Unexpected Family

Once again, my name is René, one of the pastors here, and as I said, today is the first day of the first week of Advent. And Advent is kind of the Christian name for the four weeks leading up to Christmas. And here at TLC, we really want to help you make this a meaningful time for yourself and for your family. At our new resource center, the bookstore out in the lobby, we've got all kinds of Advent resources, some extremely inexpensive, all of them really are, and there's devotionals for you, for your family, for your grandkids, and I'd encourage you to check them out.

And this morning we start our new Advent message series, so I want to invite you to grab those message notes that are in your bulletins so that you can follow along, because here's what this is about. When it comes to Christmas, everybody wants to have an amazing Christmas, or maybe a peaceful Christmas, or a meaningful Christmas, and we often get that, but what I can guarantee you will get in one way or another in the next four weeks is an unexpected Christmas. There's going to be unexpected events, unexpected visitors, unexpected challenges that you face, and it's been that way from the very first Christmas.

And if you came in late, you didn't hear Elizabeth's announcement, this is part of the set for our musical. The musical happens next weekend and the following weekend too, and we're going to interlace some church services in there on the second weekend, so make sure you check the back of your bulletins for all the sermon times, and absorb that, and invite some friends. But in this series, when we talk about an unexpected Christmas, we're going to see how unexpected it was for Mary and Joseph, but the unexpected nature of Christmas goes all the way back even further than that.

We're going to be in the Gospel of Matthew during this series, and as I kick this off, I want to go to what I believe must be the most unfamiliar, unread, unknown, unexpected part of the Christmas story, at least the part of the Christmas story that is in the Bible. And I'm going to set this up with a question for you. Show of hands, if you know at least part of your family's genealogy, your ancestry, your history, anybody know this? How many of you would consider yourselves kind of fans of your family genealogy, like you've gone to ancestry.com or something like that, 23andme and so on to try to... there's a lot of people here.

Well, my wife's mom June, who's sitting here in the second row, she is super into investigating family history, and June has found out some very cool stuff about my wife's direct ancestry. Do you want to hear some of the crazy people she's related to? She is related to Patrick Henry, the famous American patriot who said, "Give me liberty or give me death." Isn't that awesome? My wife is also related to the family of Anne Boleyn, one of the wives of King Henry VIII. In fact, when we were all visiting England with the kids years ago, we went to her family's castle. They have a castle in England. This is it, it's called Hever Castle. This is where Laurie's relatives once lived and where some descendants still live.

I actually asked if we could do a house exchange one summer, they said no, but when people go digging around in their past, they're usually looking for this kind of stuff, right? They want to find the family castle. Nobody is hoping to discover, "I think I'm like third cousin twice removed to an axe murderer," right? Which actually is the case for me. I kid you not, I can now reveal this. I googled kind of famous schlepfers, spelled exactly like, never google that, just kind of a warning. The only famous 20th century schlepfer was a guy named Brian Schlepfer who was an Australian mass murderer. How delightful.

So Laurie gets the castle, I get the rap sheet. Why bring this up? Well, when a disciple of Jesus named Matthew wrote the very first gospel that comes up in the New Testament part of the Bible, he starts with Jesus Christ's family tree. And there are some really famous people that he lists there and there are Brian Schlepfers. There are a lot of people that you probably would not include if you were writing this. Let me show you, here's the way it starts. Chapter 1 verse 1 of Matthew's gospel. This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers and on and on and on.

And to many of our modern ears we go, why do you start with all these verses of genealogy, the begats, right? Why start with a genealogy? Why not just dump right into the story? Because it's very interesting as a story, not as a genealogy to our ears, right? Why does Matthew do this? Well, first Matthew is a Jewish guy writing to a predominantly Jewish audience and so he has to answer because he's making the case that Jesus Christ is the Jewish Messiah. He needs to answer the very first question that his Jewish readers would have had about Jesus which was, was he a direct descendant of David? Because the belief was that the Messiah would come from the lineage, the royal line of King David. And so Matthew wants to establish that.

But in doing so he does something very, very unexpected. Don't miss this. In his genealogy, this is very subtle if you don't know what to look for, he includes some extremely R-rated stories. And here's why this is unexpected. In ancient times the only histories that were written were written by hired historians, especially around the time of the New Testament. Kings would hire writers to write their family histories and they essentially said, "Make me look good." And so these historians would make a big deal out of their victories, they would downplay the defeats. They would make a big deal out of the great kids who went on to great things, they would just skip over the kids who didn't turn out so well.

And then we come to this ancient document and Matthew, don't miss this, he seems to go out of his way to not only name but emphasize the exact opposite kinds of people that all the other historians would emphasize. He makes sure to draw attention to the kinds of people that they would have tried to deflect attention from. Dicey people, strange people. Now why does he do this in a genealogy of the Messiah? It's kind of like if you were running for Congress and Charles Manson was your uncle, you probably would not put that on page one of your campaign brochure. Well, the gospel of Matthew is kind of the campaign brochure for Jesus Christ, kind of to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, this is why Matthew's writing this.

And on page one Matthew puts exactly those types of people, doesn't seem to help him with this case at all or does it? There's four surprising lessons here contained in four fascinating stories in Jesus' family tree that and these make what happened at Christmas even more mind-blowing. This is going to rock your world, I think this could add a degree of emotion and understanding and appreciation to the next four weeks of your life if you really get this. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read the genealogy and I'm going to tell you four stories behind some of these names.

First story, Matthew says next verse, "Judah the father of Peres and Zera whose mother was Tamar, stop, Judah and Tamar." Talk about an R-rated story, their story is way, way out there, there's much more detail than I have the time to mention in this message but let me just give you a summary. Judah was one of 12 brothers and he hates his little brother Joseph so much that he and the other brothers throw Joseph into a pit and then they sit down to eat lunch as they plan his murderer, so cold and then it gets worse because they see an Arab caravan coming through the desert where they sit and Judah says, "Hey everyone, I got an idea. Why kill him when we can all make more money by selling him?"

And so they sell their own brother into slavery, they get money. Judah manufactures a fake murder scene. He smears animal blood on Joseph's coat and tells his dad, "That was kind of a drag. We found this. Joseph was apparently killed by wild animals. Look." And he just stands and watches as the old man wails in grief and Judah's just cold through this whole thing. Judah does not seem to be bothered at all. He gets married, he has two sons, the sons get married and then they both die and here's the plot twist. Judah tells his daughter-in-law Tamar because now her husband, one of his sons, is dead. He tells her, "Go home and wait for my youngest son to grow up so that you can marry this other youngest son."

And Tamar waits, waits, and slowly realizes Judah is not going to keep his promise and she wants some babies. So she disguises herself as a prostitute and sits at a particular road going into a particular town waiting for Judah because she knows there's a hundred percent chance he's going to go for this. Now what does that tell you about what she knew about Judah's habits? Well Judah doesn't recognize her. He offers her a goat for her services. Now he doesn't happen to be carrying a goat with him. It's like you don't keep a goat in your wallet. So what's he going to do? She says, "But I want a goat." So she says, "I'll tell you what. I need your signet ring which was like your personal ID. It was like your driver's license and your passport in those days and I want your staff, your walking cane as a pledge that you're going to pay me the goat later."

So Judah gives those things to her, sleeps with her, goes back home, brings back the goat, and this prostitute is nowhere to be found. Three months later some people run up to Judah and say, "Judah! Judah! Your daughter-in-law Tamar has been immoral and guess what else? She's pregnant by her immorality." And guess what Judah does? Now we the readers know the kind of guy he is. We know about his sexual choices, but he gets so despicably self-righteous. And Judah says, "Then she must be punished for being immoral." And then he says, "In fact let's make a real impression on all those other immoral sinners out there. Bring her out and burn her alive."

And as the mob is leading Tamar out to be burned, pushing her into the fire, she stops and says, "Wait!" Everybody's attention is on her. She says, "I am pregnant by the man to whom this belongs." Anyone recognize this? And she shows Judah's ring and everyone's head swivels around and looks at Judah. And Judah goes, "Did I say burn her? I meant learn from her." You know he does something like that. And then he says, "Spare her, for she is more righteous than I am." Is this a crazy story? Or what? How many of you learned this in kindergarten, Sunday school? Not me.

And now what happens is everybody's apparently cool with Tamar as a single mom. She doesn't get married, but she has twin boys, including Perez, who is part of the genealogy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. But the story's not over, because Judah has another secret. Oh yeah, remember that little time he sold his own brother into human trafficking? And he apparently never plans to come clean about it. It's a dirty secret until he is eyeball to eyeball with that brother, Joseph, years later and discovers somehow Joseph not only survived, he is now the chief advisor to the Pharaoh of Egypt, which makes him one of the most powerful human beings on the planet.

And only when he has to, only when he thinks he is begging for his life, does Judah come clean to his dad and everybody else. Now think of this. You just heard this crazy story, and God reaches down and chooses Judah and Tamar over any other presumably better people to be the great times 35 grandparents of Jesus Christ. You know, it's as if God says, "There's the man and there's the woman among their generation who needed my grace more than anyone else," because they both just made these questionable choices at the very least. And so there's the man and there's the woman through whom I'm going to bring grace to the whole world.

You know what I think this story shows first lesson there in your notes. God's grace is greater than my secrets. His grace is greater than my -- you might have real big secrets about your past. Maybe you're terrified that somebody's going to learn of them, but God already sees them. And just like for Judah and Tamar, he says, "And I choose you." Knowing what I know, somebody said, "Jesus loves the non-Facebook version of you." The part that's not carefully curated to be admired, the secret part. You see why this genealogy is kind of like a giant announcement at the beginning of the Christmas story. You know, saying, "Hear ye, hear ye, all ye with deeply embarrassing moments." Good news. You can be part of the family of Jesus because it's already got people just like you in it. God's circle of grace is big enough to encompass all of us.

And there's more. Second story, next verse. Judah, the father of Perez and Zera, whose mother was Tamar. Perez, the father of Hezron. Hezron, the father of Ram. Ram, the father of Amenadab. Amenadab, the father of Naishon. Naishon, the father of Salmon. Salmon, who loved cooking with capers and a little butter sauce. The father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab's hit the brakes. Second time Matthew uses the phrase, "whose mother was," both times drawing attention to a story. This time it's Rahab's story.

Now what you really need to know, it tells you a lot about Rahab's story, is that Rahab had a nickname, kind of a label. It's interesting how throughout history many people end up getting nicknames. For example, John the Baptist, right? In fact, finish some of these for me. I think you'll know them all. Alexander the...good. Attila the...Konan the...Barbarian. Buffy the...vampire. So very good. Okay, now all great historical figures. Now historically, Rahab has a very unflattering title. Rahab the...Harlot. That means prostitute. Plus, she is not even Jewish. Rahab is 100% Canaanite. Kind of the arch enemies of Israel. So how is she a good person in any way to draw attention to in the genealogy of the Messiah? What point is Matthew trying to make by drawing attention to her?

Well, here's the story. Look at the Bible called Joshua 2. Joshua sends two spies to scout the land. They sneak into Jericho to check out the city. They duck into a house of ill repute. And the house belongs to Rahab. And she recognizes them as Israelites and hides them. But they are seen ducking into Rahab's house. Soldiers, Canaanite soldiers knock on the door, bring out the spies. And Rahab comes out and says, yes, they were here, but they left. And they went that direction. And if you hurry, you can still catch them. And he sends out...she sends out the posse in the completely wrong direction. And she goes back up to the roof where she's hit the spies. And she said, listen, I believe that the Lord, your God, is the God of heaven and earth. I believe that. And all I ask is that you would save the lives of me and my family. And she lets them down by a rope through the window, hangs a scarlet thread so they may know which house to spare. And after the battle of Jericho, she and her family become part of these Israelite people and part of the family tree of Jesus. This Canaanite prostitute.

You know what that shows me? God's grace is greater than any labels. God's grace is greater than any labels. Rahab the harlot. God's law condemned her. God's grace spared her. Isn't that powerful? Doesn't that move you? In fact, I'd love for you to think of something just now. Is there a label associated with your name? Maybe other people have called you this in your past, maybe in your childhood, or maybe it's a name that nobody else would call you, but you think of it when you think of yourself. Well, the good news is God went out of his way for people with all kinds of labels. He looks past the label to let them know, to let you know, the circle God is drawing is big enough for you. In fact, like Rahab, you might even play a leading role, no matter what your past is, in what God is up to next in the world. And it gets better.

Story number three. Rahab marries one of the Israelite soldiers. They have a son named Boaz, and he has a son named Obed, and then for the third time, Matthew mentions someone's mother. And every time he does it, it's to point out an unusual story. He says, Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Here's Ruth's story. Ruth was a woman with zero status in her culture. Nobody should have given her the time of day, culturally and socially. She had no capital. She was a widow. She was a woman. She was a refugee. She was poor. And worst of all, she was a Moabite. The Moabites lived across the border in what is now Jordan, and the Moabites at the time were the most despised ethnic group in all of Israel.

Resentments against Moabites went back centuries, because when the Israelites themselves had been refugees, the Moabites had treated them so badly that there was actually a law. No Moabite can ever, ever enter the assembly of Israel. They didn't even have that law against, like the Canaanites and the Philistines, but they had it against the Moabites. While Ruth's husband had been an Israelite living in Moab, he dies, and Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, become refugees in Israel. They traveled to Bethlehem during a famine. And one day, Ruth is one of those poor people harvesting grain in the corners of the field, the second harvest for the poor that we talked about last weekend. And the owner of the field is a man named Boaz, Rahab's son. And Boaz cares for her, marries her, saves her life freely, and Ruth becomes one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ.

Her story shows God's grace is greater than my status in society. Excuse me. You know, maybe you come from a group of people of very little status historically in our American culture. Maybe you're from a different ethnicity that's been historically looked down on, or a different, you know, racial group, or a different economic status. Maybe a refugee, maybe a widow. Ruth was all those things. That was Ruth. And God told her, "Welcome in." Are you starting to see what these stories all have in common? One final story.

Ruth and Boaz get married. And their baby Obed has a son named Jesse. Jesse has eight sons. The very last son is a little guy named David. Verse 6, "David was the father of Solomon, and look how Matthew writes this, whose mother had been Uriah's wife." For the fourth time, he mentions somebody's mother. And let me just ask you, if you know it, shout it out loud. Who was Solomon's mother? Bathsheba. That's right. But Matthew doesn't just say, "And whose mother was Bathsheba," like he does the other times. He said, "Whose mother was another man's wife." So, you know, you can tell he's purposely just surfacing a ton of pure family dysfunction.

And you might remember the story from the Chasing David series that we just finished here. David takes one of his best soldier's wives to his bed. He gets her pregnant. And then David has her husband, one of his most loyal soldiers, Uriah, set up so that Uriah dies during a battle so that David can steal his wife. And the prophet Nathan confronts David, "You are the man." And David confesses, and God forgives him of his sin, but there are brutal consequences. His family falls apart. His favorite son murders his oldest son, and then starts a civil war. And David's right-hand man murders that favorite son. And with all of that as a backdrop, with all that chaos, all that dysfunction, all that embarrassment, and in spite of all that, Matthew says, "A man and a woman in the line of David and Bathsheba, Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary made their way to the town of Bethlehem, known by that time as the town of David. And there she gave birth to the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of David and Bathsheba."

God redeemed what happened with David and Bathsheba. He still had a role for them to play in his plan. Why? Not because David's goodness somehow outweighed his badness. That would have been impossible solely because of God's grace. And guess what? If your story, you know, mirrors in any way the stories of Tamar or Judah or Ruth or Rahab or David and Bathsheba, God still has a place for you. No matter what, waywardness or weirdness or wounds are in your past. And I know there's always people sitting there. I know this because people email me and they go, "René, you said that God still loves and accepts us, but you don't know my past." And then they email me and make an appointment and they reveal something that to them must disqualify them from God ever using them or forgiving them or accepting them.

But I'm just here to tell you right now, before you start telling me how bad you think you are, do I need to go back over the story? I'm just going to start chasing David all over again and do it in slow motion and reveal again all his dysfunction. Do you see what his inclusion in the genealogy shows? It shows that God's grace is greater than my worst sin. God's grace is infinitely greater than your worst sin and my worst sin. You know, I think there is another reason that Matthew, specifically Matthew, started his gospel with this genealogy and keeps drawing attention to these stories by saying, "Whose mother was?" In case you forgot the story. I think Matthew does this because for Matthew this was personal.

Because for Matthew this was also his story. You might remember Matthew talks about Jesus's birth and the magi. We're going to be looking at those things in this series and then he talks about how Jesus begins his ministry and he starts to call his disciples. Most of his disciples are pretty good kids, but then Jesus does something interesting. Matthew 9-9. Matthew is writing this now about himself. Excuse me. As Jesus went on from there he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. And tax collectors were seen as the worst sinners in the land, collaborating with the Romans, betraying their people, betraying God, robbing people. The lowest of the low they weren't allowed to go to synagogue. They weren't allowed to go to temple. Nobody would even hang out with them. Except for the other bad sinners, prostitutes and pimps and the other tax collectors. So that's who Matthew was.

And Jesus sees him and stops and says, "Hey you, follow me." Nobody like that ever talked to Matthew. And I imagine Matthew just had to be weeping with joy as he writes these words and he remembers how the whole trajectory of his life changed when he heard those words. And by the way, do you know what happened next? Do you remember the story? It's a great story. Matthew basically goes, "Okay, I'll follow you. Where are we going next?" Do you remember what Jesus says? Yeah. He says, "Well, I thought we'd go to your house." Matthew's like, "What? Nobody like you ever comes to my house. Tax collectors were rich but friendless." And so Matthew goes to his house and he gets so excited. The Bible says he throws a party. Now, what kind of people is Matthew going to invite to a party? His friends? Who were his friends? Prostitutes and pimps and other tax collectors? And indeed, that's exactly what happens.

There's all these sinners. They're having a party. I imagine the noise is just like, you know, upsetting the neighbors and everybody knows what's happening. And the Bible says that the religious leaders, kind of the religious behavior police that exists in every generation, they come up to the doorway. They won't even go in. And they're trying to get Jesus' attention. They can't get it. He's having too much fun or something. And so they finally, they beckon the disciples over and they say, "How can your master claim to be the Messiah when we know the Messiah is going to come and restore purity to our land and He's in like the most impure place in our city?"

And the Bible says when Jesus heard this, He doesn't even leave the party. He says, "Go and tell them, learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice." For He says, "You don't send a doctor to the healthy. You send a doctor to the sick and this is why I've come." You know what Jesus is saying? He's saying, "Not only did I come for these people." What He's saying and what Matthew proves with his genealogy, not only did I come for these people, I came from these people. And that means Jesus came for you and Jesus came for me. I think Matthew got it. I think Matthew personally understood maybe even better than any of the other gospel writers.

"Christmas, the Incarnation" is a story about God drawing near to those who had drawn away. About God leaning in to those who had leaned away from God because they were mad at God or because they thought God was mad at them. And so He writes this account of the family of Jesus as if to say to you and me. And anybody who reads this, you think you can't be included in Jesus' family? Let me tell you about Jesus' family. Maybe you have been leaning away from God. Maybe you've been mad at God lately. God's not mad at you. God came at Christmas for you.

I'll close with a story. You know, several years ago now, we were doing a Christmas concert here. And I'll never forget this because it was over in this section. And a woman stands up and during one of the songs, she's actually cussing God out using swear words and cussing God out. And so we asked her, you know, to please sit down and she just got more amped. And so we eventually took her out into this hallway here. And the situation got out of control. And sadly, eventually the sheriffs had to be called to take her away. But as the sheriffs are called, I see her at that time, maybe 18 or 19 year old daughter come around the corner. And she's so embarrassed. She says, I'm so sorry. And I was there. Pastor Jim Jocelyn was there. I think Mark was there. And we said, Listen, can we can we ask you something to please please do this for us? Please come back. Because God loves you. And we love you.

Well, I actually didn't know what happened until a couple of years later after another Christmas concert, a woman walks up to me who I didn't recognize. And she says, Do you remember that concert where that woman stood up and yelled? I said, I sure do. Remember that she goes, I do too, because that was me. And she says, and my daughter and I have been coming back. And the Lord has changed our lives. And I could just see the joy of the Lord on their faces. And I said, You know, I think this is going to really encourage some people. Can I share your story? She said, Sure. And I'm like, This is so cool. I asked somebody standing there, take our picture right now. And here we all are. This is this is us. Now, yeah, praise God. Praise God.

So by the way, I want you to listen to this in case you see somebody that you feel like, Oh, they're acting, they're just out of sorts. They're they're acting in a way that they shouldn't be. I listened to what she said. She told me, You know, I don't remember much from that night. But my husband had just died. And I was so mad at God. And so that night, I hit the bottle big time and all my pain. But I do remember this, you and all the pastors gathered around us and said, You loved us. And would we please come back? And she said, So we did. And then God's grace did the rest.

Now you might recognize her or her daughter Tamara, or her daughter Tamara's daughter Athena, because Tamara and Athena were our readers this morning for the Advent reading. Because their family's story is the Christmas story. And they're sitting right there in the third row right now. It's great to have you guys here. Let me just say this. So next weekend, we start two weekends of our Christmas musical. The whole musical is about how unexpected the news was about the first Christmas for Mary and Joseph. I guarantee you there will be people like Laurie and Tamara and Athena in those services. I hope you invite those people. Because what people will, what you will find is the most unlikely people just like in Jesus' day, sometimes it's actually not the good people, but the righteous religious people who are drawn to Jesus.

It's the people who at first are leaning away from God. And then as it dawns on them that Christmas is about God leaning into them and drawing a circle big enough to include them. That's when they will run into the arms of Jesus. But do you see now why Matthew starts with all these completely unexpected names? These names are a reminder. They show the whole point of Christmas is we're all equally lost, we're all equally sinners, and we're all equally loved, and we're all equally accepted. It's a reminder. And they are an invitation to you today to receive maybe for the first time or to keep living in the grace that God has for you, even you. So let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

You know, I just want to invite you to pray this prayer with me, maybe for the very first time or maybe as a December 1st, first day of Advent prayer to get your head in the right space for what's going to happen this month. Jesus, I don't claim to understand it all, but I believe you came to be exactly what Matthew presented you to be, the Savior of all of us. And Heavenly Father, I believe your grace is much more powerful than my secrets, than any label, than any status or lack thereof, than my worst sin. And in fact, I believe in Jesus as the Savior for my sin, who through his death, burial, and resurrection has offered me a new label. And I believe I am who you say I am, and that my new label says child of God, and that my new label says forgiven, and that my new label says accepted, and my new label says loved. And so God, help me to live my life in accordance with who you say I am. And God, with all of these presentations of the message in the musical over the next two weekends, God, we offer them to you now, and we ask for your blessing upon them, that they would be powerful in their impact. In Jesus name we pray, amen.