26-1004a - Detailed Summary

Jim greets the congregation and says he enjoys lessons built as character studies. He chose Joseph the carpenter knowing it would be difficult, because Scripture records very little about him, and he expects the morning lesson to be short. The study is in two parts, with the conclusion reserved for the evening. This morning he presents Joseph as a man entrusted with the most important task, a work of great honor and privilege: he was counted worthy to be everything a father should be to a child who was not his own. Joseph was a Jew born in Bethlehem and a direct descendant of King David through Solomon’s branch of the royal line. Like many believers before him, he was a man of faith and obedience who would have fit in Hebrews 11 beside the other ancient faithful. He was the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Almost nothing is known of him, and not a single word of his is recorded in Scripture, so his actions must speak for his character. Jim says the congregation can learn from Joseph’s faith and apply those lessons.

Jim returns to Matthew 1:1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. He notes that Matthew does not open by calling his work the gospel or the good news of Jesus Christ, but the book of the genealogy of the Christ. The document is built on a genealogy because proving that Jesus is the Christ is its whole point. Matthew traces the bloodline back to Abraham, which Jim calls good news and an important claim he will return to. The proofs that validate Jesus as the Christ begin with the genealogy, and through the rest of the book Matthew shows that Jesus is both king and Christ. Abraham and David stand for those claims: the promises made to Abraham prove he is the Christ, and the link to David proves he is a king. Matthew finishes the line in verse 16 with Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Jim says God recognized Joseph as the head of his new holy family, and that Matthew established Jesus' claim to the throne even through the stepfather’s bloodline.

Jim turns to Mary’s line as Luke records it. Luke 3:23 says that Jesus, when he began to teach, was about thirty, being the son, as was supposed, of Joseph, the son of Eli. Heli is a variant of Eli, the form in the reading Roger used, and Jim identifies Eli as Mary’s father. Joseph is listed as Eli’s son because ancient genealogies named only males; in modern terms he would be called Eli’s son-in-law. This is nevertheless Mary’s bloodline, the line that actually runs in Jesus' veins, and Luke carries that human line all the way back to Adam. Jim calls the pedigree remarkable and notes that his own father traced their family into the Middle Ages of England and then lost the trail. Luke follows Mary through King David’s son Nathan, as Luke 3:31 shows, securing Jesus' legal and physical right to David’s throne. Joined to Joseph’s direct link to David through Solomon, that gives Jesus a legitimate claim to the throne of Israel. He could not be a Levitical priest under the requirements of the Law of Moses, yet Jim sees an inference of a priestly, Levitical connection to Aaron in Mary’s line. Luke 1:5 records that her cousin Elizabeth was married to Zechariah the priest, and when Mary visited Elizabeth, already six months pregnant, Elizabeth was called one of the daughters of Aaron. That confirms a priestly connection in Jesus' actual blood, something uncommon in Israel. It does not make him a priest under the Law, but it fits the thought of a priest in the order of Melchizedek, a priest forever. In Jim’s reading, Christ’s bloodline unites the royal line of David and the priestly line of Levi.

Jim lingers on the statement that Jesus was about thirty when he began to teach. Thirty has Old Testament roots in temple service: a man was trained at twenty-five, mentored for five years, entered service at thirty, and worked until fifty, when Numbers 4 speaks of retirement, a twenty-year term of duty. Jim jokes about how that plan was lost and admits he loves chasing rabbits, then returns to the text. Jesus began at thirty, the son, as was supposed, of Joseph, the son of Eli. Every translation Jim checked carries that caveat, sometimes even in parentheses. In English, "supposed" means imagined or believed to be true. The Greek word is nomizo, which he defines as to do properly by law, to gain regard, to think, or to suppose. The point is that people of that time took Jesus to be legitimately the carpenter’s son. There were rumors of illegitimacy, and the Pharisees and priests Jesus contended with, especially in the temple, would at times malign him.

Matthew, himself Jewish, wrote chiefly for a Jewish audience that was waiting for the Messiah, knew he must come from David’s line, and understood the promises God made to Abraham. Matthew opens with what Jim calls a confession of faith, naming Jesus the Messiah and the fulfillment of those promises, and he wants his kinsmen and every later reader to believe that Jesus is the Christ. Joseph had an important part in forming the child who would become that Messiah. Abraham was the man God chose out of the world of his day to make a special people for himself, and God gave him three main promises: that he and Sarah would have a son and that the family would become a great nation; that the land of Canaan would be an inheritance for his children; and that one future child would bless all the nations of the earth, an extension of the seed promise made to Eve in the garden. When God tested Abraham by the offering of Isaac, the angel of Yahweh called a second time and, in Genesis 22:15–18, swore by himself that because Abraham had not withheld his only son, God would bless him and multiply his seed as the stars of heaven and the sand of the seashore, that his seed would possess the gate of his enemies, and that in his seed all nations of the earth would be blessed, because Abraham had obeyed. Jim identifies the mountain where Isaac was offered as the same place where God would offer Jesus, the fulfillment of the word that God would provide the lamb, the very thing Abraham lived through. David received the Davidic covenant, the promise that one of his descendants would rule on his throne forever. Jim quotes 2 Samuel 7:16–17: the house and kingdom would be established forever, the throne established forever, and Nathan spoke to David according to that vision. Daniel foresaw the same everlasting kingdom. In Daniel 2:44–45, in the days of those kings the God of heaven sets up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or left to another people; it will break and destroy the other kingdoms and stand forever, the stone cut from the mountain without hands that shattered iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold, a dream that is certain and an interpretation that is trustworthy. Jim identifies that kingdom as the one Christ would establish, his church. Matthew therefore begins the Messiah’s genealogy with Abraham and David, the two men to whom God made promises recorded in Scripture, written proof that Jesus, who fit every promise, prediction, and prophecy, is the Messiah.

Matthew shows the Christ’s line through the stepfather, Joseph, a lineage to which Jesus has no biological claim. Jim argues that some things are as important as genes and DNA, or more so: the essence of Joseph’s life, his morals, his values, and his character, carried in that family line. The names in the genealogy are people whose faithfulness Scripture already records, among them Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Boaz and Ruth, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah. They were devoted to God, after God’s own heart, and true believers. Those traits pass from generation to generation and establish a family legacy of faithfulness. Joseph possessed that legacy and passed those traits to Jesus.

Jim closes the lineage discussion with Mary’s line, which Luke 3:23 begins and Luke 3:37–38 ends: the son of Methuselah, of Enoch, of Jared, of Mahalaleel, of Cainan, of Enos, of Seth, of Adam, the son of God. Those names matter because they are the human line of the seed promise, and the line ends with Mary, who bore the Son of God, the Christ, the promised seed, Jesus. Those who believe in Christ and become Christians enter that seed family as children of God and citizens of Christ’s kingdom. There is another seed line, the seed of the evil one, cursed in Eden for tempting the couple into sin. God told Adam, Eve, and the serpent that Eve’s seed would crush Satan’s head, and that there would be enmity, which Jim defines as ill will, hatred, unfriendly disposition, and malevolence, between her seed and the serpent’s seed. He traces that enmity through history in hatred first of Israel, then of the Jews, and now in the world’s hatred of Christians. Two seed lines mean two kingdoms: the kingdom of Christ, which is his church, and the kingdom of Satan. Christ speaks in the Gospels of Satan having a kingdom, and 1 John 3:12 says not to be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. Cain was the first citizen of Satan’s kingdom. By Noah’s day that kingdom filled most of the world, and only a few believers remained. Peter counts eight in all, Noah’s family, which is why God destroyed the world of that time. Jim calls it a warning and a type of what is coming. Satan’s kingdom is expanding and seems overwhelming, and the world of this age is reserved for fire and will be destroyed because of that kingdom and because of those who refuse citizenship in God’s kingdom. He recalls that Steve, in the morning class, spoke of the innocents who are saved: those who cannot or do not understand sin and right and wrong are automatic members of the kingdom of God. Once a person understands right and wrong and chooses to sin, that person becomes a citizen of Satan’s kingdom. The only escape is to seek asylum in the kingdom of God by believing in Jesus, the Son of God.

Jim says he will save the remainder for the evening, when he will conclude Joseph’s life and look at every place Joseph appears in the Gospels. He then offers the invitation. Anyone who has not yet sought asylum in God’s kingdom is given the opportunity, and the church will gladly help. Anyone who, though a brother of Christ, has been on vacation in the pig pen of Satan’s kingdom and has grown dirty wallowing in that mud, and who needs the prayers of the church and repentance, may come forward to be prayed for and restored. He asks the congregation to stand and sing the song of invitation.