The Light of Christmas is Christ, Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior, the Light of the World. It is amazing to see how God's plan unfolded for His Son to come into the world. Where and when did God's plan get started? Consider a part of Scripture that you may tend to overlook. For many students of the Word, it is the genealogies, often viewed as the listing of difficult to pronounce names, and names of unknown persons. Consider the genealogy of Jesus as recorded by Matthew (see Matthew 1:1-17). Matthew, writing to the Jews to convince them that Jesus was the King of the Jews and the promised Messiah, included the names of five women, four of them Old Testament women. This is not the customary order of things, and quite unlike the genealogy according to Luke (see Luke 3:21-38).
Among these five women, we can understand the inclusion of Mary, the mother of Jesus, given the miraculous circumstances surrounding His birth. However, to include Tamar, the widow of one of Judah's sons who, while acting as a prostitute, got pregnant by her father-in-law who threatened to have her burned to death upon first learning of her pregnancy ... Rahab, the Gentile prostitute, who hid the spies ... Ruth, the Gentile from Moab ... and to note that David was the father of Solomon whose mother had been Bathsheba, Uriah's wife all made for interesting, unlikely, and unusual inclusions.
Why? For what purpose? To what end? Could Matthew have included these women to emphasize that God's choices in dealing with people are all of His grace? Could they have been examples of sinners Jesus came to save? Or could they have been representative Gentiles to whom the Christian mission would be extended? All of this is a reminder that God's thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways. I would encourage you to pay special attention to your thoughts and ways. Allow the Light of Christmas to shine brightly on them.
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