We have been taking a look at this genealogy in Matthew and we have been trying to probe why it is that Matthew begins His Gospel with this genealogy.
Some of the answers we’ve given thus far are that,
1.) Matthew wants us to know that while Jesus is the climax of the story Matthew is now continuing to tell at the same time there is a good deal of context that must be understood in order for the climax to make sense. The genealogy is a shorthand way of establishing the context.
2.) In giving the genealogy Matthew at the same time reminds us of the unitary nature of the Scriptures. The New Testament cannot be understood apart from the Old Testament and the Old Testament can not be understood apart from the New Testament.
3.) In giving the genealogy Matthews has, in an abbreviated form, laid out the problem to which Jesus is the answer. Those that knew their Old Testament history would remember, through the citing of this genealogy, that God had not yet fulfilled His promise to send a deliverer to rescue not only Israel but also the world. Jesus is that deliverer.
4.) In giving the genealogy Matthew thwarts any attempt to wrest Jesus by those who want their own “personal Jesus,” or their own “Jesus for a cause.” Matthew’s genealogy forces us to deal with a very particular Jesus that can’t be understood apart from his lineage.
The telling of God’s story that has Jesus as the culminating and completing point of this genealogy is the story from which Jesus acquires His identity and mission and it is the story to which He gives significance and authority. Without this Jesus this genealogy is just one more list. Without this genealogy Jesus is just one more baby with an interesting birth narrative.
Metaphors
If the genealogy is the setting of a royal table with all of its finery and precision then Jesus is the meal for which the royal table has been prepared.
If the genealogy is all the music that leads to grand finale then Jesus is the grand finale.
If the genealogy is all the planning, preparations and decoration that goes into a wedding then Jesus is the wedding ceremony itself.
As we continue to consider the relationship of the prologue to God’s story (the promises of the Old Testament) with the climax of God’s Story (the fulfillment that is the New Testament) we must be careful that we don’t de-contextualize or deflate God’s story into a bunch of abstractions (Here is the promise [OT] — there is the fulfillment [NT]). We must take the story in its concrete reality reminding ourselves that in this story we have real history with real people with a real God who is unfolding salvation history.
When we read Scripture as one whole then … when we read the genealogy in the light of Christ several benefits in our understanding of Scripture are realized,
1.) Whatever significance a particular event had, in terms of Israel’s own experience of God is affirmed and validated. Those historical events aren’t spiritualized away. When we understand and affirm the import of the redemptive event for God’s old covenant people it will give us a more profound understanding of the import of the Cross for us. The Old will shed light on the new.
2.) Now that we have the end of the story in Christ shining back on the earlier part of the story we are able to find even more significance in the earlier story. The new will shed light on the old.
The new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed.
Example — The Exodus
New shedding light on the old — The Exodus teaches us what God calls deliverance. In the Exodus we see that God is characterized by care for His people who are oppressed and is motivated to action for justice on their behalf. This character of God and His redemption are so central in the Exodus story that they become definitive of the character of God and all that redemption and deliverance comes to mean.
Now w/ the coming of Christ what we learn of God and how He redeems and delivers His people does not go away. In deliverance and redemption God remains concerned for His people who are oppressed and God still desires justice. With the coming of Christ the redemption we expect in Christ must not be totally divorced from the kind of redemption that was defined in the Old Testament.
However when we read the Exodus event with the light of the fullness of the redemptive work of Christ shining upon it we see that the Exodus deliverance is not about political, social, or economic freedom before it is about the lifting of Spiritual oppression. Israel was in bondage in Exodus not primarily because they were suffering from economic disparity, or social inequity, or political tyranny. Israel’s bondage and oppression were what they were because they were in subjection to Egypt’s gods. The economic disparity, social inequity and political tyranny were the fruit of spiritual bondage. The Redemption that God conferred them rescued them economically, socially, and politically precisely because it delivered them from their spiritual chains.
Evidence God’s telling of Pharaoh “Let my people go THAT THEY MAY WORSHIP ME.” The explicit purpose of Israel’s Redemption and deliverance was that they would know YAHWEH in the grace of redemption and covenant relationship.
So, the Exodus, for all the comprehensiveness of what it achieved for Israel in terms of economic liberty, political freedom, and social release, points beyond those realities to a greater need for deliverance from spiritual bondage to covenant accord with God. Such a deliverance was accomplished by Jesus Christ (prefigured in the Passover Lamb) and can only be known by looking to Christ. This is so true that we can say apart from trusting in Christ of the Bible the pursuit of other freedoms amount to just so much windmill tilting.
Yet if at the same time we allow the old to shed light on the new we must insist that though redemption is first personal and individual it is not only personal and individual. God’s mighty act of the exodus was more than just a parable to illustrate personal and individual salvation. It is true that the redemption of the Cross breaks the bondage of my personal sin and releases me from the effects of sin but it is also true that Redemption, when it is widely unleashed, delivers God’s people from the cruelty, and oppression brought upon God’s people by those who are of the seed of the serpent and are alien to the covenant. Spiritual freedom when widely disbursed never fails to bring social, economic, and political freedom because spiritual freedom is the well out of which the water of social, economic, and political freedom flows. Forgiveness of sin delivers us from the Kingdom of darkness both in its spiritual dimension and in how that spiritual dimension manifests itself concretely in space and time.
The point here is that atonement and forgiveness of one’s individual sin is not the only word on what the Exodus redemption was about. It was also a deliverance from an external evil and the suffering and injustice it caused, by means of a shattering defeat of the evil power of the seed of the serpent that was holding Israel in bondage.
And here is the kicker …
If, then, God’s climatic work of redemption through the cross transcends, but also embodies and includes, the scope of all His redemptive activity as previously displayed in the Old testament our Gospel must anticipate the Exodus model of liberation once a tipping point of Spiritually delivered people trusting Christ is reached.
The light of the Old Testament upon the New teaches us the inadequacies of relegating the redemption God brings to some spiritual individual realm. The light of the Old Testament upon the New teaches us that the redemption God offers in Christ is a redemption that though it begins in individuals moves out from there to touch every area of life so that redeemed individuals being set free in themselves, by the power of the Holy Spirit, visit that freedom that Christ visited upon them to every area of life in which God has called them.
So then we can see that when we take OT history seriously in relation to its completion in Jesus Christ, a two-way process is at work, yielding a double benefit in our understanding of the whole Bible. On the one hand, we are able to see the full significance of the OT story in the light of where it leads — the climatic achievement of Christ; and on the other hand, we are able to appreciate the full dimensions of what God did through Christ in the light of His historical declarations and demonstrations of intent in the OT.
In the Exodus we have used just one example but the examples could be multiplied many times over.
Dear Bret,
It is not often that I can say I wish I’d said that, but this is one of them. That was terrific. I am going to post this one in my notes on facebook so it will get more airtime.
Blessings brother