Merry Christmas!

Read Matthew 1:1–16

CATCHING YOUR BREATH

Christmas Day is an inevitably hectic day for many of us! And the story of
Ruth has often gone at breakneck speed. So to wrap up Finding Hope Under
Bethlehem Skies, we’re going to celebrate Jesus’ birth by briefly joining the
dots from Ruth to Matthew’s Gospel.

RUTH’S STORY, HIS STORY, OUR STORY

For the first readers of the book of Ruth, the family tree at the end of chapter
4 must have been fascinating. Having got to know Ruth, Naomi and Boaz,
picture their reaction when discovering just where this family story ends up.
The miraculous firstborn of this Moabite widow would become the
grandfather of Israel’s greatest king, David! Imagine if you’d tried telling that
to Ruth and Naomi as they returned to Bethlehem back in chapter 1…
But as we read the opening to Matthew’s Gospel, we see that King David
isn’t the end of the story either! David is just a hint of a much greater
summit: ‘Jesus who is called the Messiah’ (Matthew 1:16).
As Matthew begins his account of Jesus’ life, he traces Jesus’ lineage all the
way, through David, back to Abraham. God had promised Abraham that his
offspring would be a blessing to the whole world, and now Matthew shows
us how Jesus is the fulfilment of that promise.

QUITE THE FAMILY TREE

But as we make our journey from Abraham to Jesus, Matthew also makes a
point of stopping off along the way in all kinds of intriguing places. And
that’s because he wants us to see the kinds of people Jesus’ family history
includes.
For starters, it was highly unusual to include any women – and yet
Matthew goes out of his way to mention five (including Ruth, 1:5).
This certainly isn’t a ‘greatest hits’ of Israel’s history. As Ann Voskamp puts
it, Jesus’ arrival was ‘through families of messed-up monarchs and battling
brothers, through affairs and adultery and more than a feud or two, through
skeletons in closets and cheaters at tables’.
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Neither are Jesus’ ancestors restricted to being Israelites. In particular,
Ruth was a Moabite. It’s a clear indication that Jesus’ heart would be for the
nations. John Piper captures it like this: ‘Just as his blood was shed for the
nations, so the nations’ blood ran in his veins.’
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FOR YOU AND ME

Perhaps our final encouragement, though, should be personal. The pastor
Sam Allberry notes that this family tree highlights how the kind of people
Jesus comes from anticipates the kind of people Jesus has come for.
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However our Christmas Day goes, whether it meets our expectations or
whether the cracks appear far more quickly than we’d like, Jesus has come
for people like us. Outsiders and oddballs. Sinners and sufferers and
strangers. The wanderers and the weary. Heartbroken widows and hopeful
daughters-in-law.
He came down to earth from heaven,
Who is God and Lord of all,
And his shelter was a stable,
And his cradle was a stall;
With the poor and meek and lowly,
Lived on earth our Saviour holy.
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REFLECTION

Give thanks to the Lord for the gift of Jesus, who rewrites our stories and writes
us into his story. Pray that the wonder of this might dwell in your heart over
this busy but special day.

Listen to ‘Matthew’s Begats’ by Andrew Peterson

Ann Voskamp, https://religionnews.com/2013/12/10/nyt-bestseller-ann-voskamp-hung-christmastree-upside/
John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence, p. 112.
Sam Allberry, http://twitter.com/samallberry/status/805079815342657536
Taken from Cecil Alexander’s hymn, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ (1848).