Matthew 1:1-15

The book of the generation.

The lessons of Christ’s genealogy

1. It is a proof of the reality of Christ’s humanity.

2. It suggests the relation of Christ’s work to the whole human race.

3. It marks the importance of the birth of Christ as a historical epoch. Let it remind us also

(1) Of the shortness of human life;

(2) Of the subserviency of persons of every class and character to the purposes of God’s moral government. (G. Brooks.)

The double use of genealogies

1. A profane use for ostentation.

2. A holy use

(1) For the observing of judicial laws;

(2) For the distinguishing the church from those without;

(3) For the setting forth the pedigree of the Messiah, lest it should be thought that he were some obscure or secret person. (R. Ward.)

The old and new in Jesus

The first record is the book of the generation of Jesus Christ. What does this signify?

1. A man’s beginnings, a man’s ancestors, have something to do with both his character and his life.

2. Christ was the sacred heir of all the ancient world.

3. The genealogy reminds us how all the past was preparing for Jesus.

4. But more than all, the generations of Jesus Christ show us the birth of the new world, and the new time, and the new institutions, which are to end in the perfect glory of the Father and the perfect blessedness of the race. (W. H. Davison.)

The genealogy of Christ

1. There is much in good lineage.

2. Sin has tainted the blood of the best races of men, and frequently makes itself manifest.

3. God’s grace can flow through very crooked human channels.

4. No man stands alone.

Lessons of Christ’s genealogy

1. This table of our Lord’s genealogy, inserted in the beginning of the gospel, invests the book with an air of naturalness and reality, which probably nothing else could have done so well. No man writing fiction would have ventured to preface it with a dry list of obscure names.

2. It connects Jesus and His teachings with all God’s revelations and promises which had been given before. It binds up, as in one sheaf, all generations of the church in one uniform moral system.

3. The Lord’s ancestral roll serves to identify Him in closer connection and sympathy with the race whom, as their God, lie came to redeem.

4. The account of those who were Christ’s ancestry before His first advent suggest the anxious inquiry, whether our names are written in the Book of Life as members of His spiritual family. (J. B. Owen, M. A.)

Very man

1. He is a man.

2. He is a Jew.

3. He is a king.

(1) God’s purpose is to bless by a man;

(2) To teach by a man;

(3) To judge by a man;

(4) To rule by a man;

(5) To link earth and heaven together by a man. (Dr. Bonar.)

The text appears at first sight like a valley of dry bones without any life or fertility, or a rugged pass that leads to green pastures. Nevertheless, there are important lessons in it respecting the human race and its relation to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I. It shows the common origin of the race. St. Luke traces the ancestry of Jesus to Adam-the head of the race.

II. The physical connection of the race. Having sprung from a common head, there must be a physical connection between the various members.

(1) War seems doubly barbarous and unnatural.

(2) Men ought to sympathize with and promote one another’s welfare apart from Christianity, etc.

III. The common saviour of the race.

IV. The moral distinction of the race. What a mixture of good and bad there is in the genealogy! (W. Edwards.)