The gospels cover the same events, from different perspectives.
In your Bible there are four books written by four authors. The books are titledMatthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each book covers the same basic events, but fromdifferent perspectives. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the most similar. Reading Matthew, Mark and Lukeis like watching the big three networks ABC, NBC, and CBS. There is a slightly different editorial agenda, but they essentially cover the same stories. Sure, one station might go more in-depth, or offer details left out by the other station, but overall they toe the same line.
Now John is altogether different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John offers an up close and intimate portrait of Jesus. He’s like watching Oprah or Larry King. More than the other three, John captures the heart, tears, passion, inner relationships, and behind the scenes conversations Jesus had with people.
In January, we're going to dig into Mark. The gospel of Mark was written for a non-religious audience. Mark’s version of events is like the "Reader's Digest" or headline news. It’s shorter, it’s distilled, simpler to take in and understand. It's clear and action-packed. When I meet someone who has never read about Jesus, I encourage them to start with the book of Mark. You can read it in an hour.
Remarkably, Mark doesn’t tell the Christmas story. He doesn’t mention Mary, Joseph, the three kings, the shepherds, the manger, the baby Jesus, or Bethlehem. We’ll say more about why in January. But for now, we're going to spend a few weeks reflecting on the Christmas story from Matthew’s perspective. Matthew was a tax collector and a disciple of Jesus.
Matthew wrote primarilyforthe Jewish audience.
Matthew was very concernedaboutestablishingthe identity of Jesus— and for good reasons. Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience that was highly religious and morally righteous. His readers included Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, teachers of the law, priests, synagogue leaders, Jewish elders, and home-schooled Jewish families. These werepeople who took pride in their Jewish heritage, and who put their ancestors on a pedestal. Matthew’s readers proudly celebrated relativeslike of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel.
If you were going to introduce Jesus to such a proud, religious, and morally superior audience,how would you do it? You would probably do it like Luke does in Luke 3. You would trace Jesus’ lineage through Joseph, Jesus' father by law. You would mention Adam, Enoch (who was taken up to heaven by God), Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David. You would butter up the resume. You'd be dropping names.
But no, Matthew doesn’t do this. Seriously, from a secularor religious point of view, Matthew really blows it. He had an opportunity to demonstrate that Jesus was a descendent of quality stock, a descendent of generations of religious, upright, heroic, morally superior people. But instead, Matthew takes a dark detour through Israel’s history, mentioning some of the most scandalous names and alluding to some of the most sordid storylines in all of the Old Testament. And he presents Jesus’ scandalous lineage, through Mary, as a first order of business in Matthew 1! Matthew 1:1 (NIV) begins, "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham…"
Mary came from a line of scandalous women.
The Jewish children have gathered at the feet of Matthew to hear holy Christmas songs about Jesus’ glorious birth. But instead, Matthew focuses on Jesus’ biological lineage. Jesus was the son, the biological, blood-relative of Mary. And who was Mary? Mary was the teenage girl who was pledged to be married to Joseph, but who got pregnant out of wedlock. She was the teenage girl who claimed that her child Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was related to the likes of Tamar, Rahab, and not just King David, but King David’s mistress, Uriah’s wife!
What kind of Christmas story is Matthew trying tell here? Talk about covering the children’s ears and sending them out of the synagogue! Matthew, do you really want us telling our children that Jesus was related to women of scandalous reputation? The only woman of noble character to whom Jesus was related was Ruth— and even she was a foreigner! Jesus was related to Tamar, Rahab, and that woman King David committed adultery with. Don’t even say her name!!
We do the same thing every Christmas! We wrap Jesus up in spotless white cloth, we lay the baby Jesus down in the manger for his afternoon nap, and the cameras close in on the adoring eyes of his mother Mary and father Joseph. The angelic choir sings, the wise men present their gifts, and the shepherds bow down. But Matthew talks about a different kind of cloth the baby Jesus was wrapped in. The cloth you never hear about at Christmas because we preachers and you parents have made the Christmas story too sterile!
The story of Tamar who used a cloth to cover her head.
For example, what about the cloth Tamar used to cover her head. Tamar put a red cloth over her head and deceived Judah. Hey, I didn’t bring Tamar up! Matthew did. I'd justas soonGenesis 38 not be in the Bible too—but there it is. Matthew 1:3 (NIV) says,"Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar..."
Remember? Jacob had twelve sons. Jacob’s beloved son Joseph was sold into slavery. But Joseph was a righteous man who mastered temptation, and resisted the adulterous gestures of Potiphar’s wife, and fled sexual immorality even though it landed him in prison. And yet God was with Joseph in his imprisonment, and used Joseph to save his family and all Egypt from famine.
So who was Judah? Judah was Joseph’s older brother— you know, the one in Genesis 37:27 who proposed that his brothers spare Joseph’s life and sell him into slavery to the Ishmaelites. You know, the brother who in Genesis 38:2 marries a Caananite woman, who didn’t know or worship the God of Israel.
Judah gave birth to three sons— Er, Onan, and Shelah. And being a great father, Judah went out and found a wife for his firstborn son. Her name? Tamar. Er was wicked, and in Genesis 38:7 God puts Er to death. The wages of wickedness is death.
According to the law, it became the responsibility of Er’s brother Onan to then marry Tamar. Bearing children in those days was as much for honor as it was survival. With all the war and disease, it was difficult to be prosperous and increase without children. Onan and Tamar were to conceive and give birth, and continue the family line. Besides that, God had promised to increase Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah’s descendents to be as numerous as the stars in heaven.
But Onan, like most men these days, wanted sexual gratification without any responsibility. So whenever he was about to conceive, he would withdraw from Tamar, and spill his seed on the ground (Genesis 38:9), preventing her from having children. Don’t blame me for bringing it up! Blame Matthew. Merry Christmas! Because of his wickedness, God put Onan to death as well. For the second time, Tamar became widowed.
So Judah promised his third-born son Shelah to Tamar. But at this point Judah is beginning to think Tamar is cursed, and bad luck (Genesis 38:11). So Judah never fulfills his promise to Tamar— and she remains widowed and childless.
Children cover your ears. Parents, cover your children’s ears. Guess what Tamar does next? One evening, she takes a piece of cloth (a veil) and covers her head in orderto disguise herself as a prostitute (Genesis 38:14). And who does she seduce and become pregnant by? Her philandering father-in-law, Judah.
Tamar conceives and becomes pregnant with twins. And when it is discovered that Tamar has no husband, they bring her to Judah, her father-in-law. And in his outrage, Judah demands not that Tamar be stoned to death as was specified in the law,but that she be burned to death at the stake! But at the last minute, Tamar proves that Judah is both a hypocrite and the father of her children.
Joseph fled sexual immorality, but Judah embraced it. Judah was a sex offender, an incestuous perverted man. He was the kind of man that society hates and scorns, along with women like Tamar. And oh yeah, Jesus was a descendent of Judah and Tamar. Why in the world would Matthew associate Jesus with such a scandal? We’d all be better off if the scribes would have deleted Genesis 38. It'sX rated, it's inappropriate, and it’s un-Christmas-like. Tamar covered her face with a cloth, a veil, and Judah sinned. It will get better, right?
The story of Rahab and her red cord.
Matthew 1:5 (NIV) says, "Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab…"Rahab? Matthew, are you serious? Did you have to mention her too? Rahab wasn’t of Jewish lineage either. Remember the story of Jericho? How God commanded Israel to take the city of Jericho? Well, before the walls came tumbling down Joshua sent spies into the city of Jericho. But while in Jericho, the Israelite spies are discovered. And where do the spies take refuge?
Children cover your ears. Parents, cover your children’s ears. The spies take cover in the house of a prostitute named Rahab. She hides them out on her roof, and covers them with barley stalks that have been harvested. And learning that Jericho was about to destroyed, she tells of her fear of Yahweh, the great God of Israel, and pleads with them for her life. As a gesture of mercy and thanks, the spies instruct her to hang a scarlet cord out from her window,a cord woven of thread, fabric, and of cloth. And they promised her that the Israelites would spare her and her family.
Joshua 6:17 (NIV) says, "The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent."
Hebrews 11:31 (NIV) says this of Rahab. "By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient."
James 2:25 (NIV) tells us, "In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?"
Then there was Ruth, from Bethlehem.
Continuing right along inMatthew 1:5 (NIV) which says, "Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth..."
Ruth is cool. The Jewish people esteemed Ruth! No need to cover your ears! Ruth has an entire book of the Bible written about her life. She was widowed and childless, and had been abandoned by her family. But she leaves her country and faith in orderto accompany her mother-in-law Naomi to Bethlehem. Her radical actions continued as she secured food for herself and Naomi and summoned the relative Boaz to be their redeemer. Boaz married her. She bore a son who became the grandfather of David. The women of Bethlehem exalted Ruth as the loving daughter-in-law who meant more to Naomi than seven sons (Ruth 4:15).
Did you notice where Ruth and Naomi lived? That’s right, Bethlehem— the same city where Jesus was born under scandalous circumstances. Could anything good possibly come from a forgettable village like Bethlehem?
Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, whose cloth was immodesty.
But back to our text. Matthew 1:6 (NIV) says, "Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife…"
Matthew didn't even have the comfort to speak her name, though you have head her name a hundred times! Bathsheba. The cloth in Bathsheba’s life is that she didn’t wear any. Her immodesty caught the roaming eye of King David, and led King David into adultery and murder.
Matthew, lighten up. We came this Sunday to hear about the baby Jesus wrapped in cloth, laying in a manger. We came to enjoy a nice and sterilized Christmas story,not hear about Tamar covering her head, and Rahab escaping God’s judgment by hanging a cord out her window, or Bathsheba disrobing and seducing a king into adultery and murder. And why even mention Ruth, from Bethlehem?
Could the Messiah have been born to such a dysfunctional family?
Matthew, you are not building a very good defense for Mary, who was found with child, out of wedlock. She should be stoned for her adultery. Joseph should do away with her, not quietly, but loudly! Mary from Bethlehem is scandalous and immoral. God wouldn’t want to touch her story with a ten foot pole. Not in a million years could God allow the Christ to be born of such a wicked, depraved, and dysfunctional family lineage. Or would he?
Matthew is not, the God of the universe is not, and Jesus is notrunning from the likes of Tamar, Rahab, or even Bathsheba. He is not running from the scandal in Bethlehem.What Matthew is telling us in Matthew 1 is that God sent his one and only Son, born of a virgin, born as a blood descendent of wounded women, to save us from God’s wrath.
Even if Mary was an adulterer,and she was not, God could just as easily save her and redeem her just as he had saved and redeemed Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, and any other woman who's been found in sin.
Go read the stories in your Bible! God has the power to forgive X-rated sins at Christmas. This is why we celebrate the birth of Christ.Christmas is a time to contemplate the heavenly Father's perfect love for the generations of imperfect people through whom Jesus traces his legal and biological lineage.
By every appearance, Mary was a disgrace. Her life would never be the same again. But as she contemplated her circumstances, Mary could only marvel at the goodness of God's perfect love and plan to save this dysfunctional human family we are all a part of!
This Christmas, God offers pardon for sin and healing for those who have been wounded, even exploited, by misguided men. This is the Christmas story intersecting with real life in a meaningful way. This Christmas, God's perfect love transcends gender, ethnic background, social status, any sin and any disgrace, no matter how great. In his sovereignty, God works out his plan. The birth of Christ is evidence that no scandal can disrupt the Father’s perfect plan— not even the scandal of your sinful past.
Praise God! We’re just getting started here, friends!