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Most of us have at one time or another tried to find more about our ancestors or ancient forefathers. The concept of genealogical searches today usually is more of a fun endeavor rather than being something of serious merit. A man named Zechariah Sibley has spent his life searching out the Sibley family tree and my parents have three huge volumes with many, many pages of our ancestors grouped together in "branches." I can remember as a little kid, when we purchased those books, my father first looking through them. He first found himself and our family in them, then he went back to find out where we had come from, and then he went up our particular family tree to see if anybody famous was in it. He discovered that the Sibleys were originally from England and got their start from two brothers who came to live in the colonies a few decades after the Mayflower came over. They originally settled in Massachusetts before our particular branch moved to Arkansas. Dad was real excited when he learned that one of our great, great grandfathers had been the governor of Massachusetts, but that elation quickly subsided when he discovered that another of our great, great grandfathers had been hung for horse thievery!

Nobody was more obsessed with genealogies than the Jewish people. When God had given the Promised Land to Joshua, He ordered that the land be divided up according to the family tribes of Israel. No matter how many times it had been sold, every 50 years, the houses and land of Israel were returned to the original family tribe to which they were first given. Every 50th year it became important to be able to prove that you were really from a certain tribe! Also, the Levites were appointed to be priests but could only serve as priests IF they could prove genealogically that they were from the tribe of Levites. Part of the problems that Nehemiah and Ezra ran into when they rebuilt the Jewish temple was that many of the Levites could not prove that they were Levites because their genealogies were lost. If they could not prove that they were Levites then they were not allowed to minister before God! And then there were all those prophecies about a coming Messiah. He was to be from the tribe of Judah, and from the lineage of David. And so every family tree of Judah kept meticulous records so that, if the Messiah were to come through them, they could prove that He was definitely from the tribe of Judah.

Unfortunately all of these factors were made worse by the Pharisees of Jesus' time and their religious system was such that if you could not trace your family tree all of the way back to Abraham, then you could not be one of them. That is why they prided themselves in being "the children of Abraham." They thought that they were superior because of their genealogies. That is why the Pharisee that prayed in the temple looked down upon the publican so much, because after all he was a "Pharisee, a proven child of Abraham, and that publican, that sinner, that commoner, could not even prove from where he came." The Pharisees mistakenly thought that God cared more about their past than their present attitude! But Jesus said that God did not receive the Pharisee's prayer that day, but listened to the publican instead! Jesus told them that "ye are the children of Abraham if you do the works of Abraham!" Jesus told them "God is able to raise up the stones to become children of Abraham!" In other words, He was saying "God cares less about where you came from and more about what you actually are!"

Can I preach today? There are a lot of people who claim to be "children of God" simply because they were raised in a somewhat "Christian" home. Their parents prayed occasionally and they blessed the food and went to church on Sunday mornings occasionally and they had a Bible on the coffee table and didn't have one of those weird Buddha statues or weird Islamic beliefs. I've even known people who claimed to be "children of God" because their grandfather was a preacher, or whatever." But you are not really a "child of God" unless you have a relationship with Him yourself! Never once in the scripture do we EVER find the term "grandchild of God!" There are no grandchildren of God! You cannot claim to be a part of this thing on account of someone else's commitment! God would rather take "a publican" who has a sincere heart and a desire to worship Him in Spirit and in truth but does not have any history of any church in his background rather than receive the praise of someone who thinks that they are alright with God simply because their parents were good people. If you had good, Christian parents, then you were blessed and you should thank God for it, but don't make the Pharisaical mistake of thinking that creates your relationship with God!

I had good strong parents that were grounded in the truth and so did my wife, but we still have to sacrifice for ourselves! We still have to fast and pray! We still had to study God's Word to find out exactly what we believed! We still had to repent of our sins, and be baptized in Jesus' name, and receive the precious Holy Ghost for ourselves! We still had to make up in our mind that we were going to trust God through trials! And when we have children, then on my wife's side of the family, they will be 5th generation Apostolics, but they will still have to form their own relationship with God because their are no "grandchildren of God." They will not be able to make it on daddy's anointing or momma's commitment! I'm preaching to some of you today, that you are the first of your family to receive this precious Holy Ghost experience and the devil would like to lie to you and tell you that because of the way that you were raised or your family history, you will never get all of the blessings of God or that somehow His anointing will be hindered. That is in every way, shape, and form, a lie from the deepest pits of hell! God's anointing and blessings and relationship is determined most of all by your love and devotion to Him! Sure I have experienced some blessings from God because of my parent's devotion, but if I had chose to walk away, I would not have received those blessings! I'm challenging someone today: stop beating yourself up over where you came from; don't follow endless genealogies; if you have been born again, then you are a child of God with every right of a rightful heir!

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In our text we read a portion of the genealogies of Jesus Christ. Luke and Matthew took the time to research both Mary and Joseph's lineage to validate Jesus Christ's claim that He was the Messiah. Matthew chapter 1 begins at Abraham and traces the genealogy all of the way to Joseph. Luke chapter 3 begins at Mary and traces the genealogy all of the way back to Adam. Matthew was writing to convince the Jews of Jesus and thus went back to Abraham. Luke was writing to convince the Greeks of Jesus and thus traced the lineage all of the way to the first man Adam. The gospel of Mark was written to convince the Romans of Jesus and thus there are no lineages written because they cared less. The gospel of John was written much later than the other three and was written to defend against some of the false doctrines in the church so therefore his lineage of Jesus Christ begins "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God!" That is a whole sermon in itself!

The genealogies of Jesus Christ in Matthew and Luke don't seem too important to us today and usually, Christians just speed read through them. But they are very important for several reasons. First, both Mary and Joseph were from the tribe of Judah, and both were in the lineage of King David! They therefore prove without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus can be the Messiah genealogically speaking. But there is another reason that they are very important. King Herod who became the Roman ruler of Judea, was a Gentile that wanted to be Jewish! He had even married a Jewish wife, but the Pharisees made him so mad with their prideful genealogies that he had every Jewish genealogical record destroyed in the entire nation! He was basically saying, "if I can't prove that I am a Jew, then no one will." What this means is that there is not one Jewish person alive that can prove what tribe they are from. This also means that the only genealogical records that exist of the Jews are found in the Bible, and that the last person who claimed to be Messiah that can actually be genealogically verified was Jesus Christ! That's why when the Antichrist goes one day into a rebuilt Jewish temple and claims that he is the Messiah, many of the Jews will be deceived because there is no way to check up on him other than the Bible!

Jesus Christ was the point of all of the Genealogies! All of the Genealogies were to end with him! God allowed Herod to destroy all of the records so that no one from the tribe of Judah would ever claim to be the Saviour of the world! And so in our other text, we find Paul writing much later to Timothy who was a pastor and giving him advice to deal with some of the problems that they were having in the church and Paul writes to him:

Paul told Timothy to teach others "not to listen to endless genealogies." There were some in the church that were claiming to be great or to be able to speak for God because of who they claimed that their forefathers were. And Paul told Timothy, don't give any time to that, and teach them to stop trusting in something that cannot even be proved! Paul said that they are "endless," and they can claim all that they want to! But the only genealogy that matters anymore is the one that came to an end and stopped with Jesus Christ! In other words, he was saying "tell your church, if they have been born again, and they are a child of God then that is as far back as they need to trace their genealogy!" Paul wrote to the church in Corinth when they were having some of the same problems with the genealogy issue and said that Jesus Christ changed everything:

In other words, it does not matter who you know or came from in the flesh: "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." I am preaching to people that even this week have had the doubt of your past try to rise up and who your daddy was or was not has tried to convince you that you will never be able to see the greatest blessings and the best anointings of God, but hear the Word of God today through the Apostle Paul: the only genealogy that you need to worry about is whether or not you have been born of the water and the Spirit and are truly a child of God! What you need to be worried about is whether or not you have followed the steps of Jesus Christ in Repentance, water baptism, and resurrection power of the Holy Ghost! If you've been born again, then you've got a new genealogy that is easy to remember: Jesus Christ and you! As far as God is concerned it doesn't go back any further than that! That's why Jesus Christ looked at the Pharisee, Nicodemus, and told him "you need to be born again!" Jesus was saying, "Nicodemus, I know that you have your genealogy meticulously researched and memorized, but that stuff doesn't mean a hill of beans any more because I'm the point of the genealogies!" "What matters Nicodemus is that you must be born again of the water and the Spirit!" "Don't marvel or be amazed at what I am telling you, Nicodemus, you need a second genealogy and that will be the only one that matters!" Don't let the devil get you sidetracked with endless genealogies of the past, but get a new one today in Christ Jesus!

The Jews claim that when the Messiah comes, that he will restore the genealogies by telling all Jews from which tribe they are from. Who cares?! Why wait to find out an endless genealogy of sinners, when you can get a new one today in Jesus Christ?!

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The portion of the genealogies of Jesus Christ that we read as our text is a remarkable one. I want you to open your Bibles and look again at our text:

This is the part of the lineage of Jesus Christ around the time of King David. The only women that are ever mentioned in either of Jesus Christ's lineages are found in these two verses. The Jews did not research women in their genealogies and were not interested in tracing the mother. To the Jews, the father was the important one. But when Matthew began to be anointed of the Holy Ghost to write his Gospel, for some reason God told him to mention the mothers in these two verses. Luke did not do it and Matthew never again mentioned any other women, but it is almost like the Holy Ghost wanted us to notice these women and this particular part of Jesus Christ's lineage. Let's do that now:

Most of you are familiar with the story of how God used Joshua to take the promised land and how he led the children of Israel to march around the walls of Jericho and God caused them to fall. But before they ever got to Jericho, Joshua sent two spies into Jericho disguised as travelers into Jericho to check out the city. In Joshua chapter 2 we learn that once in the city, the officials of Jericho learned that they were there and sent soldiers to kill them. The two Hebrew spies had gone to a local "inn" which was run by a woman named Rahab who used the inn as a front to bring in her real business which was prostitution. The spies did not realize it but by trying to purchase a room in this inn, they were really staying in the home of one of the most sinful women in Jericho!

But this harlot, Rahab, had heard about the Hebrew men's God. And so she did not solicit them sexually, but she began to talk to them about how that she had heard of all that their God had done for them, and she had come to the conclusion that the one, true God of the Hebrews was the real "God in heaven." So when the soldiers came, this harlot Rahab, hid the spies on the rooftop and saved them from being killed. And then when it came dark and they were about to leave and sneak out of the city, she looked at them, and asked if their God could save her and her family! I want you to realize that Rahab was probably not the only one of her family in her profession. But as the men began to leave, she looked at them and basically asked "can God save someone like me!" And the spies told her "God is going to destroy this sinful city, but if you will take this line of red cord and hang it from the window, God will be merciful to you!" And so they slipped off into the night and then the Israelites surrounded the city.

But when the walls fell down, something remarkable happened! The only part of the wall that did not fall was the part where Rahab's house was built! And God "saved" and delivered the harlot and her family! Jewish tradition tells us that Rahab married one of the spies who was named Salmon who just happened to be from the tribe of Judah, and after Joshua chapter 6, Rahab disappears until our text! And it is just as if God wanted us to know that God not only had mercy upon the harlot that day and saved her, but also put her in the lineage of the Messiah! I don't know how many illegitimate children Rahab had already had, but the next baby that she gave birth to was a great grandfather to the great King David! God just wanted you to know, that if He can save Rahab and give her a fresh start, then He can save anybody! The harlot became a great grandmother of Jesus Christ!

The next part of the lineage is just as remarkable! Ruth was born a Gentile from the land of Moab. The Moabites were forever cursed because they had refused to help Moses in a time of need. They were God rejects and idolaters. They worshiped the false god, Molech, where they offered their infants into a fire as living sacrifices! Ruth only learned about God because a man named Elimelech disobeyed God and left the promised place to go live in a Moab. There Ruth married one of the sons of this faithless Jew. I want you to realize that these men were spineless men who refused to trust God and disobeyed God's commandments in every way. Both Ruth's husband and his brother died in Moab. Eventually, Elimelech died as well, leaving only Ruth, her Moabite sister-in-law, and her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi.

Something in the mother-in-law caused her to decide to go back to the promised land. She said, "I may have ruined most of my life by following my disobedient husband, but I'm going back to the land where I can worship the one, true God." And so the scriptures tell us in the book of Ruth chapter 1 that Naomi, the mother-in-law, had a meeting with her daughter-in-laws. She told them "you are young, so go get married to someone else in your own land and I will return alone to my land as a widow." And the other daughter-in-law, named Orpha said "so long, have a good life and walked away." But something in Ruth said "no, I want to go with you. I've heard about how good your God is. I've never seen His temple, and I've never felt His presence, and I've never even set foot in the land that He gave His people, but I've heard that He is a good God and a merciful God! And that's the kind of God that I want to serve!" Naomi tried to talk her out of it, but Ruth would not listen! Something about hearing the stories of this good, good God had caused her to be willing to forsake a future and home and friends for a chance to live in poverty but yet learn more about Him! And so she told Naomi:

And so Ruth went with Naomi to the Promised Land and there begin to live her life as a poor widow picking up the stray pieces of straw in the field behind the reapers; working from daylight to dark just to have enough for her and her mother-in-law to eat that night!

But God saw her heart and her desire, and caused her to come to the attention of one of the richest men of the land who also happened to be single! His name was Boaz and as the romance grew, Boaz married Ruth and God took a little Moabite woman from poverty and ignorance and brought her into the most blessed family in Israel! God doesn't bless names and geneologies but blesses people who are hungry for more of Him!

But that is not even the best part of the story! This man named Boaz, who became the husband of Ruth, was from the tribe of Judah and was the son of a harlot named Rahab whom God had blessed and the child that Boaz and Ruth would have together would be the grandfather of King David! Ruth, the Moabite woman raised to worship horrible idols and to be immoral -- because of her willingness to give up everything that she loved just to find out more about a God that she had only heard about -- became a great grandmother of Jesus Christ! She could have stayed in Moab and had an endless genealogy of idol worshipers and fornicators, but because she sold out to the one, true living God, her genealogy ended with Jesus Christ! It doesn't matter what you've done, or how you've been raised, don't settle for an endless genealogy of sin, but get Jesus Christ involved in your family! Ruth's name means "raised to serve other gods," but God was able to take her and use her for His divine purpose!

We do not have a lot of information about Ruth's son Obed, but we do know that his name means "servant" or "slave." Ruth's son did not become a king right away, and did not follow in his father's footsteps. For Obed to become a slave after being born to the richest man in Israel, means that he made some horrible financial decisions. It also means that he was not one of the most trusted men in Israel. Whatever he did to deserve the poverty that he received, Obed certainly did not elevate the family name! And then he had a son named Jesse. The fact that there is no mother mentioned her suggests to some scholars that Jesse may have been born out of wedlock. If that is so, then his son Jesse followed in his footsteps for the next phrase does not mention a mother either:

There is scriptural proof that David was an illegitimate son of Jesse. David wrote of his own birth:

There are many other circumstancial evidence that points to the fact that David was a product of Jesse being immoral. First, David's mother is never mentioned by name in scripture, nor was she ever around in any of the stories of David's childhood. Second, David's brothers were ashamed of David and despised him. Third, we find that David was quite a bit younger than his brothers, because they were old enough for military service while David was tending sheep. Fourth, David is described as having a "ruddy" complexion and looking different from all of his brothers. Fifth, even Jesse was ashamed of David and did not even acknowledge that he existed until the prophet Samuel asked him point blank: "do you have any more sons?" Sixth, when Saul wanted to insult David, he always referred to him as "the son of Jesse" (I Samuel 20:27; I Kings 12:16). It was if everybody knew the circumstances of David's birth!

But it was this illegitimate son that no one wanted who was probably the son of an illigitimate son whose father had went from being the richest heir to the poorest pauper that God chose to anoint as king! You see, David had every genealogical strike against him, but he loved God and developed a relationship with God! And this illegitimate son, the product of sin who was a product of sin became the only man called " a man after God's own heart!" He became the giant killer! He became the victor! He became the founder of the tabernacle of David and exuberant worship! And He became a great-grand father of Jesus Christ! Somebody needs to get your eyes off of your genealogy of sin and get it upon Jesus Christ! You've been born again, you are an heir to His riches! And that's the only past that now matters!

Some of you are looking at generational sin in your life and how that Grandfather was an alcoholic and Daddy was an alcoholic and so everything points to you being an alcoholic, but I've got news for you today! AA may say that once you are an drunkard, that you will always be a drunkard, but I serve a God that specializes in changing drunkards, and drug addicts, and fornicators, and liars, and rank sinners and washing their past away and changing them forever and making them part of a new genealogy that ends with Jesus Christ! Don't listen to the lies of your endless genealogy of sin, but listen to the promise of God! You can change, there is hope! If Jesus Christ, the perfect, sinless man could come from people like the harlot Rahab, the idolater Ruth, the untrustworthy Obed, and the adulterer Jesse, then God can use anybody! He is no respecter of persons! What He has done for others, He will do for you, if you will be born again and then refuse to listen to the cries of the endless genealogies of sin in your past!

I'd like to tell you that David never fell into the generational trap that was set for him by his father and grandfather, but the last part of our text reads like this:

You see after the blessings and anointing of God were poured out, David got too comfortable. He decided to take some time off from the duties of living for God and when he should have been at war, he decided to stay home! I wonder how many people have lost out with God because they decided that they were so far removed from their past that they didn't need to fulfill their duties to God anymore and just stayed home!?

But as David walked upon his roof top, a lady nearby decided to take a bath in the pool by her house. The only rooftop that could see her was the king's palace, and surely he was away at war like he was supposed to be, but actually as the woman, named Bathsheba began to bathe, David was on the rooftop lusting after her! He sent for her and coerced her to sleep with him. I understand that it takes two to tango, but he had the authority to have her killed if she did not obey him and so she gave in to his demands. As a result of their little love affair, Bathsheba became pregnant. To make things worse, David sent for her husband who was one of his best soldiers hoping that he would sleep with his wife when he came home and thus think the child his, but Uriah told the king, how can I sleep with my wife when my friends are dying on the battlefield and so Uriah, this good man who loved and served God slept upon the doorstep all night long.

David ordered him killed and sent the note ordering his death with Uriah to the commander at the battle. The commander ordered Uriah and some other men to attack a part of the cities wall that was heavily fortified and many men were killed. After Bathsheba had gone through a time of mourning, David brought her into the palace and married her.

Everything was fine until the baby was born and the man of God showed up with a word from God for David. He told a story of how someone in the kingdom only had one lamb and a rich man who had many had stolen that poor lamb and killed it for his friends. In indignation, King David rose up and screamed, "where is he? He should be killed?" The man of God pointed his long finger at the King and said, "thou oh King art the man!" And as punishment, God caused the baby to die. Because this son of Jesse thought that he could afford to take a day off from serving God, the generational curse was fulfilled in him as well! The great King of David was nothing more than an adulterer and murderer!

But oh, the power of repentance! David got things right with God. He fasted, he prayed, he repented! His psalm where he mentioned the circumstances of his birth was the prayer of repentance after Bathsheba!

And after David got everything right with God, God did a remarkable thing! God allowed Bathsheba to get pregnant again and her son was named Solomon! Even though Bathsheba's son was not the eldest of David's sons and was not even second or third on the list, God allowed Solomon to become the next king of Israel and allowed his sons to be the lineage that would lead to the great King Jesus Christ! It was Bathsheba's son, Solomon whom God blessed unlike any other earthly king and gave wisdom above any other person of that time! When God forgives, He releases you of the debt! He gives you a clean slate!

And so as the Holy Ghost moved upon Matthew as he was writing the genealogies, he mentioned the mothers here just to draw your attention to the fact that God can take losers, sinners, adulters, idolaters, prostitutes, murderers, servants, and the poor and make them a lineage of kings unlike any other lineage! Satan would try to tell you that you are enslaved to your past and just because, like David, you have fallen in the same traps as your parents did, that you are a hopeless case and that you are doomed to keep repeating an endless geneaolgy of sin! But I've got good news for you today: that sinful genealogy can stop at Jesus Christ! Don't follow the endless genealogies of sin, but get focuses on the great, powerful, and merciful God that we serve: He has the power to change your life forever no matter what has happened in the past!

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