The Unshakeable Label...

During this Christmas season, we are spending our time looking at the Christmas story from one of the four accounts of Jesus life in the Bible. This account, called the gospel of Matthew, was written to the Jewish people to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, the one God that promised would come to rescue and restore the Jewish nation as His chosen people. The Jewish people were looking for the descendant of Abraham, from the line of David that would be the promised Messiah who would bring the Jewish people back to God and back to prominence in the world.

So to prove that Jesus was the long promised Messiah, Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy to show that Jesus had the proper family background to be the Messiah. But as we discovered, for a Jewish person, who was so familiar with the history of the Jewish people that is recorded for us in the Old Testament, reading this genealogy, or family tree of Jesus, would not seem very convincing and would even be very confusing. For the average Jewish person, the family tree of Jesus would not seem to represent a strong family tree; instead Jesus family tree would look like it had some bent and broken branches. And as a Jewish person continued to look at Jesus family tree, they would read the following, beginning in Matthew 1:3:

Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab,

Now whether you were raised in church and regularly attend church or not; whether or not you have read much of the Bible, most people have heard of Rahab. We have heard of Rahab because Rahab had a label didn’t she? Rahab has a well-known reputation doesn’t she? There is a reason most people do not name their daughters Rahab.

We know who Rahab was because of her label, “you know, Rahab the Harlot”. You see Rahab, had a label that has followed her throughout history- Rahab the prostitute; Rahab the harlot. Imagine being Rahab and living life in your hometown, which was Jericho, and being unable to shake that label. “Hi, what’s your name? My name is Rahab. Oh, I have heard of you, you’re the harlot; you’re the prostitute”.

Maybe you can relate to Rahab. Maybe you are here this morning and you have a label that follows you everywhere; a label that you are unable to shake. A label like “Adam the Adulterer; Dave the drunk; Frank the fraud; greedy Greg; Lazy Larry; Nancy the nerd; Paul the porn addict; Tina the two-timer. You know that label that you carry; the label that your identity and significance seem to be bound up in. And for the Jewish person reading the Christmas story and Jesus family tree, they would see the name Rahab and see one thing- the label “harlot”. And once again, a Jewish person would not find the family tree of Jesus very convincing and even very confusing.

But to really understand why Rahab would be a very confusing and not very convincing part of the family tree of the Messiah, we first need to understand the context in which Rahab enters into God’s story in the Bible. You see, Rahab lived in Jericho, which was in a part of the world which was called the land of Canaan. God had promised Abraham that his descendants would live in the land of Canaan, so the Jewish people referred to Canaan as the Promised Land. After being delivered from slavery at the hands of the Egyptian nation, the Jewish people were commanded by God to take over and possess the Promised Land and destroy the all of the nations that inhabited the land.

You see, some 400 years before the story of Rahab and Jericho, God predicted and proclaimed to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, that after being enslaved in Egypt, the Jewish nation would return to and take possession of the land that was promised to his descendants. For 400 years God endured the incredible wickedness of the Amorites, which was the society and that inhabited the Promised Land. God extended grace for 400 years in order to provide that society the opportunity to change their evil ways.

And after 400 years, God chose to use the Jewish people as an instrument to exercise His justice and judgment on the people of the Promised Land, who had refused to change and were left with no excuse or defense for their wickedness. Their selfish rebellion and sin, or iniquity, was complete; they were left without grounds to question God’s justice. You see, the God that is revealed in the Old Testament is the same God that is revealed in the New Testament; a God that extends grace and the opportunity for forgiveness yet will execute His justice on those who are unwilling to change and who are bent on selfishness and rebellion.

So after 400 years of God extending grace; after 400 years of God being gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, but by no means will leave the guilty unpunished, God brings the Jewish people to the edge of the promised land. And Jericho, being a border city a short distance from the Jordan River, would be the first city that the Jewish nation would encounter. And as the Jewish people prepare for their first battle against the nations that lived in the Promised Land, their leader Joshua sends spies out on a reconnaissance mission. And it is in the city of Jericho where the woman who carried the label harlot, Rahab, resided.

Tomorrow, we will look at how this woman, who carried a most unexpected label, fits in the Christmas story. In the meantime, what label are you carrying that follows you everywhere you go? What label are you carrying that you are unable to shake?