Talk
INTRODUCTION
BRO. AUDEE VILLARAZA:
A fair warning. I need you to stand up for this, all right? We’re about to read one of the most boring passages you will ever encounter in the Bible.
How many of you have sleeping problems? You don’t need melatonin. All you need to do is read what we’re about to read and I promise you, if you’re alone reading this, you’ll be gone in 60 seconds. I’m just humoringJ
I’m talking about the first chapter of the Book of Matthew 1:1-17,15-16 NLT:
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. Amminadab was the father of Nahshon. Nahshon was the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab). Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth). Obed was the father of Jesse.Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah). Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Abijah was the father of Asa.Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat.Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram. Jehoram was the father of Uzziah. Uzziah was the father of Jotham. Jotham was the father of Ahaz. Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Amon. Amon was the father of Josiah. Josiah was the father of Jehoiachin and his brothers (born at the time of the exile to Babylon). After the Babylonian exile: Jehoiachin was the father of Shealtiel. Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud.Abiud was the father of Eliakim. Eliakim was the father of Azor. Azor was the father of Zadok. Zadok was the father of Akim. Akim was the father of Eliud. Eliud was the father of Eleazar. Eleazar was the father of Matthan. Matthan was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
The Value of a Woman
I wanted to make sure you were standing. Otherwise, you might have dozed off while reading that.
Honestly, the Word is supposed to be alive and active but the reason that verse sounds so boring is it’s just filled with names that we don’t know even how to pronounce.
Did you notice something when I was reading the text of the types of names that were included there? Did anybody notice that they were mostly men? Right?
I mean there were a few exceptions. There were five women mentioned.
But it was an almost male cast. It’s not an accident. During the time of Jesus, most ancient genealogy, which is like a family tree, did not include women.
In the Book of Luke, there is another version of the genealogy of Jesus, and still, the list is all male.
Back in the day, women were considered possessions. It’s so crazy because they treated women so poorly that some men prayed every day like this: “Lord, I thank you that I am not a Gentile. I am not a slave, and I am not a woman.”
Before, the value of a woman was slightly higher than or lower than a man, but it was higher than a cow. So, somewhere in between a man and a cow–that’s the value of a woman.
So, think about the ways how they would complement a woman.
They would say, “Wow, you’re so beautiful today. You are worth three cows.”
Does that sound flattering to the women? No, right? That’s why this is so important to know: That Matthew included five women in the genealogy of Jesus. Five women I want to preach about today.
But first, let’s pray. Put your hand over your heart and say this after me:
“Lord, I need your wisdom. I need your Word.
I pray that as I hear this, it will transform me and it will change me. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
Thy Word is a Lamp unto my feet And a Light unto my path.
Our big message is this:
God is bringing your family into His family.
According to Matthew, there were five women in the genealogy of Jesus.
They were Tamar, Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, and Mama Mary. Except for Mama Mary, the author talked about the women in such a way that kind of makes you think of them as questionable. Why? Because each had a very questionable past. You could say that most of them, if not the four of them, had a dirty past.
Let me give you some examples:
- Tamar. She was impregnated by her father-in-law, Judah.
- Bathsheba. She was an adulteress. She was impregnated by King David.
- Rahab. She was a harlot – a friendly term for prostitute.
- Ruth. She was a Gentile. To the Jews, Gentiles were foreigners who did not belong in God’s family
If you’re a Jew and you’re reading this genealogy, you would probably think, “Didn’t Matthew have a PR team to tell him not to put them in the list of Jesus?”
But I wonder why he did that.
Ludicrous Story
Just to give you a friendly analogy of how ludicrous and ridiculous this seemed to the people reading Matthew’s Gospel at that time, I’ll tell you a story.
Many years ago, my family and I ate in a 100% pure Italian restaurant. They had amazing Italian foodJ.
The co-owner of that restaurant was our friend.
So, we were sitting down and then our friend was telling us that a few nights before, they had a customer they had to throw out of the restaurant.
In my mind, I was thinking why? Did he say something mean about the food? Did he complain? Was there a scandal?
As if reading my mind, our friend said, “No. He just ordered pizza and then he asked for a ketchup.”
You need to know this if you’re going to eat in a really 100% pure Italian restaurant. You never put ketchup on pizza. But the problem is that Filipinos love ketchup, right? We put ketchup on everything– spaghetti, spam, hotdogs, and eggs. It becomes a problem when you go to an Italian restaurant and you put ketchup on the spaghetti and pizza– you might get thrown out. It’s like those people who like their pizza with pineapple. It doesn’t make sense. At least to me– but don’t get me started on that.
When the Jews were reading the genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew, they must have felt the way people felt when they saw this guy putting ketchup on his pizza.
You’ve got Jesus– the Messiah, the Anointed One from the line of David– and you’re going to put these questionable women in His genealogy?
3 Lessons from the Genealogy of Jesus
The genealogy wasn’t an accident. God deliberately chose these women to be placed along the lineage of Jesus. God put them in that place.
So, if you can look at that for a moment–that there were very sinful women in the lineage of this Savior– I’ll give you three lessons about how this is going to affect your life:
Think of Tamar. She was the first woman I mentioned.
First of all, she was a widow. If you were living at the time of Jesus and you were a widow, you were considered not just poor –but ultra-poor. You could not own anything.
Tamar wasn’t just a widow once. She was a widow twice. To top things off, Tamar was childless. Do you know how she was able to bear a child?
She pretended that she was a prostitute so her father-in-law, Judah, could sleep with her. How messed up is that?
But then, she gave birth to twins. After all that happened, you know what God did? God still chose her to be the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus.
So, what does that tell us? That if God can welcome somebody as messy as Tamar into His family, how much more you and I God would welcome?
God will welcome our family into His family. That’s amazing news for a lot of us
I’m thinking right now of Bathsheba. A lot of people might say, “Ah, Bathsheba, she seduced David.”
But the truth is that she was not a seductress. All she was doing was taking a bath. That’s why she’s called BathshebaJ
David saw her from his balcony and he knew he wanted her. He seduced her.
He even put the husband of Bathsheba on the frontlines of a battle so that he could be killed.
So, we can call Bathsheba not a seductress but an adulteress– because it takes two to tango, right? She gave her consent to David, and she bore a baby.
But even though she had such a messy background, God healed Bathsheba and He used her to be in the lineage of Jesus. That’s how amazing God is.
I don’t know what kind of mess you have in your family right now.
But I promise you that if you surrender that to God and if you allow Him, He will heal your family. Whatever brokenness that you suffer, God is good.
I’m thinking right now of Rahab, the harlot or the prostitute.
One day, the Israelites needed to get into the Promised Land through the city of Jericho– but it had fortified walls. They needed help.
So, God sent two spies from Shittim (The site east of the Jordan, and northeast of the Dead Sea, the last encampment of the Israelites before crossing the Jordan River into Canaan, the Promised Land.)
Do you know what Rahab did? She opened her doors to the two spies, and she allowed God into her life.
Rahab could have easily said, “Why me, Lord? Choose my neighbor, Lisa, instead. She doesn’t wear ultra-super mini shorts like me. She sings worship songs. She goes to church every Sunday. She hasn’t slept with 3,000 men like I have.”
But Rahab did not say that.
Rahab said, “Yes, come in. I want to be used by you.”
God simply chose Rahab for one reason and one reason alone. Because she said Yes.
Jesus Is for All
It doesn’t take much for God to use you.
All He needs is just for you to say Yes.
You don’t have to come to church and wait for God to clean you up before you start serving.
My friend, you cannot clean up your act on your own. You need God’s help.
So, the first thing that you do is to go to church –because this is the place where God is.
These controversial women have a special place in the genealogy of Jesus. Think about it: What if Matthew, for some reason, did not put intentionally these women? During those times, women were minorities. They were treated as possessions. Imagine if there were just pure, elite, and aristocratic people in the lineage of Jesus…
How did they choose kings during monarchies? You can only be part of leadership if you are part of the royal family. You cannot be a prince, a duchess, or a duke if you don’t have royal blood. They check the documents for you to prove that you’re part of the Royal Family.
Here’s how amazing Jesus is:
How many of you believe that Jesus is Royalty? He really is.
He’s the only King.
Check this out: Since Jesus is the King, when you are associated with Jesus, when you have life with Him, you are automatically royalty.
Jesus is good. So, if Matthew never included those women, I’m going to think that people who belong to Jesus are only those who are rich, prayerful, and righteous.
But the very fact that questionable women like Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Rahab were there in the first place, tells me that Jesus is for everybody.
Jesus is for you. Jesus identifies with sinners like you and me.
Isn’t that so good? I’ve got somebody who I can look up to, who will understand my suffering, who will understand my tiredness, who will understand that sometimes I’m not in a mood… Because Jesus is the People’s Champion.
Thank You, Jesus, for being our God.
Understanding Opposing Passages
You’ll come across various passages in the Bible that might sound otherwise that Jesus is “for all.” There is this portion where Jesus instructs the disciples that makes you think that Jesus seems to be a racist:
It sounds discriminating. But to understand this passage, you need to know that there are two stages in the mission of Jesus:
Now, how do we apply this to our own life?
Before God sends you into the world, the first thing God will do is to send you into your family. That’s why we call the family our first ministry.
I know it’s hard to speak to your family members because, correct me if I’m wrong, the people who are closest to you are also the most judgmental. Why?
Because they know you, your history, and your story. They know how you cheated when you were in grade school. They know how you stole that key chain when you were nine years old. When they look at you now, how in the world can they believe that God can use you?
But even if it’s true that the prophet is never accepted in his own town (Luke 4:24) and that you are never appreciated even in your own family, please don’t quit in evangelizing your family. Your first mission is to go into your family and then tell them about Jesus.
Mission Stage 1
Bro. Bo Sanchez and I were having dinner with some of our leaders in Feast Butuan last week. We were surprised because there were three priests at that dinner. I was shocked to know that they were all exorcist priests. They told stories of deliverance with families. Father Darwin, one of the priests, told us the truth.
He said, “Brothers, there is real evil happening in the world today. The enemy is real, and the enemy wants to destroy families.”
That’s true. You see that biblically. God’s design is that He would use a family to bless the world. So, how will the enemy attack God? By destroying that very thing that God wants to bless. God wants to use the family and bless the family. The enemy, on the other hand, will destroy the family.
Sometimes, we like to blame people in our family: “Daddy gambled our money.
Mommy cheated on Daddy. My elder brother was so disobedient. My sister was so lazy.”
We blame families and our ancestors only to realize that since the beginning of time, there has been an enemy that’s coming against us.
The Devil has been trying to ruin your family. That’s why you realize that sometimes it’s hard to let go of addictions. Why is it that infidelity has been running in my family for generations? Why is it that we have a gambling problem in our family for generations and generations?
Because there is an enemy that’s attacking you.
Fr. Darwin said this beautifully that it ministered to me.
He said, “Did you know that there is power in one person in a family deciding to say Yes to God?”
Because even out of that one family that says Yes to God, 1,000 people out of that generation can be blessed.
It’s that powerful: When you renounce the work of Satan and when you say Yes to God. You might be that person that will change your family. I believe that you are that person today who will say Yes to God and say No to Satan and his ways.
But before God will send you out into the world, He’ll send you first into the frontline of your family.
Mission Stage 2
Here’s the second stage. After God sends you to your family, God will send you to a bigger family. He’ll send you out because that’s the mission. We are called to be disciples and Jesus said that in the Book of Matthew:
My dear friends, you cannot call yourself a Christian if you are not producing disciples. There is no such thing as a barren disciple. If you’re going to be
a disciple, you need to produce fruit.
That’s what God wants. God will send you into His family, your family and then He will expand that family.
That’s why here at The Feast, we encourage you to join our Light Groups.
Join our Pastoral programs so that your family will be enlarged in the process.
Destination: A House with Many Rooms
God is bringing your family into His family. Jesus said something in the New Testament that ministered to me so much this week in line with the message that I’ve been preaching to you:
Jesus says this and the way that He communicated this to me was through my son Ethan.
He’s six years old. He loves drawing.
One day, Ethan comes up to me and he shows me a drawing.
He says: “Dad, look! A house. Dad, look.
It’s Heaven.”
I’m like, why is that Heaven? My version of Heaven is different.
And then he points out that it has so many rooms…
My Turning Point
The turning point of my conversion or my transformation to who I am today happened many, many years ago but it happened at a time when I was first new in Ministry. When you’re new in serving the Lord and you get to be introduced into this wild family, you get so busy with Ministry. You sign up for all the activities. You sign up for all the programs.
I was single back then. Eventually, I got married and we had kids.
One of my good friends, his name is Manny, we were just having a conversation. I was telling him how busy I was and how amazing what Ministry was doing for me. He just said something that really ministered to me at that time.
He said, “I’m happy for you, Brother, that you’re serving the Lord and you’re coming to know Him as a personal Savior and as a Friend. But I want you to listen to this: While it’s good that you’re serving in church and in community,
Heaven is already such a wonderful place because God is there, the Saints are there, and everybody who is holy is there. But wouldn’t Heaven be so much more amazing if you knew that your loved ones are also going there?”
Heaven is not a place just for you or just for me. Heaven should be a place where we can bring our family and our loved ones with us. Heaven would be so amazing if you knew that your friend, your loved one, your wife, your husband, and your children would also go to that place.
I know that it’s not up to you to save them. Salvation is a personal relationship with Jesus. It’s not up to you to do the saving– but here, just maybe, your responsibility and your challenge is you can be the one to introduce them to the One who will do the saving. Introduce them to Jesus because what God wants is to bring your family into His family. Are you ready to respond to this message today? Let’s lift our hands.
Heavenly Father, we Thank You for this wisdom and for Your Word that gave us life this morning. By the power of your Word, I pray for transformation to happen to each person here today. That change would emanate from the inside out. I pray that whatever baggage and obstacles they have, You would replace those. We pray for brokenness that the world has given to us. We pray that You would complete us and make us whole. Father, we want to pray a very specific prayer that You would heal our families. That you would heal the generations that would come after us.
Everybody, I’m going to lead you into a special prayer right now which I believe God is going to use to heal the lineage of your family.
So, your Yes today will bless thousands of people who will be in your succeeding generation. I want you to do this together with me as one family.
Lift your hands. If you haven’t done so yet, let’s say this together in one voice:
Let’s worship the Lord and believe that His blessing is upon you, your family, your children, your children’s children, and their children’s children.
Lift your hands and receive this blessing today. Amen.
