Genealogical Genius

Today’s Reading:

• Genesis 25:1-4
• 1 Chronicles 1:32-33
• Genesis 25:5-6
• Genesis 25:12-18
• 1 Chronicles 1:28-31
• 1 Chronicles 1:34
• Genesis 25:19-26
• Genesis 25:7-11

Faith-Stretching Verse(s):

• This is the account of the family of Ishmael, the son of Abraham through Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian servant. Here is a list, by their names and clans, of Ishmael’s descendants: The oldest was Nebaioth, followed by Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. These twelve sons of Ishmael became the founders of twelve tribes named after them, listed according to the places they settled and camped. – Genesis 25:12-16, NLT

Thoughts:
How important are the genealogies, really?

I don’t know anyone who really seems to like reading all the Bible’s genealogies. It’s usually not the highlight of my year, anyway. But they’re worth reading as a reinforcement to our faith.

How so? They’re nothing incredible. All they are is a list of who descended from whom. A really, really, really long list. How can a list like this reinforce our faith?

For one thing, the genealogies show how much our God cares about details. The God who claims to know everything, down to the number of hairs on each human head, shouldn’t have any trouble keeping track of details about who was whose father. So if nothing else, the genealogies give us a little bit more reason to trust that the Bible is an accurate, detailed book.

But that’s not the only reason for the genealogies. God has other ways to show us how detailed He can be. What purpose is there in the genealogies?

Let’s see if we can get a hint from where the genealogies begin. This is not the first time we’ve seen a genealogy. The genealogies start with Adam, continue to Noah, go on to Abraham, and then trace their way onward from there.

What about which people are included in the genealogies? Mostly the genealogies follow the line from one man of faith to another. Noah. Abraham. Jacob. Judah. David. Sometimes the genealogies also take a little bit of time to trace their relatives, like the one above about Ishmael. They remind us that all of humanity, including Israel’s enemies, is family.

And where do the genealogies end? The last two genealogies I can think of in the Scriptures are in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, and both end with the same person: Jesus Christ. In other words, even the genealogies tell a story, and the point of the story is that God was keeping careful watch over all of human history as He guided it from the first man, Adam, who dragged all of us into sin, to the sinless man, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and not for His own.

Even in the seemingly pointless details of Scripture, God points us to Jesus. And this happens as scores of human writers who mostly never meet each other coordinate their thoughts across centuries of Bible-writing until Jesus is born. This is no coincidence. This is evidence that God was really coordinating human history to His planned outcome. In other words, the genealogies are a reason for faith.

For an overview of this year’s blog, please see http://threequartertank.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-do-believers-believe.html.