Jesus' Family Tree

Matthew 1:1-17

Jesus’ Family Tree

When I was in college I was walking across campus when I came across a woman who was in one of my classes.

She also came to our Campus Bible study.

She was maybe in her 50’s, which seemed ancient to me.

We got into a long and in-depth conversation that afternoon, and at some point she said, “I believe heaven will be beautiful, but I won’t be there.”

As we continued talking I learned that as a young girl her father had molested her, abused her and told her she was no good.

When she got older she married a man much like her father.

He abused her and regularly told her she was stupid and good for nothing.

And she believed all this.

It’s what she had been told her entire life.

And so, although she believed in God and in Jesus as well as heaven, she couldn’t conceive that she would ever be there since she figured she just wasn’t good enough.

We talked a lot about God’s love and grace that day.

I’ve also had times in my life when I felt that I didn’t measure up, and that God couldn’t possibly love someone like me.

How about you?

Mind if I ask you a question?

How are you feeling this morning?

What motivated you to come to church, to this worship service?

Are you feeling good?

Has it been an inspiring week or has it been awful?

Do you feel that you are at the end of your rope?

Do you ever wonder if God loves you?

Do you think that you aren’t good enough for God to use you for God’s good purposes?

(pause)

The first 17 verses in Matthew’s Gospel present us with Jesus’ Family Tree.

And in doing this, Matthew makes a major theological statement right from the very beginning: God is able to use extremely flawed human beings in order to carry history forward to achieve God’s goals.

A friend of mine is hooked on genealogies and tracing her family tree.

A lot of people are interested in this; that’s the reason Ancestry.com makes so much money.

And I can understand why it’s so interesting.

We want to know where we come from.

Others of us want information about the rates of cancer deaths, or Alzheimer’s

in our gene pool.

In any event, this friend tells me about her family’s history.

She describes pioneers, soldiers, and preachers.

Sometimes people name-drop their historical connections to make themselves feel extra special like being a Daughter of the American Revolution or a Kennedy or a Rockefeller.

But when we look at Jesus’ Family Tree, we quickly conclude that it is anything but a roll call for the institute of halos and harps.

Even His ancestors who are admired have a tainted history.

It starts with Abraham, who more than once, like Pinocchio in order to save his neck.

And it’s been said that Abraham’s grandson was “slicker than a Las Vegas card shark!!!”

The guy cheated his brother, his uncle…

…his very name—Jacob—means “cheater” or “trickster.”

But he’s on the list leading to Jesus, the Messiah.

Jacob’s son, Judah, was the father of Perez and Zerah.

But do you know how he became their father—by committing incest with Tamar—and she’s on the list we just read as well.

Good grief!

It’s not a pure line leading to Christ.

In Revelation Jesus is called “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.”

But Judah was a hypocrite, an adulterer and he and his brothers sold Joseph into slavery.

What kind of people were these?

If we jump to verse 6 in our Gospel lesson, we see that King David is in Jesus Family Tree.

But King David had Uriah the Hittite killed because he wanted Uriah’s wife—Bathsheba for himself.

So our “wonderful” King David was not only an adulterer he was also a murderer.

Listen to verse 5 again: “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.”

Why does Matthew bother to say that Boaz’s mother was Rahab?

Rahab was a prostitute when she first entered the biblical story.

Ruth was a foreigner and wasn’t even Jewish.

Manasseh makes the list, even though this wicked king sacrificed his own son in the fire to Baal and consulted mediums and spiritists.

Manasseh shed so much innocent blood that he is described in 2nd Kings Chapter 21 as “a terror to his people.”

God used a guy like THAT as part of the history leading up to Jesus?

A lot of the people on the list are kings; almost half of these kings were crooks, and all but a handful worshiped and idol or two for good measure.

Why do you suppose God used these people?