Sermon: Matthew 1: 1-17 The Christmas (Family) Tree

Every year, as the dark nights are drawing in, and we’re driving anywhere at night, the lookout begins. On every drive we’re watching out to see when we’ll see our first Christmas tree. It seems that they go up earlier and earlier each year. Which leads me to ask the question. Have you got your Christmas tree up yet?

Even though the Christmas tree only really came into popularity in Britain through the influence of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, these days, nearly everyone has a Christmas tree. They come in all sizes and shapes, and can be decorated in all sorts of ways.

Our Bible reading from Matthew’s gospel is a bit like a Christmas tree, standing tall, drawing the eye. And this might be the only tree you need this Christmas, so even if you don’t have a Christmas tree in your house, you can have this one. It’s the best Christmas tree of all.

And yet, on first glance, you might be put off. And even more so, if it’s the first page of Matthew’s gospel, the first page of the whole New Testament. Perhaps, as the new year comes, you’ll decide that you want to start reading the Bible every day. But rather than starting into the Old Testament and working through it, you think it might be better to start in the New Testament. So you open up your Bible to Matthew 1:1, and your heart sinks.

You want to get to reading about Jesus, but this is more like reading a page from the Jerusalem phone book. All those hard to pronounce names, many of them you’ve never heard of before, and you wonder, what on earth is Matthew playing at? Why does he start his gospel in this way?

You might be tempted to do what some kids do when they’re counting. We used to play hide and seek in a neighbour’s garden. Someone would count and the rest of us would scarper to climb up into the trees or hide behind a fence. But every so often, someone would cheat. They would count like this: 1, 2, skip a few, 99, 100, coming, ready or not!’ It might be tempting to skip these verses, but Matthew has deliberately included these verses here, right at the start. So what’s his purpose? Why does he write it this way?

Well, look at verse 1: ‘A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.’ Matthew is recording the genealogy, the family line of Jesus Christ. He’s showing us who Jesus the Christ is. And even in verse 1, he wants us to know for sure that Jesus is the son of David, the son of Abraham.

David was the great king of Israel, the shepherd boy king, whom God set over his people. And God had made a promise to David, that one of his sons would reign forever. Matthew is going to show, through his gospel, that Jesus is this promised king - the Christ.

But Jesus is also the son of Abraham - the one whom God called, with the promise of children, land, and blessing. And Matthew will show how Jesus is the promised Christ, ministering to the house of Israel, through whom blessings will come to all the nations.

So in these opening verses, Matthew is giving us a family tree - the father of so and so, who was the father of so and so, and so on. So let’s climb into this tree to see what we find. It’s a family tree, but it’s also the Christmas family tree - we wouldn’t have a Christmas Day without this unlikely family tree. So let’s explore it, using a Christmas tree as our guide.

The first thing you have to decide when you’re getting a Christmas tree is this - real or artificial? Artificial trees might last you years, and can look very realistic, but some prefer the smell and feel and look of a real Christmas tree. And that’s the first thing to notice about this Christmas family tree. It’s a real one. It’s 100% genuine.

These days, when it comes to family history, some people are really into it, while others don’t really know much about their ancestors. In my family, we can only go back about five generations. But for the Jews, they knew their family history. Their ancestry was important to them, so they knew who they were and where they came from.

So the names that we find here are all real people, tracing their family line from Abraham. This isn’t like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter - lots of names and stories, but all made up. And so, every name from Abraham in verse 2 through to Zerubbabel in verse 13 is mentioned at least once in the Old Testament. This is the real life fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. It’s a real Christmas family tree.

So, you’ve decided you want to get a real Christmas tree. You might go along to a Christmas tree farm where you pick your tree and they cut it down, or you go along to a shop, where they are sitting netted up and ready to go. I overheard someone the other day looking at netted Christmas trees saying that you never really know what it’s going to be like, if it’s a good one, until you get it home. Because you want a good one, a healthy looking one, one that will look good.

They say that you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. But God picked out this family for his Son to be born into. Jesus picked this family as his own. But if you were looking for a family tree, this might be one to avoid.

There are more than a few bad apples growing on this tree. Forget about the names that you don’t know, and focus for a moment on the names that you do. Abraham himself, the father of faith, and yet he passed off his wife Sarah as his sister to save his own skin, not once but twice! Abraham also took matters into his own hands when it seemed that God was too slow in fulfilling his promise of giving him a son. Instead, Abraham took Hagar, his wife’s slave girl and got her pregnant.

Isaac, the son of the promise, when he grew up, pulled the same trick of passing off his wife Rebekah as his sister to save his own skin. He also played the favouritism game, favouring one son, Esau over the other son, Jacob. Jacob, whose name means ‘he deceives’ was a slimy trickster, always out to take advantage of you. David was king, yes, but was also an adulterer and a murderer (attempting to cover up his adultery).

That’s the first fourteen generations, Abraham to David. The next fourteen generations, David to Jeconiah, that covers the period of the kings. Solomon who had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And the rest of the kings follow the pattern of good king, bad king, good king, bad king, but even the good kings aren’t that good. Then the kings are finished. The nation goes into exile to Babylon, and eventually returns, but with no more kings, suffering under foreign rule.

If you were to choose a family tree to work with, to bring the Christ from, it probably wouldn’t be this one. You’d write it off - too many problems, too many scandals, we’ll politely avoid them. Yet this is the tree that God chooses to work with. This is the family line that God has chosen for his Son to be born into.

So, when you’re getting your Christmas tree, you’ve decided you want a real tree; you’ve picked one, and when you bring it home, then you have to decorate it. In this family tree, we’ve seen that it’s real, that it’s maybe not the best, but that its decoration sets it apart. You see, this rotten family tree is lit up by God’s grace.

Yes, Abraham didn’t always get it right, and David was a murderer, but God shows his grace in using them for his glory, to advance his rescue plan. God’s grace is powerful enough to turn around the worst of sinners, to draw them to himself, and to use them in his plans.

But God’s grace is seen especially in this Christmas family tree, because of who Matthew includes in it. Sorry ladies, but normally, family trees and genealogies only ever focused on the men. It was who your father was that counted, not who your mum was. The family tree traced the fathers and sons. But Matthew includes the names of five women in this family tree, to highlight and focus on God’s grace in a most remarkable way.

Tamar (3) had been wronged by her father-in-law Judah, so tricked him by acting like a prostitute. Yet God used that incident to advance the line of promise. Rahab (5) was a pagan foreigner prostitute who lived in the city of Jericho up until the moment that Joshua marched the people of Israel around the walls and they collapsed. Rahab had hid the spies, and converted to trust in Israel’s God because she knew that he was the only true God. The rest of the city died, but she and her family lived, becoming part of this family tree.

Ruth was a Moabite, another foreigner who was brought into the people of Israel - married to Naomi’s son who died, then pledged her allegiance to Naomi to return to Bethlehem, being redeemed by Boaz, finding refuge under the wing of the God of Israel.

The wife of Uriah in verse 6, not named, is Bathsheba. David had seen her bathing on her roof, had sent for her and committed adultery with her. She became pregnant, so David sent for her husband, back from the war that David should have been fighting, but Uriah was more honourable, and wouldn’t go in to his wife when his fellow soldiers were still encamped on the battlefield. So David had him murdered.

And then, finally, in verse 16, there’s Mary. A teenage pregnancy, while engaged, the talk of the town. Just another scandal to add to the rest of the family’s history. Yet this is the family that God has chosen, protected and guided. In the weakness and failure, God’s grace shines ever clearer. This was the family Jesus had chosen to join, to be identified with, to fulfil the promise of becoming the son of Abraham (the chosen offspring in whom the nations of the earth would be blessed), the son of David (the royal king who would reign forever), the Christ (the anointed one).

When you look at your Christmas tree, even if it’s a bit wonky, or it doesn’t sit as you’d like, remember this Christmas family tree. God is at work to connect the Old Testament to the New Testament, to bring all his promises to be yes in Christ Jesus. This is who Jesus is. And God’s grace continues to shine as he bring us into this family, not because of our goodness, but because of his grace.

This sermon was preached in St Matthew's Church, Richhill on Sunday morning 9th December 2018.