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Matthew begins his book with a list of some of Jesus’ ancestors. He lists three “sets” of fourteen generations each. These should not be taken as only father-to-son generations. In one place, we know for certain from the books of Kings and Chronicles that Matthew skips from one man to his great-great grandson. So when it says “Uzziah, the father of Jotham” it would be more accurate to say, “Uzziah, the ancestor of Jotham.” Most likely, Matthew simply wants to highlight the main, or most significant, people in the line of Jesus. In the Jewish thinking of that day, it was entirely legitimate to skip a few generations when listing a family history. The Greek word that is translated “was the father of” by the ESV is literally something like “generated,” or, “procreated.” In fact, in this passage, Matthew does not use the Greek word for “father” at all. Writing in this way allows Matthew to make his point, without being overly technical about every single ancestor.

Now, some people might realize that this is Joseph’s family and Jesus was not blood-related to Joseph. That’s true, of course. But Jesus was adopted by Joseph. The adopted child is just as much an heir as the child by blood. Through adoption, these are the legitimate ancestors of Jesus Christ; just as, through spiritual adoption, we are the legitimate heirs of God’s kingdom through Jesus.

Jesus Christ was born into a human family. His human ancestors included kings. You may wonder how it was that a descendant of the ancient kings was unknown, and unrecognized as royal. Let me give you an illustration of how this could be: I am the king of Serbia. Really. Well, actually, I would be the king of Serbia, if Serbia was still a monarchy, and if several thousand people who are ahead of me in the line of succession were to die, including my own mother and sister and nephew. So, although my ancestry can be traced back (on one side of the family) to a Serbian king, it doesn’t really matter because Serbia doesn’t have kings any more, and even if they did, there are other people more directly in the line of descent.

So, with Jesus, his ancestors can be traced back to King David and beyond, but many other people could claim more or less the same thing. Also, of course, the Jewish people had not had a king for 500 years before Jesus came into the world.

This list of Jesus’ human ancestors includes some shocking people, and some seemingly insignificant ones too. Matthew starts the list with Abraham. Abraham was a man of faith. But he had his failures. He slept with his slave Hagar; in fear, he lied to kings about his wife Sarah, telling them she was his sister. Isaac, Abraham’s son, was a pretty solid guy. But Jacob, the next in line was a trickster, a con man. He had two wives, and also slept with two different slave girls.

Judah was the next ancestor of Jesus. He was one of the ten brothers who sold their own sibling, Joseph, as a slave. Matthew records that the line is traced through Judah’s son Perez, who was born to him by a woman named Tamar. Tamar was actually Judah’s daughter in law. After her first two husbands died (Judah’s two oldest sons), Judah would not allow her to marry his last son (which, by law, he was supposed to do). So she disguised herself as a prostitute, wearing a heavy veil, and Judah, not recognizing her, slept with her, and so the next ancestor of Jesus – Perez – was conceived. Not exactly the kind of family history you proudly tell your grandkids.

A few generations later came Salmon. Salmon married a former prostitute named Rahab. Not only had she been a prostitute, but she was also not an Israelite. That was a very big deal in those days—she wasn’t even one of God’s chosen people. Don’t miss the significance here: so far, TWO of the ancestors of Jesus were prostitutes!

One of the descendants of Salman and Rahab was Boaz. Boaz, like his ancestor, married a foreigner, someone who did not belong to the people of God. Her name was Ruth. Not only was Ruth not an Israelite, but she had also been married once before. Boaz and Ruth had Obed, who became the grandfather of king David.

David was perhaps the most noble ancestor Jesus had. Yet he had major moral failures also. He committed adultery and murdered the husband of the woman he had sinned with. Then he married that woman, and she became the mother of the next ancestor of Jesus Christ. That’s right, at least one set of Jesus’ ancestors were adulterers. Matthew even remembers her, not as the Queen, nor as David’s wife, but rather “the wife of Uriah” (Uriah was her first husband, the one David had killed).

In fact, in this entire list, Matthew mentions only four mothers: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah (who was called Bathsheba). Aside from Ruth, the most significant thing about these women is that they were involved in major sins committed by both the mothers and fathers mentioned here. And even Ruth was a foreigner, an outsider to the people of Israel. In other words, it almost seems like Matthew is trying to draw attention to the checkered past of Jesus’ family.

In 1:7-11, Matthew continues with a recitation of the royal ancestors of Jesus proceeding from David until the time of the Babylonian Exile. There are a couple of great kings in this list. Hezekiah was a good ruler and man of faith. Josiah was too. But both of them failed to raise their children in faith. And most of this list is a remembrance of bad kings. Here are a couple of the individuals mentioned:

You get the picture. Let’s put it plainly. The human ancestors of Jesus the Messiah were a bunch of lecherous, fornicating, murdering, idol-worshiping, faithless thugs. This is the heritage that Jesus was born into. You see it’s not just that Jesus was born into poverty and humility in human terms. He was also born into a heritage of spiritual poverty and spiritual shame. This is the heritage that we all share as human beings. This is what Jesus took upon himself.

When I consider all of this, three things occur to me. The first is that Jesus’ humanity extended to having a dysfunctional family, and relatives who did shameful things. Although he himself committed no sins, the sin that corrupted the entire human race was a part of his human heritage. For our sake, he took that heritage upon himself. It says in 2 Corinthians:

God made him who had no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:21)

That began at the moment of Jesus’ conception. That sin-heritage was completely and inextricably bound with the humanity that Jesus inherited from Mary, and even from his adopted family in Joseph.

Second, it seems clear that the Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to deliberately include these particular people in the recounting of Jesus’ human heritage. The Lord seems to be pointing out that he can, and does, use even deeply flawed people. Some of these ancestors of Jesus never repented, and everything I know about the bible suggests that many of them will be in hell, not heaven. But even so, God used them, willing or unwilling.

Third, even these deeply flawed people can be redeemed. As I just mentioned, some of them rejected God’s grace. But others – like Judah and Tamar, Rahab, David and Josiah – repented and received redemption. In fact, that is why Jesus came – to bring the redemption that had to come both from humanity and from God. Jesus, eternally God, but born human on a particular day in history, is the only one who could make that redemption total and effective. He bore in his nature the weakness of humanity and the strength of divinity.

Consider this: alone, out of every human that has ever been born, Jesus got to choose his own birth family. And this is the one he chose. These are his people. These liars, cheats, and thugs, these rejected outsiders and failures are his people – by choice!

You and I are his people. One of the greatest tragedies that I ever see is people thinking that they are not “good enough” for Jesus. If you are a cheat, an adulterer, a murderer, an outsider, come join the family. You’ll fit right in with Jesus’ people. I know the church sometimes makes it hard, because we do try to behave better than that, and we know the standard is better than that. Some people even get judgmental. But, if it helps, try to remember that they are sinners too; their sin might be hypocrisy and pride. Maybe your sin isn’t hypocrisy, like theirs, but that doesn’t make either one of you better than the other. The starting place for everyone in relationship to Jesus is right where you are, at this very moment. Jesus didn’t wait for his family to get cleaned up before he joined them. He didn’t wait for them to stop being hypocrites, or hateful, or lustful, or greedy. Instead, he joined them; then he cleaned them up himself.

Maybe you know someone who feels like they already have too many disadvantages to ever become a redeemed, holy follower of Jesus. Maybe you feel like that. Maybe you feel like you could never have anything to do with a Holy God. Well, just look at where this Holy Messiah came from. He didn’t have a better family than you. He wasn’t born in a nicer place. He took on all the disadvantages that humanity has to offer, so that HE could offer YOU every advantage of heaven. all you need to do is have the faith to believe the gift is truly given to you, and to reach out and receive it.