Unexpected Guests
Part Five: The Outsiders
By Remy Diederich
Cedarbrook Church
12.24.14/ Christmas Eve
Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at the genealogy/family tree of Jesus. That’s
because the Christmas story starts with Jesus’ genealogy in the book written by Matthew, one of
Jesus’ followers.
You know, genealogies can be pretty interesting. How many of you have taken the time to work
out your family tree? Have you ever watched the TV show sponsored by Ancestry.com? Who do
you think you are? They do the genealogy for a celebrity and then during the show they film the
celebrity learning about their past. It’s pretty interesting.
I did a little research this week on celebrity family trees and I thought I’d share a few of my
findings.
 Hillary Duff is the 18th cousin of Queen Elizabeth II (most royal blooded person in
Hollywood).
 Princess Diana is tenth cousins with Sarah Palin.
 Sarah Palin is ninth cousins with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt.
 Abraham Lincoln is third cousins, four generations removed - Tom Hanks.
 And Brad Pitt is ninth cousins with President Obama.
Those are fun, and flattering to the people connected to royalty. But not everyone likes what
they find when they research their genealogy. For example, when Anderson Cooper (CNN)
researched his family tree, he learned that his great grandfather owned twelve slaves. And you
know, all of us will find something shameful if we go back far enough, right?
And that’s my point because as we’ve researched Jesus’ family tree, we’ve found some shameful
things in Jesus’ past. In fact, that’s why we called this series “Unexpected Guests.” Jesus had a
number of unexpected people in his genealogy…people that you wouldn’t expect to see in the
family that the messiah came from.
Specifically, there were murderers, and prostitutes, and idol worshippers. Plus, there were four
women that were included in Jesus’ family tree. They weren’t expected either because, back
then, genealogies usually just mentioned the men.
So far we’ve looked at three of the women: Rahab, Tamar, and Bathsheba. Today I want to look
briefly at the fourth woman, by the name of Ruth. If you are wondering what Ruth has to do with
Christmas – trust me – I’ll show you.
Ruth’s story starts with a Jewish couple who lived in the “little town” of Bethlehem…the same
Bethlehem that we sing about at Christmas. (Only this was about 1200 before Jesus’ time).
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In the days when …there was a famine in the land… a man from Bethlehem in
Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of
Moab. The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name Naomi, and the names of his
two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. Ruth 1:1,2
Now, it helps to know a little background here. First, it says that this family moved from
Bethlehem to Moab to find food. Moab was the neighboring country and everyone hated the
Moabites. It was your typical border rivalry, kind of like how Wisconsin and Minnesota fight
over the Packers and the Vikings. Only this rivalry took things to another level because the
Israelite thought the Moabites were godless people. So, we can tell this family must have been
really desperate to move if they were willing to go to Moab. It’s like if the Green Bay Packers
went on strike and Packer fans got so desperate to watch football that they started watching the
Vikings. That’s desperate!
The other thing it helps to know here is that their two boys: Mahlon and Kilion, their names
mean Sick and Sicker. Not a good thing. Maybe that’s why they were so desperate to move…to
help their failing boys.
So this story starts off very dark. This family is hurting and desperate. But it gets worse. When
the family arrives in Moab, Elimelech dies. Then Sick and Sicker get married. The Bible says:
The two sons married Moabite women. One married a woman named Orpah, and the
other a woman named Ruth. But about ten years later, both Mahlon and Kilion died.
This left Naomi alone, without her husband or sons. Ruth 1:4,5
Imagine what it was like being Naomi. Her husband moved her family to God-forsaken Moab,
and then had the nerve to die. She probably could have survived that… but then her sons died
too, plus she had two daughters-in-law to support. And as a widow, she was totally dependent on
the community to take care of them. But being a Jew in Moab couldn’t have been good for her.
So, Naomi, Ruth and Orpah were in a bad way.
Maybe you can relate to this if you are in a bad place today. Sometimes life goes sour on us. Our
problems go from bad to worse, and we don’t know where to turn. Thankfully the famine ended
in Israel:
Then Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had blessed his people in Judah by giving
them good crops again. Ruth 1:6
Naomi starts packing her bags. But she gave her daughters-in-law a chance to return to their own
families. She said, Look, I don’t have any more sons you can marry. If you come with me, you
need to realize that you may never marry or have children.
When Orpah heard that, she decided to stay in Moab, but Ruth said,
Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. I will go wherever you go and live wherever
you live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. I will die where
you die and will be buried there. May the LORD punish me severely if I allow anything
but death to separate us! Ruth 1:16,17
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You see, something happened inside of Ruth. Even though she was an outsider to the Jewish
faith, there was something about Naomi and her God that compelled her to follow Naomi, even
at great expense.
I mean, Ruth had no guarantee that life would be good in Israel. What Israelite would want to
marry a widow, let alone a widow from Moab? So, the odds of her facing rejection and poverty
all of her life…were pretty high. But in spite of all this, Ruth took the risk and chose a new life
with Naomi and her God.
I’m not going to tell you all of Ruth’s story. You can go home and read it for yourself. But what
I want you to see here is that this Moabite outsider became central to the family tree of Jesus.
Look at this diagram:
Abraham > Isaac > Jacob > Judah > > Boaz/Ruth >> David > Solomon >>>>> Joseph/Mary
Surprisingly, Ruth didn’t remain a widow. Far from it. She married into the bloodline of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and became the great grandmother of King David. And if you follow
the line of Jesus all the way down it leads to Joseph and Mary who gave birth to Jesus.
So why is this story important to tell on Christmas Eve? It’s important because a lot of us are like
Ruth. Ruth was an outsider to Israel. She didn’t have any history with the God of Israel. And a
lot of us are like that with God. We feel like outsiders. Maybe you grew up in church but you
never felt any connection to God. Church for you was just a bunch of meaningless rules and
rituals. So you assumed you didn’t fit in…that you didn’t belong. God and church and
spirituality were something for other people, but not for you. And so you drifted away from God.
I’d imagine there are at least a few of us here today that feel this way. You came to church
because it’s Christmas, but once you leave here today you have no intention of pursuing God
because that’s what religious people do. And you aren’t religious.
But I hope you see a new possibility in Ruth’s story. Ruth saw something in Naomi and her God
that made her reject her old life and choose a new life. And when she did, God rewarded her
decision. Not only was she accepted into God’s people but God used her to play a key role in the
birth of Jesus.
That’s what Christmas is about: It’s learning that you are accepted by God and that he has a
purpose for your life. God sent Jesus into the world to invite spiritual outsiders to become
spiritual insiders. In fact, three of the biggest players in the Christmas story are outsiders. Do you
know who they were? I’m talking about the three wise men.
The Bible tells us they were from the East, meaning another country, so they weren’t Jewish. Yet
they read the scripture and they understood that God’s messiah wasn’t just for Jews (insiders),
but for all people (outsides too.)
Matthew wrote in his story that the wise men were some of the first to worship Jesus:
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They entered the house where the child and his mother, Mary, were, and they fell
down before him and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave
him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11
I’m telling you this because if you’ve ever felt like a spiritual outsider, I want you to know that
you don’t have to be on the outside looking in on God. Jesus came specifically to welcome
people like Ruth, and the three wise men, and people like you and me into his family.
Ruth went to Bethlehem thinking she might never get married, or have children, but she ended
up being Jesus’ great, great, great grandmother. She was an unexpected guest in Jesus’ family
tree.
The three wise men went to Bethlehem in search of the messiah, not knowing if they’d ever find
him but they ended up being central to the Christmas story. They were unexpected guests. And
the same could be true for you today if you choose to turn to God. You might be another
unexpected guest in the family tree of Jesus.
You know, there are hundreds of people in this church that never thought God would be the most
important thing in their lives. But today he is. That’s true for me. I mean I didn’t grow up in
church. If you had told me back in high school that God would one day be central to my life I’d
have laughed you out of the room. That wasn’t even on my radar.
In my mind, God was for religious people and I wasn’t religious. But then in college I realized
that faith in God isn’t just for religious people. God designed us so He would be at the center of
our lives, just like a car is designed to have an engine. And until we get that right, we will always
feel like something is missing.
Forty years ago I decided to put God at the center of my life and follow Jesus. If you’d like to do
the same thing today, I have a prayer that I’m going to read and if you agree with it I invite you
to say “Amen” at the end. Amen means, “I agree!”
Jesus, thank you for coming into the world to rescue me from my sin and failure.
Thank you for forgiving me of my past and being willing to use me like Ruth, in spite
of your past. I invite you to come into my life by your Spirit. Fill me up, change me
into your likeness, show me the path to follow, and use me to promote your purposes
in this world.
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