Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

In 2017, I got my DNA tested. It wasn't anything too elaborate; you buy a kit online, you spend some money, and they send it to you in the mail. And when it arrives, you get a little pack of sticks and you twirl them around in your mouth and you seal them off in a test tube and you send them off and you wait. And then, some weeks later, the results come back. And I was pretty excited when my results came back, and I discovered that I'm predominantly Anglo-Scottish—mostly, which is, well, it's kind of boring. You're hoping for something a little bit more exciting than that, but predominantly Anglo. Although, I can tell you that I'm also 2.9% Finnish, 1.4% Eskimo, 2.2% Persian from Iran or Turkey, 2.3% Ashkenazi Jew, and 3.7% East Asian. And I can tell you that story, but I'm not going to tell you it just this morning. And it was kind of fun, and what it does is it tells you a little bit about who I am; it's a little bit of my history, my DNA.

116 years ago, a young couple by the name of Bill and Jenny left the United Kingdom and set sail by ship bound for Sydney. They were migrating; you could have called them "ten-pound Poms," except for the fact that that scheme hadn't started—that came many decades later—and they weren't Poms at all; they were both proudly Scots. Soon after they arrived in Sydney, their one and only son was born in Waverley; his name was Murdoch John Mackay. Why do I tell you that? Well, because Murdoch John Mackay was my grandfather, and his father, my great-grandfather, his name was Bill Mackay. Bill Mackay had been a member of the Glasgow police force, as had his father before him, and so when he came to Sydney, he joined the police force of New South Wales.

Bill Mackay quickly rose through the ranks, and in the late 1920s, while officer in charge of Darlinghurst, he was credited with suppressing the infamous razor gangs. During the opening of the Harbour Bridge just a little bit to my left back in 1932, you may know that Francis De Groot rode his horse through the crowd and cut the ribbon that was supposed to be cut by Jack Lang, the Labour Premier. And there was a lot of politics behind that, of course. However, it was Superintendent Bill Mackay who dragged De Groot off his horse, and there are photographs of him proudly standing beside him having dismounted him. "Big Billy," as he was known, rose to the rank of Police Commissioner. I don't have time to tell you about him, but he was an interesting person. He was a controversial figure; his story meshes with that of Sydney in the 20s and 30s and 40s—of nationalism, nationalistic movements, and politics. The sort of politics that was played out in Europe was also played out in Sydney in the 1930s in New South Wales. And doubtless, if you know anything of him or if you're a student of history, you may have a view of what sort of person he was. But I'm telling you, he was my great-grandfather, and his only son, Murdoch John Mackay, was my grandfather.

Why am I saying this to you? Because understanding your roots or your family background tells me a lot about you, and understanding my roots and my family background helps to explain who I am and what I'm about. See, if they had not left Glasgow in Scotland 116 years ago, if my grandfather had not been born in Waverley, I would not be here. That's my history. Now, we've just read of another birth. It's not just an interesting birth of an interesting person, but it's the birth of one who is crucial to each one of us. It is the birth of a child on whom turns the destiny of us all. This is what Matthew says in his history, his biography: "This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18-19).

It's a simple story. Joseph and Mary are pledged to be married. A pledge is a promise, but from that point, it starts to get a little bit complicated because before they've actually come together physically, they discover Mary's going to have a baby. Pretty awkward, right? "Hey Joe, I'm expecting." "Yeah, I know, it sounds weird." But Joseph is a gentle and kind man, and he knows he's not the father. But rather than cause Mary some disgrace, he planned to divorce her quietly. Wait till the baby's born, and then we'll work that out. But then an angel appears to Joseph in a dream: "Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She'll give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

You know what? This all happened. A lot of stuff around Christmas didn't really happen—elves, drummer boys, Mariah Carey—I won't go into the details, but it's all just an addition. But this bit really did happen. It was a real birth, real town of Bethlehem, real angels, real shepherds, real Joseph, real Mary, real baby Jesus. And we're going to get to this bit, but not today; we're going to get to this in the next couple of weeks. But today, I want to focus on the genealogy of Jesus.

Now, when the passage was read by Peter, no doubt you thought that you were in an episode of The Simpsons and Homer was here, or maybe you were Homer in church and you're just about to nod off during the genealogy that was being read out. Matthew records in Chapter 1 Jesus' whole family tree, and it occurred to me I could read it again, but I won't read it again. It reads a little bit like the phone book—not the greatest. Well, it's got a great cast, but pretty hard to pick up the plot of what's going on. But this is Jesus; this is His roots. This is who He is and where He's come from; this is what he is about. We are being reminded word by word; every name in the list is a person, and the name in the list says something about who they are and what they stand for. Every name stands for something. Even today, if I said to you the name King Charles, that would immediately bring to mind a person and what they stand for. If I said to you the name Greta Thunberg, it stands for something. Mandela, Bono, Churchill, Madonna—every name stands for something. It stands for who they are; it has connotations. And if you're a student of the world, names mean something to you.

And if you're a student of the Bible, the history of God dealing with people, the names stand for something. So right at the very beginning in Chapter 1, Verse 1: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." And immediately you think, "David, okay, that stands for something." It reminds you of the promises of God—the promises of God to David that one day there would be a king that would come from David's line, and that king would rule on the throne of everything and rule over everything forever and rule over God's people with wisdom and with kindness. You would think to yourself when you hear the word David, "Ah, that stands for something." And when you hear the word Abraham, you would think, "Oh, that stands for something as well." It stands for the promises of God that he made to his people: that he would cause them to be a great people, a great nation, in a great place under God's great rule.

And you might think to yourself, "Oh, that makes sense; we're talking here about the promises of God." That's what those words stand for. But then Matthew does something really unexpected, too. I don't know if you picked that up during the genealogy, but he mentions four women. Now, that's unusual because normally in a genealogy from this particular culture, you would follow the male line. So to notice four women—Tamar, Ruth, Rahab, and a woman referred to as Uriah's wife—to hear those four names, you would immediately realize that Matthew is telling us something very unusual. Because there are four women, but they're not the sorts of women you'd probably take home to meet your mother. One of them is a sex worker, another pretends to be a sex worker, another is involved in a high-profile affair that was notorious in the history of Israel, and another one who was childless, widowed, and stateless. Each of these women is extremely vulnerable. All of them are non-Jews; they are all outsiders to the natural promises of God, and yet they are part of the promises of God according to Matthew.

And we're reminded again of a couple of things here: we're reminded that God uses people we'd never expect; God uses the little people. We're reminded again that Christianity is a religion of radical grace, of God treating us in ways we need rather than the ways we deserve. God's lavish, unconditional, extraordinary embrace of ordinary people—just the little people like you and me, and in fact, anyone who wants to come to Him. This is Jesus' history; this is His family; this is His roots; this is His connections. These are the ancestors of Jesus; this is who He is. And it's got ordinary names in there, but it's also got some great names. They're very important people—I've mentioned Abraham, I've mentioned King David, Jacob's in there. There are people in here we know lots and lots of things about.

It's also full of nobodies—people like Abiud, people like Eliakim, people like Azor, people like Elihud. Elihud is mentioned twice in the whole Bible: once in Chapter 1:14 and again in Chapter 1:15, and that's it; that's all we know about him. There are ordinary people like Eli, and there is a person called Zadok. I'm not sure, but I think this is the one that George Friedrich Handel wrote his great coronation anthem about: Zadok the Priest. Imagine being Zadok. Imagine being the person that someone writes a great coronation anthem about and gets played at the coronation of kings and queens over centuries. But more than that, what a great honor to be an ancestor of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine what an honor that would be to have that in your family tree? What a great honor it would be to be a Zadok. Imagine being the great-great-great-great—and I might have missed a couple of greats—grandfather of Jesus.

Would you want to swap places with Zadok? Would you want to be a Zadok? There's no way I'd want to be a Zadok. You see, I am such a lucky man, and we all are such lucky people because we all know what God was doing, but Zadok didn't. In fact, none of the people in his family tree knew exactly what was going to happen. These people were all looking forward; they had a promise from God, they had multiple promises from God. They're looking forward, they're hoping, they're trusting, they're believing, they're wishing for God's savior, but they all died without knowing. But we know. We know what God did.

Some years ago in Sydney, in a place called Bethesda Hospital—it doesn't exist as a hospital now, but it did at the time in Marrickville in Sydney opposite a place called Victoria Park—a young woman of 22 gave birth to her firstborn son. You all know labor's never easy; it's an exhausting process, it's painful, it's messy. But at the end of it, she held her baby in her arms, and that was me. And if you'd been there, you could have seen it all. You could have seen the effort, you could have seen the pain, you could have seen the mess, and at the end, you could have seen the baby.

About 28 lifetimes ago—28 lives of a normal person stretched out fingertip to fingertip down through the ages—28 lifetimes ago, you could have seen this birth. You could have seen Mary in labor, you could have seen the baby pop its head out: the baby Jesus. God has become a human. But this was not just any baby, because for thousands of years, God had been promising and people had been waiting and hoping and questioning and trusting and believing and wishing. And at that moment, Mary held all the answers in her arms. You could have seen it all.

Let's give thanks, shall we? Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the truth of your promises kept. Often we feel like the world that we're in today is out of control, and yet what we see here is your absolute care, absolute plan, the way you effortlessly control history to bring about your promises. We thank you for these promises that are sure and sound, the promises that find their "yes" in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray, Heavenly Father, that knowing the goodness of your promises, and especially the ones we celebrate in this Christmas season, that you might give us steadfastness, you might give us hope, you might give us courage, and you might make us content. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.

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