Matthew 1:3–6

Judah is the royal line. "Our Lord was descended from Judah." This shows, in a truly marvellous way, how the grace of God rises in majesty above human sin, and wins a glorious victory over circumstances that show up man's utter weakness. "Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar!" Who but the Holy Spirit could have written these words? How clearly they declare that God's thoughts are not our thoughts! What human hand would have put Tamar into the family line of our adored Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Not one. Matthew 1:3 bears the clear mark of God, as does every clause of Scripture from beginning to end.

No true student of Scripture could doubt that there was a special purpose in it. These are exactly the kind of names that a record-keeper working by human wisdom — and above all a Jew, however right thinking — would have kept out of sight, all the more so since there was no clear need to bring them forward. They were not needed at all to establish our Lord's link with David or with Abraham.

With the other names that stand beside hers in this genealogy, I may perhaps find in each case something that breaks the darkness a little. I find nothing like that about Tamar. She comes before me here as a sinner and nothing else. But the wonder above all this is that this very sin is what brings her name into the Lord's genealogy — for this sin made her the mother of Perez, one of the direct line in Christ's ancestry.

Tamar's sin was the very thing that brought her into the Lord's genealogy. And it is simply as sinners that we have a right to rejoice in a work done for sinners. Judah will find, in a day that is near, his title — not in legal righteousness, nor in mere descent from Abraham, but in the truth that God has stressed for us here.

The first, Tamar, brings out the sin of man. The second, Rahab, brings out the faith that lays hold of the grace of God. The third, Ruth, shows that grace setting aside the claims of the law. The fourth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba), shows the grace which, through discipline, can even bring blessing out of failure in God's people.

Zerah's twin birth with Perez is mentioned, though he himself is not in the line of the genealogy. It is as if to recall the circumstances of that sin which brought the two of them into being.

The colour "scarlet" stands for the rights of the Lord. It is both striking and instructive to see how the thought of Christ's supremacy runs through Scripture like a "thread of scarlet." This beautiful thought appears in what may be one of the darkest chapters in the Old Testament, Genesis 38. In those dark, sordid circumstances something shows itself that has power to "break through" and "rise up" — as the names of the twins suggest — and it comes to a head in the generation from which David springs.

The list contains ten generations, and these may be divided into two groups of five. The first five names — Pherez to Nahshon — belong mainly to Israel's time in Egypt and in the wilderness. The second five — Salmon to David — belong to Israel in the land, up to the time when the monarchy began under God's chosen king. God had decreed that the line of descent from Pherez would end with the Messiah, so He watched over it without a break.

Ram is sometimes called Aram. Amminadab was the father of Elisheba. She became the wife of Aaron, the brother of Moses and the first of Israel's high priests, a position passed down from father to son. Nahshon was brother-in-law of Aaron, and prince or head of the tribe of Judah. Salmon, son of Nahshon, married Rahab and was the father of Boaz. Salmon was probably one of the two men Joshua sent in secret to Jericho and the area around it. They stayed in Rahab's house.

All twelve are called princes, except Nahshon of Judah. He, as the leader, the representative of Judah, must be the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is more than a prince.

The genealogy falls into three parts, and each part has a character of its own. From Abraham to David, promise is the leading thought. From David, through Solomon, to the captivity, the record is one of decline. From the captivity to the birth of our Lord is a time of darkness — a darkness that ends like a resurrection in the birth of our Lord.

The Messiah was of the tribe of Judah, and of the royal family of that tribe. His claim to royalty could not be questioned, for the simple reason that the records proved the fact. His title to the throne came down to Him by direct descent; and although so lowly — gentle and lowly in heart — He was indeed the King.

The genealogy of Jesus Christ therefore tells us much about Him. It is more than possible that every name in this list would prove itself significant, if we only had eyes to see it. Each would have its own story to tell about Him. But it is not for me to try this. Yet these generations are numbered so carefully that I cannot believe there is a single one unworthy of that care. If we had worked at this in faith, how the work would have repaid us!

And who and what was she? A Gentile, and once a prostitute! But Rahab is taken out of everything that was hers by nature. And here she is, in this gospel of Jesus written for the Jew. These are the very people who despised and hated Him because He would look on a Gentile. God visited her. By His mighty grace He delivered her outwardly and inwardly, and brought her into Israel on earth and made her a part of it — yes, by sovereign grace part of the royal line out of which the Messiah must come.

And who can doubt it was Rahab's faith that brought her into the genealogy, as sin had brought Tamar? Without faith, she had died with those shut up in Jericho, a cursed woman of a cursed race. Faith removed that curse from her; faith brought her in among the people of God.

Against this Ruth, with all her loveliness and with all her goodness, there lay a ban. It did not lie in the same way against the others. She was a woman of Moab, and the law had aimed an express statute against Moab: "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever" (Deut. 23:3)... It is striking that the law applied to this devoted, this lovely woman — not to Rahab nor even to Tamar. In this way God has shown the law's real character. He did not bring it in to condemn the sinner and the prostitute, where human judgment would have condemned. He brought it in as the thing that would have shut out a Ruth, even with all her devotion to God. This taught plainly that man as man was shut out from God — not only in his sins, but in his righteousness.

Even the Edomite or the Egyptian was hated less, and their children might enter in the third generation (Deut. 23:3-8). So this gave a still deeper testimony that grace would go out and bless the very worst of the Gentiles.

Boaz, who is the instrument of blessing, the kinsman-redeemer, is a type of the risen Christ. The name means "In him is strength"; and it was he, when the nearest relative failed, who had the power of redemption. It was not possible for the nearer relative, who represents the law, to redeem the inheritance. The apostle wrote that an inheritance by law is no longer by promise, so Ruth had to receive everything as a gift of pure grace. Boaz, therefore, on whom there was no claim, though a relative, stepped in. Acting from his own heart of love and grace, he bought the land and married Ruth.

What, then, does the name of Ruth emphasise in this series? Can it be anything but this — that the law is therefore not the way of blessing? The law does not provide the redeemer; grace alone does. For Ruth the Moabitess is debtor to the grace of Boaz!

Who, setting out to prepare a family tree to prove a title, would have brought in the story of Rahab the prostitute, or Bathsheba, or Ruth, or Tamar? Ah, none but God. You see, God wrote this Book and not man... When He is about to tell the family history of His Son, become a man to bless man, God brings them in.

The genealogy that would satisfy a Jew asking questions had to be descent from Solomon. That came through Joseph alone. If our Lord had not inherited His title legally, He could not have been David's Son in the direct royal line. This was given to Matthew, and he proves Him beyond doubt to be the Heir through Solomon, whose succession the Lord confirmed with an oath.

The genealogy itself is that of Joseph, not of Mary… There were two lines that came down unbroken to those days — the house of Solomon and the house of Nathan. Mary was the representative of Nathan's family, as Joseph was of Solomon's. If Mary had been mentioned without her connection with her husband, there would not have been a legal right to the throne of David.

Bathsheba is not mentioned by name. Instead she is linked with all the horror of the crimes that her name alone, you would think, is enough to bring to mind — "her who had been the wife of Uriah."

Who, deliberately preparing a family tree to prove a title, would have brought in the story of Rahab the prostitute, or Bathsheba, or Ruth, or Tamar? None but God. You see, God wrote this Book, and not man… So in these four women you have the most beautiful illustration of how the grace of God can rise above the sin of man. He even allowed what came out of man's weakness and sin to be the very occasion for bringing His own blessed Son into this scene.

Only a few generations apart, we have these three women. The same spirit that rejected Jesus and the grace of God would have despised and excluded them all, for one reason or another, moral or ceremonial. So this was no new thought — God's mercy reaching out to gather in the outcast of the Gentiles, looking on the vile to deliver them and make them holy. It was God's way of old. They could not read the account He gives of their own Messiah's stock without seeing that it was so. And that this was the divinely prescribed channel no Jew could deny.

"Whatever one sows, that will he also reap," and no wonder, then, if adultery and murder sprang up again and again in David's path. No wonder the sword never departs from his house… But in the middle of all this growth of thorn and thistle, the sure fruit of sin, one small flower springs up from that cursed ground. It witnesses that where sin had abounded, grace overabounds. From this David and this Bathsheba, whom sin has joined together, a child springs whose name stands next in the line of the Lord's ancestors. As if to confirm it, he receives a special name, "Jedidiah," "beloved of the Lord."