The Perfect Family?
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How many of you went to see Home Alone in the theaters once it first came out?
Well, that was 34 years ago, if you can believe it. 1990.
That year, 1990, Home Alone was the second most profitable movie of the year. The next year it moved up to the first most profitable live-action comedy of the year, and it stayed there for 21 years, the year 2012.
I remember the madness of Home Alone. I was ten years old when it first came out, and I vividly remember going to see it in the theater with my mom.
Why was — in fact, why is — Home Alone so profitable?
On one level, we know why. It was funny.
Here’s another reason why it was so popular. Turns out Americans really identify with the whole concept of the movie.
The whole chaotic family resonated with people. Here was a family that was so disordered and dysfunctional. And poor Kevin seems to be the only one who realizes that. His behavior is awful, it’s true, but you might act like he did if you had the family he had.
In the first few minutes of the movie, Kevin is called a barrage of names by his sisters and brothers, some of them I cannot repeat.
We see Kevin’s older brother pretending to throw up the cheese pizza that had been ordered just for him.
Kevin reaches his limit — wouldn’t you? — and in anger runs into his older brother, causing a huge mess in the kitchen that shocks everyone and forces them to their feet to clean up and salvage what’s left. We hear Uncle Frank’s, “Look what you did, you little jerk”. And from the expressions on everyone’s faces, they agree.
Then there’s Kevin’s mom. But Kevin had something to say to her that finally got her attention. She says “I don’t want to see you again for the rest of the night” and he shoots baxk with “I don’t want to see you again for the rest of my life”. We see Kevin banished to the upstairs as his mom, exasperated, watches him go up to the attic and then closes the door behind him and goes back downstairs.
Kevin gets his wish. He’s Home Alone.
Family can be messy. Family can be hurtful. And there can be times when it’s all just too much for us to take, and we want to pull away from our family and strike out on our own.
Jesus had an imperfect family, too.
The sermon title this morning this “The Perfect Family”. May God bless the preaching of His word.
In Jesus’ family there were…rejects.
#1: Jesus’ family included “rejects” (vv. 1-6a)
#1: Jesus’ family included “rejects” (vv. 1-6a)
Who were the rejects in Jesus’ family?
Notice first that they are women: Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba.
Notice second that they are Gentile women.
And third: They were associated w/ real or perceived scandal
Every day, Jewish men thanked God for three things: “Thank you God that I am not a woman, a Gentile or a slave”. [Green, BST loc. cit]
Women weren’t just second class citizens. They were barely citizens at all. They couldn’t own property. Their testimony was invalid in court.
But here’s the most important part for our purposes: women were almost completely absent from genealogies like this one.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever made a serious attempt to read the Bible all the way through.
Now if you were doing pretty good with reading the Bible until you came to the genealogies, give me an amen!
Here’s the thing, though. I’m convinced that God will bless you if you read the genealogies. So let me show you how to read a genealogy.
First of all, think of this not as a genealogy but a family tree.
Second of all, notice with me verse 1: “The book of the genealogy” — or birth record or family history -- “of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew wants to show us that the man known as Jesus of Nazareth possesses the legal right to the throne of King David.
So, start with me in verse 2: “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.” (ESV).
That’s the pattern. A begat B, who begat C, who begat D, and so on.
Or mine says “So and so became the father of so and so, who became the father of so and so.” Do you see the pattern? That’s normal genealogy. Raise your hand if you see that.
Now, how do you tell a counterfeit $10 from a real one? You look for the differences and irregularities in the pattern.
Same here.
The pattern is: so and so begat so and so, who begat so and so. Now, if that’s the pattern, what you want to do when you read a genealogy is be a detective. Where are the irregularities? Where does Matthew deviate from his pattern of A begat B, B begat C, C begat D, and so on?
Look with me at verse 2 going in to verse 3: “Abraham the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” — that’s the pattern, and there’s no mention of women or wives or mothers of these men — now notice what’s different with Judah: “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah” — and here it is: “by Tamar”.
Jesus is saying, Pay attention to this. Don’t miss it. The line of succession from Abraham down to me is full of imperfect people, even downright wicked people.
By setting up the pattern, and then deviating from the pattern, Matthew points out to us something he is really excited about and he wants us to be excited too. Tamar, a woman who was guilty of seducing her father-in-law. Is that messed up, or what?
Jesus is not too afraid to have such people in His family line.
If we keep going, we’ll see that Matthew does this with all three of the remaining women. Verse 4 into 5, if you’re looking there with me, Bibles out and Bible apps open: “And Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon and Salmon the father of Boaz…by Rahab”
Who was Rahab? She wasn’t much better than Tamar. This is probably the Rahab was a prostitute in the city of Jericho when Joshua was leading the Israelites into the promised land.
A woman, a Gentile, and guilty of scandalous behavior.
Jesus is not too ashamed to have such people in His family line.
Going on, verse 5 into 6: “Salmon the father of Boaz, and Boaz the father of Obed…by Ruth”.
Ruth was a woman of the highest virtue.
But Ruth was a Gentile — previously excluded from the family of God. Ruth had great faith, and God welcomed her into His family.
Ruth wasn’t a scandalous woman. We know that. But Ruth got close to scandal when she spent the night with Boaz down on the the threshing floor in Bethlehem.
The book of Ruth is clear that Ruth and Boaz had the very utmost integrity. Nothing in appropriate happened between them that night. But there could have been the appearance of scandalous behavior.
Ruth was a woman, a Gentile woman, and in the eyes of some she was associated with scandal.
Jesus is not uncomfortable with having such people in His family line.
There is one more woman. Looking with me at the tail end of verse 5 into verse 6: “Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife or Uriah”.
This is the woman otherwise known as Bathsheba. David the king, mentioned just before in verse 6. Bathsheba is associated with king David’s greatest moral failure.
David summons Bathsheba to his palacex. There is debate over whether or not she would have the right to refuse. She becomes pregnant. And to hide her pregnancy from her husband, David first tries to pass it of as Uriah’s child but when that fails David wields his God-given authority in order have Uriah killed.
Even though Bahthseba was morally innocent in all of this, you know how, unfortunately, something like that stains a person for life. Plus, Uriah was a Gentile, and not part of the people of God. That defined Bathsheba too.
Jesus is not regretful of having such rejects in His family line.
Does this mean Jesus condones all of this behavior? I think we know the answer to that. But the presence of these names in Jesus’ family line is a vivid reminder of Eph 2:8 — “by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast”.
#2: Jesus’ family included “degenerates” (vv. 6b-11)
#2: Jesus’ family included “degenerates” (vv. 6b-11)
I recently watched the movie Encanto with my kids. That song, “We don’t talk about Bruno” — Bruno is the family screw-up. “We don’t talk bout him”. Every real family has those.
Jesus was born into a real family. He had parents and grandparents. They had family reunions and gatherings, family traditions and secrets.
But like any family, there were things in Jesus’ family that they didn’t really like bringing up at Thanksgiving.
I wonder if these kings we’re about to look at were on the family blacklist at Jesus’ family reunions.
The men in this section, verses 6-11, are mainly kings. Matthew has traced Jesus’ line from Abraham through Judah through Boaz down to king David. Now he traces Matthew’s family line from David hundreds of years into the future until the time of what is called the exile, or deportation.
Now I wondered: is degenerate too strong a word to describe these men? Here’s the definition for degenerate: a degenerate is someone who is debased and corrupt.
Are these men degenerate? Why don’t you decide with me?
What about Solomon? He’s first on the list of kings after David that are in Jesus’ family line. Solomon was for the most part a righteous king. The nation of Israel flourished under his leadership. Not him.
What about Rehoboam? The kingdom of Israel split into two while he was king. He wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great either.
Let’s just take two of these kings who are in Jesus’ line: Manasseh and Ammon.
Let’s start with Manasseh. Manasseh was a bloodthirsty king. He angered God — both of them angered God by their atrocities and idolatry.
Manasseh’s atrocities included child sacrifice. One of the pagan gods of Canaan — Molech — it was believed that he demanded the death and sacrifice of children. In his instructions to Israel the Lord said “I better never see that happen”.
It did happen under Manasseh’s reign. The practice was literally called “passing through the fire”, so you can get an idea of how the sacrifice was carried out. Yahweh is a merciful God but also a wrathful God and His wrath burned hot against those who sacrificed children. He punished Manasseh and Judah for this horrible crime.
What about his idolatry? He was into witchcraft, sorcery, consulted mediums and spiritist. Most horribly, Manasseh — entrusted as king with being a steward of the worship of Yahweh the true God — built shrines to pagan gods all over the land. He even brought the idols he made into the temple of the Lord that this pagan god might be worshiped there.
Here’s the evaluation of the book of 2 Chronicles on Manasseh: 2 Chronicles 33:9: “Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel” (ESV).
Here’s the thing, though. Manasseh repented at the end of his life and the Lord forgave him.
Now the other guy — Ammon, or “Amos” which is a slightly different spelling — Manasseh’s successor — he did pretty much just as Manasseh did. And not only that — but he never repented, at least as far as we know.
So both of them — and several of othe others — they angered God by their atrocities and idolatry.
They led Israel to do the same.
There were righteous kings in this dark period of Israel’s history. They’re in Matthew’s genealogy too. Hezekiah is mentioned, Josiah is mentioned — both of these kings worked hard to stop idolatry and lead the people to live lives that honored the Lord.
But unfortunately they are overshadowed by the degenerate kings.
Would you guys say these men were degenerates?
And yet, Jesus is not regretful of having such rejects in His family line.
#3: Jesus’ family included “nobodies” (vv. 12-17)
#3: Jesus’ family included “nobodies” (vv. 12-17)
Maybe you feel like the outcast in your family
I had a really bad habit when I was a teenager. When I would be talking about someone and reference their name — say, Jim — they would say, “Who’s Jim?”
You know what I would say? My parents hated this and I would have too. I said, “You don’t know him”.
“You don’t know him”…what did I mean by that?
I meant that I didn’t think it was important for my parents to know anymore about the person than their name. If they weren’t a close friend of mine, I viewed it is unimportant to them.
This is our attitude toward the genealogy. We don’t know them, and therefore it seems not to matter.
Well, in the last section of this genealogy, they matter precisely because we don’t know them. They are important because we know absolutely nothing about them other than that their names are on this page.
We know everyone is important. We know in reality there isn’t any such thing as a “nobody” because every human being has value and dignity and worth. Every “nobody” really is a “somebody” if we would take the time to get to know them.
The standouts here in vv. 12-16, from the exile to Babylon all the way down to the virgin birth of Jesus to the young maiden girl named Mary. These standouts are standouts because they aren’t — there is no name recognition.
Now some of them were famous or infamous. King Jechoniah and Shealties and Zerubbabel in verse 12 — they are known from the OT.
But Abiud? Who is he?
Eliakim? Who is he? What did he do?
Azor? Zadok? Who are these men?
Achim, Eliud, Eleazer, Matthan, Jacob? Who are these guys?
If you look up their names in a Bible dictionary, here’s what you see: “included in Matthew’s genealogy”. They aren’t known in the OT or history for anything other than the role the play right here.
No one knows who they are.
No one knows what they did.
They are known for one thing. They are links in a chain.
What’s the chain?
Verse 16: “And Jacob the father of Joseph” — and notice how Matthew agin deviates from his pattern to draw attention to the goal of all of these names — Joseph’s son Jesus comes along not from the dad but from the mom alone. “Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” (Matt 1:16 ESV).
These men may have been nobodies, but they are links in a chain leading toward a man named Joseph who, a man who would have been just as much of a nobody as the rest of them had God not chosen him for a special role.
Every reject, every degenerate, every nobody — each name in this list are essential links in a chain.
You see? This is beautiful right here.
Jesus Christ: the eternal Son of God, born of a virgin as to his divine nature.
Jesus Christ: the perfect Son of Man, the legal son of Joseph and therefore the legal heir to the throne of David.
Jesus Christ: the union of perfect man and perfect God.
That is why Jesus is not ashamed to have people like this in his imperfect family. Because He is the perfect Savior, and He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Apart from Christ, we are lost, dead spiritually, under God’s wrath. But in Christ, by doing something as simple as choosing to trust Him for their salvation,
And in Him, nobodies, degenerates, and rejects find salvation, forgiveness, right alongside the “good” people, the “church going” people, the philanthropist — all need salvation and all find it in Him.
And finding Him, rejects become sons and daughters of God. Degenerates become holy and set apart for God. Nobodies find their purpose and the love they’ve never found in any human community.
Call for response
Call for response
Rounded symmetry (France) of three pairs of double sevens separated by two turning points and framed by references to Jesus as the Christ shows that the period of preparation is now complete
Your family need not be defined by what your parents did, what you’ve done, what your kids or grandkids have done.
God’s promised reign has come near in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who offers salvation and redemption from sin with a view to eternal life by faith alone.
The people God chose to be in His Son’s human family reflect His heart of grace and offer hope to every broken person, every broken family (MacArthur p4)
Matthew goes out of his way (selection) to show that membership in God’s family is all about God’s grace and has nothing whatsoever to do with our own goodness or morality (BKC)
