Who Are You Really? (Part 1, Matthew 1:1-17)

One of the standard ways to fill additional hours of TV footage surrounding the 3 hours of the Super Bowl consists of human interest segments. By delving into the back story of the players' lives, you care more about them as people and not just as numbers on a jersey. There are several standard plots: local boy makes good, struggling through the death of a father/mother/child, the second chance, fulfilling the promise, and so on. We know these story types (should we say stereo types?) so well that we can listen for 30 seconds and figure out how it will end. Those brief video segments help us place the person, not in terms of their few minutes of fame on the grid-iron, but in terms of their entire life.

When we come to the first chapter of Matthew, the author quickly introduces our biographical subject (Jesus):

A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:  - Matthew 1:1

Hidden in these few words are the clues that give an early reader of this book a quick sketch about who Jesus is and why should we care. Those clues are the four names Matthew uses:

1. Jesus. Matthew explains later in the chapter than Jesus was given this name (the Greek form of the name Joshua) because "because he will save his people from their sins" (verse 21).  Literally, his name means "Yahweh is rescue." The name Jesus/Joshua was probably a common name. One of Pauls' companions was named "Jesus" (Col. 4:11). But Matthew emphasizes the angel's words to focus on the rescue of the people from their sins, rather than the rescue from the sinners. Jesus was, in a sense, a second Joshua, leading the people from the 'desert' of sin, into the new hope of the kingdom 'promised land'.
2. Christ. Jesus was the Christ (Greek) or the Messiah (Hebrew). Having a last name or family name was not always common. People were often identified as a child of their parents (Jesus, son of Joseph), or someone from a particular town (Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus the Nazarene) or by their general relationship with some long-ago forefather (Bildad the Shuhite) or by their profession (Cooper/Chandler/Smith). within a tribe Meaning "the anointed one" it indicated someone set apart for a special role by God, either a priest (Exo. 40:3) or a king (2 Sam 5:3). To Matthew's readers, the Messiah was the God-promised deliverer, restorer of purity and destroyer of Israel's enemies.
3. David. Jesus is identified as being the "son of David". Matthew stakes a claim that Jesus is the claimant to the promised God made to King David. That promise, made about 1,000 years prior, stated that David would have a descendant on the throne of Israel forever.
4. Abraham. Jesus is also identified as being the "son of Abraham". Here, Matthew appeals to the memory of a different agreement (or covenant) that God had made with the great Bible patriarch Abraham, where he said that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed.

In a single verse, Matthew tells his readers they should expect the fulfillment of God's promises in a single person. He would rule, he would deliver and he would bless.

Next time, we will look at the exceptional nature of Jesus' genealogy.