Matthew 1: The Savior We Have Been Waiting For

There is no wrong way to read through the Scripture. There is no wrong way to spend time studying and meditating on the Word and turning it over in our heads.

If you read and you didn’t feel like you got much out of it, you didn’t feel like much of it made sense, that’s okay. Don’t freak out. Don’t panic. It might take a little while before it starts to make sense, and that is okay. It may take a little while before you really start to feel like you’re growing in your understanding, and that is okay. Don’t worry about that. Just keep at it.

Slow and steady wins the race. God grows us through the long, continual process of us going back again and again and again to the fountain of His Word.

Jesus Is the Savior We Have Been Waiting For

First things first, Matthew is writing to the Israelites. He is writing to the Jews. He is writing his Gospel so that his fellow Jews, his fellow Israelites, can see the story of Jesus and know that this is the Savior that God promised.

The most important thing that we need to understand as we are reading the Gospel of Matthew is that Matthew is proving to us, one step at a time, that Jesus is the Savior that we have been waiting for.

So the Old Testament prophets prophesied a handful of things about the Savior that God was sending. The Old Testament prophets prophesied that there was a Savior coming who was going to save us from the fall, save us from the brokenness of the world, save us from our sin, save us from God’s wrath over our sin, save us from spending an eternity separated from God and spending an eternity stuck in a fallen and broken world that does not work the way that God created it to.

The Old Testament tells us that God created the world good, but that humanity rebelled against God in the beginning, and as a result, that broke the world. And we live in that broken world that is marred by sin and death and shame.

That is why there is poverty in the world. That is why there is suffering in the world. That is why there’s so much loss. There is so much injustice. There is so much, all of these things.

And at the same time, that is why we are drawn towards sin. We are drawn towards bad things rather than good things. We are drawn towards things that are not good for us. We are drawn towards things that don’t honor the Lord.

Have you ever tried to go an entire day without doing anything bad? It’s impossible. If you think you succeeded, that just means you’re not very self-aware, and you should get a therapist or something like that.

But we live in a fallen and broken world, and we are fallen and broken people. And because that is true, we are separated from God because of our sin. And if we die in this state, we will spend eternity separated from God.

When the Lord one day raises everyone up and takes His people back to Himself in a new heavens and a new earth, where everything is made right again, we won’t get to enjoy that. We’ll be stuck, locked away, separated forever for all of eternity.

But it doesn’t have to be that way because God promised, “I will send a Savior. I will send a Savior who will heal the world, who will fix the world, who will bring everything back, who will restore the world to what it is meant to be, who will put the world right again, and who will save you from your sin, who will redeem you.”

So this coming Savior is going to restore the world and is going to redeem us so that we can enjoy this restored world. That is the promise of a Savior.

But the Old Testament prophets told us exactly what to look for when that Savior comes. The Old Testament prophets actually told us how to identify the Savior.

And there’s a couple of things that we need to know for Matthew chapter 1.

The Savior Would Come From the Line of David

Number one, we need to know that the Old Testament prophets prophesied that this coming Savior was going to be descended from the line of King David.

If you have no familiarity with the Bible whatsoever, that is okay. But King David was the greatest king in the history of Israel. King David was the greatest king that ever reigned over God’s people in the Old Testament.

And the Lord said, “One day, I am going to send a king who is going to be like David, but better than David. He’s going to be more righteous than David. He is going to be more powerful than David. He is going to do what David couldn’t do. He is going to restore the world and redeem My people in a way that David himself was not good enough or righteous enough to do.”

The Savior is going to be a truer and better David, and he’s going to be descended from the family of David. He is going to be one of David’s descendants.

So the coming Savior will be from the line of David.

What does Matthew tell us right here in Matthew chapter 1?

He tells us that Jesus is descended from the line of David.

The Savior Would Come From the Tribe of Judah

Number two, the Old Testament prophets prophesied that the coming Savior is going to be from the tribe of Judah.

There were 12 tribes in ancient Israel. You don’t need to know all of their names right now. You need to know that one of them was Judah. It was a small tribe. It was an insignificant tribe. And it was a tribe that was descended from a guy who, frankly, sucked so much.

Judah the man was a scumbag. His tribe was responsible for so many of the problems that the nation of Israel experienced through the years.

But from this small, insignificant tribe that sucks so much, the Old Testament prophets said God is going to send His Savior. He says God is going to send the Savior, and that Savior is going to come from the smallest, weakest, most insignificant, and incompetent tribe in all of Israel.

The Savior is not just a Savior for the best and the brightest of us. The Savior is a Savior for the smallest and weakest of us. Jesus is a Savior for the screw-ups like Judah, like you, like me.

So first things first, Jesus is descended from the line of David, just like the prophets said the Savior would be. And Jesus is descended from the tribe of Judah, just like the prophets said the Savior would be.

So if you are an ancient Israelite in the first century reading what Matthew is writing here, the first thing that should be popping in your head right now is, “Could Jesus be that Savior?”

And the answer that Matthew is going to give us is yes.

Jesus is the Savior that you have been waiting for, but He is not the kind of Savior you were expecting.

The story that Matthew is going to tell in the coming 28 chapters is the story of the Savior of humanity coming down from heaven, coming to earth, but being a completely different kind of Savior than we were looking for, a completely different kind of Savior than what we thought we wanted.

The Women in Jesus’s Family Tree

So he starts listing out the family tree of Jesus, and one of the first things that we should notice is that the family tree has four women in it.

Now, every family tree has women in it. You need women in order to exist, in order to reproduce. Women can have children; men cannot. They have not invented a scientific way for men to give birth quite yet. We’re probably a ways away from that.

But so every family tree has women in it.

But in the ancient world, most people believed that God only really cared about men. Most people believed that God only really loved men. Most people believed that God dealt with men, and women were just kind of along for the ride.

That is the way that people in the ancient world thought about women. They thought that women just didn’t really matter. There was no women’s rights movement in the ancient world. There was no ancient feminist movement. There was nothing like that. They believed that men mattered. Women were just there.

So when you were listing out your genealogy or your family tree, you would list out the men. You would list out the great and important men in your family line. You did not list out the women.

And yet Matthew names four women.

He names Tamar. He names Rahab. He names Ruth and Bathsheba.

And here’s the interesting thing about this.

Of these women, Tamar was an adulteress. Tamar actually tricked her father-in-law into sleeping with her.

Bathsheba was an adulteress. Bathsheba was married to a good man named Uriah, but she had an affair, actually, with King David. So King David was the best king in Israelite history, but he was still not perfect. He was still screwed up just like you and me.

But you have Tamar and Bathsheba, these two women who have adulterous affairs.

And three, you have Rahab. Rahab was a former prostitute. Rahab was a former sex worker. Eventually, she came to a saving knowledge of the Lord, and she left behind her life as a prostitute, and she married one of the first generation of Israelites, and she became a matriarch over God’s people.

But the point is this: the Savior, Jesus, has two adulteresses and one prostitute in His family line.

He is not just descended from squeaky-clean people. He is not just descended from people who have it all together. He is not just descended from people who always did what was right and always knew exactly what to do.

He is descended from screwed-up people, jacked-up people. He is descended from people who are an absolute mess. He is descended from train wrecks like you and me.

He is not just a Savior for the good. He is a Savior for the broken.

Jesus is a Savior for the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling. And that means that Jesus is a Savior for you and me.

Ruth and a Savior for the Gentiles

But there’s one more woman in His genealogy, and that is Ruth.

And Ruth is not an adulteress. Ruth is not a prostitute. Ruth is one of the most godly people—not just women—she is one of the most godly people in the entire story of Scripture. There are very few people who have ever existed who were better than Ruth.

But there’s one thing that’s really interesting about Ruth.

She is not an Israelite.

Ruth is not a Jew. Ruth is not descended from Abraham. Ruth is not part of the nation that God made a covenant with in the Old Testament. She is not a part of the family that God made a covenant with. She is not a part of the bloodline that God made a covenant with.

Ruth is a Gentile from a nation called Moab that served and worshiped pagan gods.

But she left behind the pagan gods of Moab. She came to Israel. She married an Israelite named Boaz, and she became, once again, a matriarch over God’s people in Israel.

Jesus is descended from the Gentile Ruth. He is descended from a woman who came from a pagan nation and pagan land.

Jesus is not just a Savior for the Jews. He is not just a Savior for the Israelites. He is not just a Savior for the nation of Israel.

He is a Savior for the Gentiles. He is a Savior for the outsiders. He is a Savior for every tribe and tongue and nation.

Jesus is not just a Savior for one group of people or one race of people or one ethnicity of people. Jesus is a Savior for every race, every people, every nation, every culture, every tribe, every group.

He is a Savior for you and me and every person we have ever met.

Jesus is a Savior for all.

And that’s why in Revelation chapter 7, we see this vision of the very, very end of all things, the end of all history, is every tribe and tongue and nation and race and ethnicity and culture and background gathered around God’s throne to lift Him up in worship.

That is why our churches should not be segregated. There shouldn’t be white churches and black churches and Mexican churches and Native churches and so forth. There’s nothing wrong with those churches, but we need to be gathering together.

Our churches need to be a melting pot of every tribe and tongue and nation. Our churches need to look like our communities. So we need to be reaching people not only who look like us and sound like us, but we need to be reaching people from every tribe and tongue and nation that is found within our town.

And one of the greatest joys of my life so far is the fact that Mount Zion, the church that I pastor, is increasingly becoming a church for every tribe and tongue and nation.

We are no longer just a white church. We are becoming a church that more and more and more looks like Franklin County, looks like Vance, looks like Granville, looks like Wake, looks like our surrounding community.

I pray that a day will come when you walk into Mount Zion and you see every tribe and tongue and nation in our community well represented, and so anyone walking in will say, “This, this is a church for me.”

So before anything else, Matthew is showing us that Jesus is the Savior we’ve been waiting for, and he’s showing us what kind of Savior He is.

He is a Savior for the lost and the broken and the hurting and the struggling. He is a Savior for women and men alike. He is a Savior for Jew and Gentile alike, for every tribe and tongue and nation alike. He is a Savior for the broken and the screwed-up and the jacked-up and the failures. He is a Savior for people who cannot get it together and keep it together. He is a Savior for people who do not know what they are doing and have not made the right choices.

He is a Savior for normal people.

He is a Savior for all of us.

Mary and Joseph

So we see that Jesus is the Savior we’ve been waiting for, and we see what kind of Savior He is. And then Matthew tells us a little bit about His birth.

He tells us that Mary and Joseph were engaged.

At that point in time, engagements often could last for years. Sometimes you would get engaged as young as 12, but typically your marriage wasn’t sealed and consummated until you were 17 or 18, so not super different from today.

So they are engaged. We don’t know how long they’ve been engaged. We don’t know how long they’ve known each other.

But in the middle of their engagement, Mary turns up pregnant.

Now, they knew where babies came from. They knew that virgins don’t give birth. They knew that if you are pregnant, that means someone impregnated you.

Problem is, in the first century, there was absolutely nothing that they took more seriously and punished more aggressively than adultery.

If you were engaged or betrothed to be married and you came up pregnant, it meant one of two things.

Either one, you guys could not wait for the wedding day, so you just went ahead and consummated. Now, if that happened, what they would do is they wouldn’t punish you, but they would just declare you married. They would say, “Okay, it’s done. You guys are married now.”

So you would move in together and start your life, but you would be the subject of intense social shame. People would mock you. People would make fun of you. People would look down on you. If you had sex before you were fully married, you were mocked and shamed and looked down on and despised.

That’s option number one.

Or option number two, if you became pregnant during your engagement, it could mean that you cheated on your fiancé. And if you were found to have cheated on your fiancé, committed adultery, they would stone you to death. They would execute you.

They severely punished adultery because they wanted to prevent anyone else from seeing what you did and then doing the same thing.

So when Joseph learns that his fiancé, Mary, is pregnant, he knows it’s not option one. He is not the father. And so he assumes it’s option number two.

And so Joseph pulls some strings to try to quietly break off the engagement.

The Grace of Joseph

Now notice real quick, Joseph doesn’t want to humiliate Mary. He doesn’t want to hurt Mary. He doesn’t want her to be publicly shamed.

He does everything he can to divorce her as quietly as possible because he doesn’t want Mary to be stoned. He doesn’t want her to be mocked. He doesn’t want her to anything like that.

He’s actually trying to protect a woman he believes has cheated on him.

Joseph doesn’t have a petty bone in his body. He is exuding the grace of God.

But so he quietly pulls some strings to quietly break off the engagement. But as he goes to sleep, an angel comes to him in a dream, and it says some things that are absolutely captivating.

I think first things first, he says, “You need to go marry this woman who has a baby that’s not yours.” He says, “Do not leave Mary. Don’t break off your engagement. Go marry her.”

Now think for one second about what that means.

If Joseph’s fiancé comes up pregnant and Joseph goes ahead and marries her, what is everybody else going to think?

They are going to think that Joseph is the father. They are going to think that Joseph just couldn’t wait till his wedding day and he impregnated his fiancé before it was time.

What does that mean?

That means Joseph is going to be relentlessly mocked and looked down upon and shamed and despised by his neighbors for the rest of his life. He is going to live the rest of his life with a cloud of shame hanging over his head because that was how it was in the ancient world. It was an honor-shame society.

So this angel is telling Joseph, “I want you to go marry this woman with a baby that is not yours, and I want you to live the rest of your life enduring the social stigma and shame that comes from that.”

That’s what God is asking Joseph to do.

If you’re a man—actually, if you’re a woman—in general, let me ask you: Do you have the guts to be shamed and looked down on and despised for the rest of your life in order to obey the Lord’s calling on you?

Joseph did.

So Joseph goes and he marries her just like the angel says.

The Virgin Birth

But there’s more because the angel tells him three things.

Number one, the angel tells him that baby in Mary’s stomach is not the result of infidelity. She did not cheat on you. She did not commit adultery.

Mary is pregnant as a virgin.

Now, in 2025, you call somebody a virgin, that’s an insult. But in Matthew chapter 1, when he says Mary was a virgin, he’s talking about a prophecy because the Old Testament prophet prophesied that the coming Savior was going to be born of a virgin.

Isaiah chapter 7 says:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
—Isaiah 7:14 (WEB)

They said the Savior is going to be born from a virgin birth. Once again, they are telling us what to look for when we are looking for the Messiah.

You’re looking for someone who is descended from the line of David, who is descended from the tribe of Judah, and who is born from a virgin, who is born from a miraculous birth.

The point is, the Savior is not just a normal man. The Savior is from God. The Savior is the result of God miraculously working in the world.

So Jesus is born from this virgin named Mary, which means if you are reading what Matthew is saying, the first thing that should be popping into your head is, “Could Jesus be the Savior we’ve been waiting for?”

And the angel who came to Joseph in his dream is going to answer that question for us right here because number two, the angel gives Jesus a name.

Actually, he gives Him two names.

Jesus: God Saves

First things first, he says they will call Him Jesus. He says, “You are going to raise this child and name Him Jesus.”

In Hebrew, the name would be pronounced more like Yeshua. He says, “Your child will be born and will be named Yeshua.”

Yeshua means God saves.

Jesus’s name means God will save. His name means Savior.

Is Jesus the Savior that we’ve been waiting for?

Yes.

He is the Savior who is descended from the line of David, who comes from the tribe of Judah, who was miraculously born from a virgin.

His name in itself is God placing a big neon sign over Him and saying, “This is the Savior you have been waiting for.”

But he gives Him another name.

He says His name will be Jesus, and they will call Him Emmanuel.

Emmanuel: God With Us

Emmanuel means God with us.

Who is Jesus?

Jesus is God with us.

Jesus isn’t just a prophet. He isn’t just a great teacher. He isn’t just a great man. He isn’t just some great religious figure.

Jesus is God Himself.

Jesus is God come down from heaven to dwell with us.

God came down from His throne, lived a human life in Jesus Christ, and then went to the cross in our place so that God Himself could take the punishment for our sins.

Jesus is the God who created us. Jesus is the God who sustains us. Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. When the Old Testament Israelites talked to God, they were talking to Jesus.

And so the God who made us and the God we sinned against in the beginning came down to earth so that He could be with us, He could rub elbows with us, and He could live out a perfect human life without sin and then go to the cross and take my sin and your sin onto His shoulders and be sacrificed in our place.

God took the punishment that belonged to you.

That is what happens in Jesus Christ, and that is the story that Matthew is going to tell.

He is telling the story of how this long-promised Messiah came down from heaven, came to earth, so that He could restore the world and redeem you and me.