The Original Dysfunctional Family

As the Christmas season rolls along, we all enjoy some of our favorite Christmastime movies. For me and my family, a couple movies stand above the rest:

-Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Who can't love a movie that it so un-politically correct that it constantly informs the audience that its main characters are "misfits" and "nitwits," and "will never fit in!"? It's pure comedic gold.

-How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Either version, be it cartoon or Jim Carrey, will do. A hairy green dude busts on the scene, steals all the Whos' stuff, and then takes it back in the end in dramatic, save-the-sleigh-from-near-death fashion. He's a mean one, that Mr. Grinch.

While both of these movies, be it the reindeer with a glowing nose or the green...(man?) with a tiny heart, feature plenty of freaks and weirdos, they do not raise a candle to the movie that comes in next: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

The Griswold family Christmas is pretty much the epitome of dysfunction. The tree catches on fire, the cat dies, the crazy cousin in the RV shows up... Everywhere you look, there's a misfit trying to ruin Clark's "brilliant" plans. However, did you know that Jesus has a family tree that could beat the Griswolds head-to-head? Let's look at the Book of Matthew:

"2 Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers, 3 Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Aram, 4 Aram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, 5 Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab, Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth, Obed fathered Jesse, 6 and Jesse fathered King David."

"Then King David fathered Solomon by Uriah’s wife,7 Solomon fathered Rehoboam, Rehoboam fathered Abijah, Abijah fathered Asa,8 Asa fathered Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat fathered Joram, Joram fathered Uzziah, 9 Uzziah fathered Jotham, Jotham fathered Ahaz, Ahaz fathered Hezekiah, 10 Hezekiah fathered Manasseh, Manasseh fathered Amon, Amon fathered Josiah, 11 and Josiah fathered Jechoniah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon." -Matthew 1:2-11, HCSB

Now, I have placed in bold some fun character's of Jesus' lineage, going from Abraham's grandson, Jacob, down through the kings of Judah. Let's read about some of these people:

-Jacob, who would become known as Israel: Ah yes, the father of the twelve sons who went on to be the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet, further inspection shows some interesting things. He cheated his twin brother Esau out of the birthright (inheritance) that Esau deserved by lying to his blind, sick father. (Genesis 25-26) He was tricked into marrying a girl that he didn't love, so he all but ignored this first wife and their kids until he could marry the girl he loved and have kids with her. In fact, all kinds of craziness went on with the whole "multiple wife" deal (Genesis 29-30).

-Judah, fifth son of Jacob: Judah was one of those sons Jacob had with the wife he didn't want. However, Judah was one of the stronger personalities, and was a leader of the group. When the baby brother of the wife Jacob loved started having dreams about ruling the older brothers, they'd had enough and wanted to kill them. Judah had a better idea: sell the pest into slavery. That way, they'd escape the body being discovered, and make money off of it (Genesis 37).

-Tamar, Judah's daughter-in-law: Judah had some sons, but they died. The first one, however, had a wife named Tamar. As Judah needed both a husband for Tamar and a grandson to carry on the family name, he told Tamar to wait for the baby boy Shelah to grow up. She didn't like this idea. Instead, she opted to dress up as a prostitute. Judah, who was now a single man, decided to hire her- not knowing it was his daughter-in-law. He got her pregnant, and then had twin boys (Genesis 38).

-Rahab: Flash-forward a few books in the Bible, and the nation of Israel has multiplied to a bunch of people. These people were slaves to the Egyptians, freed by God through Moses, and then rebelled against God. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and then were ready to enter the Promised Land. They sent spies into the land, to check stuff out. When the spies got to the city of Jericho, they needed a place to hide. Who did they end up with? A local prostitute named Rahab. Rahab hid them, and they promised when the city was destroyed, she would live. Out of everyone in the city, it was a common prostitute that would save the day. (Joshua 2)

-David: Israel captures the Promised Land and makes it their own. Meanwhile, Rahab had a son named Boaz, who fell for a chick named Ruth. Ruth and Boaz had a kid named Obed, who had a kid named Jesse. When Israel's first king, Saul, got all self-absorbed and evil, God decided they needed a new king. David, Jesse's youngest son, was chosen. While David did many amazing and God-filled things, he had one major slip-up.

You see, David had this friend named Uriah. Uriah was one of David's best commanders in the Israeli military. Uriah also happened to have a smoking hot wife named Bathsheba. While Uriah is off waging war in King David's name, Bathsheba stays home. David, who had not gone to battle, either, decides to look around his city and winds up being a Peeping Tom on a bathing Bathsheba. He decides she's the most beautiful girl in the world, and thus uses his kingship to force her to sleep with him.

Unfortunately for David, Bathsheba winds up pregnant. So now, Uriah (one of David's best friends) is going to have a wife that his buddy got pregnant. How could David have done this? What could David do, so Uriah never knew? I'll tell ya: David has Uriah put on the front lines in a fierce battle, and orders everyone to withdraw from around Uriah so his friend would be ganged and killed. Uriah can't find out about that whole "baby mess" if he's dead! Bathsheba went on to marry David and give birth to the baby, which God allowed to die because of David's sin. David then went to comfort the obviously upset Bathsheba, and sleeps with her. Lo and behold, she gets pregnant again, and has a boy named Solomon (2 Samuel 11-12).

-Solomon: Solomon was also a pretty good guy, much like his dad David. He built the temple of God, and was super-rich and super-smart. However, he was like his dad in another way: he loved beautiful women. He had 700 wives, and 300 concubines. Many of these girls were foreign, and didn't believe in his God. So, instead of remaining true to God, he allowed these beautiful women to woo him and he quit listening to God. Because of his unfaithfulness, his kingdom (which he and his dad had worked so hard and trusted in God to build) was divided at his death, and would never return to its former state (1 Kings 11).

-Rehoboam: Solomon goes on to have a kid named Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the king of the half of his dad's kingdom known as Judah (sound familiar?); the other half was Israel. Rehoboam, unlike his dad and granddad, never loved God. He did more evil "than all that their [his] ancestors had done." He led Judah to worship false gods, set up temples to foreign deities, and even had male prostitutes at his shrines (1 Kings 14).

-Jehoram (Joram): Four generations after Rehoboam, and Judah has had some shaky kings. Abijah, Asa, and Jehoshaphat were all decent kings, but all messed up enough that Judah still wasn't coming back to God. Jehoram took it another level: he became king at age 32 and died only eight years later. He led Judah into many battles against nations where they got beaten repeatedly, and did all kinds of evil things. He eventually got sick, and died "to no one's regret" (2 Chronicles 21).

-Uzziah: Five more generations passed, and five more morons tried to run Judah. Only one (Joash) came close to following God, and that was because he spent much of his life being guided directly by a priest. Uzziah, Joash's grandson, was almost a success. He decided to follow God, and while he did, he was prosperous. As fate would have it, though, he couldn't handle success. As seems fairly consistent with this family, he got arrogant about his abilities. He decided that he, despite the Law that God handed down to Israel in the wilderness, was holy and righteous enough to go into the temple and burn incense directly to God. This was in direct rebellion to God, as only God decided who was holy, and Uzziah subsequently broke out into a serious skin disease. He lived the rest of his short days in quarantine. (2 Chronicles 26)

-Ahaz: Uzziah's son Jotham wasn't a complete failure, and tried to follow God, kind of. Jotham's son Ahaz was a different story. Ahaz completely rejected God, and instead followed all kinds of religions from the local people. He even burned his children and passed them through a fire, all to worship some random pagan god. Burning your kids? That's messed up! (2 Chronicles 28)

-Manasseh: Ahaz, for all of his evil, did produce one good thing: his son Hezekiah. Hezekiah loved God thoroughly, and it paid off. Judah prospered, and Hezekiah may have been the best king to come after Solomon. His son, Manasseh, was a different character. Instead of loving Godlike his dad, Manasseh decided to try out all kinds of other things. He, too, burned his sons. He practiced witchcraft, divination and sorcery. He consulted mediums and spiritists. He even invented his own idol, and made a statue of it. Because of his evil, Manasseh was captured and shackled up by enemy forces. As he was chained to the floor, Manasseh had a change of heart, and turned everything around. He was set free, started loving God, and tried to fix everything he screwed up before (2 Chronicles 33).

-Amon: Manasseh's son, Amon, was an idiot, though. Amon was such a jerk and rebelled against God and everything his dad tried to fix so much that he only lasted two years. It was on his second year of reign that his servants conspired against him and killed him in his own house. Talk about a sorry ending. (2 Chronicles 33)

After Amon, there were a few more kings. Some of these kings loved God; most didn't. Eventually, the people of Judah were captured by the kingdom of Babylon (modern-day Iraq) and oppressed. They eventually went home and were almost immediately taken over by Rome. It was during this time that Jesus was born.

I find it amazing, as we look over this list of misfits, that these are the people that God chose to have as the ancestors of our Savior. I mean, come on, look at the people in Christ's family tree: prostitutes, sorcerers, murderers, adulterers, liars... the list goes on and on! This tells me one thing: God can use anyone.

Much as I touched on with my post "Are You Talking About Bread?" (http://freedbug.blogspot.com/2010/12/are-you-talking-about-bread.html), God can use anyone to accomplish his goal. We all have sinned; that's a given. Who knows? You may be just like one of these people I mentioned above. But that's the great news that Christ gives us: we can still be made to accomplish God's Will. You may be doing evil, but God can still use it for good. Isn't this amazing?

This isn't to encourage you to sin; rather, I encourage the opposite. You see, this is also proof that you don't become the product of your past. By putting trust in Jesus and the Word of God, you can be made righteous. Look at Rahab: she was a prostitute, and yet was saved from the destruction of Jericho. Not to mention, she was also the great-grandmother of King David.

And King David himself is also a testament to the redeeming powers of God. He was a murdering, back-stabbing, Peeping Tom-turned-wife stealer of a man, yet he changed his ways for a loving and gracious God, and was rewarded; we know that David was the greatest king, in terms of morals, that Israel ever had, and wrote most of the Book of Psalms as prayers to God. Not a bad turnaround, if I must say so.

Are you stuck in your sins, or focusing on a screwed-up[ past? Stop! Put your faith in the redemption that Jesus can offer, and start over. Everyone likes a do-over. I urge you to accept the Lord as yours.