Liam Hungate
Last week covered Abraham's story in depth: his covenant with God, the birth of Ishmael, his renaming, the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the birth and testing of Isaac. The big takeaway was that righteousness comes by faith, not perfection, and that God keeps His promises no matter how long it takes. Tonight picked up there and traced that same promise forward into the New Testament.
Passages: Matthew 1:1-17; Romans 4; Galatians 3
The New Testament opens with Jesus' genealogy in Matthew 1, deliberately placing Him front and center from the very first verse and tying Him directly to God's promises to both Abraham and David. Matthew, writing primarily to a Jewish audience, needed to show Jesus was a genuine descendant of David to fulfill the Messianic prophecy, and Jewish genealogical records of the time were kept carefully enough that no one seriously disputed the accuracy of what he presented.
The genealogy runs in three stretches, Abraham to David, David to the exile, and the exile to Jesus, and includes four women, unusual for genealogies of that era: Tamar, who fought to protect her family line after the deaths of her first two husbands; Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho who protected Israelite spies and chose faithfulness to God over her own government; Ruth, whose loyalty to her mother-in-law reflected the faithfulness God calls His people to; and Bathsheba, referred to as Uriah's wife, whose story with David involved real sin but also real repentance. The point: Jesus' family line was never made up of perfect people, royalty, or wealth. It included sin and poverty, which is exactly the kind of people He spent His life serving.
Matthew 1:16 is careful to say Joseph was "the husband of Mary," not Jesus' father, since there was no blood relation between them. That raises a fair question: why trace Joseph's lineage rather than Mary's? Both Joseph and Mary descend from David, but through different sons, Joseph through Solomon and Mary through Nathan. Solomon's line carried the legal claim to David's throne, but it also carried a curse through a later king, Jeconiah, disqualifying his biological descendants from ever ruling. Because Jesus isn't Joseph's biological son, He bypasses that curse entirely while still holding a legitimate legal claim to the throne through Joseph, and a direct blood connection to David through Mary. It's a level of detail that shows just how deliberately God kept His word across many, many generations. One of the leaders shared a personal note here too, about having no family history in Christianity and God moving him across the country before revealing Himself to him afterward, a small picture of the same kind of intentional pursuit.
Romans 4 points back to Abraham as the model of faith, quoting Genesis 15:6: Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Being made right with God was never about Abraham's works, only his belief, and that same righteousness is offered to us as a gift, credited to our account rather than earned. Work expects payment as something owed. Faith simply receives what's freely given. The lesson illustrated the difference between justice, mercy, and grace using a soccer example: justice is running sprints for showing up late, mercy is running fewer sprints than deserved, and grace is skipping the punishment altogether and getting to play a favorite game instead. None of it can be earned, which is exactly the point.
Because the promise comes by faith rather than the law, it's guaranteed not just to Abraham's physical descendants, but to everyone who shares his faith, making him the father of all who believe. Abraham's faith never wavered, even considering how old he and Sarah were when Isaac was finally born. Romans 4 closes by saying that same crediting of righteousness wasn't just for Abraham, it's for anyone who believes in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, since Jesus was handed over for our sins and raised to secure our justification.
Galatians 3 picks up the same thread: those who have faith are Abraham's true sons. Scripture had already announced the gospel to Abraham in advance, that all nations would be blessed through him, meaning the gospel was never limited to the Jewish people alone. Through faith, believers become children of God, clothed with Christ through baptism, with none of the old dividing lines, Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, carrying any weight anymore. Belonging to Christ is what makes someone an heir of the promise given to Abraham.
This ancient promise still plays out today, not just through Abraham's and David's family lines or Christ's earthly ministry, but through Christ's Spirit living in believers now. The only real question that matters is whether or not you belong to Christ, not whether you're a good person, what church background you come from, your gender, or your financial situation. Belonging to Him settles our future, since we're children of God, our present, since we're family to every other believer, and our place in a much bigger story, since we're heirs playing a role in God's plan of redemption.
These are the same questions the group wrestled with tonight. They are a good way to keep the conversation going at the dinner table.
A few easier openers if you want to start smaller: