Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

A Christmas Scandal

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 1:1-17

December 10, 2000

Certainly one of the high points of every year, at least for us literary types, is the announcement of the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This contest has been sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University since 1982. It is a celebration of bad writing named in honor of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene, The Caxtons, and -- not least -- Paul Clifford, whose famous opener has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy. Here's the 1830 original: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Last years winner was penned by David Chuter of England -- the first non-American to win the honor. Here is his prize winning opening paragraph: "Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracking paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life."

That's bad. But I personally preferred the dishonorable mention paragraph by Patrick Burns of New Jersey: "Sarah was a blue-blooded mistress of the Main Line, but she couldn't stop Jack from prowling the back streets and alleys of her mind, couldn't stop him from renting a cheap room in her remembrances, for he dwelled in the seamy underside of her soul, and yet the memory of his infidelities burned a scar on her heart like a bad tatoo."

Now that's bad writing at its best.

Many people view the opening verses of Matthew the same way as a very unpromising beginning to a book. On the surface, Matthew 1 is pretty dull -- "so and so begat so and so who begat so and so." It's kind of seems like Biblical equivalent of land that is sometimes called "fly over country" -- something to get past in order to get somewhere interesting.

. But we have to believe that the writer who would end his gospel with the command "go into all the world and preach the gospel," must have a good reason for telling us this stuff at the beginning. So lets see what we find.

First on our list is Abraham, the founder of the nation of Israel -- the supreme example of Old Testament faith. The eighteenth chapter of Genesis tells how God promised to make Abraham the father of a great nation through a son to be born to his wife Sarah. But just two chapters later we find that Abraham takes the wife of this promise - the woman that God was going to have be the mother of a great nation -- and gives her away to King Abimilech because Abraham is afraid that he will be killed so King Abimilech can have his beautiful wife. Abraham takes the wife of God's promise and says: "You want her? Take her."

Our second candidate for the rogues gallery is Jacob, Abraham's grandson. Though he is the second born of two brothers, Jacob tricks his father Isaac into giving him the death-bed blessing which was to go to his older brother Esau. Then he runs away to live with his uncle in Aram in order to escape the anger of his older brother. He wants to wait until the heat dies down.

The third person who comes to our immediate attention from this group is the widow Ruth. Now Ruth is not a bad sort but she comes from a very suspicious background. She is a citizen of the country of Moab -- a descendant of the Abraham's incestuous nephew Lot -- and has a background as a worshiper of idols . She has behaved herself pretty well since coming to live in Bethlehem with her mother-in-law, Naomi, except for one event. She sneaks into the place where the men are sleeping after harvesting all day in the fields and lays down at the feet of one of them. Nothing too much happens at least that the Bible records but she's made an offer. Just her being there is enough to get hr into a lot of trouble and maybe even killed.

Our fourth character is King David. In Sunday school there is quite a bit about David killing the giant, Goliath and sparing the life of King Saul. But there is another story which not often brought-up -- the story of how David commits adultery with Batsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. She becomes pregnant from this adultery which isn't too suspicious -- after all she is married and DNA testing is years in the future -- except for one small matter. Uriah, her husband is in the army fighting at the city of Rabbah and hasn't been home for a few months. Eventually, David has Uriah murdered to cover over his sin.

Our fifth and final person from this genealogy is Mary, the mother of Jesus -- a Jewish girl pregnant out of wedlock and engaged to a man who claimed no responsibility for her condition and who was naturally very disturbed by the whole thing.

The reason it is necessary to concentrate on just a few of the people in this genealogy is because there are so many that the Bible mentions in a negative context -- or else not at all Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, brought on a division and many years of war between God's people in Judah and God's people in Israel through his harsh government. All that is recorded of his son Abijah is that "his heart was not true to Yahwah. Asa, the son of Abijah, started out well but as he grew older and older got further and further away from the truth. Joram, the son of Jehosphahat, started his kingly rule by slaughtering his brothers and sisters so they could not threaten his throne. Ahaz, the son of Jotham, was a worshiper of idols and went so far as to offer his son as a human sacrifice to a false God. Manasseh, Ahaz' grandson, was a worshiper of the ancient Canaanite god Baal with whose prophets Elijah had contended on Mt. Carmel. His son, Amon, who was possibly named after the Egyptian god of that name, continued the spread of evil in the land.

And then look at the women Matthew singles out for mention. In Genesis 38 we read how Tamar tricks her own father in law Judah into having sexual relations with her by disguising herself as a prostitute. Perez, the fruit of their relationship, is part of the genealogy. Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho before the city was destroyed. Bathsheba committed adultery with David. Ruth is the least objectionable of the four. But she was, at the least a little over aggressive.

What is there to learn from this genealogy? What is Matthew telling us?

First, we learn that God is not overly concerned with appearances. Time and time again, God chooses people who are or seem very imperfect to do His work -- fearful Abraham, sneaky Jacob, the foreigner Ruth, adulterous, murdering David and Mary -- pregnant out of wedlock.

This same unconcern with appearances is also very evident in the life of Jesus. Jesus gathers around himself a group of followers that shock the respectable people of his time -- tax gatherers, political radicals, former prostitutes and unlearned, violent tempered fishermen. He directs His ministry not just to the successful but also to the down-and-out people who really know they need God's forgiveness and power in their own lives.

Finally, Jesus is executed on a cross as a common criminal by the Roman army -- a death which has it's closest modern equivalent to execution in the gas chamber or electric chair. In fact, to the Jewish people, this death was even more scandalous than being just the death of a criminal. Deuteronomy 21:23 declares that anyone who hangs upon a tree is under the special curse of God. That is why Paul calls the cross an offense to the Jews in 1 Corinthians 1:23. How could the Son of God die -- and especially die a death which was especially accursed?

But, as Paul writes, the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of people. And God can use means to work out His righteous. loving purpose that we would not ordinarily choose to use things like a cross or a feeding trough for a cradle. And we see over and over again that God is not bound to being the God of logical consequences. He is totally free to be the God of illogical blessing.

If I were asked to select a human bloodline for the coming of God in human form, I would choose a family of impeccable reputation -- with no trace of aberrance or insanity -- a family like mine (except for Uncle Ben). But God promised that we the redeemer would be a part of the royal family of Israel -- a "shoot from the stump of Jesse" who will inherit the throne of David. God promised and God keeps His promises. God's promises are not finally thwarted by human sin. There is just no way that the world can get so evil that God cannot work out his righteous purpose -- even if it means sending His Son to die upon a cross.

In reading this passage, you almost get the impression that Matthew poured over the Old Testament until he could find the most questionable ancestors of Jesus. He did this in order to insert them into his record and, in this way, peach the gospel - the good news that God can overcome and forgive sin and use spoiled but repentant people for His great purpose.

Notice how Matthew pointedly fails to list the "model women" of Jewish history -- Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel even though he names their husbands, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- but pointedly includes the most questionable on his list. For in this genealogy, Matthew is teaching us that Jesus came not only for sinners but through sinners. God did not begin to stoop into our messed up history at Christmas. He was stooping all the way through the Old Testament.

In a way, it is exciting to me that Jesus had running in His veins the blood of humanity, the blood shared by adulterers, murderers, liars, prostitutes, thieves, and idol worshipers. The power of God cleansed this tainted blood and gave it a detergent quality which, as the Apostle John writes, cleanses us from all sin. In a sense, it was the blood of adulterers, murderers, liars, thieves, and idol worshipers which was shed for us on the cross - - but blood made clean and cleansing by the. divine nature of Christ.

The second thing we can learn is that God is not concerned with bloodlines. Most genealogies in the late Old Testament period have the purpose of showing that a line has been kept free from "contamination" by Gentile blood. But Matthew reverses this. He shows us that time and time again, the line that led from Abraham to Jesus was intersected by Gentile blood. King David himself has a Canaanite great-great-great-grandmother, a Jerichoite great-great grandmother, a Moabite grandmother and a Hittite wife. Matthew wants the church to know that from the very start, God's work has always been interracial and that God is no narrow nationalist. Remember that Matthew is also the one who tells us of God's special revelation to the wise men from the east who came to worship the infant Jesus.

Like the rest of Israel, Jesus was a physical descendant of Abraham. The Jews at that time commonly had the idea that physical descant from Abraham was enough to qualify them for acceptance by God. So John the Baptist came preaching at the Jordan river and said to the people who came to hear him: "and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, 'we have Abraham for our father' for I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham. God is not concerned with our bloodline.

Now this is not to say that a Christian home is not important. It is vitally important. Christian teaching and a Christian atmosphere are very valuable in helping a child grow toward the day when he or she will make a personal commitment to Jesus. That is the goal of the promises made by the parents and the congregation when we baptize infants. The danger is in staying children our whole lives and trying to let our parents do our growing in Christ for us.

It is interesting how some people seem to think that a relationship with God is something that can be inherited from their parents like money and a house -- part of the family heritage which is passed down from father and mother to daughter and son. It just doesn't work. The fact is that God has sons and daughters through faith in Christ but he doesn't have grandchildren who are locked in because of their parent's faith.

The third thing we can learn is that God does not require perfection in those He chooses to call to Himself. What He requires is a willingness to serve and a constant openness to His life changing power. Jesus said that even if we had a little faith as a tiny mustard seed, God can do great things through us if we are willing to grow in Him.

This text isn't here as fly over country. It's worth exploring on foot.

Let us take another look at five characters from the genealogy of Jesus that we looked at earlier.

Out of fear, Abraham got rid of the wife of God's promise --passing her off to King Abimilech as his sister. But God is faithful to His promises. God appears to King Abimilech in a dream and tells him what has happened -- and what would happen if Abimilech did not return Sarah to Abraham without harming her or him.

Jacob runs from the anger of his older brother after he has stolen his father's blessing. But even as he runs away, God comes to him and blessed him and promises that he will inherit the promise made to Abraham and become the father of a great nation.

Ruth is a foreigner, a former idol worshiper, but God blesses her. She marries Boaz, the man at whose feet she had lain, and who incidentally is the son of Rahab the prostitute of Jericho. God gives them a son Obed, who is to be the grandfather of David the king.

King David commits adultery and then murder to cover up the evidence. God confronts him 'through the prophet Nathan -- brings his guilt out into the open and David repents. Even after this event, God is able to call David, "a man after my own heart." And God even uses the marriage which finally results from this crime and carries on David's line through Solomon, the second son of David and Bathsheba and the direct physical ancestor of Jesus Christ.

Mary is pregnant out of wedlock. Her fiancee claims no responsibility. But an angel appears to Joseph and tells him the truth of the matter -- that Mary is without blame and is with child by the Spirit of God. Mary becomes the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

God is not concerned with respectable appearances. God is not concerned with spotless genealogies. He doesn't have any grandchildren. God does not require perfection before he will bless us or use us. All that is required is that whoever we are -- a scandal before the whole world or the product of a long Christian genealogy -- is that we consciously commit ourselves to Jesus Christ and grow from there. That is faith. And through that faith, we can welcome the coming of Christ into our lives this Christmas.