Unspeakable Joy and Boring “Begats”?

Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob … Azor begat Zadok, Zadok begat Akim,  Akin begat Eliud … (Matthew 1:2, 14).

Have you ever known anyone who had Matthew 1:1-17 (the “begats”) as a “life verse”?  Me, neither.  And this passage sure is a strange way to kick off a series titled Unspeakable Joy!  Matthew’s three sets of “fourteen generations”: after the first few verses, most of us have no idea who Matthew is even talking about.  A few names ring a bell: David, Ruth and Boaz, Solomon, maybe a few others.  But “Ram the father of Amminadab” and “Perez father of Hezron”? No bells ringing here.

If they had put me in charge of ordering the books in the New Testament, I would have started almost any place other than Matthew 1.  John 1, for instance.  Luke’s beloved “Christmas story.”  Even Mark gets us going right away, plunging us into the action.

But, thankfully, the Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of the Scriptures also superintended their final ordering.  So THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS! begins with begats.

Matthew is doing something extremely important with his begats.  First, he’s providing a kind of summary of the entire Old Testament.  His “first fourteen generations” runs from Abraham through David, that is, from Genesis through 2 Samuel.  The second group of fourteen covers Kings, Chronicles and most all of the Prophets.  The final set picks up Ezra, Nehemiah, and a few of the Prophets from after the Exile to Babylon and the Return seventy years thereafter.  

So Matthew is reminding us that the story of Jesus is the continuation of a story that goes all the way back to Genesis.  The Old Testament is not a false start, not a story that “didn’t work out.”  It’s a story that awaited its culmination and completion, a story that needed not just to be finished, but fulfilled.

Second, Matthew reminds us that people matter. God knows everyone by name, even if your folks named you Amminadab.  That long list of forty-two generations is filled with folks exactly like you and me.  Most were run-of-the-mill sinners, a few were somewhat spectacular sinners, and a very few came out smelling like roses.  What matters is that they lived and that, somehow, they contributed in some small way to enable a next generation to live.  If God was intimately acquainted with “Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,” God’s got a pretty good handle on you, too.

Finally, Matthew reminds us that all those begats were in fact going somewhere good.  At the very end, Matthew’s list changes: “Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ” (verse 16).  No begat at the end.  And a new title: Messiah.

History is full of all kinds of pretend messiahs, false claimants to a crown they could not wear and a kingdom they never understood.  Which, despite the multiple tragedies along the way, turned out okay, because God saw to it that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.  That changed everything, then, now and forever.

Which is why, if we know how to pay attention, there is indeed unspeakable joy hidden where it did not belong, buried in the long list of names we’d never have known, except for the name at the end.

Ever heard the saying, “God takes ordinary things and makes them extraordinary”?

Any hints of unspeakable joy hiding in your family tree?  How about in the ordinary-because-so-familiar events of the weeks ahead of us?  How about when we consider the promised Last Day, when all ordinary days and nights are swallowed up into Day?  Think on these things …

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