Ryan Hale

Jesus doesn’t do half measures. His perspective seems to be that you either do it or you don’t. You don’t do it half way.

Jesus is God represented in the flesh, represented as a human being. He was all-in and brought all of His deity to the earth in the form of a human.

He came to the earth to re-establish His Kingdom, with Jesus himself as the King. He purchased for God people from every tribe, nation, and language, and he purchased them not with money, but with his own blood. That is most certainly a sign of being all-in, to give yourself for others, especially others who have not only not loved you, but have shown disdain for you.

I could go on with examples, but suffice to say that Jesus calls us to have the same level of passion and commitment to him and his Kingdom as he did for us. Jesus was explaining this to the crowds that were following him. He said:

In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

Luke 14:33

It is as if he was telling them, “You can’t just follow me around and say you’re my disciple. There is much more than that.”

Jesus had told his disciples that they must “hate” their father and mother, their brothers and sisters, their wives and children. Otherwise they cannot be his disciple. Are you prevented from following Jesus because of your family? You aren’t fit to be Jesus’s disciple, he says.

Jesus told his disciples that they must carry their cross and follow him. Are you prevented from following Jesus because you are afraid of being shamed by others for your association with him? Are you afraid of the possibility that you would be put to death because of your association with him? You aren’t fit to be Jesus’s disciple.

There is no half measure with which you can be Jesus’s disciple. Following him doesn’t mean just trying not to sin. It means that you go to do what he calls his disciples to do. You go to be the person that he calls you to be. This is the level of discipleship that Jesus calls us into. That is the Jesus in the Bible, and if we don’t understand this, and we don’t follow him in the way that he has called us to follow him, we won’t have a part with him. We won’t actually be his disciples.

God, help me – help all of us – to not only understand the cost of being a disciple, but even more, to truly be the disciple that you have called us to be. I pray that you won’t count us among the people who are just casually walking along, but those who have counted the cost and are willing to follow Jesus wherever he sends us, wherever he calls us to go. Do with us what you will, Lord. May you be glorified as a result of our lives and what we give to you.

Jesus was asked whether there would only be a few people who would be saved from God’s wrath and judgment. I think the people had begun to understand that Jesus was speaking of different conditions for salvation than what they had understood previously from their teachers.

The Israelites had always been known as God’s people. God had chosen Abraham and then Isaac and Jacob, that through them God’s blessing would be passed down to all people. In fact, it would be through them that Jesus would come, that the Messiah who would save his people would be revealed.

Now, though, I think the people are understanding that Jesus is teaching a different way. He isn’t just talking about nationality. He isn’t talking about ancestry. He is calling the people to repentance, to holiness, to salvation that can only be found in the Kingdom of God, by way of the King. And there is only one King, King Jesus.

As they ask Jesus about salvation, they ask whether many will be saved or only a few. Jesus says that they must enter through the narrow door to come into the Kingdom of God. So he answers them clearly: Not everyone will come in. Only a few. And if we play out the metaphor, Jesus himself is the narrow door. He is the one who will allow the people entrance into the Kingdom.

But Jesus also goes further and says that there is one who will close the door while many will be left outside. And what is more, there are people who will come from every direction – from the north, the south, the east, and the west, who will take their place at the banquet table, at the feast in the Kingdom. He is saying that there are people from everywhere who will enter the Kingdom because they have come through him, they have come through Jesus. Not just Jews, but there will be people from everywhere. Yes, Gentiles too. People from all nations, and in fact the last – the Gentiles who hadn’t been chosen before now – will be first, and the first – the Jews who had been God’s people before now – would be last.

Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

Luke 13:23-30

Like the Jews in their day, we must strive to enter through the narrow door to enter the Kingdom of God. We must go toward it and go in. We must leave everything to come through that door. Otherwise, we will be left outside where there is weeping, where there is gnashing of teeth. Not only do we not want what is outside, we will agonize over it. Let us not be caught there.

But instead, let us enter with the King. Let’s go into the Kingdom to the banquet hall and eat with those who celebrate Jesus as the King in his Kingdom. Let us not just know of him but truly know him, King Jesus.

It might seem to you that God is silent. It might seem, even, that He turns you away. It might seem that He isn’t responding. But God will respond if you keep asking.

Jesus’s disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and Jesus gave them this:

“When you pray, say:

“‘Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”

Luke 11:2-4

Those were the words that he gave them, what would amount to three verses within the Bible which covered five topics, which are:

• Worshiping God and His holiness
• Calling on God to bring His Kingdom here on the earth
• Asking for what we need on a daily basis
• Asking for forgiveness of our sins in the same way that we give forgiveness to others
• Asking God to keep us away from Satan and from his temptation

So these are the things that he taught us to say, but since the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus continued on further teaching them something just as important, so important that he used a story to illustrate.

Jesus told them of a man who didn’t have food to feed his guests, so the man went to his neighbor and friend’s house in the middle of the night to ask his friend for bread so that he could feed his guests. The friend initially turned the man away because he was already in bed, but the man kept asking. He kept calling out to his friend, and eventually his friend would wake up, get out of bed, and give him all that the man wanted because the man continued to ask.

Jesus used this example for his disciples saying that they should continue to ask God for the things that they want to see happen. He said that they should ask, seek, and knock…continuously…until you receive a response.

Jesus didn’t speak about what we should ask about, what we should seek, nor why we should knock because he had just addressed that issue in what he told his disciples they should pray. Are we not seeing God and His holiness worshiped? Call upon God to respond, and keep calling. Have we not yet seen God’s Kingdom come here on the earth, or His Lordship come into a particular situation? Keep seeking out God to intervene. Are you not receiving what you need to sustain you in that particular day, your daily bread? Knock on God’s door morning, noon, and night and He will give you the bread that you need.

Jesus told his disciples that God is a good Father. He will answer. He will give his children not just what they want, but good gifts. For example, He will give the Holy Spirit:

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Luke 11:13

Our Father in heaven wants to hear from us. He wants to see us live and move, and be about His business, depending on Him for what we need. He wishes to answer our prayers that align with His will. He wants to be our good Father. He wants us to walk with Him, and He wants us to continue to call upon Him to provide what is needed.

Jesus had sent out his disciples with his authority to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal those who are sick. As his disciples returned, they were excited about what had happened. They said that they had even seen the demons submit to them in Jesus’s name.

They were excited about the power that they wielded before the evil spirits.

They were excited about the fact that they had the authority to tell the evil spirits what to do, and if I’m right based on what I read in other places about the, they may have even been excited about showing others the authority that they were able to wield.

But Jesus tries to return them back to the right prioritization. They shouldn’t be thinking about the authority that they carried. They should be thinking, instead, about the fact that they too have been saved. They too have received forgiveness for their sins and, through Christ, are able to be saved from wrath and judgment. Jesus told them:

However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Luke 10:20

Very frequently, as we think about doing a ministry work, we can think about how we look, or we can dream about how it might turn out one day. We can imagine that God will use us for great things. We can think of the throngs of people who will come to know Christ as a result of our efforts.

But this can fool us into thinking wrongly about our relationship with God. We can think that we are deserving of a relationship with him. We can forget the humility with which we have come into the Kingdom. We can even eventually think that we are much more than what we are, imagining that we are great, imagining that we are clearly worthy when, instead, whatever we have we have been given to us by God.

I think that this is Jesus’s point to his disciples. Don’t rejoice because the evil spirits obey you, Jesus said. Instead, let’s simply remember that you have been saved from God’s wrath. You have been spared from judgment.

Amen. That is good for each of us to remember as well. Whatever we have, we have been given. What we are able to do for God is because this is God’s work and he is using us to do it. There isn’t reason for us to rejoice because of what we can do, but we should rejoice because of what Christ has done for us.

Sometimes it seems like Jesus was trying to bring people close to him. He would stay in an area for a while and would heal many people while also teaching them about the Kingdom of God.

Other times, it seemed like Jesus was intentionally trying to drive people away by saying difficult things and setting the bar for following him very high.

If we every wonder what Jesus expects of us as his followers, we should simply look to what his disciples said and what Jesus said to those who proposed to follow him. As Jesus explained that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, Peter got excited. He said, “We have left everything to follow you! What reward will there be for us?”

For the disciples, to follow Jesus meant that they had to leave their livelihoods behind. They had to leave behind any desires for wealth that they may have had. The riches of this world were no longer in reach for them because they found their treasure in their relationship with Jesus, the Messiah. They saw this as being more valuable than the riches that could be offered by the world.

But, of course, not everyone saw that yet. Jesus, in fact, was on his way to Jerusalem where he knew he would be handed over to the chief priests and put to death, and as he was going, people were coming to him looking to be part of his entourage, counted as one of his disciples. They needed to know, though, what that meant and Jesus, without hesitating, informed them:

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:57-62

These men were eager to be near the One that they saw as being important, even as great, but they may not have realized that there would be a cost:

You’ll be leaving behind your home.

You’ll be leaving behind your family.

It may not work the way that you think it will work. You think you’re coming to follow me? No, you won’t be with me. Go speak of the Kingdom of God

You are leaving your old life behind.

Everything that you thought you knew from before is over. This is what it means to follow Jesus.

Now, is that just for that time? Is Jesus speaking just to those three men? Or is he also speaking to us? Could it be that Jesus is saying the same things to us today and we are not listening, or misunderstanding the cost to following Jesus? Are we in the church not listening to Jesus when he explains to us what it means to follow him, or do we just prefer the riches of the world or the comforts of our homes and family? Do we prefer, instead, our old life, yet say that we are followers of Christ?

Those were the questions that these would-be followers of Christ had to face, and they are the same questions that we must confront today.

We live in Sicily based solely on donations. We’ve lived this way since June 2016 and haven’t lacked anything. Sure, there have been times where we have felt unsure that we would have enough, or unsure that God would provide, but we’ve always found that God has answered every time. We have always had enough.

And just as a side note, if you would like to give a donation or support our family on a monthly basis, you can see how you can do that over on our donation page! 😉

Anyway, from time to time, people ask me how they can live in the same way that we do. How could it be possible that we could live and work full-time to do the ministry work? Frequently, I think that they imagine that there is some organization that is itching to give away money and support some missionary to do something somewhere.

Of course, those types of organizations don’t exist – or at least I haven’t found them! – so I explain that I believe that there are people, churches, or organizations whom God has called to support the work that you are called to do, but you have to go find them. From there, I frequently begin to hear many different forms of feedback:

Well, you don’t understand. The culture is different here than in America.

Well, you don’t understand. The economy is different here than in America.

Well, you don’t understand. I can’t just go to someone and ask them to support me.

To which I simply respond… You’re right. I don’t understand. I suppose this all depends on God’s calling for you. If He has called you, I am sure that He will provide for you.

So recently, I heard a couple of people tell me: You know, I was surprised because I did this work and there were quite a few people who stepped in to help cover the expenses of the trip.

Exactly. God provides.

I was reminded of all of this as I read the beginning of Luke 8 today. Jesus was traveling throughout the towns of the northern regions of Israel, Jesus himself was financially supported for his travels:

After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

Luke 8:1-3

Jesus is proclaiming the Kingdom. His 12 disciples are with him, but it says that there are three other disciples, three women who had been cured of diseases and evil spirits. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna. And Luke points out that the women were supporting them. Luke never mentions, neither here nor anywhere else that I’m aware of, that the disciples were giving to the work – even though I suspect they were – but he makes specific mention of the contribution of these three women.

So, all of that to say that God is moving. God is working. And God provides for the work that He wants to have done.

Jesus continued to perform several different types of miracles, showing his power and authority over all things. Yet John the Baptist began to wonder whether or not Jesus was truly the Christ, the Messiah. He had been put in jail, so he sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask and to confirm whether Jesus was the One, or if they should be waiting and looking for another.

Even John and his disciples had some incorrect expectations about who Jesus was and what he was going to do. Like many others, and even most Jews today, they assumed that the Messiah would overthrow Rome and restore the political nation of Israel. But they were wrong. That wasn’t what the Messiah was intended to do; instead, he would lead people out of their slavery to sin, not their slavery to the Romans.

Jesus responded that the lame are walking and the blind can now see. Those who have had leprosy are now healed and even the dead have been raised. Jesus’s reply was intended to tell John that these are all signs to show that Jesus’s words were true. He is the Messiah and John shouldn’t doubt. He should believe and wait and see. John had fulfilled the purpose that God had given him in the scriptures, but he had yet to fully grasp God’s complete plan.

John’s purpose was to prepare the way for Jesus. According to Isaiah, he would prepare the way for the Lord. He would make the path straight, make the mountains low and the valleys lifted up, and all of the uneven ground will become level. And the result of this would be that glory of the Lord would be revealed. You can read this for yourself in Isaiah 40, verses 1-5. This was John’s job. His role was to make this straight path. But how? With a shovel to move the dirt? No, by calling people to repentance.

But many are too proud to say that they are wrong. Many are too set in their ways. Many will not lay themselves before God and His plan. Instead, they insist on their own plan, just as we saw the most religious in Israel do. It was those who thought that they had God all figured out, who taught others and insisted that they knew what was right, who would not believe Jesus was the Messiah, who would not be willing to believe – despite all of the miraculous evidence in contrast to their beliefs – that Jesus was truly God standing before them. Here is how Luke records the difference between those who would believe and those who wouldn’t:

All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.

Luke 7:29-30

So we see that the common people, and even the tax collectors, some of those considered to be the worst of the worst, the traitors, would repent and acknowledge that God’s way was right. They would believe in Jesus as the Messiah and give themselves to him. Why? Because John had called them to repentance and they were willing to give themselves over to God’s plan. Not continue in their own plan, but give themselves to that of God’s plan.

On the other hand, it was the Pharisees who would not. They would not respond to John’s call to repentance. They would not submit themselves to God’s plan. They would reject God’s purpose, stuck in unrepentance, unwilling to be baptized by John as a result of their pride and decision to have figured out everything about God and being unwilling to accept that they were wrong.

Where are we? Are we willing to see God at work and respond to Jesus for who he is? Are we willing to give ourselves to God’s plan in repentance, leaving behind our own plans? The question that was given to the Jews in the days of the John and Jesus is the same question that is given to each of us today. Regardless of who we are or where we are from. Regardless of our religious background, we each have this question to answer: Will you give your heart to Jesus and serve him?

Throughout the Gospels, one question that we could continue to ask ourselves as we read is: Who is Jesus? It seems that the authors are routinely trying, without necessarily explicitly declaring, to answer this question.

For example, yesterday, as I read Luke 5, it seemed that Luke was trying to answer this question with almost every one of the stories that he included. Here is what I mean:

In Luke 5, Jesus tells Peter to let down his nets in deeper waters. Despite not having caught anything after fishing all night, Peter and his fishing companions agree and bring in a catch of fish so large that their nets begin to break. The result is that Peter drops to his knees and worships Jesus as he performed a miracle that only God would be able to do as he demonstrated authority and control over nature.

A little later, a man with leprosy approaches Jesus saying that he knew Jesus could heal him if he was willing. Typically, a Jewish person would draw back, afraid that a leper, having a communicable skin disease, if they were to touch them, would infect them, giving them not only the disease as well but also making them ceremonially unclean. But that is not what Jesus does. Instead, he steps forward and touches the leper, showing that he is not only compassionate but that he is also both more powerful than the disease. Instead of the unclean nature infecting him, giving him disease and making him unclean, Jesus’s pure and clean nature overcomes that of the diseased and unclean nature of the man, healing him. Jesus then immediately sends him to the priest as a testimony to the Jews for what he had done for the man, just as it was commanded by God through Moses in the Law.

Go on to the next example… There is a man who was lame and unable to walk who is lowered down through a roof in front of Jesus. Knowing that the Pharisees were there, what does Jesus do? Instead of simply healing the man, Jesus tells him that his sins are forgiven. The Pharisees ask themselves, rightly, “Who is this that forgives sins?” Only God can forgive sins!” But of course Jesus demonstrates that he not only has the authority to forgive sins, but he also has the ability to make the man walk, and that is exactly what he does.

Then Jesus says that he has come to give forgiveness and call sinners to repentance.

Then he explains that he is the bridegroom who has come for his bride, even explaining that he is doing a new thing that people cannot, and even prefer to not accept.

And then we come to the beginning of Luke chapter 6 where Jesus’s disciples are picking a few heads of grain and eating them as they walk on the Sabbath. Jesus replies to the Pharisees explaining that David had done the same thing, and even worse by eating the consecrated bread, a bread that should have only been available to the priests. But Jesus explains that he is not only greater than David but has the authority to speak to any issue related to the Sabbath because:

“The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Luke 6:5

Jesus is saying that he himself is the one who can speak to the rules of the Sabbath. The One who is making the rules is the One with the authority, and Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is making the rules. He has the authority.

Can we see that Luke keeps telling story after story to answer this same question? Who is Jesus? Just in these few short stories, we can see these things about Jesus:

He has authority over, and can control, nature. No man can do this Only God.

He has authority over disease and sickness. What is more, he has authority over ceremonial cleanliness and uncleanliness. He isn’t made unclean. He makes the unclean clean.

Then Jesus forgives sins, something that the Pharisees rightly say that only God can do.

And then Jesus shows that he cannot only do all of these things, but he has authority over the Law. The Sabbath was established through the Law and Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, so he is the One who can speak to the writing and application of the Law. Only God can do this.

Luke does continue to ask and answer this question: Who is Jesus? Through his teaching and through his actions, Jesus continues to answer the question: I am God.

Jesus had grown and was now about 30 years old. He had been traveling in different towns, but returns back to his hometown of Nazareth where he had grown up with his family. He had been teaching in the synagogues and on this particular sabbath, he went into his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.

Jesus had stood to read the scriptures and he was handed a scroll that contained the prophecies of Isaiah. Jesus unrolled the scroll until he reached Isaiah 61 where he read these words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

Jesus read from Isaiah 61 verse 1 and the first half of verse 2 and then says:

“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:21

Before going on, here is a dramatization of this time in Nazareth. It isn’t precisely what we see in the Bible, but for a dramatization, I think it captures the scene pretty well and how the people felt – the good, the bad, and the ugly – of Jesus’s revelation to be the Christ, God’s annointed One.

The first thing that we see is that Jesus selects Isaiah 61, and in this passage in Isaiah, the annointed One of God is speaking. This is the Christ, the Messiah, that is speaking to the people of Israel through Isaiah, and now, Jesus reads it to the people in the synagogue in Nazareth and then tells the people that the scripture is fulfilled in their hearing.

Jesus is telling them that he, himself, is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He has come to:

Proclaim good news to the poor.

Bind up the brokenhearted.

To proclaim freedom for the captives.

To release the prisoners from darkness.

And proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Later, the Jews begin to think that Jesus may be the Messiah and they fill these words with a different meaning. They think that the “good news” for the poor is that Jesus will make them rich. They think that binding up the brokenhearted means that he will turn their emotional sadness into happiness. That he will remove the people from their captors, the Romans. That he will let prisoners out of Roman prisons. And that they will be favored by God so that the political nation of Israel will be restored.

But that is not at all what Jesus is referring to. Jesus isn’t a political king. He is much, much more than a political king. He is a spiritual King, the King of kings. He rules over not only the political nations of the world, but also all of heaven and earth. He rules over the evil forces and principalities of the heavens. No, Jesus has come to reveal his Kingship to the people, setting them free from everything that stands in opposition to the Kingdom of God, reestablishing God’s reign on the earth because he himself is the King.

A genealogy is a line of descent traced from an ancestor, according to the Oxford Languages dictionary. Why would someone want to understand their genealogy? Here might be a few reasons:

To connect with the past – who am I?

To understand the community to which I belong.

To know the legacy of which I am a part.

There might be other reasons, of course. America, for example, has famously been known to be a “melting pot” of peoples from across the world. The people who live there have come from across the world after just a few generations, but often we don’t know those geographical origins as they weren’t discussed in our families.

Whatever the individual case may be, it is clear that a genealogy is intended to provide a connection from the present to the past.

In Jesus’s case, Matthew (chapter 1) and Luke (chapter 3) both created genealogies for him. Why would they do this? What is the purpose?

The main reason is to connect Jesus to both his earthly and heavenly ancestors. Here is what I mean:

Jesus is a descendent from God Himself

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph

Luke 3:23

the son of Enosh,
the son of Seth, the son of Adam,
the son of God.

Luke 3:38

In verse 23, Luke makes an allusion to Jesus’s adopted status by his earthly father Joseph when he says “so it was thought”. Luke has already explained Jesus’s virgin birth in chapters 1 and 2, so he is showing here that Jesus is Joseph’s son, although he is his earthly adopted father, not his direct descendent.

At the same time, Luke also traces Jesus’s lineage all the way back to Adam, the son of God. This shows us that there are now two people who do not have human fathers, neither Adam nor Jesus as both were created and formed directly from God, not born in the same way as the rest of us from human parents.

Jesus is a descendent of Israel through the line of Judah

the son of Amminadab, the son of Ram,
the son of Hezron, the son of Perez,
the son of Judah, the son of Jacob,
the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham,
the son of Terah, the son of Nahor

Luke 3:33

God brings about his plan to bless all nations through the nation of Israel. He had originally blessed Abraham who had Isaac and then Jacob, whose name was changed by God to Israel. Judah was one of Israel’s sons, and thus created one of the tribes of Israel. The Messiah was prophesied to come from the tribe of Judah (for example, Micah 5:2) and so Jesus is connected to this tribe.

Jesus is a descendent of King David

the son of Melea, the son of Menna,
the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan,
the son of David, the son of Jesse,
the son of Obed, the son of Boaz,
the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon

Luke 3:31

King David was from the tribe of Judah as was his father Jesse. As a descendent of David, Jesus is in the royal line from a human perspective, but also in the royal line from a divine perspective. Jesus is royalty and is worthy to be praised and worshiped for his royal heritage as well as his royal nature as the King in the Kingdom of God.

Controversy

There is controversy, of course, with regard to the genealogy that Luke presents as it differs in places with the genealogy that Matthew presented. A specific place in which we can look would be Joseph’s father, Jesus’s human and adoptive grandfather. In Matthew, he is listed as Jacob, whereas in Luke he is listed as Heli.

Quite a few theories exist as to why this difference exists, but here are a couple, just to give some explanation:

Matthew may have been listing Joseph’s line whereas Luke was actually listing Mary’s line. This isn’t clear because it seems to say that Heli is Joseph’s father, but the virgin birth also makes the situation challenging and to lack clarity given that Jesus didn’t have a human father, and having a human father is the only way that a genealogy actually works. So, it could be possible that, to show the human descendency of Jesus, Luke listed Mary’s ancestors instead of those of Joseph.

A second theory is similar in that Heli was still Mary’s father but Joseph is listed as as a son-in-law to Heli, thus showing a connection, although still through Mary’s ancestry.

There are several other theories on the differences, but I think that these statements are true, regardless of which statement you subscribe to:

First, both Matthew and Luke were looking at Jesus’s genealogy from the outside. It would be possible for two people to trace genealogies differently, especially when you add in typical human situations such as adoption, death and remarriage, or divorce and remarriage.

Second, the question of the virgin birth causes a significant challenge to writing a genealogy. Both Matthew and Luke acknowledge the virgin birth of Jesus, having been born directly from the Holy Spirit creating and forming Jesus within Mary, so this is a very difficult challenge to overcome in the midst of writing a genealogy.

And finally – but probably most importantly – none of the controversy about the specific line taken changes the most important connections that I’ve outlined above. The biggest question isn’t who Joseph’s father was, nor how the descedency arrives to him. The biggest question is: Who is Jesus? If we only had a genealogy as the evidence upon which we are relying, this controversy might be worthy of consideration, but it is not. Jesus performed miracles that only God could perform. Jesus died and was resurrected, a miracle to which hundreds of people attested and died to confirm. No, the genealogies are not the primary evidence that Jesus is who he claimed to be, but instead, they confirm the prophecies and confirm Jesus’s identity.