Friday, January 8, 2010

inspiring records

Matthew 1:1-17

One of my new year's resolutions is to be more organized. This week I couldn't find some paperwork we needed to wrap up some stuff from 2009, so I looked and looked and searched and searched and it didn't help that there was someone waiting for the info. I went to where I knew it was and only half was there. After about twenty minutes of looking and sweating, I found it, but I wish I were more organized.

While I was reading the first chapter of Matthew this week it struck me how precise the accounting of Jesus family tree is recorded here in this gospel. Fourteen generations from Jesus back to the exile, fourteen generations from the exile to David, and fourteen generations from David to Abraham. Honestly, I'm not sure who my great grandparents are on either side of my family.

My Dad has done some research into our family history, but we are still not sure exactly where our heritage comes from. We think Scotland, but we can't say for sure. You would think with the record keeping in modern history that we could at least go back a couple hundred years so that we could determine where our relatives moved to the U.S. from, but we have not figured it out.

That makes the record keeping in Matthew 1 that much more impressive. Would it even be possible to keep records like that without the help of God? Several thousand years of records. All pointing to one fact - Jesus is God. He is the promised Messiah. All pointing to one truth - God is God. He is the inspired genealogist.

2 comments:

Kristin said...

that's a great point about that passage in Matthew 1...I'm pretty disorganized myself (although I can usually find things despite this) and the kind of record keeping it took to be able to trace Jesus' lineage all the way back is pretty spectacular...I can't even keep track of my tax returns for the last 7 years!

secondjohnvs12 said...

Hey, Kristin.

Glad you found this reading plan. Hope you and John are doing well. We miss you guys here.