Good morning. My name is Brian Sorgenfrei and I grew up in this church, and when David Felker emailed me asking if I would come, the thought in my head is always what comes in when I hear “First Pres Jackson” – “I will do anything. I will do anything this church asks because I’m so thankful.” Even as I was coming down Riverside this morning, testing whether the shocks on my van worked, and they still do – glad to know things are still the same! Yeah, just so many faces and names started popping up as I drove through that neighborhood of literal, like, second and third moms and grandmothers who have just loved me. And it’s just a privilege to be with you. So I just get to say, “thank you.” Thank you for loving me and being a faithful church that proclaims the Gospel every Sunday.
So before I read, I want to get you to think about something by way of introduction. Even as I was about to walk up, right, I was thinking, “What am I going to say?” because we know introductions and first impressions are funny things because you kind of want to put your best foot forward if you’re meeting somebody for the first time, and you want to hide anything that’s embarrassing. Right? We’re about five or six weeks away from students returning up in Oxford and that means what’s about to happen is something called “rush” in the sorority world or fraternity world, or “recruitment,” that many students participate in. And it’s so interesting to watch because as incoming freshmen enter this thing called “rush,” they start building their resume, and the resume is like picking out outfits that I’m going to wear, presenting certain pictures, making sure other ones are erased from a social media account; you know, getting the right people to write your recommendation, because it just feels like you’re being watched. “If I could just present this right resume, maybe I’ll get in. Maybe I’ll be accepted.”
And the whole Bible, of course, is about Jesus, but the whole Old Testament has been awaiting this person to show up, this Messiah. And how do you get introduced? What’s the first impression you get in the New Testament of Jesus? It’s a genealogy. That’s how we’re introduced to Him. It’s this long list of names – son of so-and-so, of so-and-so. And look, it still happens today a little bit in the South where family is a big deal. You know if you meet somebody, you start saying, “Who are you? Where are you from?” At least my joke is always eventually that person is connected to Yazoo or Kosciusko somehow. You’ve just got to ask enough questions! And you’ll figure that out! But in those days, family was everything, and your genealogy was essentially your resume, so much so that I have even heard that if there was someone real embarrassing in your genealogy you just erased them; you just didn’t talk about them. And so think about this. If Jesus is who He claims to be, and He is – God Himself in the flesh – there is only one person in all of history who got to pick their genealogy. Jesus absolutely got to pick His family lineage. And this is His resume. This is how He presents to the world, “These are My people. These are the kind of people I identify with. These are the kind of people that I embrace.” And it might not be the people you would think. It’s not this hallmark of faithful people. There are some faithful people in there, but it’s a group of messy people, and the genealogy is suggesting – absolutely. That’s who Jesus is proud to call His own. That’s who Jesus loves to be identified with.
So let me pray for us and then we’ll read this first part of the genealogy. Let’s pray.
Father, if we know ourselves this morning we know that we need Your help. We need Your Spirit. We come in here with sadness. Some of us come in here with fear. Some of us come in here feeling like we don’t belong. Others with great joy. But we can bring all those things to You because You are a God of grace. And I pray that by Your Spirit, You would help us to see that Jesus is real, He is alive, and He is a wonderful Savior. In Your Son’s name I pray, amen.
Alright, here is Matthew 1:
“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 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, and 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 of Uriah.”
I’m going to skip down to verse 16:
“…and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
There really is only one point this morning. I know that kind of breaks tradition around here – one point! And it’s just simply – Who are the people that Jesus identifies with? Who does Jesus loves to call “Mine”? We’re just going to read some of these names. And here’s what’s interesting – Jesus’ genealogy, He got to write it, it has the names of women, which was very – that wasn’t normal in a very patriarchal society, but Jesus says, “I am going to put these women in here because I identify with them.” We’re going to walk through those names.
Tamar
First, you have this woman named Tamar in verse 3. You can read about Tamar in Genesis 38. It is a horrifying story. It’s a sad story. It’s stomach turning. And if you grew up about the Bible, there’s a chance that this passage got skipped. Not at First Pres, I love that – they preach through every Scripture. But Tamar is a woman who, her whole life, has been manipulated, used and abused. She is twice married, twice left a widow. Because her husbands were so evil, whatever that means, they were struck down by the Lord. So she was in horrible marriages. And her father-in-law, who at that time by law was supposed to protect and provide for her, actually lies to her, sends her away, and leaves her to fend for herself. That’s Tamar. Tamar’s life is such a trainwreck and it’s not her fault. It’s other people’s doing. She’s hurt; she’s oppressed by people who have power that should have taken care of her. Things get so bad in Genesis 38 that in a last ditch effort of preservation, she dresses up like a prostitute, seduces her father-in-law, becomes pregnant, and she has twins. And it’s one of those twins, whose name is Perez, that ends up being in the genealogy of Jesus.
Why? Why would Jesus make sure that Tamar is mentioned? A woman who is personally and systematically sinned against and abused to the point of absolute desperation. I think to show you the kind of people that Jesus came from; the kind of people that Jesus came to identify with and proudly rescue. And I know in my circles we don’t always talk about this enough, but living in a broken and dark world, it means that many of you this morning, you have been horribly sinned against. People who should have taken care of you, people who should have stood up for you, instead hurt you, abandoned you, manipulated you or somebody close to you, and the pain is awful. It’s awful.
A friend of mine who is a former campus minister back when he did RUF was in a small group Bible study with some young women in a sorority house. And they started talking about some of this and he just asked them, he said – probably a group of, I’d say, twenty young women – he said, “How many of y’all by now have been treated inappropriately sexually?” And 18 out of 20 of the young women raised their hand. That might not shock some of you; that’s the reality of our world. And there’s the spectrum of being sinned against, of course, but this needs to be talked about because what happens is, if you’ve been sinned against, if you’ve been used, there is this double pain. Because what happens is, you feel dirty, you feel rejected, you are hurt, and it wasn’t your fault; it was something done to you, but not by you, and you still feel guilty, and there are deep scars.
And Jesus puts Tamar in His genealogy to say that there are people who have been bruised and broken by the fall and by other people’s wickedness and they feel shame and it’s not their fault, and Jesus says, “I came for you and I’m proud to be identified with you.” Because being sinned against means there is this longing within you – and there should be – there is this longing within you for justice and to not feel dirty, to not be defined by what somebody did to you, which means that you need justice and you need justification. You need justice and rescue provided by Jesus, here we go, who became a victim. You see, God becomes a man in Jesus and He will be sinned against – whether it be slander, whether it be falsely accused, whether it’s being spit upon towards the end of His earthly life – He experiences what ends up being the greatest injustice the world has ever seen as He hangs on a cross naked, a symbol of shame, everyone laughing at Him, and He is the only purely innocent man to ever live. And He cries out, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”
And don’t you see the healing that comes? It might take a long time, but on the one hand, when you cry out to Him as a victim, He is not removed. He knows the pain of mistreatment. He knows the pain of injustice from people who should have cared for Him, and when He hears you, He will walk with you through it. He knows what it’s like to be you and He knows just how evil, evil really is so that He promises everybody will get exactly what they deserve. Other people might not have seen what was done to you; Jesus sees it, and He is either going to pay for it Himself on the cross, or He will handle the justice Himself, but it will not be unseen forever. Vengeance is His. And, the good news is that Jesus has a greater power than the evil that has been done to you, and those scars, that dirtiness that feels like it’s forever, there is a cosmic declaration that Jesus brings that says, “You matter,” in His eyes. And that can speak louder than what’s been done to you and actually transform you. It’s Jesus who came for those who have been sinned against.
This is a somewhat famous story because it’s in some of the literature of what’s now known as Surge, but it talks about a seven-year-old girl when she had a dad and the dad had this favorite shirt. And she wanted to do something for her dad, so per usual, that shirt was supposed to be washed, but she decided to do it herself instead of her mom. And so she washed it, and it was time to dry it, but she wasn’t tall enough to hang it on the clothesline outside, so the only thing she could reach was a rusty wheelbarrow, so she hung it over it. And so when her dad came home, she was so excited, she said, “Dad, I washed your favorite shirt,” took him out to the yard, he saw it on the wheelbarrow, and when he peeled it off it ripped a hole in it and there was a big rust stain across it. And he got so angry. He said, “How could you do this?” and berated her. And probably twenty years later after going through counseling and being converted, here is what she said. She said, “You know, I finally got it. I finally got that Jesus is so unlike my dad. What He would have done is, He would have come home, He would have seen the shirt, He would have pulled it off the wheelbarrow, it would have had a hole in it, and He would have worn it to work the next day. And He would have said, ‘Look what My daughter did for me. Isn’t this awesome?’” And Jesus healed those scars. He can do that. Jesus came to identify with and bring healing and rescue to people who have been sinned against like Tamar.
Rahab
The next female name we have is Rahab, verse 5. You can read about Rahab in Joshua 2. The short summary is this. She lived in the land of Canaan. Canaan was so twisted they were sacrificing children to gods. There were so many things going on that God was bringing judgment. And in that land, there was a town called Jericho in whom there lived a prostitute named Rahab. So she is a prostitute in a dark city in a wicked land. Look, my guess is that Rahab lived a more publically immoral life than anybody in this room this morning. Why do I think that? Because most people who have this kind of public, immoral life don’t walk into the church. Now if you are here, there is no better place you should be and I’m glad you’re here, but most people with this kind of story stay away because they think they are unwanted. But the question becomes, “Why would Jesus put someone who has a trainwreck of regrets from their immoral past into His genealogy?” Because Jesus says, “Those are My people.” Jesus came for, to be identified with, and to rescue people who look at their past and think, “Man, I’ve got a lot of regrets. That’s not good.”
There’s a guy, years ago in the late 70s and 80s called Gordon MacDonald. He was a published author, Christian, president of InterVarsity – kind of a big name. And his secret affair that he had had for years came out. And so that was obviously big headlines and he kind of went through a time where he was away and unknown. And then when President Bill Clinton was elected and formed a spiritual advisory team, he asked Gordon MacDonald to be on that team. Now what’s interesting is that whenever Gordon MacDonald’s name came up on the news or in print, it would say, “Gordon MacDonald, the adulterous pastor.” That’s a past that will live with you. That’s a past that could haunt you. I’m going to come back to that. But all of us, to some degree, have things in our past that haunt us, things that bring this kind of sense of shame and guilt that we think, “Man, if I could go back and do that over I wouldn’t do that.” Some of us have lost relationships because of things that have happened in our past and it’s just a place of regret. You might have things this morning that you look back at last week and you think, “Yeah, that’s not good. I promise never to do that again.”
My question is, “What do you do with the realization that there’s things in your past that you have deep regret for? Where do you turn?” Because what you’re saying is, “Something needs to be done about my guilt.” And Jesus puts Rahab in His genealogy to say, “I came for people with a truckload of guilt in their past. I came to be identified with them, to rescue them.” What we need – and I know this is going to sound strange, but Matthew 1 talks about this – we need someone who has been conceived by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary. Because you are a Jewish person reading this for the first time and you hear the Holy Spirit hovering over something, you would have thought Genesis 1, where the Holy Spirit hovers over creation and that first creation comes into existence by the Word of God’s power. And so the Spirit is the one who brings about creation. And now, the Spirit is over the womb of Mary, which means that Jesus is the new humanity, the new beginning. And He, of course, will end up on a cross crying out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Why? Because He is taking the punishment that we deserve for all of our past mistakes and He comes out resurrected three days later declaring new life, new beginnings; sinful pasts gone, new creation here.
So that Gordon MacDonald, right, that adulterous pastor, years later he was asked, “How does it feel to be known when you walk into places and sometimes it’s in print – ‘Gordon MacDonald, the adulterous pastor’?” You know what he said? He said, “Honestly, at this point it’s kind of great.” He said, “I think everybody should have a nametag with all their worst sins that they wear on their sleeve. And when they walk into church and they walk into worship, they should take it off and stick it on Jesus because it will remind them every day of the power of what Jesus has done.” I don’t want to do that, but it does sound awesome because that’s the reality. Jesus came to identify with and bring healing and rescue to people who have been sinned against like Tamar and to people who have a ton of regret in their past like Rahab.
Ruth
Well then you have Ruth, right, verse 5. Ruth is awesome; she is faithful, she really is. But there is a whole book of the Bible devoted to her. You can read about it. You can read it this afternoon – four chapters. And here’s what I want you to know about Ruth. She was a Moabite, which in Biblical terms means she was a Gentile, which in our terms means she was “one of those people.” She was an outsider. She didn’t fit in. She was on the margins. She would have felt unwanted in the Jewish world. She wouldn’t have fit in their world. And Jesus wants Ruth in His genealogy to show what kind of Savior He is that He came for outsiders. He came for people who don’t fit in because really if you read the Gospels, if you watch Jesus, it’s really interesting, the insiders are always out, and the outsiders are always in with Jesus. Which means that He came to receive and rescue those who feel unwanted, who feel rejected. He’s actually proud to be associated with outsiders, sometimes in ways that are really disturbing.
The late, great actor, Robin Williams, one time he said he used to think that the worst thing in the world was being alone. But he said that actually wasn’t it. He said, “I learned later on the worst thing in the world was being surrounded by people that make you feel alone.” Have you ever felt that? You’re around a bunch of people, and actually feel alone. I feel like nobody knows me. I feel like I don’t belong. And again, I probably don’t have to press into the pain of loneliness, the fears of being unwanted that much. It’s everywhere. It’s hard. It’s thick. It’s so painful that sometimes we will do anything to not feel on the outside. I know we talk to our college students and our high school students about changing who you are to fit in, how that’s bad, but it still goes on with us. We so badly want to fit in, and what we are looking for is that pronouncement of acceptance; a pronouncement of “Welcome.” A smile that says, “You are mine.”
You are looking for Jesus, the God of space and time and history who became a person in Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate – Jesus is the ultimate insider. He is God’s eternal Son. But what happens? He is born to an unwed mother, He’s born poor, He is mocked about His hometown, He is rejected by the religious leaders and the social elites, and He ultimately ends up on a cross alone, taking our sin so that even God the Father turns His face away. The ultimate insider became the cosmic outsider. Why? So that you and I can be brought in. So that you and I can be accepted and smiled upon by the triune God.
The MBA great, Bill Russell, for the Celtics, played in the 50s and 60s. So he was playing basketball, you’ve got to remember, as a black man in a completely segregated place. So he is being celebrated on the court for his achievements but if you talk to him he will tell you he was not treated kindly off the court; mistreated, kind of told he didn’t belong. And later on in his life when he was interviewed about, “What was it like to be this great MBA player amidst so much kind of civil unrest and segregation?” and he said this. He said, “Well, my mother and father loved me dearly,” so he said, “When I went out and met other people, if someone saw me and what I looked like and who I was and they didn’t like me, I just realized that was their problem, not mine.” He said, “Because of these two marvelous people, my mom and dad loved me so much, then I must be okay.”
Did you hear it? There was somebody so dear to him that said that, “You matter,” that accepted him, it discounted every other voice. That kind of acceptance changes you. That kind of love that will embrace you, changes you from the inside. And so Jesus came to identify with, to heal, to rescue those who have been sinned against like Tamar, those who have a past of regrets like Rahab that they can’t make up for, and those who are outsiders, like Ruth.
Bathsheba
And lastly, you have Bathsheba. This is verse 6. You can read about Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11:1-5. What’s interesting is her name isn’t actually used in the genealogy and of course that’s on purpose because it says, “David was the father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah.” Matthew wants you to know that David fathered a son by another man’s wife. Matthew is emphasizing this point. He wants you to know Uriah was one of David’s best friends and David sees Bathsheba, he lusts over her, he uses his power to get her, she gets pregnant, and David, in panic mode, trying to preserve his reputation, kills Uriah to try to cover it up – and this is King David. King David wrote like half the psalms! King David, if you want to use our terms today, King David was a Christian, and probably a better Christian than me. I don’t know about you. I haven’t written any books of the Bible yet! And David had lots of kids, but Jesus chose this one, the place of David’s greatest failure, to say, “Yeah, that’s going to be the line that I come from. Those of My people.”
And see, this is beautiful about Jesus. He is saying, “I am a Hero who came to rescue people who still struggle with sin even after they are converted, even after they have walked with Jesus for a long time, after they are born again.” That’s why His name is Jesus. The angel commands them to name Him “Jesus” because “He will save people from their sins.” Yes, past, present and future sins that we haven’t even committed – all of them, gone. And this is what’s good news. See, Jesus isn’t someone who just simply died for your immoral past and washes that away. He even died for the ones we haven’t even committed yet and has already taken care of those. Because when He ends up on a cross and He cries out, what does He say? “It is finished.” What’s finished? All the work required to bring you into His family. All the work required to make you righteous in His sight, to make you clean. All sin forgiven. His perfect righteousness given. Jesus doesn’t just drop down and give you a clean slate. He forgives completely, and then by His resurrection says, “Now there is nothing you can do that will separate you from the love of Christ. Nothing. Period.”
And if we don’t get this, you will keep trying to build your resume. You will keep trying to show Jesus and other people that you actually are good enough, and He just wants you to receive His resume. And you’ll begin to think that your struggles with sin somehow jeopardize God’s opinion of you, or you’ll begin to think maybe your struggles with sin, at the least, they bring out Jesus’ disappointment with you. Do you ever feel that way? “Yikes, Brian. You’ve been to seminary. You’re a preacher. I would have thought you would be better by now.” And I start thinking He is disappointed in me. But that’s not what He’s like.
Some friends of ours had a child who was born severely disabled. They thought she would never walk, but through years of therapy, they actually caught this on film, that she was going to – on a street in their neighborhood, no cars – they were trying to get her to walk across the street for the first time. So everybody is out there, the camera was out there, and she was barely making it. Kind of would fall over, kind of get up. But when she made it to the end, they just exploded in joy and cheered. Why? Because the disability brings out their compassion, not their frustration and disappointment. They just loved that she was trying.
And you know, Jesus loves us better than that. You’re in Christ – if you are washed, if you are His, our sin struggles actually bring out His compassion, His tenderness; it draws Him near. He is just glad you are trying. He’s glad you are struggling. You didn’t used to struggle before you were a Christian. Now you are, and He is so glad. And you know what? That frees you. I think it frees you to struggle. I think it frees you actually to have doubts and to move towards Jesus. I think it frees you to be vulnerable because Jesus and His Church are a safe place to work through failure, to work through doubts, to be encouraged, because that’s what Jesus is like.
So I’ll end with this. There is an old NPR podcast called “StoryCorps.” I don’t even know if it still goes, but I used to listen to it a lot. And they have two people interviewing each other, and this was a mom talking with Josh, who was her son who had Down Syndrome. And they had this tender relationship. And mom is kind of interviewing her son who is now 20 and she is asking Josh things. And she says, “Josh, what are your dreams? What did you want to become when you grew up?” And Josh said, “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a minister and a WWE professional wrestler!” And the interviewers, they kind of start laughing and those sorts of things! But you could also tell that mom kind of stopped because here’s Josh, he’s 21, he’s not a minister, he’s not a professional wrestler. And he said, “I wanted to do those things to make my mom proud of me.” And you could tell she kind of got choked up. And she said, “Josh, do you know I’m proud of you?” And he said, “Oh mom, I know you’re proud of me!” And then on air she said, “Do you remember this thing we always do? Let’s do it.” She goes, “You’re my Josh.” And he goes, “You’re my mom.” “You’re my Josh.” “You’re my mom.” “You’re my Josh.” Right? You’re crying in the car; everybody’s crying! Because what she presented to Josh was an everlasting love and acceptance that was not based on whether he achieved his goals or dreams or even his performance. He was something before he ever did anything. And you realize that brought the security, that brought this joy.
Because here’s the deal. Tons of voices are going to come into your head every day – voices from being sinned against, tell you that you are full of shame; voices that talk about your past is still going to haunt you; voices that when you struggle with sin – “You can’t confess that. You can’t tell anybody.” You can’t control the voices that come into your head, but what we can control is the voice that you listen to. You can control the voice that you feed on. And the genealogy of Jesus is saying, “Feed on Jesus’ voice. He came for, to be identified with, and to rescue those who have been sinned against, those who have an immoral past, those who are outsiders, and those who have been following Jesus and still struggle with sin and can’t get their life together.”
And my question is, “Is that you this morning?” Because if it’s not, beware. Because if you don’t fit into those categories, those are the people that miss Jesus. Those are the ones that think they don’t need grace, they don’t really need this kind of Hero. They think they can do it. But if you fall into those categories, listen to Jesus’ voice. He is for you and He is bigger and better than anything else you can hold up to it. He is that good. He is that real. That’s an invitation. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for sending Jesus through real parents, real flesh and blood, 2,000 years ago in real history through a lineage of just broken and messed up outside people. And it is so hard to believe that with You, we don’t have to put our best foot forward. We can let You see the real us and see the good news of Jesus. Would You give us eyes to receive, if for the first time or the thousandth time, that Jesus really is for us and He is enough. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.