Unto You is Born this Day a Savior

Question for you. Honestly, when it comes to Christmas and the Bible, do you ever feel like, "I think I've literally heard it all"? I mean, like, you've read every one of these verses a thousand times. You've heard every Christmas story a hundred times. And if truth be told, when it comes to December in church, your heart kind of sinks because you know you're just going to hear the same thing over again. And there's nothing new for you, right? Well, today I'm going to put the light of that.

Because today, as our Advent series continues, I want to go to, honestly, what I'm sure is the least known and most underappreciated set of Christmas verses in the entire Bible. Because at first glance, although these are part of the Christmas story, people look at them and they don't understand them. They seem mysterious and strange and frankly even a little bit boring. So they just skip them. But if you really get today, in the next few minutes, why these verses are in the Bible, it will change your appreciation of what happened at Christmas in ways that could really rock your world.

And here's how I want to set up these verses. By show of hands, how many of you know something about your family's genealogy, your family history? Does anybody know anything about your family? A lot of people here. My wife, Lori's mother June, is really into family genealogy. I mean, she just loves it. And she has unearthed some really interesting things. Like, for example, my wife and her family are related to Patrick Henry, the great American patriot who said, "Give me liberty or give me death." And they're related to the family of Anne Boleyn, one of the wives of the notorious King Henry VIII.

In fact, when we were in England several years ago with the kids, we visited the family castle. It's called Hever Castle. This is a picture of it. And we got to take the kids there, and they saw on the walls of one of the castles their own family tree, which is pretty cool. When people do family genealogies, this is exactly the sort of thing they are hoping to unearth, right? The family castle. So we're standing in the family castle, and the kids look at me like, "Dad, what have you got to offer?" You know? And I'm not making this up. Literally, we know about my family, several centuries back in Switzerland, and our name, like, if your last name is Miller, it's because you were a Miller, right? If your last name is Smith, it's because your family was a Smith, you know, a metalsmith.

Well, my last name is Schlepper, and that's because our family were Schleppers. Thank you for that laughter. This is my family we're talking about here. Now, I know it is ridiculous. They were members of a lumberjack crew that built dry flumes and greased them up and transported the logs. And so my kids are in Hever Castle, related to British royalty. And I'm looking at them and going, "Why do you want to be here in the castle? Come and look at the ruins of the dry log flumes in the Swiss forests." No, thank you, Dad. This is the kind of thing that we discover in my family here, we discover in my family history, but everybody wants to discover connection to royalty, connection to celebrity.

And some people just are so lucky. I saw an article just this past week talking about how some celebrities are related to other celebrities of the past. For example, Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln. Can you believe that? Mick Fleetwood is related to the royal princes of England. They are cousins. And you can sort of see the family resemblance here, if you really kind of squint. Here's one, believe it or not, President Obama and Brad Pitt are cousins. Can you believe that? That is true. I'm not making this up. And I love what the president said when this got released. This is true. The White House released a statement, among other things he said, "Well, every family tree has a black sheep." And he's exactly right, right?

In fact, you know when they did all these genealogies, they did discover some black sheep, right? You're not only related to royalty and past celebrities. There's also some notorious infamous characters, probably in your past, but nobody writes a newspaper article about that. Nobody brags about that. Nobody goes, "Hey, guess what? I'm the third cousin to Jeffrey Dahmer." Nobody ever mentions that. Except for Jesus. Check this out. The Bible story has the story of Christmas in two books of the Bible, Matthew and Luke. Luke starts right off with the story about how Jesus' cousin John the Baptist was born, and that works right into the Mary story. Luke just cuts to the chase.

But Matthew goes way back and starts with Jesus' family tree. Now, there are some very famous people in Jesus' family tree, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but there are also black sheep. There are also very notorious stories, and it's in those people's stories that you get amazing insight into what Christmas is all about. Now, I want to just sort of acknowledge my sources for this message. I was listening to a six-part series by Andy Stanley at North Point Church in Atlanta, where he takes a month and a half to go through the genealogy of Matthew in Matthew 1. So I just want to digest it all in the next 25 minutes or so and start with this question.

Why did Matthew start with a genealogy? Why did he start with something? To our modern ears sounds stultifyingly boring, you know? And so and so begat, so and so, and so begat, so and so, and so, and so begat. Why not just get to the action? Well, a Jewish audience and a Jewish writer is going to want to confirm the credentials of the Messiah right off the bat in one way, because a Jewish audience knew the Messiah would come through David's lineage. And so Matthew decides, let's just answer the big question first, is Jesus or is Jesus not related to King David? Because if he's not related to King David, any other claims to his being the Messiah just fall apart.

So Matthew answers the number one question that a Jewish audience is going to have right off the bat, right off the bat, but then he does some very, very unusual things. In his genealogy, he includes some very scandalous people, some of the black sheep with really R-rated stories. And here's why this is fascinating. In ancient times, the only histories that were written were written by hired historians, especially around the time the New Testament was written 2,000 years ago. Kings hired people to write histories to make them look good. And so consequently, there are all kinds of gaps, right? For example, they make a big deal out of their military victories and they downplay their defeats.

They make a big deal about their sons who went on to become warriors and kings, but they barely even mention or don't even mention the children who didn't turn out so good. And then we come to this ancient document, Matthew, that begins with the genealogy of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah. And Matthew goes out of his way to emphasize the exact opposite kinds of people that other historians emphasize, dicey people, failed people, strange people. Why in the world does he do this in a genealogy of the Messiah? It doesn't seem to help his case at all. Or does it? I think there's three surprising lessons in Jesus' family tree on page two of your notes.

I'm going to tell you three stories that you may not be familiar with from this genealogy today that put Christmas in a whole new perspective. This is the back story to Christmas from Matthew's perspective. And the first story shows us that God's grace is bigger than my secrets. God's grace is bigger than my secrets. And he says in Matthew 1:3, "Judah was the father of Perez and Zera, whose mother was Tamar." Now hit the brakes. He's talking about Judah and Tamar. And let me just tell you, there are some verses in the story of Judah and Tamar that I probably would not read out loud in church in a mixed audience. I mean, this story is so like way, way out there that there's some verses here that you're just going to have to read on your own today.

And that's just going to make Bible readership in our church just shoot up with that kind of a teaser. But here's the overall story. Judah is one of the 12 brothers of Joseph, and he hates his little brother Joseph so much that one day he and his other brothers throw Joseph into a dry well and then they sit down to eat their meal as they plan his murder. Cold. Then they see a caravan. And Judah says, "Hey, why kill him when we can make some money by selling him?" And they sell him into human trafficking, their own brother. And Judah's not bothered at all. Judah goes on with life. He gets married, has two sons. The sons get married, but then the sons both die.

Now follow me here. Judah tells his oldest son's wife, his daughter-in-law Tamar, who by the way is not even an Israelite. She's a Canaanite. She's a pagan, which is another reason this is a scandalous name to include in the genealogy of the Jewish Messiah. But Judah tells Tamar, "Look, you're a widow now. I want you to go home. I know you want to have babies and you want to extend our lineage, but go home and grieve. And when our youngest son grows up, then you can marry him and have children." And Tamar waits and waits and waits, and soon it becomes clear that Judah is not going to keep his promise, and she wants to have babies.

And so she dresses up like a cult prostitute with her face covered at night. And she sits by a road waiting for Judah, where she apparently knew Judah went to look for prostitutes. Are you starting to see why this is not a story that Rankin Bass animated with stop-motion puppets? You know, it's just so... The story of Judah and Tamar starring Buddy Hackett as Judah. You're never going to see that on TV because it's strange. And what happens is Judah sees her, does not recognize her because her face is covered at nighttime, and he offers a goat for her services. Now, he doesn't happen to be carrying a goat with him. That doesn't fit into a wallet.

So he takes his signet ring, which was a ring with his seal on it that you would use as a signature for, like, ceiling wax documents, right? And his walking staff, which apparently was something very recognizable as his staff, something unusual about the way it was carved or something. And he says, "I want you to take these as pledge, and I'll come back and get these from you when I bring you the goat in the morning." He sleeps with her, goes back home, brings back the goat, and the woman is nowhere to be found. He kind of shrugs his shoulders, "Well, I don't know what else to do." Fast forward three months later, people come up to him and say, "Judah, as the leader of the family, you need to know your daughter-in-law, Tamar, has been immoral. And what's worse, she is pregnant by her immorality."

And Judah, though he is such a despicable guy himself, he gets all self-righteous, and he says, "Bring her out here. Bring her out here." And he says, "We are going to make an example of you." He says, "We're not even just going to stone you. We're going to burn you alive for your immorality." Even though he's guilty of the same thing, but that's a secret. He's not letting anybody know he's guilty. And I'll tell you something, when you see people being overly self-righteous, so often it's because they have a hidden shame. And you see this is Judah to a tee.

And so they light a big bonfire. They lead Tamar out to it, and Tamar stops, steps away, and says, "Well, wait, wait, wait. I have one thing to say before you burn me." She says, "I am pregnant by the man to whom this belongs," and she shows the signet ring. And the way I picture it, just a hush falls over the crowd. And everybody who'd been staring at Tamar now swivels and stares at Judah. And Judah goes, "Did I say burn her? I meant learn from her." That's what I said, and that's kind of what he says. He says, "This woman is more righteous than I am, and more righteous than anybody here, and she deserves to live." And people go, "Whatever," and they're fine with her being a single mom.

And she gives birth to two boys, one of them, Perez, grows up to be the great-grandfather times 35 of Jesus Christ. But there's more to the story, because Judah has another secret, and he plans to take this one to his grave. Do you remember? He sold his own brother into slavery. And again, he's keeping it a secret. Judah doesn't confess, he doesn't come clean until he is eye-ball to eye-ball with Joseph decades later. And he discovers, "Uh-oh, Joseph not only survived Egyptian slavery, but he has risen to chief advisor to Pharaoh, and now my family's starving, and we need the grain silos that he's in charge of so that my family doesn't die, and only when he has to, only when he's confronted, only when he has no other choice, Judah finally comes clean."

And God reaches down and chooses Judah over Joseph or over any other person to be the great-great-grandpa times 35 of Jesus Christ. I mean, he had 11 other choices just among the brothers. Why Judah? I think God said, "There's the man among them that needs my grace the most, and therefore that is the man through whom I will bring grace to the entire world." And I'm not just imagining this, this is in the text, because right before Judah's father dies, he brings all the boys in for a blessing. And in Genesis 49, he says to Judah, "The scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet," you know, kind of even redeeming the staff, which had been part of that episode with the prostitute. "The ruler's staff won't depart between your feet until he to whom it belongs shall come, and the obedience of the nations shall be his." There is only one person who can fulfill that prophecy, and that is Jesus Christ.

It's a prophecy that through this totally messed up man, the Messiah will come, showing that God's grace is greater than my secrets. So let me ask you something. Do you have a real big, big secret in your life that you're hiding? And sometimes you almost put yourself on the bench, away from ministry, and away from relationships, because you're so ashamed. This story is in the genealogy to tell you God sees those secrets, and he still says, "I choose you." Trent Smith, our worship pastor this week, had a quote, "I love it." He said, "Jesus loves the non-Facebook version of you." Jesus loves the non-Facebook version of you. You know what I mean? The part of you that's not carefully curated to be admired. The secret part.

And Matthew starts out the Christmas story with this genealogy, it's like a Star Wars crawl at the beginning of the movie, saying here's the back story. It's like a way to announce, "Hear ye, hear ye, all ye secret keepers, all people with dark chapters that you don't want anybody to know anything about, all you who have regrets, all you have deeply embarrassing moments, all you who have inflicted hurt on other people, and somehow have never quite made it right, all you who took secrets into relationships and lived with the fear of being found out." God says to you, "Good news. You are prime candidates for my redemptive grace. Your prime candidates to be mightily used by me, there's no need to hide, there's no need to bench yourself because I already know, don't hesitate to begin a spiritual journey because of your baggage, I already know."

And God's circle of grace is big enough to encompass all of us, all of us liars and cheaters and deceivers and disloyal people and inconsistent people were all candidates to be used by Him in ways that exceed our expectations because His grace is bigger than any of my secrets. But there's another strange character here. And this character shows a second lesson and it's this, God's grace rewrites the labels. God's grace rewrites the labels. I want to show you Matthew, back to Matthew 1:3 where it says, "Judah, the father of Perez and Zera, whose mother was Tamar," now you know the back story there, "Perez, the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amenadab, Amenadab the father of Nashon, Nashon the father of Salmon, who loved cooking with a little lemon sauce and capers." No, it doesn't say that. Just check in to see if you're paying attention.

"Salmon, the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab," hit the brakes again. Do you notice something? This is the second time that Matthew pauses to point out a woman's name. He doesn't have to do this. This is what's called a patrilineal genealogy. He should have just gone, "Father to Son, Father to Son, Father to Son, Father to Son." But for the second time now, he's paused and said, "Whose mother was..." That's his way of putting an asterisk, underlining, highlighting somebody who was totally unnecessary to the genealogy, but he's drawing attention to the story. He mentions Rahab. And Rahab has a label, a nickname. Put it this way, throughout history, people have had titles associated with their names like John the Baptist, right? In fact, finish these for me. Alexander the what? Great. That's right. This one, Attila the what? Hun. Conan the? Buffy the? Vampire Slayer. Very, very good. Now, these are usually pretty good things, right? But Rahab has a very unflattering title. Rahab the what? Harlot.

That's not a very good word for prostitute. Plus, like Tamar, she's not even Jewish. So how is a Canaanite prostitute a good person to draw attention to in the genealogy of the Jewish Messiah? Here's what happened. In the book of the Bible called Joshua, chapter 2, Joshua sends two spies out to scout the land, and they sneak into Jericho, they duck into a house, the house belongs to Rahab, it's a house of prostitution. She recognizes them as Israelites. She hides them. Soldiers knock on the door. Bring out the spies that we know are in there. She says, "Well, they were here, but they left just after sunset right before the city gate was closed. If you hurry, you can catch them." So the guards send off a posse and completely the wrong direction after the gun, she goes up and she says to the spies, "Listen, I believe that the Lord your God is God and Lord of everything, Lord of heaven and Lord of earth." Quite a confession for a pagan Canaanite to be making.

And then she says, "Not only do I believe, but I'm asking you, save me. Save me and save my family." And the spies say, "We will." And she lets them down in a rope because her house was on the city wall and she hangs a scarlet thread there so that they know which house to spare. Now, I want you to notice right at that moment, there's no real obvious repentance in the text over her sinful lifestyle. What there is is just, "I believe that the Lord is Lord and help. I need help." Very, very simple coming to God. And she is rescued. She and her family become part of the Israelites. She eventually does leave her occupation because she marries one of them, Salmon, who was a great catch, it is said. No, I'm just kidding. I saw that out there and the two voices, one voice said, "Don't say it." But I did say it. Anyway, he was a great catch. I said it.

And they have a son named Boaz and his great grandson is none other than King David. The point being, Rahab the harlot, Rahab the Canaanite, Rahab the foreigner, Rahab the outsider, God's law condemned her, God's grace spared her. And later on in Hebrews 11 and James 2 in the New Testament of the Bible, she is listed as Rahab the hero of faith because her faith compelled her to action and God's grace rewrites every label. Now, let me ask you to think of something. Is there a label associated with your name? Maybe you know that other people think of this label when they think of you and maybe nobody does, but you do. That's how you think of yourself. I'm John the jerk. I'm just a jerk. Everybody knows it. I'm Charlie the cheater. You know, I'm Gary the glutton. I'm Larry the luster. I can't stop. I'm Adam the addict. I'm Jackie the jealous. I'm Faith the unfaithful. Debbie the drinker.

You know, a lot of us, a lot of times we have those labels that we put on ourselves. But Jesus invited all kinds of people with all kinds of labels to follow him and believe in him while their labels were still attached. Isn't that powerful? I mean, isn't that a little bit overwhelming? Doesn't that move you? Anybody here with a past that you're ashamed of or a habit or a present that you're ashamed of? Good news. God went out of his way to show in every way, even in the genealogies, that he wants you to be included, that the circle he drew is big enough to include you and even to let you play a leading role like Rahab did and what he might be up to in the world. And it gets better.

Because the next verse in the least read Christmas passage of all time shows me that God's grace always keeps its promises. How does it show that? Matthew 1:6. David was the father of Solomon and look at how he writes this again. Whose mother had been Uriah's wife. You know, you kind of feel like asking Matthew, why don't give us the stained glass hero portrait of David? David the musician, David the psalmist, David the builder, David the warrior, David the giant killer, David the shepherd boy. There's a hundred wonderful things you could say about David, but when he gets to David in this genealogy, he points out who someone's mother was for the third time.

Matthew's way of drawing attention to a story behind these names that is the worst episode in David's life. The one thing that you know David wishes he could just rewrite the thing that created a ton of just dysfunction in his family. What happened? Well, let me ask you this. Who was Solomon's mother? What was her name? Shout it out. It was Bathsheba. And before the incident with Bathsheba, God promised David this. Look at this promise in 2 Samuel 7. "The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. I will raise up your offspring. I will establish his kingdom. I will establish the throne of his kingdom for how long? Forever. I, look at this, I will be his father and he will be my son." Now follow me here. This was a promise to David from God, back when David was still kind of the golden boy, a promise that God's son, the Messiah, would come through his family lineage. Great.

But a couple of chapters later, David has an affair with one of his best friends' wives, one of his best generals' wives, Bathsheba. She gets pregnant, and David has his general set up so that he dies in battle, so that David can steal his wife. And God sends Nathan the prophet into David's court, and he says, "You are the guilty man." And David confesses he comes clean. He writes Psalm 51. He says, "God, I have sinned before you, and does God forgive David of his sin?" That was kind of tepid. Two people said yes. You're not sure, because it's pretty bad, right? Does God forgive David of his sin? Yes. Are there brutal consequences to the sin? Yes. His kingdom splits apart. His own sons commit mutiny, and one of them tries to kill him. His oldest son kills his favorite son. His favorite general kills his oldest son. There's this horrible kingdom division, but the unconditional promise remains.

God has chosen David, period, to the point that 990 years later -- this is so amazing -- 990 years later, Matthew says, "A man in the line of David, Joseph, and his pregnant wife Mary, make their way to the city of Bethlehem, which by the first century is known as the city of" -- who? David. In fact, watch this, the other record of the Christmas story. Luke, here's what the angel says. Now, I want you to listen to what the angel said, because this is one of those verses you have heard a thousand times, but now listen to it with this brand-new filter. Luke 2:11, the angel says, "Unto you is born this day in the city of" -- what? David.

Now, here's what I hope for you. I hope that for the rest of your life, every Christmas, when you read this in the Christmas story, when you hear somebody up on stage reading this line in a Christmas story, when you hear Linus and the Charlie Brown Christmas quote this in the greatest Christmas TV special ever, when you read this for yourself, I hope that what you get with just gut-punching impact is that line, "City of David, City of David, City of David, in the city of the promise-breaking David, in the city of the faithless David, in the city of the sinful David, in that city, the Messiah came because God promised." Not because of King David's wonderful behavior, but because God promised.

And I talk to people all the time who tell me, "I know I'm far beyond God's reach. I have messed up so badly. I've embarrassed my family. And if I even come into church, the walls are going to cave in on me." Do you see why these names are even in the genealogy to say even before Jesus was born? This is how God works. God redeems the story of people who really blow it. And if you want to come to me and tell me, "Yeah, but I'm an exception. I'm so bad. I'm going to tell you the story of David all over again in slow motion with all the details, and the story of Tamar, and the story of Rahab, because the big idea here is, God's grace is greater than my worst sin, and greater than your worst sin."

You see, there's another reason that I think Matthew started his gospel with this genealogy, and that's this. For Matthew, this was very personal. For Matthew, this was his story. Do you remember how Matthew became a follower of Jesus? He tells it himself a few chapters later in Matthew 9. Matthew was a tax collector, and Matthew was sitting at his tax collection booth when Jesus came walking by one day. Now, at this point, Jesus has gathered all his other disciples, right? Except for one. And he approaches Matthew, and as a tax collector, Matthew is the worst sinner in that society. In fact, in those days, they had a way to categorize sinners. They had two categories, tax collectors and sinners.

In other words, there's bad sinners, all those prostitutes and all those other people, and then there's tax collectors. They're in a category all by themselves. They're so bad. Why were they seen as so bad? They were traitors to the Jews because they supported the Roman government by collecting taxes for them. They were thieves because they could charge as much as they cared to for taxes as long as Rome got their cut, and they could enrich themselves on the blood money from their own people. And they were helping to support pagan idolatry because a lot of those taxes were going to build Roman temples. They were blasphemers. They were betrayers. They were traitors. They were thieves. They were despised. To the point that tax collectors were not allowed to go to the temple to worship. They were ceremonially unclean. And tax collectors were not even allowed to go into synagogues. It was like, "You're so bad, you can't even go to church. That's how bad you are. Don't even try."

And people derided tax collectors. Nobody would hang out with tax collectors except for other tax collectors and sinners. So that's the only friends that they had. They were on the outside, and they thought there's no way they could ever have a relationship with God. And Jesus approaches this Matthew. That's where Matthew was at when Jesus comes up to him. And you can see all the other disciples. The way I picture it, they're all kind of in Jesus's wake, and they see him going up to the tax collector's booth there in Capernaum. And you know what was happening in their minds. They were going, "That dirty son of a gun tax collector." And they're thinking about all the things they're gonna do as they walk past. You know, this time will they just sneer at him? This time will they look away? This time will they spit at his feet? This time will they curse him? And they're kind of working it up. And then Jesus goes up to him, "Let's see what Jesus says. He's gonna give him the ultimate insult." And Jesus says what? "Follow me." And the disciples are like, "What did he just say? That's crazy."

And then what happens next? If you know the story, Matthew kind of goes, "Follow you where?" And Jesus was going, "Well, I was kind of thinking, your house. Tonight. Party. Your place." And that's what happens. They go to Matthew's house where they have a big feast, a dinner, a party, we would call it today. And the only people there are Jesus's disciples, and Matthew invites all of his friends, and who are all of his friends? The tax collectors and sinners. And so I can just imagine Jesus's disciples so uncomfortable, like, "Just go to the dip." So, who do you like in the chariot races? They didn't know what to talk about. And Jesus is totally relaxed. And then in the story, it says this in Matthew 9, it says, "The other religious leaders come up, and they stand outside Matthew's house. They won't go in, because if you went into a tax collector's house, you would get tax collector cooties." Really, that's what it amounted to. And you'd be unclean.

So they stand outside, and they, like, beckon to Jesus's disciples. They go, "Hey, James, James, James, come over here. Ask your master. We're completely confused, because he talks about the holiness of God, and now he's in there getting sin cooties. What is going on with him?" And Jesus hears about it, and Jesus says this, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and tell them, 'I have not come to call the righteous.'" But the sinners. And I think when Matthew wrote down this part, he must have just been weeping with joy, as he remembered the phrase he overheard that changed his life. Because he knew he was a sinner. Maybe he didn't think his occupation was a sin, but he knew what a sinner he was. And he'd been benching himself. But Jesus said to him, "This is why I came. This is why Christmas happened. This is why I'm here to draw you into a relationship with me."

I want to tell you a story, and I'll close with this. Something fascinating happened last Sunday night after the final Christmas concert. A woman walks up to me, and she says, "Hey, do you remember me?" I said, "I'm not sure." She says, "Well, do you remember seven years ago tonight at the Christmas concert?" She says, "Somebody was on stage singing a beautiful song about Jesus' love and why he came at Christmas." And she said a woman stood up who was drunk out of her mind, and she started screaming at the top of her lungs, "That's a bunch of B.S." only she didn't use the initials for B.S. I said, "I do remember that. That's hard to forget. I do remember that." And she said, and then she started cussing out God and cussing out Jesus, I said, "Yep, remember that." I remember that because Jim Jocelyn and I went over, it was in this section, and we said, "Ma'am, would you mind doing this in the hallway? Follow us." And eventually we got her out of the hallway, and she started taking swings at us, and to make a long story short, we had to call the sheriff to come and take her to detox. I didn't want to, but I just didn't know what else to do.

And as they started to take her away, her daughter came out, who was probably just a teenager at the time, 18, 19 years old, and her face was red, and she was just weeping, and she just kept saying, "I'm so embarrassed, I'm so embarrassed. Oh, my gosh, I'm so embarrassed, I'm so embarrassed, I'm so sorry, I'm so embarrassed." And I saw the two of them, and right before the sheriff left, now, I'm not usually this, I don't know what, godly or Christian or something, but at that moment the Holy Spirit just must have had a hold of my heart, because I said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you go, look at me, there's something I want to ask you to promise me." I said, "Promise me you'll come back. We want you back, because Jesus came at Christmas for you, and He loves you."

Well, this woman who came up to me Sunday night said, "That was me seven years ago." And she said, "Now, God's grace has changed my life." She said, "We've been coming to Twin Lakes Church for a couple of years, my daughter and I, and I want to show you a picture of her." I asked her if I could tell you her story, and that's her on the right side of the picture, that's Lori, and that's her daughter Tamara, and she said, "My daughter's singing in your Christmas choir this weekend." And she was just glowing. Honestly, I didn't recognize her because her face just looked completely different than when I saw her that night. And she said, "Yeah, what happened was," she said, "my beloved husband, to whom I'd just been devoted, he was a paraplegic, we were in Special Olympics, and then he died suddenly."

And she said, "I was so mad at God. God, you made him a paraplegic, and then now he's dying young, and now I'm a widow." I was just so furious that I reverted back to the bottle again, which by the way, there's always a story behind it, you know? There's always a story behind it if somebody is misbehaving. And God sees that story in his grace, but she said, "René, honestly, I don't remember much about that night, but what I remembered in the morning was that you said, 'Please come back.'" And she said, "It took years, but we did, and it's God's kindness that has led me to repentance." And she's sitting right over here, and she's crying too, just like me, "Lori, stand up." Jesus rocks.

But do you see why Matthew started with these stories? Because these are stories, these are all stories, and Jesus is genealogy like Lori's story, and like my story, and like your story. Matthew's saying, "You see, the whole point of Christmas is that God drew near to those who had been drawing away." You know, God drew near to those who had been drawing away, thinking of themselves as being so sinful and so bad that God could never use them or accept them, so they put themselves on the bench, and God comes up. God comes down into the manger, and then to the cross, and then to the grave, and then through His resurrection, saying, "No, I want to redeem your past, and I came to welcome you, to welcome you in, to welcome you home." The genealogy's point is, we are sinners in need of a Savior. The good news is, we've got one. Best Christmas gift ever.

Heavenly Father, thank You so much for Your amazing love for us. And God, my prayer is that if somebody just got dragged to church this morning, and they're thinking of themselves as being so bad that you never even want to look at them, I pray that they would pray some prayer like this, and maybe some as a recommitment. I believe You came to be exactly what Matthew presented You to be. The Savior, the Forgiver, the gift of righteousness to the world, the Lord of all. And I believe Your grace is more powerful than my secrets. I believe Your grace is more powerful than my worst sin. I believe Your grace rewrites every label, and I believe You've offered me a new label, a label that says, "Forgiven, and accepted, and loved, and beloved child." Now, God, teach me to live my life in accordance with who You say I am, because it's based on what You have done, not what I've done. Thank You for this great gift. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.