If you were tasked with retelling the most significant story in human history, how would you begin? Matthew had to ask the same question, and what was his answer? A genealogy. Seriously? Could there be anything more boring than that? We normally skip right over them. But in Jesus’s world, genealogies were anything but boring. And when we understand what Matthew does with the genealogy, we grasp how electrifying it was for those in the first century world, and how electrifying it is for us today with respect to hope, salvation, and restoration. For Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus makes it undeniably clear that that all are welcomed to be part of the God’s family, no matter how messed up our past or our present may be.

(This teaching was done at Genesis Church in Noblesville, Indiana.)