Son of God and Son of Man (Luke 3:23–38) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Genealogies don’t normally grab us. If you know a few generations back on your family tree then you might be able to interest a cousin or an aunt in your findings. But just try showing it to someone that’s not part of your family. ‘Hey, do you want to take a look at my family tree?’ You will likely watch a quick exit. A list of names that means something to you may hold little attention for others.

Blame it on the disconnections of our day or the busy pace of life or the disinterest in the historical. Whatever the reason, apart from a desire to know the roots of one’s family, force-feeding another’s family tree won’t go over well.

Yet the Lord God considers some family trees particularly important, so much so that a few of them find their way into His eternal Word. So they even show up on occasion in our daily Bible reading! We face them and wonder just how exacting we’re to read through the endless list of names of people we know nothing about, and most that have no additional details. Yet, odd as it may seem, they have a bearing on our eternity.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy. Luke doesn’t. Instead, he lays out the early stories of John the Baptist, the angelic announcement to Mary of her conception of the Messiah, followed by Jesus’ birth and John’s early ministry. Then Luke gives us a small statement on the baptism of our Lord.

At the baptism we see the sonship of Christ revealed. The Holy Spirit descends on Him in a way unlike upon any other. Then the voice from heaven attests, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” God the Father affirms that this man Jesus, who was around 30 years of age, is the unique and only eternal Son of God.

Just afterward, in chapter 4, we find that the devil tempts Jesus for 40-days in the wilderness. Throughout that time he questions Jesus as the Son of God, with each beginning, “If You are the Son of God. . . .” Jesus responds perfectly without giving in to the devil’s enticements. Instead of acting like us, Jesus acted like the Son of God.

Sandwiched right in the middle of the divine voice affirming Jesus Christ as God’s Son and the devil questioning Jesus’ divine sonship, Luke provides a detailed genealogy. Why does he do that? He wants to show us that God sent His Son for the nations, just as He promised. Let’s consider how Luke does that through this detailed genealogy.

1. Jesus is vitally connected to the human race.

The Gospel writers do many things but two things in particular in their Gospels. They affirm both the deity and humanity of Jesus. They do so through the attesting miracles of Christ, His power over the demonic, His authority over nature, the attesting voice, as well as through the uniqueness of His birth, death, and resurrection. They also show Jesus being born into a family like all of us, needing to be nurtured, learning and growing into maturity, facing hunger and sleep, feeling grief and sadness, and enjoying relationships. Luke, especially, makes use of the genealogy to do the same. He’s emphasizing both Jesus’ deity as “the son of God,” and His humanity, with the long list of his forefathers.

While Matthew’s genealogy focused on Jesus as “the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” in order to confirm his right through Abraham and David as the promised Messiah, Luke takes a broader look (Matt 1:1). He demonstrates Jesus as Messiah in the lineage of David but he also shows Jesus connected to the rest of the human race. To accomplish that, Luke goes back seventy-six generations. How’s that for genealogy! Twenty of those generations precede Abraham in order to confirm that Jesus was not just a Messiah for the Jewish nation to give them a national heritage. He’s the Son of God sent for sinful humanity. As Michael Wilcox so aptly put it, “Jesus is not simply one with the whole Jewish race: he is one with the whole human race, for he is son of Adam” [BST: L[...]