Matthew 1:7-25

Sunday message · The Book of Matthew series

Phillip Santillan  ·  Matthew 1:7-25

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Message Summary

Continuing the series on the Gospel of Matthew, Pastor Phillip Santillan finishes the first chapter, Matthew 1:7–25. Matthew set out to prove that Jesus fulfilled every Old Testament prophecy about the promised Savior, yet he filled Jesus’ family tree with people from questionable backgrounds. Asking what these names meant to Matthew’s Jewish readers, Phil finds a clear message: God uses unlikely, broken people to accomplish remarkable things.

Phil walks through the kings of verses 7–11, names that mean little today. After Solomon the kingdom split, and David’s line ruled the southern kingdom of Judah, whose kings were remembered as the better ones. Their record says otherwise. Under Rehoboam the people did evil. Even Asa, devoted to the Lord, relied on an alliance with another king rather than trusting God. Idolatry continued under several kings, pride brought leprosy on Uzziah, and both Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed their own sons, Manasseh even placing an idol in the temple. For Matthew’s readers, the point was unmistakable: God is not limited by broken and imperfect people in accomplishing his mission.

This is encouraging, Phil says, when the world seems to be falling apart. Nor is God limited by people the world sees as insignificant, or by our past. The names after Zerubbabel appear nowhere but in Matthew; they were not kings, just fathers doing their best in Babylon, trusting God’s promise in Jeremiah 29 of a plan to prosper them.

Verse 16 breaks the pattern: Joseph is called not the father of Jesus but the husband of Mary. A Jewish betrothal, Phil explains, was legally binding, and unfaithfulness during it counted as adultery punishable by death. When Mary was found pregnant, Joseph, a righteous man, chose to divorce her quietly rather than disgrace her. Then an angel told him in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, and to name the child Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

Phil notices the angel says not to be afraid rather than not to be angry. He has found that fear often comes just before stepping into God’s plan. Fear, he says, is believing, intentionally or not, that God is not in control and does not have our best interest in mind, and it turns us into control freaks, grabbing whatever we can manage, from a clean house to screen time. Drawing on Max Lucado, who imagines Joseph the carpenter realizing that this time he is not the builder but the tool in God’s hand, Phil asks whether we meet the unexpected by grabbing a tool to fix things or by submitting ourselves to God as his tool.

Rather than describe the birth, Matthew shows the heart of an obedient man and meets fear with the promise of Emmanuel, God with us, echoed in Jesus’ final promise to be with his disciples always. Phil closes by assuring listeners their circumstances cannot stop God’s will, their lives can display it through growing trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, and Jesus will be with them through every fear.