Sunday 12 • 01 • 19

Go through the book of Matthew. This year, we're gonna go through the genealogy of Jesus. And so I'm gonna read for us part of the genealogy from Matthew chapter one, and then we're gonna focus in on one of the people in that genealogy, and I'll read from Genesis chapter 38. Not all of it is right in your bulletin. So I will guide you in what we're doing. And because there are lots of Hebrew names, I'm just gonna do the heavy lifting for us this morning. You can just be along for the ride, not have to read aloud.

So the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew one one through three and then 38 verses six through eight and eleven through 30.

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. — Matthew 1:1-3

Let's look at Genesis 38, which highlights the story of Judah and Tamar. Verses six through eight, eleven through 30.

And Judah took a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her and raise up offspring for your brother.

I'm gonna fast forward here. Onan is also put to death by the Lord. We pick up in verse 11.

He was also wicked. Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till Shelah, my son grows up, for he feared that he would die like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shuah's daughter died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah, with the sheep shearers. He and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And when Tamar was told, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear the sheep, she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up and sat at the entrance to Ennaim, which is on the road to Timnah, for she saw that Shelah was grown up and that she had not been given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, 'Come, let me come into you,' for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, what will you give me that you may come into me? He answered, 'I will send you a young goat from the flock.' And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it, he said, what pledge shall I give you? She replied, your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand. So he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by him. Then she arose and went away, taking off her veil she had put on and she put on the garments of her widowhood. When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her. And he asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who was at Ennaim on the roadside? And they said, no cult prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I have not found her. Also, the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here. And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this goat and you did not find her. About three months later, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality. And Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. And she as she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, by the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant. And she said, please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff. Then Judah identified them and said, she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son, Shelah,' and he did not know her again. When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb, and when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, this one came out first. But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out, and she said, what a breach you have made for yourself. Therefore, his name is called Perez. Afterward, his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. — Genesis 38:6-8, 11-30

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that the parts that are clear, the parts that are confusing, Lord, all of it is from you. We pray now for your Holy Spirit to join us in this room as he always is and to be present to us as we open your word as we talk about these things. Father, we pray that you would open our eyes, open our ears, open our hearts. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Well, Merry Christmas. Right? I mean, Happy Thanksgiving. What a great passage for today.

Just what you were expecting coming to church. We're gonna be looking at the begats of the New Testament. So this genealogy, a lot of times it's called the begats because if you grew up King James version of the Bible, it's so and so begat so and so begat so and so begat so and so. And it's usually one of those parts of the Bible, to be honest, that we skim or we skip over because it's kind of boring. And yet, if you do so, you're going to miss out. This genealogy is really unique in all the ones of the Bible and certainly unique in all of ancient near eastern literature because this genealogy has got some really different things sprinkled in.

Let me explain. Matthew, whose genealogy we're reading, and we're going to go through this all the Sundays of Advent, he is writing to a Jewish audience. All of his explanations are sort of directed to the Jewish people, and his purpose is, and you see this at the beginning of the genealogy, to show that Jesus is bonafide. Jesus is legit. He's trying to show like, Jesus goes back to David who is the great king of all the great kings of the Old Testament, and before that to Abraham who's the father of the nation. He's like, Jesus is a good Jewish boy in the line of the kings. That's his purpose.

And yet, if you read this genealogy closely, which we're going to do over the next month, you're gonna see that they're included in this genealogy, not just the names that you would expect. Now the genealogy is traced through the father's line. So it's all the daddies going back over and over. But in this genealogy, there are four women mentioned. And they're not, if you study the Old Testament at all, they're not the four women we sort of expect to be mentioned. So you'd expect maybe if this was like heroes of the Old Testament, we'd get Sarah who was married to Abraham or Hannah who is the mother of Samuel. Instead, you get these four women who are kind of remarkable in a couple ways.

One is that most of them are not even Jewish. So the four women are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. And of those, we know Rahab was a Canaanite. We know that Ruth was a Moabite. And we know that as you get further on and you get to Bathsheba, she is very likely her husband's a Hittite. Alright. And it's very likely she is too. Something like not Jewish.

The other thing that you get in this, the other reason these women are remarkable, is they sort of have a whiff of scandal about them. They're not the kind of nice Christmas stories you expect. You have Rahab, who's a prostitute. You have Ruth, a woman who's very poor, who's kind of a refugee. And then you have this story with Tamar, sexual entrapment. And then as we look a couple weeks from now, we're gonna get to Bathsheba, which is clearly a hashtag MeToo story. I mean, these are hard stories.

And here's the thing I want us to see—the overarching point in doing this mini series, as we look at the four mothers of Jesus in this passage—is I want you to see what Matthew's doing here. He's saying, yes, Jesus is the legit king. He is the royal king in the line of David, goes all the way back to Abraham, but he is a king for everyone. He's the king for everyone. He's a king for the outsiders. I mean, if you're here this morning and you feel like, I just don't fit. I don't fit with other Christians. I'm not cleaned up and nice. I don't feel like I fit here. You are Jesus' kind of people. You are Jesus' kind of people.

And what we see here is Jesus also includes in his family, his kin, people that we might raise an eyebrow at. We might be like, really? This is in the Bible. This is the Christmas story. But if you feel like that, you are Jesus' kind of people. That's what I want you to see in this.

So four weeks, four women. And today's story, as we look at the story of Tamar and Judah, it's a story of scandalous grace. It's a story of a woman who does a bold and daring act. It's a story of a man much in need of redemption, and it's a story of Jesus' kind of people. And if you have young ears around you, I'm just going to tell you, I'm going to be very discreet, so you don't need to worry. I'm not going to—I even left out the juiciest parts of this narrative, if you can believe it.

So here's what I want you to see. We're going to look at this with three headings: the righteousness of Tamar, the redemption of Judah, and finally, the kin of the king. And before I go on, I just want to give a nod. A lot of my source material comes from a writer, Carolyn Custis James, who's done a lot of work on lost women of the Bible is what she calls them. Great story here.

The Righteousness of Tamar

Now, I didn't start with the first couple of verses here, so I'm going to give you some background. Tamar marries Er, son of Judah. Judah is her father-in-law.

After some period of time, Er was a wicked man and the Lord put him to death. We don't know any more about that. So Judah marries off Tamar to his other son. Now, that may sound odd to us, especially if you think about your brother-in-law. But this was actually done as a way of providing for this woman and providing for the family line. It ensured that Er's family continued on, but it also provided a safety net for women in the society.

As a widow, Tamar would have been the most vulnerable person in the society, and we see that she is widowed twice. She's first married to Er, he dies, and then Judah marries her to his son, Onan, who again was a wicked man—God puts him to death. And so she is a widow by the time Bible scholars estimate she's maybe 20 years old. She is very young.

In that society, widows have no options. She can't go get a job. She's not allowed to own land. The provision for her has to come through family. There was a law in Israel, the law of the levirate. Levir means brother. And so that's why Judah follows the law in marrying Tamar to his next son in line. This was to provide for her and to protect her.

But after the second boy dies, Judah says no way is he marrying her off to the third one. He tells her, "You just wait, Tamar. Go back home to your father's household. In a couple years, I'm gonna call you. Shelah, maybe he's 11. When he hits 15, I'll call you up." So she does. But the passage says he had no intention of following through on this. He has no intention of making sure that she gets to marry, because he's like, "I don't know what's wrong with this woman. She's a bad apple. She's got a curse. Something is wrong with her."

I want you to see what a difficult position this put Tamar in. When she realizes he has no intention of fulfilling his commitment, she is without options. She can't make her father-in-law do what's right, and so she does this bold and desperate act.

Tamar's Plan

She plans to sexually entrap her father-in-law. She takes off the clothing of her widowhood—probably black, just like we wear today in mourning. And she puts on the clothing of a prostitute with a veil over her face, and she prepares to go and find him.

Notice this in the story: she doesn't just know where Judah will be, she knows what kind of man Judah is. She's gotten to know this guy by now. She's like, "I know what's going to happen. If I dress this way and I sit by this place in the road, he is going to proposition me." This is not a guy who's morally upstanding and will just walk right by. And sure enough, this is what Judah does. He engages her for prostitution.

There's this funny little exchange that happens here. She's like, "How are you going to pay me for this?" He's like, "I don't have payment on me. I'm gonna give you my cord, my signet ring, and my staff." The Bible scholar Robert Alter says that's akin to giving someone your wallet and your car keys. These are essentials. So he goes back home and sends a friend back with a goat to pay her. But when the friend gets there, there's no woman on the side of the road. In fact, the people around are like, "We don't know what you're talking about. There's never a woman on the side of the road right here."

Fast forward three months. Tamar is pregnant and Judah finds out. And he's not just angry, he is over the top enraged. In fact, he demands that she be killed. He has the power over her life and death. He has the power to bring her out and kill her. What's going to happen? Is she gonna be burned alive?

And in this moment, she's being dragged out, and she says, "These things—the signet ring, the cord, this staff—the man who owns these is the father of my baby." And this is where the whole thing turns because Judah says something really peculiar. He doesn't say, "Okay, okay." He says, "She is more righteous than I am." That word in Hebrew means just. She is more just than I am. She is more righteous than I am.

In Hebrew, it's a word I want you to know. It's called tzedek, t-z-a-d-e-k. Tzedek, righteous, just. And isn't that fascinating? He doesn't say like, she did right, I did wrong. He's not like, hey, sexual entrapment, good idea. But he's like, no, she is more righteous. Compared to her, she's done nothing. I have done great evil. That's what he's saying by saying this.

Now why would he say that? And before we judge her, American audiences, modern church people are like, ugh, this is a story. I want you to remember, she is powerless and she is merely exploiting the double standard of her day and to some degree, our day, which is that a man can sleep with any woman he wants to and get away with it. A woman sleeps with someone, and suddenly she is ready to be killed for it. She's exploiting this double standard, and when the crime is exposed, he has the power to kill her. And yet, what does she do? What does he call her action in doing this? Tzedek, righteous, doing justice. There was something that she was seeking that was making him do justice.

Justice and Righteousness in Scripture

Now, I know some of you really recoil at that word justice, especially like the word here has the connotations of social justice. And I know that if you are politically conservative, some people are like, ugh. That word has been co-opted by the liberal left and they've made everybody into a victim, and like everything is about making people get what's theirs. And so in our society, a lot of people are like, I don't want to hear anything about social justice. And yet, here's this thing: justice, doing tzedek, this is a central theme of the Bible. This is a central thing in the Old Testament and it's a word that we don't need to flush. We actually need to learn to reuse in the right way. Tzedek is all over the page of the Bible.

So when most people hear the word righteousness, they think something like moral purity, sexual purity. That's why we raise an eyebrow at this story, which is not filled with that. But listen to Scripture. In the Bible, tzedek is a word that has the connotations of doing right in all your relationships. I'm going to borrow heavily from Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice, for a lot of this.

Justice is care for the vulnerable. It's care for the people who are on the margins of society about to fall through the cracks. In Scripture, there are four groups of people. We call them—ask any deacon in our church, they know these words—the quartet of the vulnerable: the widow, the poor, the orphan, and the stranger. And God's people are commanded to do justice to those four groups, to show tzedek to those four groups.

Today, we might think of people like migrant workers, refugees, elderly people who are on fixed incomes, single mothers, the homeless. They're people whose lives could be easily pushed just a little bit that puts them into a place of crisis. That's what's going on.

The justice of society in the Bible, over and over God evaluates His people. He judges His people according to whether or not they exercise tzedek, how righteous or how just they are toward those four groups. In fact, this actually is something that God identifies Himself by. He identifies Himself as one whose heart is closely aligned with justice.

You know, you have a job, many of you, and if somebody asks you about what you do, they're asking you about your public life—what do you do most of the time in public? So people ask me what I do, I'm like, oh, I'm Geoff Bradford. I'm pastor of a church in Downtown Raleigh. That's how I publicly identify. How does God publicly identify in the Old Testament? How does he do it? Defender of widows. He's the one who is the father to the fatherless. God publicly identifies himself with tzedek and He expects His people to exercise the same kind of care.

So many people ask, like, hey, why do we use the term justice? Charity seems like a better word. Maybe mercy seems like a better word. The problem is that both those words imply a good but optional activity. Charity is not charity if it's demanded. And over and over in the Bible, what we actually see is works of righteousness, works of justice is what God's people are called to do.

When you care for the poor, you are doing acts of righteousness. — Matthew 6

So important to our Savior. In the book of Job, Job calls out the people for every failure. He calls failure to help the poor a sin, a lack of tzedek. Not sharing your bread would be unrighteousness.

See, I have to ask this question: Do we understand that at our church? Do we look at the Bible that way? Like, there are people in our city that God calls us to actually care about what's happening with them as part of, like, the very essence of our salvation. Not as an icing on the top, extra something else.

This isn't a signal like talking about justice, it's not like, oh no, CTK is going liberal this Sunday. This is central to the heart of God. The Old Testament people were disciplined by him, Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom, sent into exile in part because they failed to exercise justice. Paul, when he finally comes to Christ, fourteen years later, he appears before the apostles and they're doing that scratch and sniff test with Paul. Hey, your theology right? They find him completely legit and they say one thing: make sure you remember the poor. And Paul says, I'm very eager to do that. Tzedek, remember this. Remember social justice. And this is what this story is all about—that for Tamar, what is she doing? She is righteous because she is forcing him to do Tzedek. She is forcing him to do what is right regarding the like—she is on the margins of society, and she's forcing his hand. It's not a secondary thing.

But there's another thing that she's doing. Her actions are part of the redemption story of this man Judah. Let me show you how that works.

The Three Strikes Against Judah

This is a part of the larger downward spiral in Judah's life. It's kind of a three strikes situation. I'm going to take you through strike one, strike two, strike three.

Judah is one of 12 sons of a man named Jacob, one of the patriarchs of Israel. I thought we had a lot of sons. We have six. This guy is twice the family we have. So 12 sons. Judah is one of the boys.

Now there is in the family one of the youngest sons named Joseph, and he is daddy's favorite. Some of you just got through Thanksgiving, and you can tell me exactly who daddy's favorite is, and you're not happy about it. Favoritism has this way of destroying families, and nothing's different in this family. So here's Joseph, daddy's favorite, who dad kind of dotes on. And what's worse, Joseph is also a braggart. He has had no shame in telling his brothers, "I had this dream that I was the sun and you're the planet, and you're all bowing down to me." Probably like, no problem. They hate him at this point. What's more, Jacob has this multicolored robe made for his son. Like, in case no one knew, I just want to make sure we advertise in technicolor that this is the favorite boy.

So one day, all the brothers are out in the field working, and they see Joseph coming from far off. He's wearing technicolor robes, and they're like, it's our moment. This is our time. And they plan to kill him. But Judah is like, no, let's not just kill him, let's make some money off of it. So they throw him in a pit, they wait till a traveling group of people come by from Egypt, they sell him into slavery. And then they take the robe. Judah takes the robe, they kill a goat and put goat's blood on this robe, rip it up a little bit, and take it back to daddy. They come to him and Judah says this:

Hakarnah—recognize. You recognize this robe?

Of course, Jacob is like, yeah, I recognize that robe. That's my favorite son's robe. He bursts into tears, assumes the boy is dead. Strike one. Like, this is not a guy you want to do business with, right? Judah.

The second strike is what we see in this passage. He is allowing this woman—this probably barely out of teens woman—to fall through the cracks of society. He doesn't care. He's like, I am not going to give my son Shelah to her. I'm not going to do what's required by the Levirate law. I'm not going to make sure that she is provided for, that she doesn't starve to death. He does this, and she's powerless according to the law. There's nothing she can do about this. Strike two.

And then strike three—see toward the end of this passage. Notice what happened when Tamar's dark secret is exposed. When Judah finds out that the woman's pregnant, notice his reaction. He says two words in Hebrew:

Bring, burn.

Bring her out and burn her to death.

Now, just to highlight how crazy this is, this is nowhere else in the Bible. God's people never burned other people alive. And Judah not only has this kind of power over her life and death, but you can see the malice in it. He doesn't just want her dead, he wants her to suffer as she dies. All the hatred, all the anger about the death of Er and Onan is directed at this poor woman, and he has no shame in calling for her to be burned alive.

You see how far gone? Strike three. How far down the spiral has he gone? He is about to do an enormous evil. He is about to send an innocent girl to a brutal death.

Now, time out real quick. Let me just say that this isn't so different from us.

I mean, this story is horrifying, and yet aren't we also people for whom things that are not dealt with, secrets, bitterness, blame—I mean, you've just come from Thanksgiving. They have the power to grow. Some people say time heals all wounds. That is the biggest lie. You know what heals wounds? It's confrontation, forgiveness, honesty, reconciliation. That's what heals wounds. But blame turns into bitterness, into hatred. And that's what happens in the story and it's not so far afield from us. Yes, way more violent, but the same kind of violence and anger is in so many of our own hearts.

What a violent scene. They're dragging out Tamar. Picture it. They're dragging her out to be burned, and she doesn't have a trial. I mean, she just gets a couple words out as they're dragging her out. And she says this, she says, "Recognize"—in Hebrew, hakurna. The same words that Judah said back before to his daddy about the robe.

Robert Alter, biblical scholar, found this ancient rabbi who commentated on this passage about fifteen hundred years ago who wrote: "The Holy One, praise be He, said to Judah, 'You deceived your father with a goat. By your life, Tamar will deceive you with a goat.' The Holy One, praise be He, said to Judah, 'You said to your father, Haqarnah, recognize? By your life, Tamar will say to you, Haqarnah.'"

She says, "Recognize." And of course, she's talking about the signet ring, and the cord, and the staff. She's talking about his wallet and keys. Do you recognize these things? But don't you understand that those words have so much more meaning in this passage? Judah, do you recognize what you've become? Do you recognize what you're doing? Do you recognize that you've gotten to this point that you are happy to let an innocent woman go to her death? Do you recognize what's happened in your life? Do you recognize how dangerous this position is?

I mean, her life is hovering over a fire. His life is hovering over an abyss. I mean, what happens to this man if he goes on with this act? The rest of his life carries this dark secret that he allowed this to happen.

The Turning Point

Judah does a remarkable thing here in telling the truth. I mean, think about this. This is ancient Israel. This isn't like a big city. This is a little town. Everybody knows everybody's business. If he owns this, everybody's gonna know for generations. Everyone will know.

And when he says, "She is more righteous than I," this isn't just the turning point for Tamar. This is the turning point for Judah too. This is the redemption story. Because after this, we see Judah is a different man.

After this story, do you remember what happens? Do you know what happens? Judah and his brothers are living with dad still. Eleven brothers, back with dad. Then the famine comes to the land and they go down to Egypt to buy grain. And there they encounter the right hand man of Pharaoh who happens to be this very difficult person for them to deal with, treats them harshly. And so he sells them grain, sends them on their way, and as they're leaving, they find a cup in one of the sacks. They get chased out by the Egyptian officials who say, "Wait a second, somebody has stolen something from that official." They bring him back in and it's the youngest son Benjamin, daddy's new favorite. Daddy's new favorite, replacing Joseph.

And Judah does something remarkable in that moment. Instead of letting this just happen and the son Benjamin stay behind—the official says, like, he can go, just leave Benjamin here in jail—Judah says, "My life for his. I'll stay here. Let him go."

I mean, do you see what's happened to Judah? He's gone from a man who all he cares about is himself, all he cares about is his own name, all he cares about is what he wants, to a man who says, "I will lay down my life for my brother." What has happened to him? Salvation is what's happened to him. Redemption is what's happened to him. He became a person who lays down his life for his brother because Judah met the Lion of Judah, all because of this woman Tamar. All because of her.

You know, later on in this passage, we read about the birth of two boys. She has twin sons by Judah. The boys' names are Perez and Zerah. And we sort of skip over this. This one is called Breach. She named it Breach, which also means breakthrough in Hebrew—Perez. It's a great name for your kids, by the way, because it means breakthrough.

This story is a picture of grace that has broken through in Judah's life. Redemption that has broken through in his life. And my life, your life, every person needs this kind of grace breakthrough, just like Judah sees.

Because what happens to Judah? He hakarnah. He recognizes. He recognizes first that he's a sinner. That he has gone down this pathway of self-destruction, and that his life will continue down that pathway of self-destruction.

And that is true for every one of us. I mean, from those who look the goodest on the outside to those who look the baddest on the outside. The reality is all of us are rebels against the Lord. All of us are those who inside are internally fighting against him. And if what is on the inside is brought out and we actually saw it, we would recognize it. Every one of us stands condemned.

Second, Judah recognized and you need to recognize, all of us need to recognize how much we need Jesus, the Lion of Judah. Here in the story, Tamar is punished for Judah's sins. She's about to be dragged out and punished for his sins. The real Judah, the Lion of Judah, was dragged out and punished for our sins. In the story, Judah orders Tamar's destruction, but the Lion of Judah steps out and goes to the cross of his own accord. Judah was anything but righteous, the Lion of Judah, the only true righteous one who came to take away the sins of the world.

Do you see how this is a redemption story for this man? He was never the same. The reality is every person needs the same redemption story. This redemption story is offered to you this morning. God wants to do the same thing in your life. He calls you, Hakarnah—do you recognize? Do you see?

What Christmas Is Really About

The last thing that this passage shows us: you might go like, why is this in the Bible? And why is this highlighted for us in Advent of all time? Here's what I want you to see. This is exactly what Jesus' kind of people are like. Tamar and Judah, I mean, these don't fit the Hallmark shop Christmas. It doesn't fit the precious moments nativity scene Christmas. But this is what Christmas is really about. It fits the real Christmas story. The one that involved a dirty manger and a stable and some dirty shepherds who come to worship—not the best of society, the lowest of society.

Every year, our family loves to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special. You know, the one where Charlie Brown buys the worst tree. But my favorite point is where Linus tells the Luke 2 Christmas story, verse by verse. He reads the whole thing out loud, and then at the end he says, "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." And that's what I want to say to you this morning about Genesis 38. This is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

It's about a rescue. Tamar is for us a picture of Jesus. I've heard people foolishly say things about the genealogy of Jesus like, oh, look how women messed up the line of Jesus. No. This woman rescued the line of Christ. Judah was on a pathway towards self-destruction, and her bold action was part of the rescue story of this man. Tamar is a picture of a rescuer. That's what Christmas is all about. It's not about nostalgia, or family, or Christmas trees, or presents, or even warm fuzzy feelings. It's a story about an incredible rescue.

And second, this is what Christmas is all about. It's a king for everyone. For those who don't fit, for those whose lives feel like a tragedy, for those whose lives are a mess, for those who are down and out, for the Judas of the world. This is Jesus' kind of people. And if you're here this morning and you're like, I don't fit this church, and I don't fit these kind of people, and my life is not neat and tidy, it is something I can barely hide. You know what? You are Jesus' kind of people.

Our world is dying to hear this kind of Christmas story, not the nostalgia one, not the one of perfect families and stockings and everything's happy and bright, but this kind of Christmas story. God is the one who identifies himself with the quartet of the vulnerable. God is the one who cares about justice for the poor and the weak and the orphaned and the stranger. God is father to the fatherless, a defender of widows. Not a, "Hey, let's do something nice for people since it's Christmas," but an all-year-long kind of justice.

And also that God gives rescue. Our world is dying to hear of a God who gives rescue to those who are real sinners, not pretend sinners or theoretical sinners, but real sinners. This story shows us there is no soul beyond the reach of God's mercy and grace. And there's nobody so good that they don't need it. This same Christmas story shows us the grace of people who don't deserve it, and yet God is over and abundant. There's no Black Friday inventory that runs out on grace. This is what we see.

There is always more, more grace for real sinners. These are Jesus kind of people. You can be too. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you. We thank you that the Bible isn't the cleaned up version, that it's the real deal, the story of the real deal. Lord, we pray today, Father, that you would help us to believe more than we disbelieve, that this kind of grace is available to us. The one who's the long term Christian, the one who doesn't think they belong here—Lord, none is outside. Lord, we thank you that you are the King for everyone. We pray for faith to believe it today in Christ's name. Amen.