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”?
It was in the springtime when David, the king of Israel, saw the beautiful Bathsheba bathing as he walked on his roof. We’re not told how long David deliberated over his plan, but the king sent messengers for her and “took her” (2 Samuel 11:4). What David hadn’t considered is that Bathsheba became pregnant.
1.1 Who Was Bathsheba?
Bathsheba was the daughter of one of David’s best fighters (2 Samuel 23:34). She was the granddaughter of one of David’s most trusted counselors (2 Samuel 16:23; 23:34). And she was the wife of one of Israel’s most honored soldiers (2 Samuel 23:39). David’s sin was really a knife in the back of one of his most trusted men. You see, Uriah was one of David’s best friends. It was Uriah who helped David when he was a fugitive from King Saul. When David was running for his life in the wilderness before he was king, a group of men got around him and voluntarily became outlaws to protect David. These thirty men voluntarily put their lives on the line just to save David and to protect David out in the wilderness. It was incredibly dangerous. Uriah was one of these men. David’s sin wasn’t just a knife in the back of Uriah, David also turned the knife as well.
1.2 Who Was Uriah?
Had David and Bathsheba lived in our day, no doubt he would have paid for her to have an abortion. But thankfully, this wasn’t in the realm of possibilities back then. In order to conceal her pregnancy, David acted swiftly. He had Bathsheba’s husband brought in from battle. No doubt Uriah was startled by the king’s request that he travel the forty miles from the battlefield (modern-day Jordan) to the king’s home. He was even more surprised when he learned that David only wanted to know how the war was going and how the soldier was faring (2 Samuel 11:7). David could have learned this information from any one of a number of “runners” whose specific job it was to keep the king informed of the battle’s progress. No sooner had Uriah informed the king of the war’s development than David sends Uriah home to enjoy a night of marital intimacy (2 Samuel 11:8). David even sent a gift home with Uriah (was it food and wine?). But Uriah refused to even go into his home. He slept at the front door. Why should he enjoy the comforts of home with his brothers in arms were without the same comforts on the battlefield? When David resorted to get Uriah drunk two nights at David’s house, even then Uriah refused to enter his home (2 Samuel 11:13). David must have then had a sleepless night because the next morning he orders his general, Joab, to attack the strength of the enemy’s city and be sure to have Uriah “accidentally” killed in battle. In the irony of all ironies, David sends the sealed orders through none other than Uriah himself. Uriah is killed in a matter of hours upon returning to the battlefield.
Enter Nathan, the prophet. God sent a preacher named Nathan to confront David (2 Samuel 12:1). David confessed and David repented. And God took the life of the child as punishment for David’s sin. This is a story of shame if I have ever heard one.
2. Coincidences Happen?
Leave the story of David and Bathsheba for a moment. Place a bookmark there as we’ll want to return in a moment. Do coincidences just happen? What if you are a single young man and you meet a young lady whose parents were married on the same date as your parents? Is that a sign?
2.1 Lincoln and JFK
An unusual number of coincidences surround the assassinations of Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln. For example, both men were elected one hundred years apart (Lincoln in 1860, Kennedy in 1960). They were both succeeded by Southerners named Johnson, and the two Johnsons were born also one hundred years apart (Andrew in 1808, Lyndon in 1908). Both assassins were born one hundred years apart (Booth in 1839 and Oswald in 1939) and both died before they could be brought to trial.
We've all experienced strange coincidences, perhaps bumping into a friend in a strange city or having a dream and then having the thing happen the next day. Let’s move from the superficial and the trivial to the real and important.
2.2 DFW Airport
Stand with me inside a major airport and look above yourself for a moment. Just a few minutes from here, DFW airport is a beehive of activity. Look with me at the departure and arrival screen. Don’t worry yourself for the time being over what plane is arriving on time and what plane is running late. Instead, take it all in for the moment. Imagine those who busy themselves with coordinating it all. Most of us who travel, simply busy ourselves with arriving at our meeting on time. But consider those whose job it is to coordinate the thousands of flights around the world. If you were to simply look at our own DFW airport, where more than 57 million passengers passed through the airport in 2013, making it the fourth busiest airport in the US. In fact, the congestion of the skies above is viewed through the day before Thanksgiving where there’s a 100% to 250% increase in the number of passengers. Imagine the planning that goes into taking nearly 27 square miles of the property and ensuring that every major city in the US can be accessed within four hours of time. Imagine the engineering and air traffic control hours that go into moving more than an additional 652,000 tons of cargo every year. Comprehend the coordination of 24 different airlines offering 204 destinations accessed by 155 different gates. Now think larger than this one airport. There are more than 5,100 public airports around our country with another 14,000 private airports. This makes my mind hurt.
What if even the “random things” in your life were connected as part of a bigger plan? Instead of thinking of life in terms of luck, chance, and blind fate, what if each life representing the seven billion people on the planet, were coordinated by Someone? Someone who tracked the nuances, the pain, and the direction of our lives like an air traffic controller controls the skies above. What if your life had another side to its story? One that was secret and hidden from your view. Where you see only chaos and disorder, the other side of the story shows God coordinating and arranging the story of our lives. Where there is a symmetry and a beauty to the interwoven patterns of the lives of the planets seven billion people. The other side of your story is the rich tapestry where every aspect of your life is meticulously charted. What if I told you that every event in your life from the bitter breakups to the mundane dinner invitations you accepted are interwoven into a larger story?
2.3 David and Bathsheba
The story doesn’t end simply with the shame of David’s sin. Instead, we learn that David and Bathsheba have another child: Solomon. Solomon was among the wisest men to ever live and is the famed king of ancient Israel. And yes, their child, Solomon, is in the family tree of none other than Jesus Himself. David, Bathsheba, and Solomon are distant parents to Jesus.
3. Christmas is Designed
I said at the beginning of this message that by paying close attention to the genealogy of Jesus, we see two things jump off 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. Matthew highlights these five scandalous women. Tamar is the mother of Perez (mentioned in verse three) who is the distant father to Jesus. And Perez was born out of incest as we saw in our first week together in this series. Ruth is a racial outcast as we saw in last week. Ruth’s son, Obed (mentioned in verse five) was also a distant father to Jesus. She was a part of a despised race of people. Bathsheba and David had an adulterous affair and Solomon was the son they produced. Solomon is Jesus’ distant father. And lastly, the scandal of scandals, Mary, the teenage unwed mother of Jesus. But we’ll get to her next week.
3.1 God Patently Fulfills His Promises
I don’t have a great deal of time to develop this but watch God’s careful, meticulous preparation for the first Christmas. It wasn’t that He just lined up the famous star in the sky and it wasn’t enough that Caesar Augustus commanded a worldwide census so Mary and Joseph would have Jesus in Bethlehem as the prophets predicted… But God works and weaves the family history of Jesus from what looks like a pinball bouncing back and forth in an arcade machine into a masterful symphony orchestra where every note is pitch-perfect. He orchestrates the first Christmas like an air-traffic controller would land planes on the busiest day of the year without even one delay or one lost piece of luggage!
3.2 God Highlights What’s Embarrassing
God doesn’t hide the embarrassing side of Jesus’ family tree. If you flunked out of the University of Texas of Arlington and eventually you started at the University of Texas Tech and you got your Bachelor’s at the University of Texas Tech, you may not say anything about the University of Texas of Arlington on your résumé. You sort of drop that out, hit delete, and it’s not there. In the same way, the old genealogies for people did not want anybody in their genealogy who they weren’t absolutely proud of. Look at Herod the Great, the villain of the Christmas narratives. We don’t even know, really, who he was descended from because he doctored his genealogies all the time. Yet, Matthew deliberately reminds us of these embarrassing stories. What’s more, Jesus isn’t simply a descendent of these shameful people, but God designed it where Jesus was a product of the sinful unions.
Look, when Matthew mentions David, that’s a place where everyone might take pride in Jesus. “Look at this! Jesus has none other than King David’s blood in His veins! The great conquering king and hero of Israel!” And yet, Matthew doesn’t highlight David’s heroic deeds so much as David’s tragic mistakes. God calls your attention to His rich grace. Nowhere does the gospel of Christmas say Jesus came to reward great people for their good deeds. Instead, the gospel of Christmas is this: You’re a great sinner and He’s a great Savior. This is the message of Christmas: it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or what you’re family’s done. Jesus wants to show you off. You are someone by the grace of God.
