Bathsheba- A Christmas Story Series

Merry Christmas from my family to yours! We begin a short series two Sundays ago designed to make room in your heart to worship Jesus, entitled The Mothers of Jesus.

The best-selling book in the world begins in the oddest way. Matthew chapter two is the account of the first Christmas and it warms our hearts to read about the romance of the scene. But Matthew chapter one is the place where most people get a “glaze in their eyes” when reading Jesus’ family tree. The New Testament begins by telling us the family background to Jesus, His genealogy. In Matthew 1, right before the Christmas narrative, Matthew gives a genealogy of Jesus, and the genealogy is a way to show who Jesus is and why he came. Again, listing a person’s family tree is an odd way of starting the most significant book of all time. No other Gospel begins the way Matthew’s does. Yet, for Jewish readers of Matthew’s day, it wasn’t unusual.

Genealogies were a big deal for the Jewish people; Jewish families commonly kept private family records. Some of you are into genealogies as well. You research your family’s history through the elaborate websites and reams of paper. For every one of you who have discovered you have a famous person in your family history (president or a military general), there’s also the black sheep who was hung for stealing a horse. The first page of our New Testament reads like an ancient Hebrew phone book – many of us would simply wish to skip it. Against the common notion that these words are boring and irrelevant is a failure to see it’s importance. Genealogies were significant because they communicate a person’s social’s standing and status. And Jesus’ family tree shows His pedigree and it conveys His importance. But His Jesus has skeletons in His family’s closet as well – you’ll see some liars, cheats, and crooks.

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah…

… and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” ” (Matthew 1:1-6, 16)

Jesus’ family line travels through many of the Old Testament luminaries such as Solomon, David, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. All Jewish people took great pride from descending from on the great patriarchs such as Abraham. The genealogy has something almost no genealogies back then had. It contained women’s names - five women’s names to be exact. Very few of the ancient genealogies contained women’s names because women had little to no status in Jesus’ day. The five women’s names that we’re focusing on – Tamar, Ruth, Mary, and today’s focus, “the wife of Uriah.” Not only is it unusual for a family tree to contain women’s names in Jesus’ day, what’s most unusual is the five women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy is that a scandal is attached to each of their lives. If Matthew were simply looking for godly women to include in Jesus’ family tree, he could have mentioned Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, wives to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead, Matthew highlights these five scandalous women.

Quick Summary

By paying close attention to the genealogy of Jesus, we see two things jump of the page. First, Matthew includes women’s names in a day when almost no one did this. Second, each of these five women had some kind of scandal attached to them. We looked the story of Tamar in week one and Ruth in week two. This morning look with me at “the wife of Uriah.”

1. A Story of Shame

While Matthew only refers to her as “the wife of Uriah,” the Old Testament gives us her real name and her full story in 2 Samuel 11-12. Her name is Bathsheba and she is identified as an exceptionally beautiful woman: “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful” (2 Samuel 11:2). Perhaps Matthew blushes to name her directly but only says, “by the wife of Uriah”?