Warning
Preachy (And again unedited)
In Matthew 1, the genealogy of Jesus Christ, five women are
mentioned, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, & Mary. The men listed in this genealogy show the
proper lineage of Jesus but the inclusion of the women show just one thing; the
shame of Jesus Christ.
Tamar was rejected and she so wanted a child that she dressed
like a hooker in order to entice her
father-in-law to do the dirty with her and get her pregnant. (She bore a child with Judah whom we spoke of
last week -Genesis 34)
Rahab made a living as a hooker in Jericho and she
manipulated the Israelite into sparing of her life (Joshua 6). She went on to marry a Jewish man and had a son who is one of Jesus' great-great-grand-daddies.
Ruth was a Moabite woman who was Married to a Jewish man
then remarried to a kinsman redeemer.
Although she is shown to be a woman of faith and devotion, she too was
not a natural born Jew and she was one of Jesus' great-great-grand-moms (Ruth 1).
Bathsheba was such a hottie that King David saw her nakked one day
and decided he had to have sex with her.
Oops, she got knocked up (didn't know that could happen) and tried to
push it off as her husband's kid. The plan failed so King David simply had the
man killed and took Bathsheba as his wife.
It was one of their son's that sired the line of Jesus (2 Samuel 11
& 12).
And then there was Mary, the engaged girl who got knocked up but claimed that no wrong doing had taken place
because God just made her that way, so all was ok (Luke 1).
Matthew's Gospel was written to a Jewish audience to prove
Jesus was the Messiah, and pointing out these five women was not a great way to
state his case.
("Ahem, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, yes, the accused did stab her husband
to death, and yes she did stab him 27 times in the eyeball, and yes she did dedicate
on him when she was finished stabbing him, and yes she did yell "glad he's
dead" seven times. But I plan to
prove that she really did love him.")
Yeah, Matthew's case was starting out shaky by pointing out
the five women in Jesus' lineage.
But isn't this exactly the point? This Jesus who was executed upon the Roman
Cross as a common criminal took the sin and shame of humanity upon
himself. He took our shame and died the
death that was rightly our own, in our place, and then rose back from the dead on
the third day proving that He was truly innocent and victorious over sins and
death; wiping out our shame.
Yes, Matthew's case for Christ starts a little shaky but by
the end of his testimony we can clearly see Christ; the Messiah of God.
