How God used a motley crew to give us His Son

Archive: Those Wretched Genealogies!

by Joel B. Green

“We’ll never be able to buy a house, not with these interest rates!”

“No one can get along with him. He’s impossible.”

“Our church is past the point of no return; it will never change.”

Have you ever been confronted with life’s impossibilities? Have you ever told yourself, “It can’t happen”?

As the Christmas season approaches and we turn with renewed interest to the accounts of Jesus’ birth, we find ourselves confronted by yet another impossibility.

Thousands of years ago God made a promise, what Genesis 17:7 calls an “everlasting covenant,” to Abraham. God promised that the relationship between Himself and His people would be restored; the walls of separation would be pulled down. God said, “I will … be God to you and to your descendants after you.”

I would suggest that, by most standards, God made a promise He could not keep. He bit off more than He could chew. And Matthew 1:1-17 proves my point!

Biblical genealogies, like the one presented here in the first chapter of Matthew, are often shunned as “boring,” “meaningless,” “just a bunch of ‘begats’ that make reading the Bible more difficult.” But this introduction to Matthew’s Gospel contains some amazing facts. It provides four reasons why what God promised to Abraham was a major impossibility.

1. The people through whom God wanted to work were too sinful. In general terms, genealogies were for giving one’s roots and for proving that those roots were pure. The bloodline was traced through the fathers, not through the mothers. In fact, to be called the “son of your mother” was a slap in the face. However, in the genealogy provided in Matthew we note the inclusion of four women. And, as if that were not enough to spoil a lineage, these women had pedigrees that were anything but pure.

In verse three Tamar is listed. In Jewish tradition she is a Canaanite, not an Israelite. Further, Tamar’s reputation was that of an adulteress. In verse five Matthew mentions Rah ab, the harlot who aided Israel in the destruction of Jericho. She also was a foreigner, not an Israelite. In verse five is recorded the name of Ruth, a Moabite and a proselyte to the faith of Israel. The mother of Solomon is mentioned in verse six. This woman, whom we know as Bathsheba, was also non-Israelite. The world remembers her as the woman who committed adultery with King David.

“R” rated ancestry

Strange, is it not, that in a list which was designed to prove one’s pure ancestry as an Israelite, we find four women, all of whom were Gentiles, three of whom were known for their sexual misdeeds? The people through whom God wanted to work, so it might seem, were too sinful!

Lest we think the obstacles to God’s purpose were women only, we might note a few male sinners on the list. Jacob schemed his way into his father’s inheritance. David, whose sexual misconduct we have already mentioned, was also a murderer. Solomon, who had enough wives to populate a small town, was persuaded to compromise his faith. And less well-known but equally valid to our point are the infamous exploits of Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon.

Our conclusion can only be that the ancestry of Jesus is made up of a sin-full bunch. Many of their lives would be rated “R” (or worse) even by today’s standards. They compose a motley crew, not the sort of people we would expect God to use to bring about His great purpose.

Isn’t that what we often say about ourselves? “My sin is too great.” “My testimony is blotched forever.” The genealogy of Christ is evidence that God can and does use the humbled, the despised, the sinful to accomplish His purpose. By our standards we would look at this lineup and say, “God doesn’t have a chance! There’s no way! It’s a lost cause! It’s impossible! ” Yet, even through these sinful people, God worked.

2. The people through whom God wanted to work were in the wrong place. Everyone knows it’s important to be in the right place at the right time. Most everybody has known someone who got a good break because he happened to be in the right place. So we find ourselves wishing: If only I had grown up there instead of here … If only I had gone to that church instead of this one … If only I had her boss instead of my own … If only …

For Israel the promise given to Abraham was very much connected to the Promised Land. But in the latter part of the genealogical record in Matthew we see that the Israelites were spending less and less time there. In exile (verses 11 and 12) the Israelites were separated from their land, their home, and—many of them thought—from their God. God’s people were “out of pocket,” in the wrong place. This was a formidable obstacle, but not as great as the next.

3. It was going to take too long to get the job done. From Abraham to Jesus were 42 generations—14 to David, 14 to the Exile, and 14 to Jesus (verse 17). Suppose we were given a great promise and then told, “It’ll be yours in just 42 generations!” What would we think?

The thought of waiting some 2000 years for the promise to be fulfilled would hardly bring us to a state of excited anticipation. It would be almost like saying to a 14-year-old, “When you graduate from medical school, I’II buy you a car.” The response would likely be, “That’ll take forever!”

Much of our generation suffers from a convenience-store mentality: “Get what you want when you want it.” We often label “impossible ” anything which will take a long, long time. After waiting a few weeks or months we so easily allow our hope to fade. “It’ll never happen!”

Is there time for God to do His thing? Many of us would have discounted God’s promise to Abraham because it would take too long.

Surely a God who can do anything could just wave a finger—Zap!—and it’s done. Why use sinners to do so important a task? After all, it’s illogical. Why use people who were in the wrong place? Why waste so much time?

But there is more.

4. The way God wanted to work included an impossible birth. In verse 16 we have a clear picture of Jesus being born in a special way, without a normal biological father. As if these other obstacles didn’t render God’s plan impossible, now there’s the problem of this birth by an impossible process. It betrays all of the laws in our textbooks. It is not written up in the medical journals. It is not logical. God’s promise had to be impossible, because He wanted to accomplish it in an illogical manner.

Of course we live on this side of the life of Jesus—His birth, life, death, and resurrection. And we know that what seemed impossible, God has done. We know that in Jesus Christ God did what He said He would do.

But do we believe that God still works that way? How do we respond when faced with the impossible? How do we respond when facing overpowering obstacles—financial, marital, vocational? Do we allow our faith to falter at the first sign of hurdles which seem too high to leap?

Are we willing to think big about what God might do? Or are we tied to our ideas of what is possible? We are (or he is, or she is) too sinful. … God cannot work here. … It will take too much time. … It is illogical.

As is evident in Matthew’s genealogy, so it may be said of our own contemporary situations. It was impossible, but God did it anyway. And He still does.