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Matthew 1 — A genealogy full of surprises and a birth that changed everything
5 min read
doesn't ease you in. No warm introduction. No "once upon a time." He opens his entire with a list of names — a genealogy. And if you're to skip it, don't. Because this list is making an argument. It's saying: the person I'm about to tell you about didn't come out of nowhere. He was planned. Promised. And the road that led to him is wilder than you'd ever guess.
What follows is a family tree stretching from to , and then the story of how Jesus actually entered the world — through an impossible pregnancy, a terrified carpenter, and an with very specific instructions.
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started with credentials. In the ancient world, your family line was your résumé. It told people where you came from, what tribe you belonged to, whether you mattered. So Matthew laid it out — and the first line says everything:
This is the record of Jesus Christ — son of David, son of Abraham.
Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah — by Tamar. Perez led to Hezron, then Ram, then Amminadab, then Nahshon, then Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz — by Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed — by Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse. And Jesse was the father of King David.
Now here's what makes this list remarkable. In a culture where genealogies were meant to impress, Matthew kept including women — and not the women you'd expect. disguised herself as a prostitute to get from her -in-. was a and an actual prostitute who hid Israelite spies in . was a foreigner from — an outsider by every measure. These weren't the names you put on the family Christmas card. They were the names most people would have quietly left off. Matthew put them in bold.
Then the family tree moved through the kings — and it didn't get cleaner:
David was the father of Solomon — by the wife of Uriah. Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Then Asaph, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amos, Josiah. And Josiah was the father of Jechoniah and his brothers — right around the time Israel was hauled off to Babylon.
Did you catch the detail? "By the wife of ." didn't even name — he named the man wronged. That's not an accident. It's a reminder. David, the greatest king in history, the man after God's own heart, had a line that ran straight through and murder. And then, generation after generation, you get a mix of faithful kings and absolute disasters. prayed down . was one of the worst rulers ever had. Same family. Same bloodline.
God didn't curate a story. He worked through the real one.
The genealogy continued through the and into the quiet centuries most people forget about:
After the exile to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel. Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel. Then Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim, Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob. And Jacob was the father of Joseph — the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus was born, the one called the Messiah.
From Abraham to David — fourteen generations. From David to the exile — fourteen generations. From the exile to the Messiah — fourteen generations.
That structure — fourteen, fourteen, fourteen — was deliberate. was showing a pattern. History wasn't random. It was building toward something. And notice how the last line shifts. The whole list says "so-and-so was the of so-and-so." But when it gets to , the grammar changes. It doesn't say was the father of Jesus. It says Jesus was born of , and Joseph was her husband. Even the sentence structure is making a theological point.
Think about it: forty-two generations of waiting. Centuries of kings and exiles and silence. And then — right at the end of the line — everything changes.
Now told the actual story. And it's not the sanitized version you see on greeting cards:
Here's how the birth of Jesus Christ happened. His mother Mary was engaged to Joseph. But before they came together, she was found to be pregnant — through the Holy Spirit. Joseph was a good man. He didn't want to humiliate her publicly. So he decided to end things quietly.
Let that sit for a moment. Put yourself in shoes. You're engaged. You've made plans. And then you find out your fiancée is pregnant, and you know the child isn't yours. In that culture, a betrothal was legally binding — breaking it required something like a divorce. Joseph had every right to make this public. He could have dragged her name through the community. Instead, he chose to protect her — even while his own heart was breaking.
That tells you something about the kind of man God chose to raise his Son.
was still wrestling with this — lying awake, weighing his options — when God interrupted:
An Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said:
"Joseph, son of David — don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. The child she's carrying was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She's going to have a son, and you will name him Jesus — because he will save his people from their sins."
then added:
All of this happened to fulfill what God had spoken through the Prophet Isaiah:
"The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" — which means, God with us.
Two names. Two meanings. — "he saves." Immanuel — "God with us." The baby wasn't just a birth. He was the answer to a that had been hanging in the air for seven hundred years, since first spoke those words. And the way God delivered on that promise — through an unmarried girl in a nowhere town, announced to a confused carpenter in a dream — was nothing like what anyone would have planned.
That's the pattern with God. He doesn't show up the way you'd design it. He shows up in ways that make the whole thing clearly his idea, not yours.
The ending is quiet. Almost understated. But don't miss what it means:
When Joseph woke up, he did exactly what the angel told him. He married Mary. He didn't sleep with her until after the baby was born. And he named the boy Jesus.
No dramatic speech. No negotiation. No "let me think about it for a few weeks." woke up and obeyed. He took on a situation that would have looked terrible from the outside — a pregnant fiancée, whispers from the neighbors, a story nobody would believe. And he walked straight into it because God told him to.
Sometimes looks like trusting a dream when everything you can see tells you to walk away. Joseph couldn't prove any of this to anyone. He just had a word from God and a decision to make. He chose to trust it. And because he did, the had a home, a name, and a who would protect him through what was coming next.