Ever wonder why the Gospels start with a 17 verse list of
obscure names and references? If you're not real familiar with the Bible and its structure, you might find it odd - or maybe even boring - that the New Testament would begin like this. I
mean really, who knows – or even cares – who all of those people are? I bet you were tempted to skip it,
weren’t you? If you did, you
missed something incredible.
Before we talk about what’s incredible, let’s talk about the primary
reason that it’s there.
Matthew, the man that God chose to write the book of Matthew, was Jewish. Most of the first people who read his account of the life of Jesus were Jewish too. You see, one of the primary goals of Matthew was to convince those to whom he was writing that Jesus was, in fact, the long awaited Messiah of Israel. If Matthew’s goal was to convince his audience that Jesus was THE legit Messiah, he HAD to start by listing his ancestral credentials.
Any good Jew would recognize the 2 most important names in that lineage - Abraham and David. Abraham was the spiritual father of Israel - the first to enter into a covenant relationship with God in Genesis. David was the greatest king in the history of Israel. All of the prophecies about the coming Messiah said that he would come from the lineage of David. So Matthew begins by just taking a few minutes to say essentially, "Look, Jesus' claims to be the Messiah are legit from a legal standpoint."
But what's incredible to me when I read these words is the fact that God would use such a bunch of messed up, broken, sinful people in the lineage of Jesus. I mean really, if God is trying to convince people in Scripture that Jesus is the Messiah, couldn't the list have looked a little better, and couldn't these people have had a little higher pedigree?
This genealogy is too exhaustive for me to talk about every single person in it. But if you go to biblegateway.com and do a keyword search of each of these names, you'll see that everybody in this lineage is messed up.
Some of this stuff sounds like it's straight out of Jerry Springer.
Read about Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. That is messed up! Read about Rahab in Joshua 2. She was far from perfect! Ruth was a pagan from Moab. The Moabites were one of the most sexually perverted cultures in ancient times. And we know that despite the greatness of King David that he slept with one of his soldiers' wives (Bathsheba), got her pregnant and then had her husband (Uriah) killed. The list of Israel's kings that follows David is littered with men that did much evil in the sight of God.
Nobody in this list is perfect, not even Mary (nope, she's not sinless and she wasn't a perpetual virgin). In fact, these people are far from perfect. The incredible thing about Matthew 1 is that it shows us that no matter who we are or what we've done, we're never beyond the grace of God. No matter who we are or what we've done, we're never beyond being used for the purposes of God.
But it's not just a feel good story. It's a story about a Messiah, a Savior. You see, the birth of a Savior isn't really news at all - good, bad or indifferent - if you don't realize that you need a Savior. All of the people in the lineage of Jesus needed a Savior. You and I need a Savior, because we're not perfect either.
The wonder of the birth of Jesus is that He is "Immanuel - which means 'God with us.'" (v.23). God loves us so much that He came to us in Jesus. He was born to die for our sins, in our place and on our behalf, shedding His blood as a perfect atonement for sin. This wasn't the kind of Messiah that Israel was expecting, but Jesus is the kind of Messiah that saves, heals, restores and makes new. His life is about our new life.
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