Scripture to Go

Episode 9 - The "Begats"

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Okay. Show of hands. How many of you derive a secret

pleasure from skipping over the “begats” in the Bible? You open your
read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan and today’s assignment is five long
chapters. As soon as you discover the first four contain nothing but genealogy,
flip, flip, flip go the pages. Bingo! Presto! Your usual thirty minutes of reading
only takes you ten.

I’ll confess, I do that most of the time as well. There are

days, however, when I push myself to read every last biblical name in hopes of
discovering a hidden treasure. After all, it was a tiny clip of Scripture
buried under stacks of names that brought us that little gem called The Prayer
of Jabez–a book that went viral before anyone knew what “viral” meant.

Tracking the “Begats”

Why did God make sure these genealogies survived in

Scripture until now? I mean, why should we care anymore?

Maybe this inventory of names, so carefully preserved down

through the ages, affixes something of a tracking number to God’s promise to
the list’s originators. The promise’s fulfillment can be traced by following
the names throughout history.

As soon as sin marred the Garden of Eden, God promised Adam

and Eve a Seed who would come through them to redeem all the evil they had
introduced to the world. A Son of theirs would deliver not only the two of them
from death but everyone who proceeded from them. (Genesis 3:15)

Well, that got all the begetting started. Adam begat Cain

and Abel. Then, after Cain killed Abel another son, Seth, appeared. Cain begat
some “seeds,” but Seth produced the line that carried THE “Seed.”

Soon Seth begat Enosh who begat Canaan who begat some more

until Noah showed up. He begat three seeds (Shem, Ham, and Japheth), but Shem
carried the promised Seed forward to Abraham to Isaac to Jacob (who was known
as Israel). From Israel to Judah to Jesse to David, the names drew a straight line
from the “promisees” (Adam and Eve) to the Promised One–Jesus.

Then, all the begetting stops.

Or does it?
The “Begats” Change Direction

Jesus gave birth to no children in the natural. Yet Paul

called him “the firstborn of many children.” (Romans 8:28) If his line was
going to continue, the manner of begetting was going to have to change. Instead
of giving birth to seeds through a natural womb, Jesus delivers children for
his Father through a spiritual portal.

He reaches out his hand to us from his place in the

heavenlies and invites us to join him. As our hearts touch him, he draws us out
of our old life into a new one, begetting us into his bloodline and making us
part of his genealogy. Our names may not appear in Scripture, but they’re
recorded, nonetheless–in God’s Book of Life (Philippians 4:3).
Merging Bloodlines

It may feel odd to think of merging our bloodlines with his,

blotted as ours are with ugly episodes of sin. But Jesus isn’t afraid of our
foibles or the bobbles of morality filling our family history. He understands.
His own human bloodline was filled with ancestors bent on murder, rape, incest,
deceit, jealousy, rage, apostasy, and more.

He knows both the beautiful and the ugly in our genealogy.

Still, he stands at the end of all our “begats” holding out his hand saying,
“Come up higher. Be born into something new and wonderful. Let me take the seed
that is you and combine it with the Seed that I am.” Read the rest on my website...

Check out my blog at tmurphywrites.com or follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

Want to learn more about the tabernacle? Check out my devotional, A Place for Me in God's Tent

Thanks to Dreamr Productions for my theme music.

#TerryMurphy, #TMurphyWrites, #Begats, #Biblegenealogy

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Scripture to GoBy Terry Murphy