GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 3:28-30
The Genealogy of Jesus Christ – During the Divided Kingdom
28 the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, 29 the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, 30 the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim,
In this part of Jesus’ genealogy there are fifteen generations, taking us backward from the Babylonian captivity about two hundred years to the time of the divided kingdom. Melchi was the son of that Zerubbabel who is mentioned prominently in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah, which all describe Israel after the return from Babylon.
The last name in verse 30 (and the earliest name in this part of the list) is Eliakim. He is not the same man as any other Eliakim in the Bible. Even the Eliakim in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is from another century altogether (Matthew 1:13). This Eliakim would have been born during the reign of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, in the early days of the Divided Kingdom. In his older years, he could have heard the prophet Elijah preaching. Note some of the events in this approximate chronology (the dates are perhaps close to each man’s year of birth). Many of these men are named after various Patriarchs:
Eliakim, 921 (in the days of King Rehoboam)
Jonam, 904
Joseph, 888
Judah, 872 (Ahab and Jezebel vs, Elijah)
Simeon, 856 (Elijah taken to heaven)
Levi, 840
Matthat, 824 (Elisha’s ministry)
Jorim, 808
Eliezar, 792 (Jonah and the whale)
Joshua, 776
Er, 760 (The prophet Amos is active)
Elmadam, 744 (Prophets Isaiah, Micah and Hosea are preaching)
Cosam, 728 (Fall of the Northern Kingdom, 722)
Addi, 712
Melchi, 696
The days of the divided Kingdom were difficult and dark. These were the days when Obadiah was forced to hide a hundred faithful prophets of God from Jezebel for fear of their lives (1 Kings 18:3). Many of the major and minor prophets ministered to God’s people in these years. As Israel was split further and further apart, the need for a Redeemer became more and more apparent. Most of the people of Israel—the entire northern Kingdom—were forbidden by their kings from going to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices or to worship God as he had commanded them. Again and again, God sent his messengers to the people to turn their hearts back to him in repentance and trusting faith. Too often they showed with their actions and attitudes that they didn’t trust in him anymore.
In one of Jesus’ parables, he describes the people’s rejection of the prophets. A certain Master sent servants to his tenant farmers to collect the rest. The first servant was beaten up and sent back. “He sent another servant,” the parable goes, “but that one they also beat and shamefully treated and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out” (Luke 20:12). What did God do after this? Jesus prophesied his own rejection: “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when they saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him outside of the vineyard and killed him” (Luke 20:13-15).
Jesus had to come down into the world to be one of us, even though his own people mostly rejected him with hatred, spit, fists, stones, and worse. They accused him of blasphemy because he, Jesus, a mere man, claimed to be the Son of God. They could not believe that God would appear among them like a vulnerable man, even though Isaiah, Moses, and others had made the human nature of the Messiah perfectly clear. “The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me from among your own brothers,” Moses said (Deut. 18:15). “He was despised and rejected by men,” Isaiah said, “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3). He had to be human, but the Pharisees did not believe.
Why did Jesus have to be a human? As one ancient pastor said, “What (Christ) did not assume, he did not redeem.” What he assumed was our human flesh. John’s Gospel is clear: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). When Paul says that God sent his own Son “in the likeness of sinful man” (Romans 8:3), he does not mean that Christ only had a sort of “likeness” of a human body, but that the Father sent his Son in flesh like sinful flesh, in fact, flesh that was subject to sin, but nevertheless he did not sin. Christ’s human nature was genuine. The miracle was that he never gave in to any temptation and never committed any sin. Born of a virgin without the taint of original sin, he remained sinless through his own personal obedience. All this he did to rescue us from all our sins and our own personal disobedience—every way our sins make us captives—and for this we honor and worship him with our voices and lives.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota