If there is a major theme in the first five books of the Bible, it’s movement. The people of God never stayed in one place too long, and if they did it didn’t seem to go well for them. Like slavery, prison, or death….that kind of not going well for them.
And so they camped, for a long, long time.
After God had delivered the Israelites from slavery, not everything went rosy. They disobeyed God repeatedly. Some scholars actually believe they wore their cranky pants out of Egypt. (Okay no scholar says that, but they did complain a lot). And the real turning point for them was when God tells them to go into Canaan and take a well armed land for themselves.
And they tell God no.
But before we get too hard on them remember they were just a traveling band of recently freed slaves. They weren’t exactly a military power house. It’d be like the workers of What-a-burger trying to invade Russia.
They had a right to be scared.
But what’s interesting to me is how God responded. When they told Him no, he just gave them their wish. They didn’t want to take risks for God, and He just let them have exactly that. They did absolutely nothing risky for the rest of their lives. And for 40 years they died off one by one in the wilderness. And eventually so did Moses.
Now imagine being the kids of this group.
Forty years have come and gone and you’ve watched everyone’s parents die one at a time. You’re 40 and you’ve wasted your life. And now Moses, the guy who has been the leader of your people for almost 5 decades kills over. You’re beginning to think that you’re going to spend your whole life in the dessert paying for a mistake that your parents made.
But that’s not where this story ends.
Because there is somebody who replace Moses.
And his name is Joshua
This is a new chapter in Israel’s story. They don’t have to stay where they were. God is going to act again on their behalf, despite their previous mistakes, and he does it by raising up Joshua.
Matthew’s Genealogy is commonly thought to be the most boring part of his Gospel. But that’s only if we don’t pay attention to what he’s actually doing. Matthew is laying out the pedigree of the Messiah. And he does the worst one possible. He mentions all the rated R stories of the Old Testament. Spilling seed, murder, adultery, Hookers and men who sleep with them. Matthew’s supposed to be laying down Israel’s greatest Hits, but instead he airing their dirty laundry.
A preacher named Andy Stanley has a great line about this: “This is because these people aren’t just a part of the story. They are the point of the story.” These are some of the people in Israel’s history who God redeemed.
And then in the end of the Matthew’s genealogy we read this, “Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.”
If you think about it it’s kind of anti-climatic. There was at least one Jesus on every corner, that name was the Starbucks of the day. Imagine being there when the Angel announced to Mary and Joseph about this new son who is going to change everything. You’d kind of expect him to have a kick-butt name, like Samson or Elijah. But not Jesus.
It’d be like the angel shows up in all his glory, scares them to death, and then says the boy shall be called Bob.
But God knows exactly what He’s doing. Because the name Jesus means Joshua. It’s about a time in Israel’s history where all hope was lost. And God interjects a new and better story.
The name Jesus means that God saves. But in this context it doesn’t just mean that God saves us from our sins. It also means God saves us from wasting our lives and our passions on things that don’t really matter.
God saves us from living out a story that is too small. Christmas is the time of year that God reminds us of what kind of story He made us for.
And that is an (Advent)ure.
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