redeemer. Boaz responds with integrity, marries her, and their child Obed becomes the grandfather of King David, tying a Moabite outsider directly into the Messiah’s line.
“The Wife of Uriah” (2 Samuel 11)
While Israel’s army is at war, David stays in Jerusalem, sees Bathsheba bathing, sends for her, and sleeps with her; the text presents this as David’s initiative and abuse of royal power, and she becomes pregnant. To cover his adultery, David recalls her husband Uriah from the battlefield and tries to manipulate him into sleeping with his wife so the child will appear legitimate, but Uriah refuses out of loyalty to his soldiers. When that fails, David has Uriah placed in the fiercest fighting and orders the troops to pull back so he is killed, effectively arranging his murder to hide David’s sin.After Uriah’s death, David takes Bathsheba as his wife, but the Lord sends Nathan to confront him, declaring that David’s actions are evil and bringing severe discipline on his house.
Matthew reveals to us the stories of incest and attempted honor‑killing (Tamar), prostitution and enemy blood (Rahab), a Moabite outsider with a sexually charged midnight encounter (Ruth), and an abused wife whose husband was murdered by Israel’s king (the wife of Uriah). This is the line Jesus chose to step into.
Spurgeon captures the tension - “Christ is not the patron of sin, but the destroyer of it.”
Matthew includes sinners not to normalize sin, but to highlight that the Savior has come to save sinners and end the kingdom of sin.
Matthew 1 is about God’s story crashing into human history in the person of the promised King. “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” is a royal announcement: Jesus is the covenant Son of Abraham (blessing to the nations) and the royal Son of David (eternal King), the Christ whose very name means “Yahweh saves.”
That means weak Christianity — the kind that treats Jesus as a life coach, a therapist, or a genie in a bottle — is already exposed in verse 1. If He is Abraham’s Son, He owns the nations; if He is David’s Son, He owns your allegiance; if He is “Jesus,” He defines what salvation is (from sin, not just from pain).
The Genealogy: Grace, Not Excuse
Matthew breaks all the polite rules of a “clean” pedigree.
He intentionally includes Tamar’s scandal, Rahab the prostitute, Ruth the Moabite outsider, and “the wife of Uriah,” forcing us to remember David’s adultery and murder.
This is not sentimental inclusivity; it is extreme grace.
It tells the religious: “Your clean reputation does not impress God.”
It tells the rebellious: “Your dirty past does not intimidate God.”
But this grace is not permission to stay in sin. Jesus’ genealogy shows that God weaves sin-marked stories into His plan — but always as stories He redeems, confronts, and reorients around His King. Any “grace” that leaves generational patterns untouched is not Matthew’s gospel; it is unbelief dressed in Christian words.
The Structure: God Owns History
Matthew’s three sets of fourteen generations are not a math mistake; they are rich in theology, a numerical sermon pointing to David’s name.
Fourteen echoes David’s name in Hebrew, and the three movements — Abraham to David, David to exile, exile to Christ — preach that God has been steering every rise, collapse, and long silence toward this King.
From Abraham → David = RISE.
From David → exile = COLLAPSE.
From exile → Christ = REDEMPTION.
Every high, every failure, the 400 years of silence from the Prophet Malachi to John the Baptist — all of it was moving toward Jesus.
So the weak Christianity that panics at cultural exile or assumes God has gone silent is out of step with Matthew 1.
God can hold centuries of failure, idolatry, and exile inside His sovereign plan and still land right on Jesus. In that case, He is not wringing His hands over your family line, your past sins, or this cultural moment – He is your providential King, He is sovereign and aligning everything according to His will.
God has never lost control of history.
He will not lose control of yours.
Joseph: Righteous Obedience
Joseph exposes another counterfeit: “righteousness” obsessed with image but avoiding costly obedience.
Betrothal in Joseph’s world was a legally binding marriage; Mary’s pregnancy looked like clear immorality, and Joseph had every legal right to protect his name by a public, shaming divorce, which likely would have ended with Mary’s public stoning.
Instead, before the angel ever appears, he chooses the most merciful option available — a quiet divorce to spare her public disgrace — showing that true righteousness already mixes justice and mercy. Then, when God speaks, Joseph goes further: he obeys, embraces the shame, takes Mary as his wife, and names the Child Jesus, legally grafting Him into David’s royal line.
That is the kind of obedience weak Christianity cannot stomach. Real faith will lose reputation to keep step with God’s will; fake faith will sacrifice obedience and repentance at the altar of preserving reputation. What matters more to you, your reputation before God or man?
Immanuel: Not Safe, But With Us
The Child is given two names that destroy tame views of Jesus. He is “Jesus” — Yahweh saves — because He comes not to affirm “good people” but to save His people from their sins, the deepest problem in every generation and every family system. He is “Immanuel” — God with us — not God vaguely above us or God occasionally near us when we perform well.
“God with us” is not a cozy slogan; it is a holy invasion.
If God is with us in this Child, then He comes to expose, forgive, and overthrow every rival loyalty — including family patterns, cultural idols, and respectable churchianity.
Any Christianity that wants “God with me” for comfort but not “Jesus, Yahweh saves” for repentance is rejecting Matthew 1’s King.
Matthew 1 Recap:
Matthew 1 is meant to do more than inform your mind — it is meant to heal your story. Here’s what this chapter whispers into your life:
Your past doesn’t disqualify you — it qualifies your story for grace.
Jesus is not intimidated by your failures, wounds, or family history.
He breaks sinful cycles that generations before you couldn’t break.
He steps into painful family patterns to create new legacies.
What defined your family does not have to define you.
The King came not to condemn your history but to rewrite your destiny.
The genealogy teaches something extraordinary: If God could form the Savior of the world through a tangled line of brokenness, He can form beauty from your story too.
