Both Matthew and Luke record the genealogy of Jesus—Matthew from the line of Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, and Luke from the line of Mary, his mother.  Why is this significant?  Why would the writers include such a tedious list in their Gospels?  Just to bore us?  Or to throw in some unwanted details?  No. It shows us that God always had the plan of salvation.  From the moment sin entered the Garden of Eden, God had a plan.

The genealogy of Jesus is found not only in the New Testament, but we can follow his ancestry all the way through the Old Testament.  God’s son was ready to die for our sins long before the birth of Adam and Eve’s first son, Cain (Genesis 4:25).

Immediately after Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, God pronounced a curse on Satan (who was disguised as the serpent), and on Eve and Adam.  But within that curse there is also a blessing—the Protevangelium—the first Gospel message found in the Bible in Genesis 3:15.

^(NLT)  Genesis 3:15   “From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies.  He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

God tells Satan that his offspring and the woman’s offspring would be enemies. Who is Satan’s offspring? John 8:39–44 answers that question for us:

^(NLT)  John 8:39–44   "Our father is Abraham," they declared. "No," Jesus replied, "for if you were children of Abraham, you would follow his good example.  I told you the truth I heard from God, but you are trying to kill me. Abraham wouldn't do a thing like that.  No, you are obeying your real father when you act that way." They replied, "We were not born out of wedlock! Our true Father is God himself."Jesus told them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, because I have come to you from God. I am not here on my own, but he sent me.  Why can't you understand what I am saying? It is because you are unable to do so!  For you are the children of your father the Devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning and has always hated the truth. There is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.

The person who is Satan’s offspring is the person who hears Jesus’ words but does not believe them. In the Bible there is no neutral territory—agnostics and atheists don’t exist!  We are either children of our heavenly Father through the eternal gift of salvation that only Jesus can give (and we receive this gift because the Father draws us to himself), or we are children of the world, of Satan. Genesis 3:15 says the two lines would be enemies, but eventually the Woman’s seed would crush Satan’s head, though Satan would strike his heel. This was fulfilled when Christ hung on the cross. Satan thought he had the victory. He thought God’s plan was thwarted because Christ hung dying on a cross. Satan had no idea that the victory would come when Christ rose from the dead. Through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, sin and death—the very things Satan loves—were defeated.

In Genesis 4:1 Eve has her first son, Cain.  Her words, as translated by Martin Luther, are “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth The Man, The Lord.”  Our Bibles don’t translate it this way, but this is the literal translation.  Eve is already expectant about the Savior whom the Lord had promised.  She and every Jewish woman following her would anxiously await the possibility that they might be the one to give birth to the Messiah.  When Mary was told she would be the one, she was not confused about whom she would give birth to, she was confused about how.  However, we quickly learn that Cain was not the one because he murdered his brother Abel, and God cast him from his presence (Genesis 4:16)

 ^(NIV) I John 3:12   “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.  And why did he murder him?  Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.”

In Genesis 4: 25 another son (Seth) is born to Adam and Eve, and it is through his line that Jesus would come. God would protect this line until the day the Savior was born.

TWO GENEALOGIES

Luke’s genealogy tells us of this line, Mary’s line. He traces Jesus’ ancestry back to Adam, the son of God. Matthew’s genealogy only goes back to Abraham because Matthew’s target reading audience was the Jews. Matthew wants the Jews to know that their long-awaited King had come. For the Jew to accept the Messiah, they had to first accept him as King. So Matthew gives us three groups of fourteen generations each coinciding with three time periods in Israel’s history. They are:    

Abraham to David—the theocracy    

King David to the exile—the monarchy    

The exile to the time of Christ—the hierarchy

Luke wants to present Jesus as Savior of the world. His target audience is Gentile because he was Gentile, too.  Using Luke’s genealogy we can trace the genealogies listed in Genesis. The two are almost identical with only a few names inserted in Luke’s that are not found in Genesis.  Genesis 5 begins with Seth’s line and takes us to Noah. This is the line from which the Savior would come.  Though God saw in his righteous judgment the need to destroy the world and all its inhabitants through a flood, he kept his promise from Genesis 3:15 that a Man would come. He preserved Noah (from Seth’s direct line) and Noah’s son to keep the remnant of his offspring alive. 

Noah had three sons—Shem, Ham and Japheth—and God chose to keep the line alive through Shem. In Genesis 11:10–32 we follow the line of Shem until we reach Abram, or as most of know him, Abraham. At this point God does not change his plan, but he gets more specific with it. He chose to build a nation through one man, Abram. The purpose of this nation is to be his witnesses, his chosen servants. They were to be a priestly and holy nation. From them would come the Messiah and they were to declare his wonders to the world.

^(NIV) Exodus 19:6    “You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.

^(NIV) Isaiah 43:10   “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.  Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me."

In Genesis 12 God calls Abram to this mighty task—to leave his own country and go to a place God would show him and where he would make him into a great nation. Abram obeyed and many years later God gave Abraham and his wife Sarah a child, Isaac.  The line continues through Isaac to the nation of Israel and ultimately to the Messiah.  Through Isaac came Jacob and Esau and God chose Jacob to further the line. Jacob, later named Israel, had twelve sons. These sons would become the twelve tribes of Israel, the people who would be that priestly nation of servants to the Lord.

In Genesis 49:8–11 Jacob is dying.  He pronounces a blessing on each of his twelve sons, but on Judah he pronounces a very special one. He tells Judah that his brothers would bow down to him, and that he would rule over them until the time came to give the scepter to another, the one to whom it belonged—the one we now call Jesus.  Again, God is getting very specific with his plan. He is not changing it.  He is narrowing it.  David, Israel’s beloved King, would come from the line of Judah.  In 2^nd Samuel 7:5–16 the prophet Nathan reveals to David that God has promised that his house would rule over Israel forever.  This promise was fulfilled in Christ who came from the line of David and now rules over Israel, and over us all, forever.

This is where the genealogy of Matthew and Luke intersect. Both Mary and Joseph were from the line of David and it is here that we begin to see prophecy fulfilled in such a way that only God’s hand could do it.  The line was preserved from the first Adam to the second Adam, Christ.

^(NIV) 1 Corinthians 15:45–46    So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.  The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.  The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.