God's Gifts Wrapped In Jesus' Genealogy

AM Sermon preached at Syria Christian Church December 26, 2004

God’s Gifts Wrapped in Jesus’ Genealogy Matthew 1 & 2, 1 Corinthians 13:13

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Back in High School I was fascinated when we began to do three dimensional equations in calculus. I thought wearing goggles and cooking things over bunsen burners in chemistry class was cool. Art class gave my creative juices opportunity to flow. And Phys. Ed. well, the competitive side of me always loved it. But history now that met with an entirely different reaction. I dreaded history class. I responded to the lectures in that class with either boredom or sleep. And I liked the homework even less. Now since High School I’ve developed a whole new appreciation for history. And I’ve come to believe that history itself isn’t boring although it’s often approached in boring ways but that’s a rabbit chase I don’t want to get sidetracked with right now. I’m just mentioning my former boredom with history because I know it used to effect the way I read the Bible, especially whenever I came to the genealogical sections of scripture...I’d start reading how so and so begot so and so who begot so and so and so on and so forth and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah---and this switch would go off inside my head and this inner voice would cry start crying out, "boring," "boring," "boring." And my typical reaction was to quickly skim or completely skip those sections of scripture. I mean I was channel surfing before the TV remote was invented. Just look at Genesis---The creation account to me was like the Discovery Channel, pretty neat stuff. The report on Sodom and Gomorrah--that would be the weather channel. The Tower of Babel that was the Women’s Network--just kidding ladies! Jacob’s wrestling a stranger all-night was an ESPN special. The genealogies were of course, the history channel and every time I come across that kind of thing out would come the mental remote and I’d push the skip button... I think it took me three attempts to read through the Bible before I ever got it done cause I kept getting bogged down in the book of Numbers and all of its begets and begottens....but like I said I’ve developed a whole new appreciation for history since my High School years---and this is especially true for the history recorded for us in the Bible. Why I’ve learned that even the begets and begottens sections have some pretty good stuff in them. In fact I want to share some of what I’ve discovered with you today as we take a brief representative look at the genealogy of Jesus.

My sermon text this morning is Matthew chapter 1. I encourage you to follow along in your Bible or on the screen as I read some representative verses from it...

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"Mat 1:1 A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:"

Comment: Let me stop her just for a moment---and say that Abraham wasn’t really David’s father---this was just a Jewish way of hitting some highpoints in a person’s family heritage... Put 12 greats in front of the word grandfather and you come up with David’s actual relationship to Abraham...now let’s read on...

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2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers

Comment: Jacob by the way was renamed Israel by God and so the descendents of Judah and his brothers became known as the 12 tribes of Israel.... ah but we digress---moving on...

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3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar

Comment: gotta say it---it the male dominated society of the first century, it was highly unusual to list a women in a genealogy but God had it done anyway...let’s skip down to verse 5 and we’ll notice mention of two other women...

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5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,

Comment: Rahab...now where have we heard about her before? Could this be the same Rahab who helped the Jewish spies escape capture, could this be the prostitute Rahab in the family line of Jesus? And Ruth---she’s left us with one of the greatest examples of committed love in the Bible. Reading on...

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6 and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife, Comment: Uriah’s wife? That would have been Bathsheba, the woman David committed adultery with. Verse 7...

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7 Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa,

Comment: This would be King Solomon, the man God granted the greatest measure of wisdom given to any man other than Jesus Christ. There are serveral more names I could stumble across in reading the next several verses and each person is important but we’re not going for an indepth look of Jesus’ genealogy this morning just a representative look and what we can learn from it...so let’s skip down to verse 16 to pick up the last of the genealogical record and then quickly finish the chapter...