Chapter 3 - The Second Rejection of the King (Part 2 of 8)

 

The Legality of This Kingship

It is clear from the outset that Matthew wishes to portray Jesus as the King. This is the theme of his gospel account. Throughout the chapters and verses, time and time again, Jesus is lifted up as the King of Kings, and His Kingdom—The Kingdom of Heaven, or sometimes called The Kingdom of God—are the focal points of every word. If you want to know Who Jesus is, why He came, why He lived on Earth, why He died, Why He rose again, and what He taught all along the way about that Kingdom, including what we must do to enter it, Matthew makes it vibrant and visible, if a person has the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

In this development of the overall theme, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus in chapter 1, verses 1-17, offers interesting information which simply proves just how God Almighty is the lone and master operator of the machine that is human history. In these first seventeen verses, we have the lineage of Joseph listed, the husband of Mary. For most people today, genealogies are just something to explore in an effort to find out if they are related to someone famous or infamous, using DNA services to help determine their pedigree. For many readers of the Bible, they just skip the genealogies because they are “boring.” However, there is nothing in God’s Word that is there simply as “window dressing.” Every chapter, every verse has a reason for being there, for God could not put everything down on paper, otherwise, the Bible would be voluminous (John 21:25).

In Jewish culture, the husband’s or man’s lineage was needed to establish legality in everyday living and all legal proceedings. All taxes, land and property transactions, inheritances, etc., were tied to a person’s lineage or pedigree.

Having said that, there is an interesting little lesson contained in Joseph’s genealogy that must be addressed before we can move on in our overall study. In this lineage, we have a person referenced in verse 11 by the name of Jehoiachin (some versions call him “Coniah”). According to Jeremiah 22:24-30, Jehoiachin was cursed by God. What was the curse, specifically?

“As sure as I am the living God”—God’s Decree—“even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, I’d pull you off and give you to those who are out to kill you, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Chaldeans, and then throw you, both you and your mother, into a foreign country, far from your place of birth. There you’ll both die. You’ll be homesick, desperately homesick, but you’ll never get home again. Is Jehoiachin a leaky bucket,  a rusted-out pail good for nothing? Why else would he be thrown away, he and his children,  thrown away to a foreign place? O land, land, land,  listen to God’s Message! This is God’s verdict: Write this man off as if he were childless,  a man who will never amount to anything. Nothing will ever come of his life.  He’s the end of the line, the last of the kings” (The Message/TLB).¹

God was so angry with Jehoiachin, he was cursed with the kind of curse that would haunt any human king: “You are going to die at the hands of a ruthless and powerful enemy, and your offspring will not carry on the family line. It is your kingship that became the final nail in the coffin of the nation of Judah.”

Ouch.

But how can Jehoiachin be “as if he were childless” when he had children? It meant he was not going to have any offspring who would be allowed to sit on the throne of David. Hence, the “as if he were” part of that phrase.

When you look at this curse at first on its face, it immediately raises some questions with Joseph’s genealogy in Matthew 1, because it seems the curse of Jehoiachin would nullify Jesus from inheriting the right to rule from David. However, two things must be noted here. First, Matthew is very careful not to list Joseph as Jesus’s “blood” father. When he gets to the end of the genealogy, he changes the verbiage. Up until that point, the phrase “was the father of” is used consistently throughout the genealogy. But when we get to verse 16, we read, “Jacob was the father of Joseph,” but it does not say, “Joseph was the father of Jesus.” Instead, it says Joseph was, “the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” This is because Joseph was not the father of Jesus, as we learn in verses 18-25.

This solves the Jehoiachin issue, meaning Jesus doesn’t fall under the curse of Jehoiachin as a blood relative would. However, it still leaves us with a genealogy problem, for Jesus had to be of the line of David by pedigree (i.e., be a blood relative) in order to be a legal heir to the throne.

And this is where Luke’s gospel account comes into play.

The Lineage of Mary  

In Luke 3:23-38, we have the lineage of Mary, a Jewish woman. This genealogical account not only travels backwards in time through her genealogy, it also goes all the way back, past David, past Abraham, past Adam even, to God Himself, because God, the Father, is the Father of us all (Matthew 5:9, 16, 45, 48; 6:1, 9, 26; 7:11; 18:14; 23:9; Mark 11:25-26; Luke 11:2, 13; John 12:28; 17:1).

Thus, Jesus had the legal right to rule because of Joseph’s lineage, and He had the blood lines of Mary’s lineage. By Jewish law, Jesus could be the legal heir to the throne of David, according to Matthew’s account and Luke’s account. He could be that “Righteous Branch of David” spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah. This shows just how in control God is of everything. Even a curse smack dab in the middle of a genealogy could not prevent Him from orchestrating the lives of two Jewish teenagers, growing up in the same vicinity, from being pledged to one another and eventually married, all the while making sure the Messiah’s lineage was pure and legal.

Thought for the Week:

If God can orchestrate history, centuries of Jewish history in this particular case, and bring about the exact moment in time He needs to have happen, then can He do the same in our lives? Of course He can. However, do we always live like that?

Sadly, the answer is “no” more often than it is “yes,” I think.

We used to sing a song many years ago, particularly to our children. Even sang it in the kids’ Sunday school classes and children’s church. The song went like this:  

“My God is so big,

So strong and so mighty,

There’s nothing my God cannot do.

My God is so big,

So strong and so mighty,

There’s nothing my God cannot do.

The mountains are His,

The Valleys are His,

The stars are His handiwork too.

My God is so big,

So strong and so mighty,

There’s nothing my God cannot do.” 

Is He?

If so, then why do we doubt? Why do we wander in despair? Why do we grumble and complain? Could it be that we do not see Him as the King? Could it be that we do not view this life through the eyes of the Almighty? Therefore, we do not see His kingdom? The one that is at hand (Matthew 3:2; 4:17)?

It’s a matter of faith, isn’t it?

 

NEXT WEEK:

We’ll look at prophecy pertaining to the King.

Endnotes

1. It should be noted that this passage in Jeremiah, which denotes the end of the nation Judah because of their wicked, human kings, is immediately followed by chapter 23 where God tells of how He is going to raise up for David a “righteous Branch” (v. 5). This “Branch” will “reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.” Jeremiah goes on to prophesy that “in His days, Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety,” and “His name will be ‘The LORD Our Righteous Savior’” (vv. 5-6). 

The “human king experiment” started in 1 Samuel 8 was a catastrophic failure. One unified nation was split into two warring ones and ended up in separate captivities to the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The elders in 1 Samuel 8 got their wish. They wanted to be like all the other nations around them. If it were not for God, Israel would have been exactly like them—nothing more than a few paragraphs in some history books and some relics buried in the dirt for archeologists to use to piece together what their culture was like. But God made a promise. And only a Savior from the line of David could pick Judah and Israel up from the ashes and bring them back to the Promised Land.

Pictures courtesy of  Pixabay & Unsplash and the following photographers/artists:

"Matthew" - Pixabay by Scottish Guy

"Luke" - Pixabay by wisconsin pictures

"Strong Boy" - "Upsplash by Ben White