Most people never pick up a bible for the very reason that it contains sections like Matthew 1:1-17 (Read here). On the surface, it can seem highly boring and irrelevant. Its just a long list chronicling Jesus's ancestors that comes before the story of Jesus. "And this ancient dead person with a weird name was the father of that ancient dead person with another weird name. Blah, blah, blah...blah." Compelling stuff I know.
However, there are some really beautiful things going on behind this list of names.
You just have to dig a little.
I want to focus on one thing I've noticed.
A few of the ancestors of Jesus that are mentioned by Matthew actually have quite disturbing backgrounds. In fact, several of his ancestors only existed because of some twisted, horrible sexual encounter. For instance, in Matthew 1:3 we learn that Jesus had a great, great, great...(you get the picture) grandfather named Perez and that Perez's parents were named Judah and Tamar. The thing is Judah is also technically the grandfather of Perez and as well as his father. This is because Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah and when both her husbands died and it looked as if she wasn't going to have any children, she disguised herself as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law in order to get pregnant. She did this partly out of desperation and partly out of bitterness towards her father-in-law. It ended up working and nine months later little Perez was born. (For the somewhat explicit details, see Genesis chapter 38)
But there's even more dysfunction.
A few verses later, in Matthew 1:6, we learn that another of Jesus's ancestors was Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba. The story of David and Bathsheba is one of the most infamous in history, but its worth recounting. David was the King of Israel, and a man after God's own heart but one day he saw from his rooftop a beautiful woman bathing. This was Bathsheba. He was so enamored with her that he had her brought to him in his palace and thus began one of history's most well known affairs. Tragically, Bathsheba had a husband who fought in the army. When Bathsheba became pregnant through David, he had her husband sent to the front lines where he was quickly killed in order to cover up the affair. As a result, God allowed David and Bathsheba's first child to die shortly after it was born, which broke David's heart. (see 2 Samuel 11-12)
Come on, who says the Bible is boring?
Seriously though, these are truly hard stories. There's a lot of dysfunction, a lot of pain, a lot of trauma in them.
But that's life isn't it?
Life can be quite ugly.
It can be very painful.
It can be horribly dysfunctional.
Yet, what these stories show is that God can bring wonderful things out of the mess of life.
That's who God is.
Although God did not cause Tamar to sleep with her father-in-law or cause David to have an affair with Bathsheba and have her husband killed, He still used the results of these horrible situations, the children that resulted from them, to help form the link that would produce Jesus himself.
God was still going to do something wonderful despite people's horrible choices and He worked with the pain and ugliness in their lives and used it to bring about an amazing outcome.
But God is still good and my life is moving forward despite all of that.
He's not only given me healing where I needed it but He's taken the ugliness in my life and used it to give me a voice and a message.
Despite mistakenly entering into and staying in a relationship that wasn't the best, He's still given me the woman of my dreams.
The pain I've been through and the horrible choices I've made haven't stopped beautiful things from coming.
Nothing can stop God from bringing about something really wonderful in your life and oftentimes He'll use your mistakes in order to do it.
What I have learned is that you just need to keep saying yes to Him. No matter what you've gone through. No matter what place you may be in at the moment, just say yes to Him and just keep walking with Him.
If you do this, you'll be amazed at what He does.
