After reading that genealogy, believe it or not, I have a message of hope for you today. I begin on that positive note because I sense that some of you live pretty close to despair and are discouraged right now.

A grayness overshadows our personal lives, and we despair of life ever taking on color again. Are you there? Despair, discouragement in your personal life. Lost hope in your personal life. Is that where some of you are today?

The other level where we despair is the bigger picture of what's happening in the world, what we call history. There is a lot of bad stuff in the news. The world is a dark place. We worry, What kind of world are my children going to live in? With deaths, damning drugs, divorce, and deteriorating national debt and disasters and predictions of world history is like a train gone out of control. Does someone have a hand on the throttle of this train, or had the engineer bailed out just as we come in sight of Dead Man's Curve?

In the middle of your despair and your discouragement, whether it be on a personal level or on the larger level of history, Matthew comes with a message of hope. This is the last place we'd expect to discover a message of hope. The genealogies in the Bible don't seem to make much sense. They seem to be boring, meaningless, unending lists of descendants and ancestors, just interminable lists of monotonous names.

All these names except the last three are Old Testament people. This is the Old Testament family tree of Jesus, but it's not a family tree assembled in some haphazard way. This Old Testament family tree of Jesus is put together like a work of art to teach two truths.

Truth 1: God moves history forward in an orderly and purposeful way.

This genealogy, the Old Testament history leading up to the birth of Christ, is a perfectly ordered, perfectly planned, controlled flow of history. Look at verse 17 again, the conclusion. "Thus, there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen generations from the exile to the Christ."

Matthew is saying something astounding in the historical summary. This Old Testament history, from Abraham to Christ is a perfectly ordered, perfectly planned flow of history. Jesus' birth is the climax of three groupings of fourteen.

Way back in the Old Testament, in Genesis 17, God said to Abraham, "I'm going to give you a son, and that son will have a son. And that son will have another son until someday far down the line the Savior of the world will be born, the Savior of all who believe in him."

Matthew summarizes this line of descent by pointing out that it contains three groupings of fourteen.

We have to realize that Matthew's gospel was written to Jewish Christians to help them understand the significance of Jesus' coming. Seven or any multiple of seven symbolized perfection.

For example, when Israel went into exile to Babylon, God said the perfect completion of their punishment would be seventy years, ten multiples of seven.

Three is also a symbolic Old Testament number, signifying fullness. Remember in Isaiah's vision of God, he says, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord." God's holiness is mentioned three times to symbolize that God's holiness is perfect, complete. So in the Old Testament, the number seven and the number three were divine numbers of perfection and fullness.

Fourteen is a multiple of seven, and in the generations from Abraham to Christ, we have three sets of fourteen. Matthew's point is that under God's control, the history leading up to the birth of Christ has been orderly and perfectly planned with meticulous, mathematical care. Since God made his promise to Abraham, he moved history forward in an orderly, purposeful, perfect, balanced way toward this Old Testament history's fulfillment in the birth of Jesus Christ.

So the first truth is this genealogy is not a record of man's biological productivity, but rather a demonstration of God's order and movement toward the great goal of salvation through his Son.

Truth 2: God uses flawed humans as he carries history forward.

Not only does God control the flow of history; God chooses flawed humans as he carries history forward to his goals. Believe me, you and I would have kept some of these characters in the closet. Jesus' lineage is anything but a roll call for the institute of halos and harps. This reads more like the Sunday morning occupancy at the county jail.

It begins with Abraham, who more than once lied like Pinocchio just to save his neck.

Abraham's grandson, Jacob, was slicker that a Las Vegas card shark. The guy cheated his brother, his , his uncle. Jacob's very name means "cheater." He's in the list leading to Christ.

Jacob's son, Judah, was the father of Perez and Zerah, but you remember how, don't you? By committing incest with his own , Tamar. She's found in this list too. Good grief. This isn't a pure line. God wants us to know that Tamar seduced her , Judah, and the product of that union was part of the line leading to Christ. Now, Jesus is called in Revelation "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," so we think Judah was this great saint. Judah was a hypocrite. Judah was an adulterer.

Notice it says Jacob was the father of "Judah and his brothers." This reminds us that Judah and his brothers sold Joseph into slavery. What turkeys they were.

Jump down to verse 6: "And Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon whose mother had been Uriah's wife." Matthew reminds us that great King David had Uriah murdered so he could indulge his sexual cravings. David, the murderer and the adulterer, who wrote in Psalm 51, "Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Hide your face from my sins, for I have done evil in your sight." David the adulterer and the murderer is also part of this history leading to Christ.

Listen to verse 5: "Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rabah; Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth." Why does Matthew explicitly say that Boaz's mother was Rahab? Because Rahab was a prostitute; God wants us to know that he used a prostitute in the line of Christ. Ruth is mentioned because she was a foreigner, not even Jewish.

Manasseh makes the list, even though this wicked king sacrificed his own son in the fire to Baal and consulted mediums and spiritists. Manasseh shed so much innocent blood that 2 Kings 21 says, "He was a terror to his people." God used even Manasseh as part of the history leading up to Christ.

His son Amon is on the list, even though Amon rejected God. A lot of guys in this list are kings; almost half of these kings were crooks, and all but a handful worshiped an idol or two for good measure.

And so reads the list of Jesus's . This family tree isn't all so pure, is it? God chooses flawed humans as he carries history forward to his Son. In this list, we find the most of sinners. You go down this list and you'll find the sins of murder, bloodthirsty terror, adultery, incest, prostitution, the false worship of pagan gods, cheating, in the up in the family tree of Jesus.

Why did God use these people?

Why did God use these people? He didn't have to. He could have just laid the Savior on the doorstep. It would have been simpler that way. Why does God tell us their stories? Why does God give us flawed humans, wicked humans in the line of Christ who stumble and bumble? Why did God use these people?

Simple. He knew that you and I watched the news last night and heard about all the bad stuff, all the crooked people. He knew we would fret. He knew we would worry where history is going, and he wants us to know that when the world goes wild, he stays calm and he's in total control.

Want proof? Read the last name on the list. In spite of all the crooked halos of his people, the last name on the list is Jesus. Verse 16: "Joseph was the husband of Mary; and Mary was the mother of Jesus. Jesus is called the Christ." Period. No other names are listed. No more are needed.

As if God is announcing to a despairing, discouraged world, "See? I did it! I did it just like I said I would. The plan succeeded. I controlled the flow of history. I even chose flawed humans, and it all led to the birth of a Savior.

"The famine in Egypt couldn't starve my plan. Four hundred years of slavery in Egypt couldn't shackle my plan. Wilderness wanderings couldn't stop my plan. Babylonian exile for seventy years couldn't stop my plan. Murderers, adulterers, prostitutes, cheaters, idolaters, liars in the very line of my Son couldn't stop my plan."

God will not be defeated by evil. You can lock these two truths together like this: God works even though sinners. Even out of evil, God, in the orderly plan, has moved Old Testament history forward at a perfect time when Christ would be born.

How do we apply this to our own despair?

It's time to apply all of this to the despair and discouragement you feel personally, and in the bigger picture of what's happening in history.

The train may seem out of control, and you may have sighted Dead Man's Curve straight ahead, but the Engineer, capital e, has not abandoned the train of your life.

During the terrible days of World War II when Germany was bombing England, a father holding his small son by the hand ran from a building that had been struck by a bomb. In the front yard of his home was a shell hole. Seeking shelter as soon as possible, the father jumped into the hole and held up his arms for his son to jump into. The son was terrified. He could hear his father's voice telling him to jump; but the boy cried, "Father, I can't see you. I don't know where to jump." The father, looking up into the sky tinted red by the burning buildings, called to the silhouette of his son, "But I can see you! Jump!" The boy jumped because he trusted his father, even though he couldn't see him.

In the discouragement and the despair of your personal life, you may not right now be able to see your heavenly Father; but he sees you. So you can have hope. The Engineer has not abandoned the train of your life.

At times you may experience the feeling that everything is falling apart, that history gives no hope for the future. And we have to remember our God because sometimes we're tempted to think, "My God, what in the world is this world coming to? What am I coming to? Pessimism and heaviness weigh down on me like lead." As a Christian poet sarcastically wrote, "King Christ, the world is leaking and life preservers there are none." It is then we must remember this genealogy. God is still purposely moving human history forward as he moved it forward through the Old Testament generations to the coming of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

There are two comings of Christ, and God uses sinners to accomplish both.

You see, there are two comings of Christ. The Old Testament generations leading up to his first coming were full of evil people and seemed to be going nowhere. But God was purposefully and in an orderly way marching those Old Testament generations forward to the culmination in Bethlehem.

In our present generation, the drama of human history is also full of evil men, and it seems to be going nowhere; but in the same way as he did in the Old Testament, God is purposefully guiding our history to Jesus' second coming on the clouds of heaven.

He makes sense out of nonsense. And he is bringing forth his purposes even when sinful humans don't think it's happening. Despite men like Hitler and like Stalin and like Idi Amin and others, he is working out his sovereign plan of when history looks like a jigsaw puzzle.

The Devil knew Jesus was on the way through the Old Testament generations, and he did his best to destroy that physical line; but God never let him do it. And now, Satan cannot stop where history is the second coming of Christ.

I think there are basically three views of history. There's the cyclical view, which the Greeks held, where history goes around and repeats itself endlessly.

Then there's the view of modern nihilism, which I could characterize by a blob on a white piece of paper. That means history has no meaning. Things just happen here, but there is no meaning.

Then the Christian view, a linear view of history. I characterize that with an arrow that's going somewhere, toward a goal. Your life is not cyclical, endlessly repeating. Your life is not just a nihilistic blob either. If you're a Christian, your life is linear; God is moving you toward a great goal that he has planned for you.

No one when Jesus was going to be born knew it was happening, but in the perfection of God's timing, three by fourteen generations from Abraham, God did the job. In a similar way, no one knows when the second coming of Christ is coming. But is most certainly is coming in God's perfect time. The very date and the very hour are already in God's mind; and it's a perfect date, and it's a perfect hour just as it was at Bethlehem.

If you are a child of God, never live in pessimism and despair. Never. God knows where he's taking your life. God knows where he's taking your children's lives. God has a design. You may not see him, but he never takes his eyes off you. And God knows where he's taking history. He has a design. Though history seems like a chaos, the Divine Designer directs history toward a goal.

He knows what he's doing in your life, and he knows where he is taking you.

Gordon Terpstra is pastor of the Bellingham (Washington) Christian Reformed Church. He served as a U.S. Army Chaplain in the Persian Gulf War.

(c) Gordon Terpstra

Preaching Today Tape #171

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