By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
Ko te pukapuka o te whakapapa o Ihu Karaiti, tama a Rawiri, tama a Aperahama.
O le tala lenei i le gafa o Iesu Keriso le atali‘i o Tavita, le atali‘i o Aperaamo.
This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Matthew 1:1
In the first century, your genealogy told a person almost everything they needed to know about you. It was almost like a resume or a CV today.
What’s fascinating is that in the genealogy that Matthew presents, Jesus’ history is filled with moments of human mess. It includes people who committed incest, rapists, idolaters, prostitutes, murderers...
Jesus was born into a long line of very dysfunctional families.
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. All four of the women mentioned were surrounded by sexual scandal.
Manasseh, a king of Judah, spent most of his 55-year reign doing “evil in the eyes of the Lord”. He worshiped false gods. He even put an idol in God's temple in Jerusalem.
Judah was the head of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Not only did he fail to protect his own daughter-in-law, but he had a passion for prostitutes, with disastrous results for his family.
King David betrayed one of his best friends, Uriah. He slept with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba and then had him murdered to cover up his sin.
Jesus's genealogy is filled with mess—sexual mess, historical mess, spiritual mess.
It is in the middle of this mess that God is at work. Jesus enters into this broken, dysfunctional family line to bring about a new beginning for humanity.
Matthew 1:1: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.” A first-century reader would have heard an echo of the book of Genesis in general and specifically Genesis 5:1, where it is written, “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam”.
Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is a new beginning. Jesus is a new Adam, the head of a new and redeemed humanity.
I grew up in much of the mess above, but Jesus entered into that mess and saved me from it. I regret none of it, because God used all of it to bring me to the knowledge of his precious Son. Because of Jesus, the Living Word, the worst of our stories are not the last word in our lives.
