Jesus: Son of David, Son of Abraham, Son of Adam, Son of God


Sermon by J. Ligon Duncan on March 29, 2009 Luke 3:23-38

Download Audio

The Lord’s Day
Morning

March 29, 2009


Luke 3:23-38


“Jesus: Son of David, Son of Abraham, Son of Adam, Son
of God”

Dr. J. Ligon
Duncan III

Amen. If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with
me to Luke 3, as we continue to make our way through the Gospel of Luke. We come
today to the genealogy of the Lord Jesus, and as your eyes look at Luke 3:23-28,
you may be thinking to yourself quietly (so as not to admit to these thoughts to
those around you) Why in the world did Luke stick a genealogy in the middle of
an exciting narrative passage? There’s a great story going on here! He’s been
telling about the baptism of Jesus, and heaven has opened and the Holy Spirit
has descended in bodily form and God the Father has spoken from heaven. And then
the next thing that we’re going to see by way of scenes is Satan himself coming
to tempt Jesus in the wilderness. Why in the world would you plop a genealogy
right down in the middle of an exciting storyline like that?

Or maybe you’re asking yourself the question What can
I possibly learn that will help me to live the Christian life from a list of
Jesus’ ancestors? Maybe you’re thinking that as we come to the genealogy of
Jesus today.

Well, dear friends, Southerners, of all people, ought
to understand the importance of the genealogy! I mean, it’s almost the first
question we ask: “Who are your people?” Well, Luke’s telling you who Jesus’
people are. But he’s doing a lot more than that, isn’t he? Luke is showing us
this family tree in order to teach us the humanity of Christ, that He’s a real
flesh and blood human being with a genealogy and a lineage, just like you and
me. But not only that, he’s showing us this family tree to connect Him to these
great figures of the Old Testament that stand for the promises and the
prophecies of God in the Old Testament of the Messiah to come. And, finally,
he’s telling us this family tree in order to teach us that Jesus is the Son of
God. So Luke shows us Jesus’ humanity, he shows us how Jesus fulfills the Old
Testament prophecies, and he shows us how Jesus is the Son of God — right out of
this genealogy.

Now you don’t need to be a Bible scholar to know that
when you pick up Matthew 1 and you begin reading the genealogy of the Lord Jesus
that Matthew records there, and when you pick up Luke 3 and you begin reading
the genealogy that Luke records of the Lord Jesus Christ there, that the
genealogies aren’t the same. There are a few places where they overlap, but
there are significant differences between these two genealogies. And you may
well have had someone — maybe a religion professor, maybe a skeptical friend —
say to you, “Well, the Bible clearly has errors in it because the genealogies of
Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 don’t match up; therefore, the Bible’s wrong.”
Well, my friends, has it ever occurred to you that Christians have been reading
their Bibles for 2,000 years and it’s never bothered them a bit that these two
genealogies are different? In fact, I would guess that if we were to do some
genealogy in the room today we might find more complex problems in your own
genealogies than we would find in the genealogies before us today.

But Christians have for many years attempted to
give plausible explanations of what may be going on in Matthew 1 and in Luke 3.
There are three main suggestions about how we ought to understand these
genealogies that have been given by Christians over the last two millennia.

The first and perhaps most common suggestion
is that Matthew is giving us Joseph’s genealogy and that Luke is giving us
Mary’s genealogy. Luke, after all, hints by the very language that he uses, that
Joseph of course is not the actual father of Jesus. And Luke records the
prophecy about the virgin birth, so he knows that Joseph is not the human father
of Jesus — that Jesus is the result of a miraculous intervention of God through
the Holy Spirit and that He is ex Maria. He is out of Mary’s flesh and
blood and womb, but He’s not Joseph’s natural son, and so it would make sense
that Matthew’s giving you Joseph’s genealogy as the legal father of Jesus and
that Luke is giving you Mary’s genealogy, the actual line of Jesus.

On the other hand, for about 1800 years now there
have been those who believe that Joseph’s family had a Levirate marriage. Now
you know that in the Old Testament when a brother died and he didn’t have a son,
a law allowed his brother to marry his widow and the children that are produced
of that union to be counted as the legal children of the dead brother, in order
to carry his name and his tradition on into the future. There was an early
Christian theologian named Africanus who lived in the early third century, about
A.D. 220, who suggested that there was a Levirate marriage here and that Matthew
is giving us Joseph’s line through Jacob (who was his actual father), and that
Luke is giving us his line through Heli, who was his legal father.

And then more recently the great J. Gresham Machen, a
very famous Presbyterian scholar in the twentieth century, suggested that
Matthew is giving us the legal royal descendants of David — the people who would
have been king, had David’s line continued on — and that Luke is giving us the
descendants of David in the particular line that ends with Joseph, but that the
two lines converged at the end because Jacob, the father of Joseph, had no issue
and so the succession plan passed to Heli’s line.

Well, we will never know here exactly what the right
answer is. It’s one of those questions that I can’t wait to ask Luke! Or maybe
Mary…or maybe Joseph, one day: “What is the story here? Tell me about these
genealogies.” But these are three very plausible explanations. I don’t know
which one to commend to you, but as I said before, my guess is that if we were
to do a little genealogy in the room there would be more complex problems with
your own genealogies than there are with these particular genealogies.

Whatever the case is, whatever the right answer is,
there is no reason to question the full veracity and historicity of God’s word.
In fact, the very fact that the Christian church was happy to lay these
genealogies side by side for years and years with all the questions we can ask
about them, and not fear that they undermined the authority of Scripture, lets
you know that the early Christians were not unsettled by the questions that can
be raised by these genealogies. They thought the overall picture and message was
very, very clear — and it is, indeed.

So let’s give attention to God’s word in Luke 3,
beginning in verse 23. And before we do, let’s pray and ask for His help and
blessing.

Heavenly Father, this is Your word. You mean it
for our edification. You mean it for our correction. You mean it for our
training in righteousness. You mean it so that we can understand the way of
salvation, which is through faith in Jesus Christ. So by Your Spirit, make Your
word do all these things for us by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hear the word of God:

“Jesus, when He began His ministry, was about thirty years of age,
being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat,
the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the
son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son
of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son
of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of
Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son
of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua,
the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, theh son of Levi, the
son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of
Eliakim, the son of Lelea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of
Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz,
the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the
son of Arni, the son of Nezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of
Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor,
the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of
Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of
Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of
Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of
Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

Amen. And thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired,
and inerrant word. May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

1. What do you need to know
about Jesus in order to fully appreciate the gospel?

What do you need to know about Jesus in order to
fully appreciate the gospel? What do you need to know about Jesus in order to
understand the gospel and God’s overarching plan of redemption?
That
question is always on Luke’s mind as he explains the story of Jesus to us as he
speaks to Theophilus, this God-seeker, this God-fearer that he’s sharing the
basic facts about the foundation of Christianity with in this glorious Gospel of
Luke. He’s always thinking, ‘What does Theophilus, what do my readers, what do
my hearers, what do those who are going to read this book and hear this book
read…what do they need to know about Jesus in order to understand the gospel? In
order to appreciate the gospel?’

2. Why does Luke include this
genealogy?

Well, Luke’s insertion of this genealogy after Jesus’
baptism and prior to His temptation is designed to help us understand the right
answer to that question. What do you need to know about Jesus in order to fully
appreciate the gospel? You see, in this genealogy Luke manages to do five
things all at once.

He marks Jesus out clearly as the Son of God.
Matthew will take Jesus all the way back to Abraham; Jesus’ lineage in Luke goes
all the way back to God. Luke is drawing attention to the fact that this is not
just a man, this is the very Son of God…a very important fact in light of what
you’ve seen in the baptism and what you will see in the wilderness as Jesus is
tempted by Satan.

Secondly, he is showing you that Jesus is the
second Adam
. The verse after this genealogy is over will introduce you to
Jesus going into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Now, you will remember
that Adam — the first Adam — was tempted once by Satan in the form of the
serpent in a garden that was perfect and lush. And he failed. And Luke wants you
to remember that this son of Adam, who is the second Adam, who will be tempted
not in a garden, but in a wilderness — and not once, but three times — will not
fail and does not fail, and reverses all that Adam had done. He’s the second
Adam.

This genealogy will show you that Jesus is the
seed of Abraham
, in whom all of the Abrahamic promises are fulfilled.

Fourth, this genealogy will show you that Jesus is
the Messiah:
He is the heir of the Davidic throne. He’s the rightful ruler
on the throne of His father David.

But this genealogy also marks out Jesus as a real
man
— flesh and blood. He is no Greek demigod ascending in some sort of
spiritual form and only appearing to be fleshly and coming into this world. He’s
flesh and blood, just like us; and, therefore, there’s a whole string of “son
of… son of… son of… son of…” stretching back 75 generations.

About nine years ago, a Wycliffe Bible translator was
in New Guinea translating the New Testament into a new tribal language, and he
experienced in that work the power of a genealogy. You know how Wycliffe works.
They train a person for a couple of years in a new language, and then they send
that person into the culture to learn even more about that language in the
culture and to start immediately translating the Bible into the language of that
particular tribe or culture. (And the way they do it is, of course, they use
native speakers to help them translate the Bible…because who would you think
would understand the nuances of a language better? Somebody who had studied it
for two years, or people who had been speaking it from the time they could talk?
And that gives the Wycliffe translator the opportunity to do what as he’s
translating the Bible for those people? To share with them the gospel! Because
as they’re helping him translate the Bible into their own language, they’re
getting to hear the gospel.)

Well, this translator had just moved into this tribal
setting in New Guinea, and he thought, “Well, I’ll just start with the Gospel of
Matthew.” And he opened up Matthew and what did he see in the very first
chapter? A genealogy. And he said, “I just can’t do this to these people. I
can’t let them get bogged down in a genealogy, so I know what I’m going to do.
I’m going to start translating with chapter two, and we’re going to skip chapter
one.” And he started translating and he worked with the men in the village, and
they translated all the way from Matthew 2 to Matthew 28. And at the end of all
that translation time, they were still not believing the gospel that he kept
explaining to them as they translated chapter after chapter of the Gospel of
Matthew. And finally he said, “Well, we’ve translated all of Matthew. I guess
I’m going to have to do back and translate chapter one now.” And so they started
in chapter one, and by the time they got to the fourth, the fifth, the sixth
begat
— “So-and-so begat So-and so; So-and-so begat So-and-so…” — he saw the
men around him getting excited. Their faces lit up! Their eyes were wide; their
voices were beginning to show agitation, and they began interrupting him as they
were translating this genealogy in Matthew 1. They stopped him and they said,
“You mean to tell me that this Adam was a real person? And that this Abraham was
a real person? And this David was a real person? You mean that these people are
not just stories that you white men made up, that these are real people?” And he
said, “Yes! I’ve been telling you that all along as I’ve translated the rest of
the Gospel of Matthew.” And they said, “We believe you now! We understand this!
We can tell you our ancestors fifty generations back, by name. We can tell you
about them! We learn these things. We now know that everything that you have
been telling us is true about this man Jesus, and that He had real ancestors and
that they were real people, and that God had really done these things — these
are not just stories.”

The genealogy had confirmed to them the truthfulness
of the historical account of the Gospel of Matthew. We perhaps cannot understand
that in modern cultures — even in the Southern culture. But in most cultures,
the power of genealogy is palpable, and Luke is bringing to bear the power of
the genealogy of Jesus in this passage. Those tribal folk in New Guinea said,
“We didn’t know that Abraham was real and that David was real, but now we
believe.” When they saw the genealogy of Christ…. And
Luke is giving us this genealogy of Christ in order to
root the story of Jesus in concrete historical realities of what God had been
doing in history, and even in Jesus’ own family line.

Now this passage is truly rich, and we could spend a
long time in it. But I want to draw your attention today just to two things.
I want you to ask the question, “What does Jesus’ genealogy say about me? What
does it say about us?” Then, an even more important question, “What does Jesus’
genealogy say about Him?” What does Jesus’ genealogy say about us…what does
Jesus’ genealogy say about Him?

Application:

1. What does Jesus’ genealogy say about us?

Let’s start with the first one. What does Luke
show us in Jesus’ genealogy that we need to learn about ourselves?
He shows
us Adam, and he shows us Noah, and he shows us Abraham. He shows us David, and
he shows us some of the great heroic figures of the Old Testament. These people
did amazing things, heroic things, and many of them believed against all hope in
the promises of God. But you know what else you learn about the people that are
listed in this genealogy? You learn that they are sinners. Adam plunged us all
into sin with his rebellion. Noah was a drunkard. Abraham was a liar and a
coward. David was an adulterer and a murderer. And when you study this
genealogical tree — yes, you find heroes, but you especially find sinners. This
family tree teaches us our sin and our need for grace.

Here’s what Phil Ryken says about this genealogy:

“They were guilty of the same kinds of sins as we are. All these men
were sinners. It’s nice to think that our ancestors were noble and good, and
that they did something heroic. This is one of the reasons people like to study
their family trees. Whether they were heroic or not, the people who came before
us were just as deeply flawed as we are. We can infer this from the mere fact
that they were human beings, but we can also prove it from the pages of the
Bible. Consider some of the skeletons in the family closet as recorded in the
Old Testament: Terah, the father of Abraham, was an idolater; Abraham was a
liar; Jacob was a cheater and a thief; Judah traded slaves and consorted with
prostitutes; David was a murderer and an adulterer. We usually remember these
men as heroes, but they were also scoundrels, all the way back to Adam. At the
tap root of the family tree, like any genealogy, the one in Luke’s Gospel
records a long line of sinners.”

And the Apostle Paul says the wages of sin is death, and so
we die.

2. What Jesus’ genealogy says about Him.

And here’s our only hope, my friends. Hope is that
though we were born and live in sin, and because we sin, we die, we do not have
to die, because Jesus is in this genealogy.
Jesus is in this family tree.
And Luke is reminding us even as he shows us this family tree that we are
sinners, and we’re not the answer. We are not the ones we have been waiting for.
We are not the answer to our salvation. We are not the ones who can undo the
mess that this world is in. We cannot look to ourselves. We ourselves are
sinners. We need to look away from ourselves and we need to look to God for
grace. And that is the second thing that this genealogy so beautifully displays
in Jesus.

This genealogy tells us at least six things about Jesus.

First of all, it identifies us with Him. You
remember how we said that in the baptism of Jesus, though He was not a sinner
and though He didn’t need to be forgiven and He didn’t need to repent, yet He
received the baptism of repentance in order to identify himself with sinners who
were guilty, who were sinful, who did need to repent, and who did need to be
forgiven. He identified himself with us in baptism. Well, so also the genealogy
identifies Him with us. Luke is telling you that Jesus — though He was perfect,
though He was sinless — came from a long line of sinners. He was connected and
identified with sinners.

And this genealogy makes it clear that Jesus is a
real person
. His humanity is emphasized in the very record of the genealogy.
Just as the tribal folk in New Guinea got the point that this is real history —
this isn’t a story, because a genealogy is recorded — so also the genealogy
reminds us that Jesus is a real person. He’s not a story. He’s flesh and blood
and human. He had a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather. And you
can go on back for 75 generations.

And this passage teaches us that Jesus is the
Messiah, and David’s heir
. In verse 31, He’s called the son of David, and
this reminds us that He’s the King that Isaiah 32 talks about. He’s the one that
we’re looking for! He’s the one who’s going to reign on His father David’s
throne. And in verse 34, He’s called a son of Abraham. He is the heir of
Abraham. All of the promises of God to Abraham are yea and amen in Christ. It’s
in Christ that we become children of Abraham, even if we’re Gentiles…Jew and
Greek, slave and free, male and female are one — co-heirs, inheritors with Jesus
Christ, because He has fulfilled the covenant of grace that God has made with
Abraham, and He is the inheritor of the promises of Abraham, and we inherit
those promises in Him.

In verse 38, He’s called the son of Adam. He’s
the second Adam. Whereas the first Adam failed, and sinned and fell and plunged
us into sin and misery, He did not fail. Luke is going to display His glorious
rebuttal of Satan, the evil one, in the wilderness, in the early verses of Luke
4. He’s the second Adam, who does not fail when He is tempted. Three times He is
tempted; three times He resists. He does what Adam couldn’t do, and reverses the
course of Adam’s sin. Through one man (Paul will say in Romans 5)… “Through one
man’s disobedience, sin and death came into this world, so that through one
man’s obedience life and righteousness will come to all who trust in Him.” He is
the second Adam.

And He is the Son of God. Verse 38 ends the
genealogy with the assertion that Jesus is the very Son of God. He’s not just a
great moral prophet. He’s not just a great philosopher. He’s not just a great
leader of men. He is the very Son of God. In other words, Luke is saying we have
a temptation to trust in ourselves and trust in people, and when we do, our
trust is built on sand, because we’re sinners, people are sinners, and they will
let you down. But if you will turn your eyes on Jesus, if you will put your
faith in Him, He has in Him concentrated the sum total of everything that you
need. He is identified with sinners, and so He can bear your sin.
He is
fully human, so He can be a great high priest who can sympathize with your
weaknesses as a human. He is the Messiah, and David’s heir, and so He is the
King of your heart to reign over you. He is the heir of Abraham, and so all of
God’s promises to Abraham are yours in Him. He is the second Adam. The son of
Adam has reversed the course of Adam’s curse so that you can find the blessings
of God in Him. And He is the very Son of God, and by trust in Him you become the
very children of the heavenly Father.

In other words, Luke is
saying the sum total of everything that you need is concentrated in Jesus, and
it’s not found anywhere outside of Him. There’s nothing that you need that’s
outside of Him, but everything that you do need is in Him.

It’s Luke’s way of saying in this world you can
either trust yourself and trust people, and sin and fail and die; or, you can
trust in Christ alone. You can find all your hope in Him alone, and live. That’s
what this great genealogy teaches us about ourselves and about our Savior.

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we ask that by the grace of Your
Holy Spirit You would open our eyes to our own sin and our own need, and that
You would point us then to the Savior, Your Son, Jesus Christ — son of David,
son of Abraham, son of Adam, son of God — and that we would put our trust in
Christ alone. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

______________________________________________________________________________

© First Presbyterian
Church, 1390 North State St, Jackson, MS (601) 924-0575

www.fpcjackson.org

This transcribed message has been
lightly edited and formatted for the web page. No attempt has been made,
however, to alter the basic extemporaneous delivery style, or to produce
a grammatically accurate, publication-ready manuscript conforming to an
established style template.
Should there be questions regarding grammar or theological content, the
reader should presume any website error to be with the
webmaster/transcriber/editor rather than with the original speaker. For full
copyright, reproduction and permissions information, please visit the FPC

Copyright, Reproduction & Permission
statement

FIRST
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
● 1390 North State Street Jackson,
Mississippi 39202 ● (601) 924-0575

© 2024 First Presbyterian Church.

This transcribed message has been lightly edited and formatted for the Web site. No attempt has been made, however, to alter the basic extemporaneous delivery style, or to produce a grammatically accurate, publication-ready manuscript conforming to an established style template.

Should there be questions regarding grammar or theological content, the reader should presume any website error to be with the webmaster/transcriber/editor rather than with the original speaker. For full copyright, reproduction and permission information, please visit the First Presbyterian Church Copyright, Reproduction & Permission statement.

To view recordings of our entire services, visit our Facebook page.

caret-downclosedown-arrowenvelopefacebook-squarehamburgerinstagram-squarelinkedin-squarepausephoneplayprocesssearchtwitter-squarevimeo-square