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The Scandal of the Genealogy

From the Series: Scandal
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: December 13, 2009

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Transcript

NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH

December 13, 2009

The Scandal of Genealogy

Mark Batterson

Welcome! It is so good to see you this weekend. Thanks for making NCC a part of your weekend. We are so glad you are here! If you are tuning in by podcast or webcast, thanks for being part of our extended family. I’m excited about this weekend. A couple of significant things we need to do up front. You should have in your bulletin received a little slip of paper that looks like this, would you take that out? Let me explain what we are doing this weekend. It was eight weeks ago that we got word about Union Station closing down. We had all of five days to come up with a Plan B, and we decided to move our Sunday morning services from Union Station over to Ebenezers Coffee House, can you say Thank God we had a coffee house one block away! God’s provision, so we said we didn’t know what was going to happen, but we moved the services. So many of you have shifted to that Sunday morning time slot at Ebenezers, others have gone to maybe one of our locations where we have a little bit more space. So, let me tell you what is going on as we begin to get our bearings and get a sense of where the Lord is taking us. We love Ebenezers and we feel like the Sunday morning situation is a wonderful one, so what we thought was an interim solution, we feel like we want to keep having Sunday morning services at Ebenezers. Here’s the thing, it’s pretty full. So we also want to launch another location as a way of continuing this multi-site strategy. If you are part of NCC, you know that we have four locations and our vision is to meet in movie theaters, we love those marketplace environments, so long story short, sometime between February and April of 2010, we have every intention of launching a fifth location. That’s where you come into play and that’s why we are taking this survey. We want to take a pulse across all of our locations and make sure we are all on the same page. So, fill in your zip code, it’s our way of plotting where everybody is, maybe looking for some clusters that might be a natural place to launch a location. Second question, if you’ve been around, you know the drill. Every time we launch a location, we ask every NCCer to do something simple, just pray about whether God wants you to be a part of that launch team. So of you will feel like you need to stay right where you are, get more involved in the location that you are part of, but some of you will feel that little pat from the Holy Spirit and then you’ll become part of that launch team. It is exciting being part of something starting up. What we want to gauge, and I know this will be largely determined by the third question, it’s geography, but we want to get a read on how many of you would be interested in being a part of a launch team. So definitely, probably, maybe and no, we want to get a read on that. Then finally, which location would you prefer? There are multiple scenarios that are very attractive and some wonderful opportunities available to us, more than one, so we want to get a read on where you would like this next location to be. So, you’ll see four options, Crystal City, Virginia, Columbia Heights and Friendship Heights. So go ahead and fill that out and we’ll collect them at the end of the service.

One last thing, again, this isn’t like vision Sunday but I want to put it out there. I’m so excited to be a part of a church that is going places and doing things. We are never satisfied. As long as there is a person who needs a relationship with Christ, we need to keep growing and keep reaching and keep introducing people to Jesus Christ. Our multi-site strategy is a way we do that, so we’ll launch a location next year but let me say this, it wouldn’t surprise me if we launch two locations locally in the metro area next year, and let me say this, you know we’ve been praying for months, we’ve taken a trip over there, we’ve done research and been praying about the possibility of launching a location in Berlin, Germany. And the response has been overwhelming, many people interested in being a part of that. I want to let you know that we feel like God has given us a green light. The timeline is like, well, it takes a little longer to get there, ya know, so the timeline is a little bit longer but this is going to be an exciting year as we begin a new decade. I just want to invite you to be part of what God is doing.

Let me talk about one other thing. I got this last week just like you did. I had nothing to do with this, so when I cracked this thing open, I was reading it for the first time just like you. This is our Christmas catalog. It is a way at the end of the year that we encourage all of us to invest in missions. That’s a huge part of who we are. Ten trips this year, we’ll give more than half a million dollars to missions this year, and at the end of the year we feel like giving a gift to missions. So, I encourage you to pick up one of those catalogs. This week, Laura and I set aside some time and we both read through the catalog and we were both so inspired by different stories and different things, then we went through the four different countries that we are focusing on this year and the different projects, and it was very revealing. Somehow I am very attracted to things like vitamins and health things and she was into the scholarship things, but at the end of the day, we’d picked several projects from each of those and different countries and then we went online, www.aoneeight.org and we did a simple online donation, and it felt so good. It felt so good to know that this Christmas season, we are going to make a difference in some people’s lives. I want to encourage you to do that because I don’t want you to miss out on the true joy of Christmas. This week, Laura took our kids Christmas shopping and Josiah, our little guy, wasn’t so excited because he is still at that place where he likes getting gifts. It’s the giving gifts that he hasn’t gotten a handle on, he is 7 years old, so I felt like this is a teachable moment. I sat down with him and said, “Josiah, I want to tell you something and I want you to remember this forever, you want to know what is even better than getting gifts?” And he said, “Yep, getting more gifts!” I said, “True, but here’s my point, Josiah, it is so much fun for Mom and Dad, we have so much fun giving you gifts. Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive. And if you want to give me a gift, I’m not going to deprive you of that opportunity, I’m not going to rob your blessing from you. All of us love receiving gifts, but at some point, you cross this spiritual maturity threshold where you realize that true joy is found on the giving end of life.” I think this catalog is an opportunity to do that so I encourage you to do that.

There are two sermons, are you ready for the third one? Let’s pray together then we’ll dive in and I’ll try to keep it short.

Father, thank You, thank You, thank You. Every good and perfect gift comes from You. I think this is a season where we celebrate the blessings that are ours. We are so blessed, and Lord, we are so grateful. God, as we look at this Christmas story, would You give us new eyes to see new things in this story and may the reality of the miracle that happened 2,000 years ago be made real in us. In Jesus Name, Amen.

This weekend we continue our ‘Scandal’ series. Turn over to Matthew Chapter 1. I think at Christmas time, we tend to take the Christmas story and we wrap it up in the nicest wrapping paper and we put a pretty bow on top of it and we package it in this beautiful way. But let suggest that the Christmas story is much more like my wrapping job – which is ugly and full of mistakes and not as nicely wrapped. See, this story is not as clean and neat as we make it out to be. In fact, it is full of scandal. This weekend, instead of talking about the Christmas story, what I’d like to do is talk about the Christmas back-story. Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy, which we tend to skip right over.

You can turn to Matthew but it is the story behind the story and it is full of scandal. I want to preach this weekend the first sermon I’ve ever preached on the genealogy. There’s an audible gasp of excited! Listen, I know some of you are ready to check out, but I think there is something here for us. To be perfect honest, from a human perspective, this isn’t how you should start a book. I mean, you shouldn’t say that about the Bible, but like what was Matthew thinking? As a writer, I spend about 40% of my time on the opening chapter, and the reason I do that is because I know that you’ve got to frame it and paint the picture, and if you don’t hook the reader in the first page and the first chapter, you will lose them. So I’m thinking to myself, Matthew what are you doing? You start with the genealogy and you will lose readers before they even start reading. See, to us, I think the genealogies are lost on us and part of that is because most of us aren’t Jewish. We don’t have a sense of why this is significant. So why does Matthew start out his gospel with the genealogy? Well, to the Jewish readers, each one of these names was more than a name. Each one of these names was a story. They were individual stories that were part of this grand story that was this narrative of the people of God, the people of Israel. Each genealogy represented a personality. Each genealogy tells a story and those stories are the back-stories to the Christmas story. I would suggest that they help put the Christmas story into context.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I love back-stories. The story is great but I love back-stories, the story behind the story. This week, our family went and saw the Blind Side and we loved it. Parker gave it 4 solid stars, and on his conservative scale, that’s pretty generous. Summer gave it 20 stars. We loved the movie. In case you didn’t see the movie or read the book, it is about a boy named Big Mike who grew up on the streets, his mother was a cocaine addict and he went from home to home and school to school, and then a family found him, this is a true story. He was living on the streets and they invited him into their home, and he because their pseudo-adopted son and they began to love him and raise him and teach him. There is this one scene where he comes into their house and he has never seen anything like it, he is awed, and she makes up a bedroom for Big Mike with a computer and a desk and then she makes the bed and it’s just this moment, you have to see it, and she says, “This is yours,” and Big Mike says, “I’ve never had one.” And she says, “What, a bedroom?” And he says, “No, a bed.” And it is all she can do not to lose it, it’s all everybody in the theater can do not to lose it. My eyes start sweating at that point in the movie and I’m like, it was just, a kid who has never had a bed to sleep in. To me, that moment in the story symbolized his life, no home, no mom, no comforts to enjoy, no bed, and knowing that back-story sucks you into the movie. Then when he starts playing football, you totally want him to excel. That’s because you have the back-story.

I think if you start with the Christmas story and miss out on the back-story, I don’t know that you fully appreciate the Christmas story itself. So Matthew 1:1

This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar). Perez was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amminadab.

I’m not going to go through the whole thing. Name after name, story after story, the genealogy records the names of ancestors. Some were noble, some were ignoble, some were righteous, some were downright evil; some left legacies of faith, others left legacies of dysfunction, a mixed bag, to say the least. But Matthew, in his genealogy, makes specific point of mentioning four women, and it’s debated as to why, but the four women that he mentions, the first is Tamar, and then you have Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba. What you have in this genealogy are two prostitutes, someone who is not even Jewish in a Jewish genealogy, Ruth who was a foreigner, and an adulteress. You read this and you think, why would Matthew want to do this, it is unnecessary. Why would he pull these four women into this genealogy? Why would he go out of his way to do it?

Scholars have a variety of opinions on these genealogies. Let me mention a couple of them. I think some scholars believe that it was to point out that Jesus’ lineage went back to King David, that was important for prophetic reasons. That’s why most of us believe the genealogies are in there, but some scholars believe that maybe including these four women was to keep the Jewish people’s pride in place. But it’s the last point that I really want to focus on this weekend. I think it’s the beautiful message of these genealogies. Listen, God’s plan is bigger than any of the mistakes any of us can make. See, these genealogies are filled with people who made huge mistakes. In fact, we would call them scandals. Scandals of historic proportions. But God is bigger than that and I love the way this story turns out.

But before we get there, I want to look at one scandal. Turn back to Genesis 38, and what you have is the story of Tamar. We’re going to read that story and make a couple of quick observations and I believe the Lord is going to speak to us through it. Genesis 38, the story of Tamar. And as the Jewish people were hearing this story, they knew the genealogy, backwards and forwards, inside and out, it was part of their lineage. But most of us don’t know it, so we read right over it. Genesis 38:6

In the course of time, Judah arranged for his firstborn son, Er, to marry a young woman named Tamar. But Er was a wicked man in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord took his life. Then Judah said to Er’s brother Onan, “Go and marry Tamar, as our law requires of the brother of a man who has died. You must produce an heir for your brother.” But Onan was not willing to have a child who would not be his own heir. So whenever he had intercourse with his brother’s wife, he spilled the semen on the ground. This prevented her from having a child who would belong to his brother. But the Lord considered it evil for Onan to deny a child to his dead brother. So the Lord took Onan’s life, too.

Ok, this is already messed up. Seems to me like Tamar is 0 for 2. She is widowed twice, and come on, she was probably better off with those two husbands dead, because they were wicked. This is serious reality. The thing I love about the Bible is it doesn’t sugar coat thing, it shares the reality of the human condition. I don’t know how old Tamar is at this point, but do you think this is the life she wanted. What I see as I read this story, I picture this little girl with dreams of growing up and falling in love and having a family, but her life is a nightmare and it’s about to get worse.

Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, “Go back to your parents’ home and remain a widow until my son Shelah is old enough to marry you.” (But Judah didn’t really intend to do this because he was afraid Shelah would also die, like his two brothers.) So Tamar went back to live in her father’s home. Some years later Judah’s wife died. After the time of mourning was over, Judah and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went up to Timnah to supervise the shearing of his sheep. Someone told Tamar, “Look, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.” Tamar was aware that Shelah had grown up, but no arrangements had been made for her to come and marry him. So she changed out of her widow’s clothing and covered herself with a veil to disguise herself. Then she sat beside the road at the entrance to the village of Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. Judah noticed her and thought she was a prostitute, since she had covered her face. So he stopped and propositioned her. “Let me have sex with you,” he said, not realizing that she was his own daughter-in-law. “How much will you pay to have sex with me?” Tamar asked. “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” Judah promised. “But what will you give me to guarantee that you will send the goat?” she asked. “What kind of guarantee do you want?” he replied. She answered, “Leave me your identification seal and its cord and the walking stick you are carrying.” So Judah gave them to her. Then he had intercourse with her, and she became pregnant. Afterward she went back home, took off her veil, and put on her widow’s clothing as usual.

If this wasn’t in the Bible, I would feel like I was sinning reading it. It is so sorted, so sinful, so scandalous, I don’t want to read it, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to talk about it, do you? But since we’re on the subject. Isn’t this the kind of story we’d cover up? Isn’t this the kind of story that you’d do your best to forget it so that no one remembers it? This is the last story that you would ever want to bring up. It is just so wrong. I’m thinking about the kids, did they ever ask how their mom and dad fell in love? Like, ‘I actually propositioned your mother and I’m not only your dad, I’m also your grandfather, surprise!’ Can you imagine the family reunions? Can you imagine the identity issues with everybody involved in this story? Part of the reason I read that is because every once in a while, we need to read a story in the Bible that makes you feel like maybe it’s not quite as bad as I think. Everybody say, ‘I thought I was messed up.’ Go ahead. But this is so scandalous. This is about as bad as it gets.

About three months later, Judah was told, “Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has acted like a prostitute. And now, because of this, she’s pregnant.” “Bring her out, and let her be burned!” Judah demanded. But as they were taking her out to kill her, she sent this message to her father-in-law: “The man who owns these things made me pregnant. Look closely. Whose seal and cord and walking stick are these?” Judah recognized them immediately and said, “She is more righteous than I am, because I didn’t arrange for her to marry my son Shelah.” And Judah never slept with Tamar again.

This is one of the most messed up stories in the Bible. It is hard to know where to start, so let’s start here.

Number one, jot this down, God’s plans are bigger than your mistakes. Aren’t you grateful for that? We know how the story ends! But if I’m Tamar, I’m thinking, how did she assess her own life? When she looked at her life, how did she assess it? I’m guessing that she assessed her life as a huge tragedy. One mistake after another, one problem after another, disappointment, betrayal, he life is so not what she wanted it to be. But she did produce a son and that son turned out alright. And he had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who is the Son of God.

See, I don’t think you can assess your life on your life span. What I love about the genealogies is this, why don’t you get a little perspective here, let’s zoom out and take a 42 generation perspective of our lives. I think sometimes, we get so into the minute circumstantial details of our lives, we just feel like our lives aren’t what we want them to be and what we need is a little bit of eternal perspective. I think some of us are probably here this weekend and feel like you are messed up. Maybe you don’t know where to turn or what to do. Listen, I want to tell you that the gospel is good news for you because God’s plans are bigger than your mistakes. I think sometimes we reduce God to the size of our biggest failure. But He is bigger than that. He was bigger than that in this story.

Let me talk about the specific context, I think it is something we probably don’t talk about as much as we could or should. God is bigger than the sexual mistakes that you’ve made. This is a big sexual mistake here. We live in a culture that is filled with sexual brokenness and sexual confusion. I’m sitting in the movie watching Blind Side and one of the previews, there was this part, I think the line was, ‘who sleeps with only one person their whole life?’ That was the basic of it, and it ticked me off. It was like they were saying the marriage covenant is not sacred, as if that’s not possible and it made it seem like it was somehow weird. Part of me wanted to get up in that theater and say that I’ve had sex with one woman my whole life, but I thought it might be a weird way to prove that it wasn’t weird. Despite what our culture says, you can be faithful. You can experience sexual wholeness. I don’t care what mistakes you’ve made in the past. From here moving forward, God is a God where we are not talking past tense. It’s not about guilt over past tense mistakes, it is about your future. What is your future? Where are you going from here? Some of us have made some mistakes, but let me be clear. I believe the Bible teaches that sex is God’s idea and it is God’s gift to us. It is a sacred covenant between a husband and a wife, to be enjoyed in the context of marriage. But I know in our culture, a lot of us have made a lot of mistakes. What I want you to know is that you can live in guilt or you can keep making those same mistakes, but I want to tell you that there is hope and there is help. Listen, with God’s help and God’s forgiveness and God’s healing in your life, I want to tell you that God’s plan is bigger than those sexual mistakes. This story is evidence of that.

I think it is interesting to read this story. I’m just talking out loud, that’s dangerous on this topic, but, it’s interesting that I read this and I think if that happened today, I wonder if she would have gone through with the pregnancy. I wonder if she would have the courage to say, ‘that’s one big mistake.’ If she would have aborted that baby, she would have aborted God’s plan and short-circuited this genealogy. I think we have such a small perspective on our circumstances, and what I want to say is that God is bigger than that. Two people make a big mistake here but God is bigger than the mistakes they made.

Let me make a second observation. It’s not who goes before you, it’s who you leave behind. I think some of us read these stories and we can identify with them because we come from dysfunctional families and dysfunctional situations. Let’s talk about this because a lot of you are getting ready to go and you’re going back into situations where, oh man, it just brings all this stuff back, and the truth is, some of you are here and you wonder if you’re destined to make the same mistakes that your parents made. You wonder if you inherited their genes. Its this genealogical question, like, ‘am I going to mess up the same way my parents messed up?’ There is a fear, but what I want you to know is that your mom is not you, your dad is not you, you are not them, you are a unique individual and you don’t have to make the same mistakes.

I want to be careful here, this isn’t dish on parents day at NCC. Thank God for parents, but the truth is, none of us are perfect. There are things that I want my kids to emulate from my life and there are things that I don’t want my kids to emulate from my life, because I’m a mixed bag. I don’t want them to be me, I want them to be them. I think it is important that we identify those things in our parents that we love and tell them how much we appreciate them, because the truth is, we don’t really fully appreciate our parents until we are parents, until we have a baby that stays up half the night crying, or that rebellious teenager makes some decisions that have repercussions and we’re like, I can’t believe my parents put up with this. It’s not until you are in that situation that you fully appreciate it. So let’s give parents credit, there are things that you need to conscientiously say I’m going to break that cycle. Here is the genealogy question and it is one that Laura talked about this week. Laura and I spent two days in Baltimore. It’s a new thing for us, we wanted to get away as a couple and just spend two days together talking about our family and our future, setting goals, what’s important to us, who are we, what are we trying to do, those things. I brought up the question, what is our legacy? What are we leaving to our children, so then we naturally talked about the legacy we inherited from our parents. That might be a good thing to talk about and think about in the genealogical sense. We realized from Laura’s side, there is this unbelievable generous spirit from a mother-in-law and Christmas to a father-in-law who passed away 11 years ago who had the biggest heart for missions of anyone I’ve ever known. I love and appreciate Pastor Joel, our Campus Pastor at Ballston, he is also my brother-in-law. I tell you what, what I see in Joel is what I saw in my father-in-law. He got that gene, he has a huge heart for missions. The fact that we’re going on ten trips and giving so much money to mission, the fact that that’s so much of our heartbeat, I think is largely because of his leadership. There is this legacy thing happening. He inherited that and it’s a legacy that he is passing on. He talked about it last week when he talked about giving, he was just talking about who he is and what he does. And then we thought about my family. My sweet grandmother. At the end of her life, she was living off Social Security and she shocked our family when she passed, there was an inheritance waiting for us. $10,000 helped pay off my college tuition bill. I couldn’t believe it, how did my grandmother do that? And the legacy that she left, Laura and I were just asking what is the legacy that we are going to leave. I want to challenge you to think about it and talk about it. See, the issue is not who has gone before us. You may come from a messed up family, I want to say this in love, that is not an excuse. There I no excuse, God has given you a free will, and you can turn those things, all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purposes. I’m not up here blowing smoke, I can tell you a lot of stories of situations that seemed bad but God turned them for God, and things that I wished hadn’t happened but in retrospect I’m go grateful they did, because they helped me become the person I am. The things I wouldn’t’ wish on my worst enemy but I’m glad I went through them because they helped me become who God wants me to be. God is not concerned about your past, He can take care of that. He is concerned about your future and who you are becoming and the legacy you are leaving.

Let me close with this. What a promise, you can become part of his genealogy! Isn’t that awesome! You look at these genealogies and you think, it’s not that meaningful to me because it’s not my family. Yes it is! You are a child of Abraham, if you have put your faith in Christ, then Galatians 3 says you are a child of Abraham, you have been grafted into this genealogy and this is your family. It is your messed up family. Such a beautiful promise, John Chapter 1, to as many as have received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God. Oh. I had a little bit of a glimpse, a new appreciation, again the Blind Side, there was this one scene where they bring Mike into their family and they feed him and clothe him and give him his bed and bedroom, but there is a moment where they go through all the steps to become legal guardians and adopt him into their family, and there is this moment where it’s just this precious moment with every member of the family and they ask Mike if he would like to be part of our family. Mike said, “I thought I already part of this family.” What I loved about that is there was a moment where it was made official. I want to ask you this question. Everybody at all of our locations, let me ask you this question, are you a child of God? Are you a child of God? If you are not or if you aren’t sure, this is your day, this is your promise to make it official. To as many as have received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God. I

I want to encourage you today to receive the gift that has been freely offered to you because of what Jesus Christ has done on the cross. He came. For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. You are invited to this table. He wants you to be part of his family. Your true destiny is to become that child of God. I pray that today would be your day. Let’s pray together.

Father we come to right now, we thank You. We read a story like this and wow, some messed up things, but God we think about our lives and the challenges we face and the mistakes we’ve made and sometimes we look in the mirror and we see a messed up person who has made a lot of mistakes, but thank You that we are in Christ and when You look at us, You see your child because we have been adopted into your family. Lord, right now, I pray for every person who needs to make that decision to put their faith in Christ, Lord right now we say thank You, thank You for extending that invitation. Right now, Lord, some of us made this decision a long time ago, but we renew this affirmation, and for some, for the first time, we simply say, we receive the gift that you freely offer to us. We receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and we give You thanks for the gift of salvation that is ours. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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