Of the four Gospels only two give us a genealogy. We may have many genealogies in the Old Testament, but only One Person has a genealogy in the New Testament.
Matthew presents the Lord as King, and so the genealogy is traced to David, proving Jesus the Christ to be the rightful Heir to the throne; further, going up to Abraham, as showing His right of title to the land.
The Old Testament is more quoted in Matthew than in the other three Gospels. It stands first, and is thus quite a connecting link with the Old Testament.
This chapter reminds us of the wondrous working of the vail. No doubt the four colors correspond to the four Gospels. No genealogy is needed for a servant, so in Mark He comes forth girded for work. In Luke He is traced up to Adam as Son of Roan; but: John presents Him as Son of God.
In Luke the genealogy is traced through Mary; here, through Joseph, by Jewish law heir to the throne.
The Lord's divinity is markedly brought out in every Gospel. As another has said, If we have a Savior, He must be God: if God is with us, it must be as a Savior.
People may think a genealogy dry bones. This is a great mistake. It will always pay to go into it carefully-it is God-given, Spirit-breathed. No man would have written it thus. There is a blessed design throughout. Things altogether are arranged dispensationally in Matthew—in Luke morally. In this genealogy it strikes us at once that we have the names of four women—three of them, at least, Gentiles, and the fourth the wife of a Gentile. Of none of them would a Jew be proud. They are all very humbling, and marvelous in showing God's grace.
These four are so arranged that we have in miniature the early chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, where we find the foundations of Christianity.
In Romans 1 you get a very, very dark picture of human depravity. Some people say the Bible is a filthy book, and none of us would like to read that chapter in public, but it is not filthy. A Christian once heard a man say so publicly, and challenged him thus, “If it is a filthy book, why do not filthy people love it?” Instead of which they hate and shun it. It shows their evil up. Why is that chapter given? God never gives a useless thing. He would let us know that He at least knows the deepest depths of human depravity, and provides for it a suited remedy. You have Romans 1 in Tamar. It is a black picture indeed which is given us in Genesis 38
Then in the next one, we get the truth of an expression which only occurs once in Scripture— “faith in His blood” —Rom. 3. That is what is brought out in Rahab. “By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not.” She is always called “the harlot.” Her sin is not toned down. She was no mere lodging-house keeper. God would have us know that His grace goes out to the most unlikely and unworthy. What she wanted was “a true token": she got it in the scarlet thread. She calls it “a line “; the spies, a “scarlet thread.” Did they remember Jehovah's words, “The blood shall be to you for a token” on the night of the Passover? The scarlet line of Redemption runs through the whole Bible. In the early books, it is typical redemption; in the historical books, historical redemption; in the Psalms, redemption experimentally expressed; in the Prophets, it is prophetical redemption; in the Gospels, personal redemption; in the Epistles, doctrinal redemption; in the Revelation, the eternal results of redemption.
Rahab married a prince of Judah. Sin brought Tamar into the line; faith brought Rahab. “Faith cometh by hearing.” She heard and believed. There is all the difference between a human and a divine standard. It is very beautiful to see how God honors her faith.
The next one is Ruth, and there we see the distinction between law and grace. Law never brought salvation; it demanded righteousness but never got it. Its weakness was in the material it had to deal with. Grace, unmerited favor, suits man. “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” —truth as to God, and as to man. Law excluded the Moabite; hers was a hopeless case. But we have a beautiful type of Christ in Boaz, the “mighty man of wealth,” and “strength is in him” —the Lord in resurrection, with all things given into His hands Ruth comes in after Judges, and she “finds grace in his eyes.” Elimelech and his family went away from Bethlehem, the “house of plenty.” True there was a famine, but that should never be an excuse for going away. A time of pressure took Abram to Egypt; he lost his strangership and ceased for the time to be a worshipper. If you have only a tent, it is formal. A tent marks separation from the world. The altar marks separation to God. Lot had no altar; Abram had both. “Grace reigns through righteousness.” This is the teaching of Ruth. Grace brought in one whom law excluded, as it would every one of us.
The next—her name is not mentioned here. But it is singular how David is here repeatedly called “David the king.” He has great prominence in this chapter. We get justification by faith in “her who had been the wife of Urias.” There had been terrible sin, and no one was ever chastised as David was. Forgiven he was, but the sword never departed from his house.
Sin in the believer is a thousand times worse than in the unbeliever; for it is sinning against love and light. It would have been a bad thing for any of us if that provision, “He restoreth my soul,” had not been made! David was in a miserable condition; his moisture turned into the drought of summer, etc., a fearful experience. Then the prophet came with the parable of the ewe lamb. David was indignant, but “Thou art the man!” Yet David was a man after God's own heart, and there was a nimbleness of faith in him that always turned to God. He makes confession, “I have sinned,” It was not like Saul or Judas, because God saw that his repentance was not to be repented of, and “God hath put away thy sin.” How should we do without Psalm 51? Oh, the blessedness of the man whose sin is forgiven! “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” Was it not against Uriah? Sin is always in relation to God. It is well to remember there is no such thing as little sin. There is “great sin,” and “greater sin,” but no little sin, because there is no little God to sin against.
The side of grace is what we have had, but besides this there is government, and every child of God is under it. It is prominent in Peter's writings; in the First Epistle we have the government of God's house; in the Second, of the world, In 1 Pet. 1:1414As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: (1 Peter 1:14) we are called “children of obedience.” We have been dealt with in grace, and what must characterize us now is holiness. So in vers. 17 we are under the government of God. So, too, David was disciplined here in this world. There is no discipline afterward—1 Cor. 11. “Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.” As regards one's soul's safety it is sin for a believer to fear; but there should be infinite respect. It was the triumph of grace that Solomon should be born of that marriage-the type of our Lord in millennial glory. David and Solomon both together are types of Christ, David putting down enemies; Solomon reigning. So you see how you get in miniature in the names of these four women the outstanding truths of the Epistle to the Romans.
There are some names omitted in this genealogy in connection with Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel. In each division there is a double seven-the perfect number; but to make these sevens, three names are left out. The government of God had great prominence in the Old Testament. That will account for those names being omitted; the house of Ahab was horrible to Him.
People who want to find discrepancies here will find plenty; those who want food will get it. God has permitted it that there have been faults of transcribers, and the Revisers had 30,000 various readings to choose from. People might think such a task almost hopeless, but God had been watching over it, and in the great bulk of it they could easily see how the mistakes had come in. A copyist might leave out a word, or skip a verse; or sometimes someone put a note in the margin; the next one who makes a copy from that roll, perhaps 100 years after, sees this note in the margin, and embodies it in the text. In this way we can easily see how a vast number of these readings occur.
But suppose instead of having all this vast number of MSS. to compare, they had only had one, and that one copied 100 times—all previous copies being destroyed when a new one was made in the one surviving they would have had all the mistakes with nothing to check them! It is a rule with critics that if of two readings one is plain and one difficult, and they have no other guide, they should accept the difficult.
God does preserve His word for His people. Really in the dark ages the monks were used in God's providence to hand it down to us by transcribing it. “The words of the Lord are pure words... Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever” (Psalm 12:6, 76The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. (Psalm 12:6‑7)); given to us, preserved for us....
Mary here is regarded as Joseph's wife. Mary's line is traced through Nathan; Joseph's, through Solomon. Mary is prominent in Luke; here Joseph. But it is remarkable how he disappears in the Gospels.
It is very beautiful to see how God, after being silent 400 years, breaks the silence to Zacharias in the temple about the Forerunner, and the curtain is lifted, and we are permitted to see the remnant. There had been a remnant all through those 400 years. Simeon is in the secret of the Lord. Anna, a widow indeed—really devoted; Zacharias and Elizabeth, both righteous; Joseph and Mary—there was a precious simplicity in her, in marked contrast to Zacharias. What a mistake to make her immaculate! She was only the vessel, the Babe was holy, without sin, apart from it.
It is very lovely to see the gradual unfolding of the word. The first intimation from God Himself of the Seed of the woman is in the garden of Eden; then the Seed of Abraham, through Isaac, through Judah; then the Seed of David; then born of the virgin, the word given to Isaiah. Wonderful. The Jews did not realize who their Messiah should be-Emmanuel the Son of God. They looked for some great deliverer from their enemies. All speak of Him as God over all. It is “an angel” in verse 20. Often in the Old Testament “the angel” is the Lord Jesus. “The angel of His presence saved them.”
Dreams have a very important place in the Old Testament, not so much in the New. The time is coming “when your old men shall dream dreams, etc.” It speaks well for Joseph, and what grace had done for him, that he bows to the instruction; there is a graciousness about him, though he is called a “just” man.
Jesus a Savior. They did not think much of their sins and being saved from them. Yet Isaiah 53 speaks of them.
Israel will get the blessing of the new covenant and there will be a people who will love the Lord with all their heart, etc. They will have the stony heart taken away. We have no new heart. Our old nature is as bad as or worse than when we were converted, and has a wider scope to display itself in. God has saved us from the guilt of sin, we have no more conscience of sins, but He has perfected in perpetuity, without a break, those who are sanctified. So sin can never be charged against me as guilt, but if I sin “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world.” The ground on which God deals with the whole world is propitiation. “But these things have I written unto you that ye sin not.” Never lower the standard. Beside that, though we are not delivered from the presence of sin, the evil nature in us, yet we are from its power, its rule, Romans 6 We shall never have done with its presence till we are at home with the Lord or changed into His likeness. If a believer sins he cannot go on and be happy with the Lord. Be careful not only what you say and do, but also of your spirit.
He died not for sin, but to sin. He died for our sins. Sin has been judged and Christ has died to it. “Therefore reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” There is all the difference between being the judge and the prisoner. Once I was the prisoner; now I am to judge myself. It is very blessed to know that we are married to another to bring forth fruit unto God. “Ye have your fruit unto holiness.” We are not only saved from the consequences of our sins, but the power of them. In ourselves we have no strength to stand for a single moment.
It is very beautiful to see “God with us.” He is not content to be apart from His creatures, He tabernacled among us—He shall be with them their God.
Verse 25-Her firstborn son. There are evidences in the New Testament that Mary had other children. These were the Lord's brethren according to the flesh. Terribly unbelieving during His life, the cross brought them out. James the Lord's brother had a distinguished place, but was content to speak of himself as a “servant.”