Beauty out of brokenness Matthew 1 3 The amazing thing about being in relationship with Jesus Christ is that every

y part of our lives can be used for His Honor the good, the bad, the beautiful and even the ugly. The little things we think are so insignificant, the things no one notices God notices and He says they are important and very necessary for the story He is writing. The evidence is in His Word. Matthew was a tax collector. He would have had access to public documents. To the Jew, lineage is very important, so when things started getting documented, it is highly probable that family histories were at the top of the first to be documented, right behind the Scriptures. The journey of going thru Jesus' family history was most likely the method God used to convince Matthew and Luke that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God everyone in his time was waiting for. The Hebrew culture (eastern mindset / practices) held the men, the father in esteem; it was the fathers line that determined who a person was. This would be who the Gospel of Matthew would be intended to reach. The Greek culture (western mindset / practices) held women in higher esteem; it was the mothers line that was used to determine who a person was. The Gospel of Luke would have been used to reach the Greeks. God put both of these men (Matthew & Luke) in position to be where they were; at the time they were there to

discover these treasures. We cannot say that God does not use anything outside of His Word to speak to people; here is the proof! He used a Jew and a Gentile to reach His people in both cultures and used the process of their research to convince both of these men themselves of who Jesus was!!! We can use the other sources with the Word! Matthews History of Jesus did not totally discount women. He mentioned a few. The ones he mentioned are the ones that most families want to bury and forget about. They were however, women of strength and character. The first woman named is Tamar; a woman who was scorned by not only the men who married her, but by their father as well. She took matters into her own hands, and tricked Judah, her father in law into having sex with her, and she gave birth to 2 boys, never knowing that God would choose one of those boys (Perez) to be a part of His Plan of humanitys salvation. Rahab was a prostitute from Jericho, the only survivor of the first city that Joshua and the Israelites took in Canaan. Gods favor on Rahab continued when He chose to use her child (Obed) to not only be the father of Boaz - who would later marry another non-Jew (Ruth) who would be brought into Gods Plan of salvation. These two women, Rahab and Ruth were the grandmother and great grandmother of King David. David had more then enough wives and children for God to choose from, but guess what? God chose Davids mistake, his disobedience to be a part of His Plan. God chose Bathsheba and their second son, Solomon, carry on with the Plan. The past, the good, the beautiful, the bad, and even the ugly - God takes it all and uses it and incorporates it into His Plan, somehow, someway. The parts He draws attention to are more often then not the very parts we keep trying to bury! Gods Beauty comes out of our brokenness!