28 April 2019
Dear Phyllis,
To say that the Lord's ways are strange and past finding out is a gross understatement. There are many things in Scripture that simply blow my mind, but perhaps the most mind-boggling of all
is the thread the Father used to weave together the fabric that became Christ. There are five women listed by name in the genealogy Christ in Matthew. And all of them have a story that is unbelievable. I can't begin to narrate each one today, but the other
morning the Lord was speaking to me about one of them. This is a story that defies any human explanation. It goes back to the days of Abraham.
Biblical dating places Abraham somewhere around 2.500 BC. The biblical account tells us that there was a man living in Ur that God spoke to telling him to get out of there and go to a land
that He would show him (Gen. 12:1-5). God told him to leave his kinsmen behind and go out alone, but we see he took some baggage with him. One was his nephew, Lot. We see Lot staying with Abraham for many years and going down to Egypt with him. But after they
came back from Egypt there was a problem where the land just was not able to support both of them. Abraham told Lot to chose what he wanted and he would take the rest. (Gen. 13:5-13). Lot looked at the plain of Jordan; he saw it was hands down the best, and
said he would take that. The Bible is very instructive and says it was “just like Egypt”. Egypt is a type of the world, and the Word also says he pitched his tent towards Sodom. That tells volumes about the heart of Lot.
Many years have past and we see that Lot has given up being a nomadic herder, he has sold all his cows, and moved into town. A real bad move. Sodom is the worst word in scripture, and almost
in human language, to describe evil. It is distinguished by being the one city that God singularly destroyed by fire and brimstone. (I know that Gomorrah got it too.) In Genesis 18:17 we see an amazing statement where God says, “Shall I hide from Abraham the
thing that I am going to do?” (Gen. 18:17); and in a unique moment in human history, the Lord personally came down to talk with Abraham about His plans to destroy Sodom. We see that unique discussion where Abraham stood before the Lord pleading for any righteous
in Sodom. He started with 50 and got down to 10 before he quit. As it turned out the only ones who were saved were Lot, his wife, and two unmarried daughters, who had to be physically dragged out of town. But even then, Lot's wife's heart was still in Sodom
and she turned into a block of salt. Some time later we see Lot with his two daughters in a cave thinking that they were the only survivors left on planet earth. To save the human race his daughters got their dad drunk so they could have sex with him and preserve
humanity. The girls got pregnant and each had a son. The son of the oldest daughter was called Moab, and the younger sister's son was Ammon (Gen. 19:36-38).
With the passage of time we see that both of these boys were the fathers of two major tribes mentioned in the Bible. One is the Moabites and the other is the Ammonites. This is highly significant.
Four hundred years later, when Israel was coming out of Egypt on their way to Canaan, their path took them through the land of Moab. At that time Malak was the king of Moab and hired he Balaam to come curse Israel to save his territory (Num. 22). This was
one of the major events during that 40 year period. Much to the dismay of Balak, God turned the curse of Balaam into blessings, but by his attempt to curse God's people Balak sealed the fate of the Moabites forever. We see in Deuteronomy 23 that no Moabite
was allowed in the congregation of the Lord forever (Deut. 23:3,4). This is terribly serious. Later, at the time of Jehoshaphat, we see an invasion of the Moabites in Israel, and, in response to Jehoshaphat's prayer, the Lord wiped them out (2 Chron. 20).
But buried in there we find one of the most wonderful books in the Bible. It was during the period of Judges there was a famine in Israel. A half-saved, back-slid family left Israel to go
to the land of Moab. They had two sons that they married off to Moab girls. In time all three men of the family leaving the poor widow mother. By that time things had improved in Israel so the mother decided to go back home. She told the girls that she was
sorry for the terrible misfortune that had happened to them and she hoped they could find new husbands. But one daughter-in-law said, “No way. I'm sticking with you. Where you go I will go. Where you live I will live, Where you die I will die. Your people
will be my people and your God will be my God.” (Ruth 1:16,17). The two women returned to Israel but the mother-in-law was one bitter lady. Fortunately the daughter-in-law was a woman of marvelous character. If you know the book you know what happened. Ruth
proved herself one outstanding woman and in the Lord's marvelous grace she wound up marrying an upstanding wealthy man and lived happily ever after. But Ruth had a son that turned out to be the grandfather of David. The final words in Ruth are the genealogy
of David. And we see that repeated in the genealogy of Jesus in Mat. 1:5. Ruth is one of the five women listed in the genealogy of Christ.
You talk about something amazing – now there is one for you. Buried in the DNA of Jesus we find a thread that came from Lot and that incestuous event that happened in the cave when his daughter
got pregnant by her dad. The result of that produced the Moabites that were cursed of God who could never enter in the community of God's people. And from that God laid His hand on a woman that had a son who was the grandfather of David and eventually became
the One who was incarnate Son of God. This is a thread of the fabric that God wove together to be His Son.
This is shocking but there is another story that is even worse. I can't go into that today but the take-away from this is a truth that the Lord has emphasized in the details of His Word. Of
the five women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ four are scandalous. Ruth was a wonderful woman, but her background was ridiculous.
They say you should never ask an Australian about his ancestry In the early days of the British Empire. Australia was the Alcatraz of England. To get rid of the worst criminals, England put
them on ships to take them to Australia so they could never come back. Australia was populated by criminals. Ruth came from the same roots. What does this tell us?
God can take some of the darkest events in our life and weave it together to make the fabric of what we are today.
Another major point is that grace trumps legality. I don't believe in pulling all the nails in the house so that the walls fall down. I don't believe God smiles on the marriage of sexual perverts
or sanctions sodomites as ministers of the Gospel. But I do believe there is an amazing element of grace in the Gospel. One of the most contested issues Jesus faced in His day was the Sabbath. The Pharisees had taken the 4th commandment and made
it into a chain. The Lord went out of His way to challenge them about that. One day He countered their accusation of illegality by reminding them what David did in eating show bread, which was illegal, but he was not censored for it. In doing that Jesus said
He was the Lord of the Sabbath (Lk. 6:1-5). Or in other words, “I made the law and I can allow grace to triumph. I wrote an adulterer must be put to death, but I also can say they can be forgiven”. There might be a law that a Moabite could never
come into the congregation of God's people, but God choose a Moabitess to be an ancestor of Christ. Pretty amazing. God took a famine, a half-saved Israeli family, and the death of three men to go get an incest descendant of Lot to be the ancestor of Christ.
Ruth is one of the five women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew. This is what the Gospel is all about.
Praise the Lord,
bill
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