In the Gospel of Matthew, the Christmas Story doesn’t begin with a baby born in Bethlehem and placed in a manger. When Matthew wants to tell us the story of Jesus, he takes us back hundreds, even thousands of years, to look at the family line from which God chose to bring the Redeemer into the world. Matthew starts by giving us a genealogy — which gets skipped over by many people, because it reads like a Hebrew phone book!
But, if you look closely, you’ll find that Jesus’ family tree contains a lot of knots: people we have read about in the Old Testament, whose stories were full of scandal and intrigue…and sin. Yet, these people each represent a story of redemption, in which God blessed a mess and brought beauty from ashes and salvation from brokenness. Ultimately, it was from this group of people that God brought The Savior, The Redeemer, Jesus Christ into the world.
In Matthew 1:21, we read this glorious proclamation: “Mary will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Jesus came to save you from your sins. That is what Christmas is all about.
I invite you to join us at White Fields Church in Longmont every Sunday in December and on Christmas Eve for “Redemption: An Advent Series” – in which we will be looking at the knots in Jesus’ family tree, and how God redeems.
Theology for the People 