Jesus' Family Line: Saints and Scoundrels

We’re going to play a little game this morning.

The purpose of this game is to test how willing you are to say what’s really going on in your life. You all know that we ask each other, “How are you doing?”, and we all know that even though we say “Good” or “fine”, a good portion of the time we are not really good or fine. We’re having a hard time.

Here’s how this will work. I’m going to ask you guys a series of questions. Actually, I’m going to give you guys a set of statements and you have to either agree or disagree with the statements.

These questions are going to go from really innocent and easy to answer, but then they’re going to get progressively harder to answer. So when I ask the question, you’ll raise your hand if you agree with the statement.

The purpose of this game is to test how willing you are to say what’s really going on in your life. You all know that we ask each other, “How are you doing?”, and we all know that even though we say “Good” or “fine”, a good portion of the time we are not really good or fine. We’re having a hard time.

First, the easiest ones:

“I have brown hair”

“I like Buffalo Baptist Church”

“I use social media”

Here’s how this will work. I’m going to ask you guys a series of questions. Actually, I’m going to give you guys a set of statements and you have to either agree or disagree with the statements.

“I like Christmastime.”

Well done. Now for the next set:

“I have a character or personality flaw that I have a hard time fixing.”

“My children or grandchildren sometimes disobey.”

These questions are going to go from really innocent and easy to answer, but then they’re going to get progressively harder to answer. So when I ask the question, you’ll raise your hand if you agree with the statement.

“I sometimes feel like a bad person.”

You’re doing great! Now, for the hard ones. Can you raise your hand in agreement to these questions?

“I have a family member who is lost, and I have not tried to share the gospel with them like I know I should.”

“My spouse and I had an argument this morning before church.”

First, the easiest ones:

And then here’s the last one: “My family is a messed-up family.” How many of you would be honest enough to admit that this morning?

Here’s why I ask that question: Jesus’ family line was the very same way. We knowMary and Joseph were upstanding Israelites, but their family line, Joseph’s family line had plenty of dysfunction in it, plenty of brokenness in it.

“I have brown hair”

“I like Buffalo Baptist Church”

And this morning, I want us to see this. I want us to examine the family tree of Jesus Christ, because in doing so, we learn something very fascinating and not a little bit comforting: We learn that Jesus’ family is alot like our own. There are some saints in Jesus’ family line. And there are also some scoundrels in His family line. There are some wonderful stories of faith and godliness and piety. And there are some sordid details about family secrets and some of the worst crimes imaginable, even by today’s standards.

And Jesus does this - God has orchestrated this - the Holy Spirit has inspired this text in order to show us that Jesus is, really and genuinely and truly, God with us. “Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus - our Immanuel!”

So notice with me five markers of grace in Jesus’ family line. Five markers of grace. The first marker is that of hard times.

“I use social media”

What do I mean by hard times? Are we going through hard times now? They say inflation is the highest it has been in this country since President Reagan was in office, 1982. COVID-19, still circulating around the globe, two years into it. Do we know something about hard times too? Yes, we do.

Well, Israel did too - worse times, in fact. We know the Jews experienced the Holocaust in the late 1930s and early to mid-1940s. But there was an event that was more significant even than that, and it’s what Matthew calls the deportation. Also known as the exile.

The exile was probably just as significant. Because exile or deportation - that is a forced exit from your home country. So what was the exile or deportation? Well, it was the worst thing the Israelites ever experienced in the history of their nation that is found in the Bible.

That’s what happened to Israel. Around 586 BC, the nation of Babylon invaded Israel, took the city of Jerusalem, invaded the city, burned the temple to the ground, forcibly removed Israelites from their homes, slaughtered countless numbers of them and the ones they didn’t kill, they loaded up like animals and deported them back to Babylon.

It would be like our biggest and most powerful adversary — China — invading our country, destroying the Capitol Building and the White House, slaughtering as many Americans as they could find. And then, as if that would not be enough, it would be like the Chinese forcibly removing each family in this country from their homes and hauling us all to the other side of the world to live in China.

“I like Christmastime.”

And this was even worse for Israel, because in being deported to Babylon, they were being removed from their land. The land - the promised land! The land of flowing milk and honey! The land God had promised to Abraham to give to his descendants after him. The land God had prepared for them when He rescued them from Egypt. The land where God promised to bless them with His presence and His law and His name and glory, that they might bless others by reflecting the Lord’s righteous character.

Now the land lies empty and devastated, like one of those scenes after a major tornado when houses and buildings are flattened and trees are uprooted and everything has become a wasteland. That was Israel after the exile. Why did God allow this? Because of their sin. They worshiped other gods. So the exile was God’s discipline upon Israel.

And yet, during this time, during this period of darkness, during these hard times, God is at work. How is he at work?

Well done. Now for the next set:

Look with me in your Bibles at Matt. 1:12-16

Matthew 1:12–16 ESV

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

What was happening during this time? God is still preparing the way for His promised King, the descendant of David, the promised offspring of Eve who would destroy the serpent and reverse the curse and undo all that sin has undone. Like a good father, even as the Lord disciplines His chosen people, He is also simultaneously bringing history to the perfect moment to introduce to them their Savior.

And church, our good, wise and all-powerful God is using these hard times to bring about His glory and our good and our ultimate salvation. He is working behind the scenes now, no less than He was then. COVID-19 will one day end. We don’t know when. And it’s probably best not to put our hopes in COVID-19 coming to an end soon. Instead, why not place our hope in the only One who is worthy of it? Why not trust in the Lord who will get us through this crisis and the next one that comes? At Christmas we’re reminded of the hope that is ours - Immanuel, God with us. “I give them eternal life,” Immanuel says, “and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28 ESV).

“I have a character or personality flaw that I have a hard time fixing.”

That’s the first marker of grace. Jesus identified with us in our difficult times. Notice with me now the second marker of grace. Not only does the family line of Jesus’ progress through hard times. The family line of Jesus also included Canaanite women.

Now let me explain. Having women on an official roll or list is nothing weird today. We would be confused if a list of people didn’t include women today, and rightly so. It was wrong for women to be unable to vote or own property. That was a social injustice.

But in the first century, you just simply wouldn’t have seen women in a genealogy. Why not? Because genealogies back then focused on the fathers. This one does, too. You see that right off the bat in Matt. 1:2 - “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” (ESV). Genealogies focused on fathers because genealogies were legal documents. Genealogies were proof of things. “I belong to this family, because this genealogy says I come from these people.” Or “This land belongs to me because this genealogy proves that the family property will go to me.

“My children or grandchildren sometimes disobey.”

But women weren’t on those documents. Why not? Because, in general, women were seen as of little importance. If you were in court, you couldn’t call a woman as a witness because women’s testimony wasn’t seen as valid.

But Jesus saw women differently. Jesus didn’t completely obliterate all distinctions between men and women, because men and women are different. But Jesus elevated women far above the place given to them by society. Think of Mary Magdalene, Martha, and the other women. In the first century, their role was in the family line was suppressed. Jesus gave them prominence by including five women in His family line. That is unprecedented in the first century!

And here’s another thing: these women - they were Canaanites. Who are these women? There’s four of them, all of them Canaanites. Tamar was a Canaanite - that means she was part of those people who were living in the promised land when Israel took the land. The Canaanites were known for doing things like sacrificing their children to pagan gods.

Then you have Ruth. Ruth was from Moab - Ruth was a good and godly woman. Ruth was known for this. Do you remember this? Ruth 1:16-17

Ruth 1:16–17 ESV

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

Ruth said that to her mother-in-law. She was committed to her even though she had no real reason to stay with her, her husband being dead and all. Ruth effectively became an Israelite with that statement. Ruth was an incredible young woman, but her homeland, Moab, wasn’t so great. They were long-standing enemies of Israel.

What about Bathsheba? Bathsheba was the woman who King David saw bathing on her roof. He sent one of his aids to get her, he got her pregnant, and then had her husband Uriah killed. Some people say that Bathsheba was partially to blame for bathing on her roof. I don’t know about that, and it sounds kind of like victim-blaming to me. But she was married to a Hittite - a non-Israelite, and that meant that she herself was legally a Hittite.

All of these women were non-Jews. That made them Gentiles. In Jesus’ day, when this gospel was written, Jews had gotten to where they wanted nothing to do with anyone who wasn’t Jewish. They thought the Gentiles were inherently more sinful than they were. They thought God loved them more than the Gentiles just because they were Israelites. But not only were all of these women Gentiles.

They were also women who were connected in some way with scandalous things. Tamar and Rahab were sexually immoral women; Bathsheba and Ruth weren’t, but they were associated with events that could be looked at that way. Even Mary, the fifth woman in the genealogy and Jesus’ mother, even she was a scandal - pregnant and unmarried.

Again, why is Jesus doing this? Because sinful human beings like us get ourselves entangled in messy things. Whether we’re like Rahab and Tamar and we walk into it with our eyes wide open, or whether we’re like Bathsheba who was pulled into it, sinful human beings get themselves into messy things. And Jesus is showing us that He has come to save messy, sinful people.

That Christmas hymn Hark the Herald Angels Sing — Charles Wesley wrote that, and I wonder if he was thinking of this fact about Jesus as he wrote those lines? “Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus -- our Immanuel!” God with us. God with us. That’s why Jesus includes Canaanite women in his family line.

Notice with me now, marker of grace number 3. Sordid family secrets.

“I sometimes feel like a bad person.”

You’re doing great! Now, for the hard ones. Can you raise your hand in agreement to these questions?

“I have a family member who is lost, and I have not tried to share the gospel with them like I know I should.”

When I was writing this sermon, I did an internet search for “family secrets”. Don’t worry, I had some search parameters set so that I didn’t come across something I wasn’t looking for. I wanted to find an example, an illustration of a family secret. And I started reading through some news articles — you know, there are these people out there who as adults have discovered these secrets about their families — the guy they thought was their dad isn’t their dad, the name they’ve always used isn’t their real name — something really disorienting like that. I wanted to incorporate a story in my sermon.

But what I discovered when reading these stories is, there’s no way I can tell one of these stories in my sermon because these stories are so complicated, so many twists and turns, so many odd details that are confusing to explain about but they’re actually crucial to the story.

And that’s the moment I realized the obvious - family secrets are really, really messy. No wonder they’re hidden — not only are they embarrassing, but it also just takes a lot of mental work to explain all the ins and outs to someone who doesn’t know the situation. It’s just easier not to talk about it.

I wonder, do any of you here this morning have something in your family that it’s just easier for you to not talk about it? If so, you’re probably ashamed of it and embarrassed by it. I hope it encourages you to know that your Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the promised King and Messiah, He too has complicated and messy things in his family line that his family no doubt found it easier to not talk about.

Verse 3 introduces us to a lady named Tamar. We talked about her before. Now we learn the full story. Tamar was a widow. She had been married to a man named Er, who was the son of Judah, one of the patriarch Judah. Er was not a righteous man. The Lord took his life. The law said that if a woman’s husband died, and they had no children together, it was the duty of the brother to essentially marry his deceased brother’s widow and help her produce offspring. That sounds weird to us, but it was actually a way of protecting the woman whose husband has died. She’s going to need someone to take her of her and provide for her.

Anyway, Er’s brother, the guy who would be the one to do this, his name was Onan. Onan refused to fulfill his lawful duty to Tamar to help her conceive a child. So the Lord took his life too. With her husband and his brother now dead, it falls to Judah, the father-in-law to take care of Tamar. But Judah falls down on the job too. He sends Tamar back to her father’s house. Think about her for a moment, church. Think about how alone she must have felt, how rejected and worthless she must have felt.

But Judah actually had a reason for sending her back to her father. Judah did have a son, but he wasn’t old enough yet to step into that role. The idea is that he’ll bring Tamar back when he’s of age. But Tamar doesn’t want to wait. Judah messed up, but this is where Tamar goes astray. Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute in order to attract her father-in-law so that he will be with her and provide her with a son.

As I wrote this, I was reminded of those 90s talk shows? Remember those? Jerry Springer, Ricky Lake. Of course, none of you ever watched them. But you would hear the most messed up stories on the show — people would go on the show and tell-all, they would air all of their dirty laundry for the whole world to see - how this person or that person had done this or that terrible thing to them. And then inevitably the talk show host would say, “Hmmm, that’s terrible. Well, it just so happens that in the studio today we have that person who traumatized you so badly! Come on out!” Then the two would have it out on stage or end up hugging each other or sometimes both.

If the story of Tamar and Judah reminds you of that kind of situation, you’re reading it right. I was studying for this sermon and reading a commentary on the Matthew and the author wrote this about Tamar and Judah:

“Forget the soap opera tomorrow morning or Desperate Housewives reruns. Just give good old Genesis 38 a read.” [O’Donnell, p36]

That is the story; it’s exactly what happened. Read Genesis 38 later for yourself if you don’t believe me. Did you know that kind of stuff was in the Bible? What do you think of something like that being in the Bible? More to the point, what do you think of something like that showing up in Jesus’ family lineage? Does that shock you? Does it offend you? Does something like that seem beneath Jesus?

If so, then my friend you misunderstand what the gospel is all about. I understand why it would shock you or bother you. But my prayer is that you would come to understand it in such a way that it comforts you. It comforts me, because it shows me that God is not surprised by our sin. God with us - In the person of Christ, our God has come near to us. He identifies with us, church! Our God identifies Himself with us so completely and so fully that He risks His own reputation!

Now don’t misunderstand me, church: Jesus Himself never sinned. Scripture is clear that Jesus remained completely sinless in thought and deed. And none of this should be taken as me saying that these sins are okay.

But it’s why He came — to take on our nature and live and die in our place, rise again, ascend to heaven, and then to live within us by His Spirit. The genealogy foreshadows this, and shows that God is willing and even happy to use the “worst of the worst”. If God can work with people like Judah and Tamar, I’m pretty sure He can use me and He can use you.

“My spouse and I had an argument this morning before church.”

Marker of grace #3: sordid family secrets. How about marker of grace #4?

Rahab was a prostitute. Enough said there. She is actually more known for how she helped the Hebrew spies. Israel sits on the far side of the Jordan. They’ve come out of Egyptian captivity. God has brought them out of Egyptian captivity, parting the ocean into two gigantic, stationary walls of water with dry ground in the middle. What power!

Now the question is: will they have the faith to actually enter the land? They send over two men who will serve as spies. They’ll gather intelligence - what’s the lay of the land like? What are the geographic features that will make it easy or hard? What are the people like? What about the cities? What about the natural resources?

The spies get in trouble with the authorities though and Rahab helps them escape. But before she lets them down out of the window, she tells them this:

Joshua 2:8-11

Joshua 2:8–11 ESV

Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

That’s an Israelite confession of faith, coming from the mouth of a non-Israelite, pagan prostitute. No wonder the book of Hebrews says that Rahab was a model of faith!

Because, you see, having saving faith doesn’t mean you’re sinless. It means you recognize your sin and look to the One who isn’t to forgive you and deliver you from your sin.

And then here’s the last one: “My family is a messed-up family.” How many of you would be honest enough to admit that this morning?

And even though Rahab is a prostitute, this is why the Bible does not seem to reduce her to that. She’s known as a prostitute, an immoral woman, but she is known for her faith and for her good works that flowed from her faith.

Don’t get me wrong, church: God does not condone sin. Just because the Bible tells the story of a prostitute doesn’t mean God’s cool if you want to become a prostitute, anymore than the fact that the Bible says people had slaves means the Bible condones slavery. Sin is not okay.

But that’s precisely the wonder of grace. That’s the beauty of the gospel. That’s what makes the gospel such good news! God takes someone like Rahab, and what He does is, on the basis of her faith, He gradually forms Christlikeness in her, and He then uses her as a link in the chain of salvation. In this case, His purpose was to have her rescue the spies but also to be a link in the chain that leads to the birth of Jesus.

Rahab was a sexual sinner. And so it’s appropriate here to say at least one thing about that. Church, when it comes to sexual sin, we have got to talk about it. If Jesus was not ashamed to include a sexual sinner in His family line, we ought not be ashamed to acknowledge that it can be a problem for us too.

As a church, we open wide our arms to sexual sinners. We do not affirm the sin. We will not bow to the pressure of the culture around us that demands that we celebrate sexual sin as good. That is not love. Love does not condone or affirm, but love does embrace the sinner. We do not condone the sin; but neither do we condemn the sinner. We embrace him or her and point him or her to Jesus, whose arms are wide open to receive and forgive and change sexual sinners. We embrace and love the sinner because Jesus embraces and loves the sinner. “Welcome one another,” Paul wrote in Romans 15:7, “as Christ has welcomed you.”

Marker of grace #4: immoral people in the line of Jesus. Now for the last marker of grace: wicked kings.

Now, I ask that question for two reasons. The first is that every family has details they’d like to keep in the dark. The reason for that is that every family is made of people, and people sin. We Christians are forgiven. We’ve been pronounced righteous in God’s sight. He considers us as righteous and sees us as righteous. But we are still learning how to live that way in reality. And so we mess up.

Before God called me into the ministry, I had a non-ministry job. And that’s when I was introduced to the world of embellishing your resume. When I was still an intern, one of the VPs there offered to help me with my resume. I’ll never forget what she said: she said, “I’m going to make you look so good you won’t recognize yourself.”

That’s the first reason: families are disfunctional because they’re sinful - which means there are dysfunctional families in the room this morning. To some degree, in some way, there are people and events and patterns in our family that we would like to keep hidden. That’s the first reason I ask the question.

The second reason is a better reason, though: Jesus’ family line was the very same. “Pastor, are you saying Jesus came from a dysfunctional family?” What I’m saying is that while Mary and Joseph were upstanding Israelites, their family line, Joseph’s family line had plenty of dysfunction in it, plenty of brokenness in it.

From David with Bathsheba to Judah and Tamar, from rape and murder to incest, Joseph, Jesus’ father, came from a family with people and events and patterns so sinful and twisted that they look they belong on a Jerry Springer episode. I’m not the only one who sees it this way. I read this quote this past week out of a commentary on Matthew:

“There is no pattern of righteousness in the lineage of Jesus.” [Wilkins, NIV Application Commentary on Matthew, quoted in O’Donnell p37]

Another guy who wrote a commentary on Matthew’s gospel said this:

The mention of four mothers is unusual. All were probably non-Jewish, and in each case there was some irregularity or even scandal. Richard T. France, “Matthew,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 908.

And this morning, I want us to see this. I want us to examine the family tree of Jesus Christ, because in doing so, we learn something very fascinating and not a little bit comforting: We learn that Jesus’ family is alot like our own. There are some saints in Jesus’ family line. And there are also some scoundrels in His family line. There are some wonderful stories of faith and godliness and piety. And there are some sordid details about family secrets and some of the worst crimes imaginable, even by today’s standards. And Jesus does this - God has orchestrated this - the Holy Spirit has inspired this text in order to show us that Jesus is, really and genuinely and truly, God with us.

So notice with me five markers of grace in Jesus’ family line. Five markers of grace. The first marker is that of hard times.

Now it’s kind of hard to preach a genealogy; if you’ve ever tried to read one, you know it’s also hard to read a genealogy. So I’m not going to go sequentially through the verses like I normally do. We’re going to topically. The first topic, the first marker of grace, are hard times.

What do I mean by hard times? Well, the genealogy is divided up into three sections. The first one goes from Abraham to King David in verses 1-5. Then the second section from King David to the deportation, or the exile. And then the third section is from the exile to the birth of Christ.

So what was the exile or deportation? Well, it was the worst thing the Israelites ever experienced in the history of their nation that is found in the Bible. We know the Jews experienced the Holocaust in the late 1930s and early to mid-1940s. But the exile was probably just as significant. Because exile or deportation - that is a forced exit from your home country.

That’s what happened to Israel. Around 586 BC, the nation of Babylon invaded Israel, took the city of Jerusalem, invaded the city, burned the temple to the ground, forcibly removed Israelites from their homes, slaughtered countless numbers of them and the ones they didn’t kill, they loaded up like animals and deported them back to Babylon.

It would be like our biggest and most powerful adversary — China — invading our country, destroying the Capitol Building and the White House, slaughtering as many Americans as they could find. And then, as if that would not be enough, it would be like the Chinese forcibly removing each family in this country from their homes and hauling us all to the other side of the world to live in China.

And this was even worse for Israel, because in being deported to Babylon, they were being removed from their land. The land - the promised land! The land of flowing milk and honey! The land God had promised to Abraham to give to his descendants after him. The land God had prepared for them when He rescued them from Egypt. The land where God promised to bless them with His presence and His law and His name and glory, that they might bless others by reflecting the Lord’s righteous character.

Now the land lies empty and devastated, like one of those scenes after a major tornado when houses and buildings are flattened and trees are uprooted and everything has become a wasteland. That was Israel after the exile. Why did God allow this? Because of their sin. They worshiped other gods. So the exile was God’s discipline upon Israel.

And yet, during this time, during this period of darkness, during these hard times, God is at work. How is he at work?

Look with me in your Bibles at Matt. 1:12-16

Matthew 1:12–16 ESV

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

What was happening during this time? God is still preparing the way for His promised King, the descendant of David, the promised offspring of Eve who would destroy the serpent and reverse the curse and undo all that sin has undone. Like a good father, even as the Lord disciplines His chosen people, He is also simultaneously bringing history to the perfect moment to introduce to them their Savior.

And church, our good, wise and all-powerful God is using these hard times to bring about His glory and our good and our ultimate salvation. He is working behind the scenes now, no less than He was then. COVID-19 will one day end. We don’t know when. And it’s probably best not to put our hopes in COVID-19 coming to an end soon. Instead, why not place our hope in the only One who is worthy of it? Why not trust in the Lord who will get us through this crisis and the next one that comes? At Christmas we’re reminded of the hope that is ours - Immanuel, God with us. “I give them eternal life,” Immanuel says, “and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28 ESV).

That’s the first marker of grace. Jesus identified with us in our difficult times. Notice with me now the second marker of grace. Not only does the family line of Jesus’ progress through hard times. The family line of Jesus also included Canaanite women.

Now let me explain. Having women on an official roll or list is nothing weird today. We would be confused if a list of people didn’t include women today, and rightly so. It was wrong for women to be unable to vote or own property. That was a social injustice.

But in the first century, you just simply wouldn’t have seen women in a genealogy. Why not? Because genealogies back then focused on the fathers. This one does, too. You see that right off the bat in Matt. 1:2 - “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” (ESV). Genealogies focused on fathers because genealogies were legal documents. Genealogies were proof of things. “I belong to this family, because this genealogy says I come fromt these people.” Or “This land belongs to me because this genealogy proves that the family property will go to me.

But women weren’t on those documents. Why not? Because, in general, women were seen as of little importance. If you were in court, you couldn’t call a woman as a witness because women’s testimony wasn’t seen as valid.

But Jesus saw women differently. Jesus didn’t completely obliterate all distinctions between men and women, because men and women are different. But Jesus elevated women far above the place given to them by society. Think of Mary Magdalene, Martha, and the other women. In the first century, their role was in the family line was suppressed. Jesus gave them prominence by including five women in His family line. That is unprecedented in the first century!

And here’s another thing: these women - they were Canaanites. Who are these women? There’s five of them, all of them Canaanites. Ruth was from Moab - Moab was a country that was really an enemy of Israel. Tamar was a Canaanite

First, though, a word about genealogies. You’re probably thinking: Why is he preaching a genealogy? Genealogies are tedious and they can be boring and when you’re reading your Bible you tend to want to skip them, to get to the good stuff. I completely agree with that.

But actually, genealogies are important.

We do live in a world where we embellish our resumes. We hide those things we don’t like and those things we’re proud of, we bring them to the fore. Practically the whole world thinks this way. And that’s not a new thing. In the ancient world, genealogies were embellished. If you were proud of someone in your family line, you would include them. If you weren’t proud of them, you would hide them.

Which is why we know this genealogy is historically accurate! If Jesus had wanted to make Himself look good, He wouldn’t have included Rahab and Tamar and Manasseh and Rehoboam. If you’re going to fabricate your family background, you don’t include people like that. You don’t include wicked kings like Rehoboam and Manasseh.

Manasseh ruled with an iron fist and lacked wisdom. Then there was Manasseh - not much better.

But most notably among the wicked kings? King David. King David was described as a man after God’s own heart. And yet he sinned grievously. David had too much time on his hands. He got distracted and gave in to temptation. He committed adultery with Bathsheba. She became pregnant. And to keep her husband from finding out, he had him killed.

But not just David. Solomon, too. Solomon had a great start. Israel grew and prospered under his leadership. But Solomon had many wives who didn’t worship the Lord, and they led him astray. It’s almost as if every king that took the throne in Israel’s history prompted the question: Is this the one? Is this the one promised to sit on David’s throne forever, the one promised to bring in peace and joy and justice? Is he? ....No, not him. What about this one? …No, not him either. Each successive king raised Israel’s hopes and and then dashed them. What was God up to? He was teaching them to look for the Messiah and not place their hope anywhere else but in Him.

And we too have to discipline ourselves not to hope in earthly kings but in the king of kings. Too many of us think that what happens in Washington can make or break Christianity. Too many of us elevate presidents or politicians to the level of a Messiah who will meet all our needs and bring us salvation and happiness. In other words, too many of us worship our political leaders. Only Jesus is the Son of David and the Son of Abraham.

Now some of you have probably been thinking: Why is he preaching a genealogy? I mean, genealogies are tedious and they can be boring and when you’re reading your Bible you tend to want to skip them, to get to the good stuff. Get to Mary and Joseph and the wise men and the manger scene and all that. I completely agree with that, and we will get there next Sunday and the Sunday after that and the Sunday after that.

But actually, genealogies are important. What seems irrelevant to us was extremely relevant to the Israelites. In 2021, we define ourselves but how much money we make or what we do for a living. In the first century, people defined themselves by who they belonged to.

But this genealogy is relevant to us, too. Look up at the top of the chapter, verse 1: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ” - this is the record of Jesus’ family line. But then notice how he describes Jesus further: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” You see that? Then the genealogy starts with Abraham, and continues all the way up to the birth of Christ, through David.

So what Matthew is doing here is showing us, hey, this Jesus of Nazareth, he really is the Messiah, and here’s the proof: here’s the family lineage to prove it. Jesus is uniquely qualified to be our Savior, and God has given us proof of that in a genealogy that’s historically accurate, that’s made up of real people who really existed.

Matthew wraps up his genealogy by summing it up. Look with me at verse 17.

Matthew 1:17 ESV

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

You noticed the repeated number 14? It’s a multiple of seven, which in the Bible is the number of completion, the number of fulfillment. God has been guiding human history according to His perfect wisdom, and His wisdom concentrates itself in the person of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul said in Galatians 4:4-5

Galatians 4:4–5 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

When the fullness of time had come, when the time was just right, in other words, God sent for His Son. His Son, John tells in his gospel, came with grace and truth. We see that grace in the five markers of that grace in his genealogy — wicked kings, immoral people, prostitutes, sordid family secrets. “Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus - our Immanuel!”

Friends, have you received this Jesus into your life? Have you believed upon Him? Are you resting your hope in Him? Do you bank your hopes for eternal life on Him? Are you relying on His shed blood to cleanse you and to cause you to stand innocent before the Father?

If you haven’t, why not? We’ve seen this morning that we have nothing to hide. Jesus identifies with us in our most broken and messy moments, to show us He loves us and to glorify Himself. When a couple are dating, you put your best foot forward. When you get married, you start to see them as they really are. And the way you know you’re spouse loves you is when they see you at your worst and they still love you. That’s how Jesus loves us. We can’t stay in our sin, but Jesus does come to us in our sin, He embraces us, and with His strong hand He pulls us out of our pit and makes us one with Himself. You don’t have to clean yourself up to come to Jesus. You just have to come to Him, brokenness and all, and offer it to Him. In reality, that’s all that we have to give Him. We have nothing to contribute to Him, nothing to offer Him. Jesus does it all.

So why don’t you trust Him today? If you haven’t done that and you would like to, find me or pastor Shawn or one of our deacons and get that settled today.

For those of you who are trusting in Jesus, is your hope settled upon Him 100%? What are those areas of your life are closed off to Him? Jesus comes to you in grace and He invites you to join Him in precisely that area where you are struggling the most. Rest your hope on Him fully today.

Jesus' Family Line: Saints and Scoundrels

#1: Hard times

#2: Canaanite women

#3: Sordid family secrets

#4: Immoral people

#5: Wicked kings

Conclusion and call for response