In a time where Christmas has become a largely secular holiday, it is important for Christmas to do more than just remember to “keep the Christ in Christmas”. What would really help the Christian embrace the full glory of Christmas, would be to keep Christ in the larger story that surrounds Christmas. Most Americans today can tell you what Christmas celebrates. But unfortunately so, not many Americans, believers and unbelievers alike, could not tell you the bigger story that the Christmas story is only a chapter within. And when we isolate this chapter from the story, we lose so much of its weight. We misunderstood so much of its content. And we obscure the fullness of its glory.

The book of Matthew begins the New Testament canon with what may seem quite anti-climactic to us: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). He then goes on to bless us with 17 whole verses filled with esoteric names and historical references! What a great beginning to the Gospel! Talk about getting the audience hooked, right?! Well actually, Matthew knew what he was doing (or better yet, the Holy Spirit knew what He was doing). This introduction to Matthew reminds us something extremely important about the story of Christmas: it is not an independent story. It is a climax of a much greater, longer story that has kept the people of God waiting for hundreds of years since they last heard from God through the prophets. Imagine your favorite scene out of a long movie series and you have a friend watch it with you, but they know little to nothing about the rest of the series. You would be frustrated by their lack of interest. The story which you find to be heart-wrenching, life-changing, or tear-jerking is for them not all that impressive. Why? Because they don’t know the rest of the story. They do not know all the heartache and struggle that has brought the character to this climactic moment. Matthew will not let his audience watch an isolated YouTube clip without sitting down for the whole trilogy in the movie theater with a big bag of popcorn. He needs you to know the bigger story to understand the drama of this specific story. So in some sense, Matthew is just continuing another story, the story of Abraham and the story of David. But in another sense, he also sees that this story is the pinnacle of the entire story. The words, “the genealogy of Jesus Christ”, literally “the genesis of Jesus Christ”, call us back to the original beginning, as if the beginning of Jesus will be a new beginning for us all, a new genesis.

So why does Matthew think the first thing we should know about this new beginning, the “genesis of Jesus Christ”, is that he is a son of David and a son of Abraham? Because he insists that we read the story of Jesus in light of the rest of the story. His significance, His role, His mission, and His destiny, can only be understood in the context of the story that has been waiting for a climax and resolution for a long time. And these two men, Abraham and David, are representatives of that story and the grand promises that comprise it. Abraham, the father of the faith, was the first to be called out by God to inaugurate His grand plan of redemption. For Jesus to be a son of Abraham is to place Him within the line of that promise. Jesus’ Jewishness is a requirement for our Gospel. The Jews were the people of the promise, and it was revealed to them that it was through their nation that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). The blessing of the world by the Jewish nation finds its fulfillment in the person of Christ, the Jew who would bless the nations beyond their greatest imagination.

The term “son of David” had large Messianic implications in the Judaism of Matthew’s day. The Old Testament had spoken of a great King that would rule over the people of Israel and subdue the nations. It was this anointed, conquering King that was the hope of the nation. Not only that, but God had promised David that “your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam 7:16). It was this covenant with the Davidic throne and its descendants that gave the relatively small and insignificant nation of Israel security and confidence throughout the years. But when the day had come that the Babylonians were to siege their beloved city Jerusalem, the city of David, the Babylonians took their Davidic King captive along with the city. The Babylonian destruction and humiliation of the king was seen in the Israelites eyes as a failure of God to maintain His covenant with David. It almost seemed to bring the story to an end. The absence of a Davidic King was a source of pain for God’s people, as they waited and wondered how God might indeed keep his covenant with them and make them a great nation, even a blessing to all other nations.

It was the hope of a coming Davidic King, someone who would pick up where the story left off, that kept the people of Israel hopeful in their identity as the people of God. So for Matthew to announce Jesus as part of the line of David was no small fact. It was a clear association with the promises of God and the hope of the people. The story that many people thought had come to an end was about to get interesting again. The silence of God expires, His voice breaks through time and space, His Word becomes flesh, and it not only tells us the rest of the story, but accomplishes the rest of the story. God had not forgotten the promise to Abraham. He had not forgotten the promise to David. He had not forgotten His people. The story was not over. And Matthew, with just one verse to open his account of the Gospel, clues us in to the fact that we are about to read the climax. The long, often circuitous, frustrating plot of the Old Testament is culminating in this very chapter of redemption. The apex of God’s revelation has arrived. And He comes to finish what Abraham and David started.

Turns out Matthew is just a great story teller, not a boring Bible geek. As He references Abraham and David, thousands of years of history floods into the minds of his Jewish readers, thousands of years of promises and hope, of disappointments and despair, of joy and yet of sorrow, of triumph and yet of defeat, of glorious expectations and yet of painful waiting, of anticipation and suspense. He has gotten his audience on their toes. They are dying to know how God will finish this story. Are you?