Revelation 1:9-20 – You’re in Good Hands

In this section of John’s introduction to his book, he tells us about who we are as Christians, and who Jesus is as our Lord.

In verse 9, as John tells us about how the vision came upon him one Sunday on the prison island of Patmos, he describes himself as a “brother and companion” with the people of his churches in three ways. They are three traits that all Christians share. We are companions in..

1. SUFFERING: Look at Mark 13:5-23, 1 Peter 4:12-19, Hebrews 11, and 2 Corinthians 1 as just a few examples. Suffering is an aspect of Christianity. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

2. THE KINGDOM: The philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote about the “superabundance” of the kingdom of God. The “economy” of grace goes far beyond the give-and-take exchange of the world. It’s an overflowing blessing of God that’s at work now, and it’s an inheritance that we’re waiting for. In the midst of the suffering, there is grace and hope beyond our imaginations.

3. PATIENT ENDURANCE: Think of Romans 5:1-5, for example. This is how the first two Christian traits interact with each other. Because of the presence and the promise of the kingdom, we hang on through the suffering.

John goes on to tell us that he was in exile because of “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” Jesus’ testimony isn’t what he said; it’s what he did. John was committed by faith to the saving work of Jesus. “The word of God” is more than just the Bible. Remember John 1:1-4: Jesus is the living Word of God. The word that continues to come to us through the Spirit (and yes, as the Spirit testifies to Jesus through the words of Scripture). These are the two reasons why we have the three traits.

John heard a voice, and turned to see who was speaking. Verses 13-16 give us a description of Jesus as John encountered him. If we read this literally, we get a very weird image of Jesus (Albrecht Durer’s Renaissance woodcut of this scene is a good example of what that would look like). Remember: John uses symbols, images, and references to other parts of the Bible to stir our imagination in order to understand more about who Jesus is. Here, he give us three descriptions.

1. WHITE HAIR AND HEAD: Think of Isaiah 1:18’s description of purity
2. BLAZING EYES: There are lots of images of fire in the Bible as a heavenly attribute (2 Kings 2:11 is just one example). It’s a fire that purifies and transforms (Proverbs 17:3). His eyes search us, know us, and refine us.
3. BRONZE FEET: In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a statue with feet of clay, which represents our human weakness. Here the image changes to reflect the solid feet of our Lord
4. VOICE OF RUSHING WATERS: Think of Amos 5:24, describing God’s justice as rolling water. Water can be lifegiving (Exodus 17) or dangerous (Genesis 6 & 7). Just like God. This is how Ezekiel described the voice of God (Ezekiel 43:2).
5. HOLDING THE SEVEN STARS: There were seven known planets at the time John wrote this. Christ holds and controls the cosmos.
6. SWORD FROM THE MOUTH: The sword is the word of God (Hebrews 4:12; Ephesians 6:17) that both protects and cuts us.
7. BRILLIANT FACE: Exodus 34:29-35 tells us about how Moses’ face became unbearably bright, just from the reflection of having been in God’s presence

These are all attributes of God, which Jesus, being God himself, shares. But one is most important of all. Greco-Roman literature was often arranged “chiastically,” which means that in a list, the outer elements balance each other out, leaving the most important thing in the middle. Here we can see #1 and #7 related to each other (the head and face), and #2 and #6 (eyes and mouth). #3 and #5 are the feet and hands. This leaves us with #4 at the center: the voice. It is Jesus’ voice calling us that matters most of all.

So what is it that the voice says? “Do not be afraid.” This is something that heavenly messengers frequently say when they appear to people (the angel speaking to the shepherds in Luke 2 is the best known example), because they were so strange and frightening. But Jesus doesn’t tell John not to be afraid just to calm him down. It’s like what he told John and the other apostles at the Last Supper (John 14): do not let your hearts be anxious or troubled. Frightening and horrible things are going to happen. But you don’t need to be afraid as you go through them. Jesus, the one who loves us, encompasses everything from the First to the Last. He died, but lives forever. Even death can’t stop him. So often we’re tempted to think of death and hell and the devil as God’s adversaries that he has to work to overcome. But that’s not the case. He controls them: their keys are in his hands.

There is so much that we can be afraid of. But none of it really matters when we have the right perspective. This isn’t to trivialize the struggles that we face, with finances, with relationships, with health, with time management, with self weakness, with violence and scarcity and bitterness and so much more. It’s all real. But Jesus gives us perspective. Often, when we’re down about our troubles, we talk about “getting perspective” in the negative sense: think of all the people who are worse off than you. Yes, that helps. It keeps you from dissolving into a puddle of self-pity. But this is a positive sense of perspective. How much do all of our struggles and trials really matter compared with the power and authority of Jesus, who loves us?

Verse 19 reminds us that he’s always there. John is seeing what was, what is, and what will be. (Remember that Revelation is to be read from a historical-prophetic perspective, not just about what the end times will be like, or what the past was like).

At the beginning of his description of Jesus, John said that he was standing among seven lampstands. Now, Jesus tells him that the lampstands are the churches that he serves. And the stars in his hand are their spiritual protectors. That’s our assurance. Jesus holds his church in his right hand. He’s here. We’re in good hands, and always will be.

More Comments on Revelation 1:1-8

The key words for this passage, and maybe even the entire book, are the first five: “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” This could either mean that Jesus Christ is being revealed in this book, or it could mean that he’s the one doing the revealing. If you read what follows in the next couple verses closely, you’ll see that John means that Jesus is the one who reveals. He sent it to John by means of an angel. And at the end of verse 2, it’s called the testimony of Jesus. And that makes sense. As we talk about the revealing of hidden spiritual mysteries, that’s a major part of what Jesus Christ is about. He came into our world in order to show us what is beyond our world, and to give us the opportunity to experience it with him. He is the heavenly one who also became the earthly one. The only things we can know about God is what he chooses to reveal to us. While God does so in all sorts of ways (natural theology talks about seeing God through creation, Scripturalists refer to the Bible as God’s revelation), the fullest form of God’s self-revealing is through Jesus. It is through Jesus’ testimony that we know what we do about God.

Verse Five gives us three descriptions of who Jesus is.
1. THE FAITHFUL WITNESS: The Greek word for witness is martyr. If you’re going to testify, it may very well be at the expense of your life. In fact, the most faithful testimony that Jesus gave didn’t just lead to his death; it was his death!
2. THE FIRSTBORN FROM THE DEAD: In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul describes Jesus’ resurrection as the first-fruits of what is to come. His resurrection is one that all God’s people will share in, when our time (or the time) comes.
3. RULER OF KINGS: Philippians 2 predicts the time when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Psalm 2 describes the incredible power that God has over the kings of the earth who may try to break with him.

The second half of verse 5 and verse 6 tells us what the result of Jesus’ identity and action has been for all of us. First, it all starts with love. The very first commitment we can make about who our Lord is, what characterizes him, is love. Because of that love, he took something from us, and he gave something to us. What he took was our sin, the poison that kills our souls and destroys our world. Because of his love, he gives us the identity of a kingdom and of priests. We have an identity and a ruler. We are priests: those with direct access to God. And this is all possible because of his blood: the blood of his martyr-testimony.

When will all this happen? Verse 7 could make us think that it’s all in the future. Eventually, when Jesus returns, his promise will be fulfilled. But Verse 8 reminds us that Jesus holds the beginning and the ending—and everything in between—in his power. The distinction between future and present doesn’t really matter much to God. For him, that which is future is already present.

Comments on Revelation 1:1-8

Revelation is one of the strangest books in the Bible, and certainly one of the most misunderstood. So as we start this study of Revelation, it’s a good idea to think about the best way to approach it.

The best way to begin is to think about what the name of the book means. “Revelation” means “to reveal,” or to expose what has been hidden. The word “apocalyptic” means the same thing: to expose or to make known. This book is meant to reveal or disclose things that would otherwise be hidden or unrecognized. Think of an audience attending a play. They see all the action on the stage, and may start to think that what they see is everything that’s going on. But if the backdrop and curtains would be taken away, the audience would see that there’s a lot more going on than they would otherwise be able to see: lighting and prop technicians hard at work, costume and make-up artists getting the actors ready, and so much more. The same thing is true for what is happening all around us in the world: we may think that “what you see is what you get.” But there is so much more going on than what we can recognize with human senses. There are spiritual forces at work that are influencing and affecting the affairs of the universe. Modern science is wonderful, but it can only go so far. There are aspects of the cosmos that are beyond our ability to observe, measure, and analyze. We can only see and understand them if they’re revealed to us.

Think of Revelation as our back stage pass: this is our chance to learn about what’s going on “behind the scenes” that influences this world that we live in. It is a vision (or perhaps a series of visions) that the apostle John had, in which God showed him more than what we would otherwise be able to see. In the midst of the suffering and distress that fills human life, John’s vision showed him that there is a larger cosmic purpose to it all, and it gave him a promise of the ultimate victory of God and his people over the powers of evil. But the insights that John received from God weren’t meant just for him: he was instructed to share what he learned with the seven churches that he was serving as a pastor.

Because what he experienced was so different from ordinary human experience, John couldn’t simply describe what happened: our language doesn’t have the words and concepts to do it. John had a dilemma: how do you express something that words can't describe? How do you use earthly words to describe heavenly realities? He decided to use symbols, to express a reality that points to a more profound reality. Symbols, by the way, are not simply substitutes for saying something straight-out. In other words, we can’t get out a magic decoder ring that helps us recognize that when John wrote “A,” we should understand that he meant “X.” Sure, it may mean “X,” but it also means so much more: more than we could ever explain. Revelation is meant to capture your imagination and make you see things in ways that you’d never be able to otherwise. There are some books of the Bible that are meant to be read logically and straightforwardly. For example, Paul’s letter to the Romans is a well-reasoned logical discussion of Christ’s grace. But if we try to read Revelation the same way, we’ll misunderstand it, just like you’d misunderstand a book of poetry if you read it like a chemistry textbook. John engages our senses through his use of art, symbols, and images in order to stir our imagination. As they work through you, you'll experience truth he's expressing, more than if he laid it out in declarative form. John’s intention was not to baffle or confuse, but to express truth in the best way possible. To do so, he used images from the rest of the Bible. One Bible scholar has found that Revelation has 518 Scripture references in just 404 verses! It only misses 6 of the 39 books of the Old Testament (the New Testament doesn’t really count because it was still being put together when Revelation was written). In a sense, Revelation doesn’t really tell us anything new: it just tells us in a new way what we already know from the rest of Scripture.

That’s not to say that Revelation is a disorganized hodge-podge of ideas. Like any good work of art, it all flows together, but not necessarily in a logical progression. As we look at this book, we’ll see that it is organized in groups of seven (a symbolically significant number for John). But it isn’t organized chronologically: first this happens, then that, and so on. If you try to read Revelation that way, you’ll start to get hopelessly confused somewhere in Chapter 8 as the same situations start to be described in different ways.

There are four basic ways that we can try to understand Revelation. The first, which is most common these days, is the “futurist” approach. When we read Revelation this way, we focus only on what John’s vision tells us about the end times. While it certainly does tell us about what will happen in the future, that isn’t the only thing the book is about. It also describes what’s going on right now, and what has happened in the past. A futurist reading blinds us to the lessons about right now that John’s vision offers. A second way to read it is “historically:” John’s vision is about what was happening in John’s time. In a sense, this is also true. We can learn about what God was doing for these faithful Christians as they faced horrendous persecution. But this approach is also limited because it puts everything in the past; Revelation means nothing for us today. Third, we can read Revelation as an example of comparative religion, and think about how John’s book is similar to what we may find in other religions of the time. We can see how John borrowed from other religions to make his point. But if this is the only way we read it, then we may be tempted to think that all religions are the same. But they’re not. The fourth way to approach Revelation, which the way I’ll do it, is called the “historical-prophetical” approach. To put it simply, Revelation describes all of history: past, present, and future. It is closely tied to the situation that John and his seven churches experienced, but it’s not limited to it. It offers us news about the future: the promise of a New Jerusalem and the annihilation of evil, but it’s not just about the future. John’s vision is rich enough to speak to all generations of believers, including ours, because the issues that it explores are ones that we continue to experience. Or to word it another way, the spiritual forces that were at work in John’s time are still at work today, and will continue to influence human life until the end.

Revelation is a profoundly Christ-centered book. It is all about what Jesus has done, and how his victory over the forces of evil continues to be at work in our lives and in our world. That’s why, as John introduces us to his vision, he begins with a description of Jesus’ glory, the way that his self-sacrifice gave us the status of being God’s people, and of the victory that he will win in the future. The “revelation” isn’t a revelation of some broad, vague, general spiritual stuff. It is “the revelation of Jesus Christ,” as John’s opening words tell us. The whole point of the vision is to help us understand Jesus better. And as we understand Jesus more, we know more and more what it means for us to be his people.

Revelation 4:1-11 – To Glorify God and Enjoy Him Forever

Revelation can be a frightening and confusing book. But it also a powerful document that offers hope for the future and insight into the present. From the votes that are coming in from the congregation for my next sermon series, it looks like we’ll be exploring these themes more fully after Christmas. For now, we’ll focus on this particular passage, and the description it offers us about prayer.

Revelation is a book that the apostle John wrote after God granted him a visionary experience that took him to the very limits of human experience. In fact, we call it “Revelation” because it revealed aspects of the cosmos that are beyond our perceptions and experiences. (The word “apocalypse,” by the way, comes from a Greek word that means the same thing: revealing or unveiling.) In order to capture our imagination, John draws upon a wealth of images to evoke other passages of Scripture. In fact, this is a hallmark of Revelation. You really can’t read this book with any sort of understanding until you’ve first become familiar with the rest of the Bible. Revelation is at the back of the book for a reason.

Chapter 4 is John’s description of the throne of heaven. As a good Jew, John was rather reticent about describing God himself upon the throne of heaven. After all, no one can look upon God and live. And the Second Commandment forbids us to try to represent God with any kind of an image. So John reverently provides us only with hints about God’s appearance by describing the brilliance of precious gems. One of the blessings we will enjoy in heaven will be the privilege to gaze upon the glory of God face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). And we’ll be able to do so without being utterly undone by the power and majesty of the Lord, which no mortal human can handle. John tells us that the throne is surrounded with a rainbow. This is presumably a reminder of the covenant which God shared with Noah after the flood, that he would never again destroy humanity; the rainbow was the sign of his covenant of grace.

God’s throne is surrounded by two groups of creatures. John describes one set first, but then tells that the other is “in the center.” So it’s a good guess that the creatures described second are actually the ones closest to the throne, with the others farther out. This could make sense if we think about John’s perspective, beyond both sets. The best way to understand them is like two concentric circles surrounding the throne.

Closest to God’s throne, John saw four “living creatures.” The fact that they are covered with eyes symbolizes their insight and wisdom, and their wings reflect their mobility. In Revelation, the number four is used to describe all of creation (as in the four corners of the earth), so these creatures represent all that God has made, and John’s descriptions indicate the chief qualities of the created order. The lion represents nobility, the ox represents strength, the human represents wisdom, and the eagle represents swiftness. By the way, these are also the creatures that Ezekiel saw in his vision, and the four gospels of the New Testament are frequently symbolized by them.

Next are the twenty-four elders. Their white robes indicate their purity, and their golden crowns highlight their honor. According to one theory, these elders represent the twenty-four divisions of priests who served in Solomon’s temple. According to this theory, John saw the reality for which the Solomonic temple was just a reflection. Another way to understand them is to think of the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel, and the twelve apostles which Jesus appointed. According to this theory, the elders are the leaders of the full number of God’s people: the Old Testament nation of Israel and the New Testament church. To be honest, I like this second theory better. But the nice thing about symbols is that they can mean more than one thing, and often do. So we don’t have to pick between the two.

Now that we’ve met the “cast,” it’s time to look at what they’re doing. You’d expect creatures that represent all of creation, and elders who are the leaders of God’s people to be doing something impressive. They’re sort of like God’s Cabinet, or his inner circle of advisors. When the President meets with his Cabinet, or goes to the Situation Room to meet with military, intelligence, and diplomatic leaders, they gather to deal with very important matters. So here, in God’s throne room, we’d expect the same thing. God is meeting with his chief deputies, to assign duties to them or to listen to their counsel, right? Wrong! The main thing that they do – in fact, the only thing that they do – is to praise God. That may be surprising. These are very important and prestigious creatures and people. So that’s all they do: praise God? Shouldn’t they be doing something more important?

In fact, what they are doing is the most important thing of all. We frequently lose sight of this truth. Worship seems like a waste of time. Even among people of faith, we describe a church by its programs and the stuff that it does. Mission statements talk about things like education and evangelism and mission and justice and fellowship. All very good things, but not the most important thing. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s what we were made for: to worship. Sure, we can do other things, just like you can use a screwdriver as a pry bar or a shoe as a hammer. If the four living creatures and the twenty four elders who surround God’s throne have nothing better to do than to praise and glorify him, why should we think that we are somehow more important, that the world needs our actions to keep going?

Although it’s beyond the scope of this particular passage, by the end of Chapter 5 John looked beyond the immediate vicinity of the throne and saw ever-expanding circles of creatures engaged in praise to God, starting with the thousands and tens of thousands of angels and extending all the way to every creature in heaven and earth and sea and underground. That, by the way, is what we do when we are worshiping. Whether together as a church on a Sunday morning, or individually in our personal praise to God, we are taking our place in the giant circle around God’s throne, singing his praise.

As we’ve been looking at the various things that Scripture teaches us about prayer, it’s fitting to end with this passage. Of all the different kinds of prayers that we can lift up, it’s prayers of praise and glory to God that are the most significant. They are the ones that fill heaven, and they are the ones that will fill our lips for eternity. Does your prayer life reflect the value of praise?

Some people have said that heaven must be pretty boring, if all we do is stand around and sing our praises to God. It would be boring, perhaps, if God was boring. Because of who God is, his surprising, amazing, literally limitless glory and majesty, there will always be something new to inspire, amaze, and thrill us. Think of it this way: do fans at a football game get bored? Perhaps, if they don’t really care who wins, or if one teams starts to run away with the score. But if it’s a close game with lots of great plays, and if you’re a die-hard fan, you’ll scream yourself silly for three hours straight. And when the game’s over, it’s all your going to want to talk about. If we can get that excited about 22 guys fighting over a piece of pigskin, surely the glorious majesty of God will keep us excited! And we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to grasp this. God’s glory is all around us. Sure, it’s not as obvious as it will be when we’re in heaven. And sometimes we lose sight of it. But that’s our role for now: to watch for God’s glory as we see it around us now, in order to take our place in the circle of praise.

Just a few final thoughts about the praises that the living creatures and the elders lift up. The song of the living creatures declares God’s glory throughout time: past, present, and future. Compare that with the song of praise of the seraphim that Isaiah heard during his call: very similar, except that the seraphim declared his glory throughout all the earth. God’s praise covers all times and all places.

The elders’ song is a bit different, declaring that God deserves our praise because he has made us. Remember those crowns that they were wearing, to symbolize their honor. They take off their crowns and lay them before God. Whatever honor we receive, we like the elders can offer to God. By the way, this passage is the inspiration for that line in the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy:” casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea (see verse 6).

And we haven’t even gotten to the rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning, which were echoed on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 19, before Moses received the Ten Commandments. In Revelation 8:3-5, it is the prayers of the faithful which bring this tremendous power of God to earth itself. But that passage deserves its own sermon about prayer.

Matthew 1:1-17 – Nuts in the Family Tree

Christmas messages are usually based on the second chapter of Luke: the well-known narrative of how Joseph and a pregnant Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem because of the Roman census, they couldn’t find a room at the inn, the baby was laid in a manger, and angels announced the news to terrified shepherds out in the fields. When the preacher wants to break out of the mold, she might turn to Matthew for a different version of the story that describes the dreams that guided Joseph and the star that guided the magi. Or, she may really go out on a limb and preach on the great hymn on John 1, which describes Jesus’ birth in cosmic terms as the creative word which came into the world and the light that shone in the darkness.

But how often do we look at the opening to the book of Matthew? It’s a tough read because it’s filled with hard to pronounce names. And it’s pretty boring, to boot. But if we want to understand the significance of Jesus’ birth, it’s an excellent passage to explore.

The first seventeen verses of Matthew outline Jesus’ genealogy, through his earthly father Joseph, all the way back to Abraham, the patriarch of Israel. It’s forty-two generations of fathers and their children. Some of the names are pretty familiar: we find Abraham and Isaac, David and Solomon in the mix. Those of us who have a better grasp of Scripture will recognize names like Ruth and Boaz, Hezekiah and Josiah. But even the greatest student of the Bible will run across names that are totally unfamiliar, and are found elsewhere, if at all, only as minor players in the Biblical story.

Christmas is a time for family. We may not always like everyone in our families, although we’d only admit that to our closest confidants. There are plenty of holiday movies that are based on the crazy things that happen when people who spend all year avoiding each other or engaging in surface pleasantries now have to gather together and pretend that we like each other. Perhaps the family circle includes the black sheep: that person whom the rest of the family is ashamed of because of what they’ve done, or what they’re not doing. They’re welcome at the family gathering, but they’re tolerated at best. It could be that some family members have had a big fight which has turned into a bitter resentment. For the sake of the holidays and the rest of the family, they put up a good appearance and pretend to be able to endure each other until they can go on avoiding each other for another eleven months. Maybe the family includes the braggart that sees the family gathering as an opportunity to tell everyone else about the wonderful things she’s done. Or, it could be that the relative is there who offends everyone else every time he opens his mouth. Parents revert to treating their grown-up children like little kids, while young children fuss because of their fancy but uncomfortable holiday outfits, too much candy, and not enough sleep.

Things are different for Jesus, right? After all, he is perfect. Therefore, he ought to have the perfect family. That’s what we may be tempted to think, but it’s not true. These opening lines of the entire New Testament remind us of that. We all have a few nuts in our family trees, and Jesus was no exception. The Roman Catholics believe in the Immaculate Conception: that Jesus was born to a perfect mother (that’s right; the immaculate conception refers to how Mary was born, not Jesus). While we Protestants certainly honor Mary as an exceptional example of faith and devotion because of her willingness to accept an important but difficult role in God’s plan for salvation, we recognize that she was a fallible human being just like the rest of us. Jesus’ birth bridged the gap between perfect holy divinity and broken, sinful humanity. Jesus’ genealogy demonstrates that he was born into the heart of human messiness.

As Matthew outlines Jesus’ genealogy, he goes off script a few times. When he does, it’s to make a point. The Holy One of Israel was born into a family with a lot of baggage. Genealogies are generally supposed to be pretty straightforward. In a male-dominated society like ancient Israel, you’d outline someone’s heritage by following the male bloodline: father begets son, son begets grandson, and so on. But Matthew breaks the traditional way to describe a genealogy four times. Each time he does, he lets out a family secret.

First, Matthew tells us that Jesus’ ancestors include Judah and Tamar, the parents of Perez and Zerah. We find the messy story of this household in Genesis 38. It seems that Judah and his wife had two children, and Tamar was the wife of his oldest son Er, until Er died. According to the custom of the time, called levirate marriage, when a man dies before having a child, his brother is to marry his widow, and her children would be considered to be the offspring of the dead man. This may seem creepy and weird to us, but for a society that placed high value on bloodlines and inheritance rights, it makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately for poor Tamar, Er’s brother also died. At this point, Judah considered his daughter-in-law to be something of a curse, so he sent her away. In a society where a woman with no husband and no son had no legal rights, this was pretty harsh. But the story gets even more interesting. It seems that Judah had the habit of visiting the prostitutes in the next town. So Tamar dressed up like a prostitute, including a veil that hid her face, and Judah slept with her without knowing it was her. Several months later, when he learned that Tamar was pregnant, Judah ordered that she be killed for her offense. But when Tamar produced evidence that Judah was the father of her unborn child, he had plenty of crow to eat, and he acknowledged that he had mistreated her. Eventually Tamar gave birth to twins: Perez and Zerah. Perez is one of Jesus’ ancestors.

Second, Matthew tells us that Boaz’s mother was Rahab. We can find her story in Joshua 2 and 6. Rahab was actually a hero: she hid the Israelite spies when they came into Jericho as part of the preparations for conquering the city. And when the city officials got wind of the spies and went looking for them, she helped them escape. As a reward, her life was spared when Jericho was taken over. If that was everything there was to Rahab’s story, you’d think she’d be someone to be proud to have your family. But there’s just one minor detail about Rahab that may make you think twice: she was a prostitute. And that’s a big enough “detail” to make us want to put her behind Cousin Ernie, who shops at the Big and Tall Store, for the family photo.

Next we move on to Obed’s parents: Boaz and Ruth. Now, Ruth is a pretty well-known character in the Bible. In fact, she has a book named after her (one of only two women to receive this honor). She was a Moabite woman: she came from one of those heathen nations that surrounded Israel and caused it all kinds of grief. In fact, back when the Israelites were wandering through the wilderness, the Moabites attacked them, tried to get someone to curse them, and tried to wipe them out. Let’s just say with a history like that, the two nations got along about as well as Iran and Israel do today. She had married a Jewish refugee who came to her land; when he died, she joined her widowed mother-in-law when she went back home. The Jewish law was pretty clear: their men weren’t supposed to marry outsiders like the Moabites. So when Boaz and Ruth got married, their son Obed was, well, a half-breed. It hasn’t been that long since mixed race marriages were illegal in some states here in the US. So we can imagine the outrage and shame that Boaz and Ruth caused the family. And it was probably pretty hard on Obed growing up.

Probably the best known person in Jesus’ family tree is David: the greatest king that Israel ever had. So, when Matthew reaches him, you’d expect that he’d either stay on script, or talk about what a wonderful king David was: a man after God’s own heart, who unified the nation of Israel and did so much to increase the devotion of the Lord in the land. But that’s not what we find. Instead, Matthew reminds us of David’s greatest crime: he seduced a woman named Bathsheba and had her husband killed so that could marry her.

So here we have the family tree of Jesus: a hypocritical womanizer who mistreats his daughter-in-law, a prostitute, an enemy of the Jewish nation, and an adulterer and murderer. No matter who’s in your family, I’d say that Jesus has you beat. This certainly isn’t a pedigree to be proud of.

And that’s the whole point. The Son of God came into the world in order to touch us at our deepest, most broken places. We all have things we’re ashamed of. And I’m not just talking about embarrassing or frustrating relatives. I’m talking about the damaged places in our own lives. We’ve been the outcasts like Ruth, the mean-spirited people like Judah. We’ve done things that we’re ashamed of, like Rahab. We’ve abused our positions and hurt other people in the process, like David. When we recognize this in ourselves, we either do our best to hide and ignore it, or we collapse in a puddle of guilt and shame that paralyzes us from doing anything else. We’re unworthy of anything.

And then we learn about Jesus: the perfect Son of God. Not only was he born under, shall we say, suspicious circumstances…. Not only did his mother have to give birth to him in a cattle barn…. But he came from one of “those” families. The kind that you know no one good ever comes from. So, if you ever think that you’re not “good enough,” that God would never accept someone like you, remember how Jesus came into the world. Not as one of those goody-two-shoes that never makes a mistake and handles everything wither perfect grace. No. When God decided to enter our human world, he met us at the most disgraceful, broken places where humanity goes. And he did it to remind us that there is nothing we can ever do, no checkered past we could ever have, that disqualifies us from his love.