Saints and Scoundrels

Jesus' brother, James, grew up with him, lived with him his whole life, and still did not believe that Jesus was who he claimed to be until Jesus rose from the grave. Nancy Guthrie says James' persistent unbelief and his ultimate surrender to Jesus as his Lord gives us hope for what Jesus might do in the life of any of our family members. That's what happened in Jesus' family, and I think that gives us hope for our own families. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapeen. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Nancy Guthrie says the Bible is full of stories of both saints and scoundrels.

In fact, all of us were scoundrels before we came to faith, and that should give us hope that God can still work in the lives of any of our family members. We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Here's a little pro tip for those of you who are regular listeners. If you ever notice online that there's a new book coming out from Nancy Guthrie, you can say, oh, I wonder when she'll be on Family Life Today. Because we love her. Because anytime there's a new book coming out, the door is open. Nancy, welcome back.

And she writes a lot of books, so she's going to be on Family Life a lot. Some people might say I started talking and I won't shut up. So you guys put it very nicely, and I really appreciate it. Nancy is an author and a speaker and is doing a lot online these days, Bible studies that you can engage with online. We first chatted with you and your husband more than two decades ago, wasn't it?

2002. Over the loss of your daughter, Hope, and your son, Gabriel. And we're just grateful you keep coming back. Well, thank you for letting me come back.

I'm excited to talk to you guys today. When I saw that you'd written this book about saints and scoundrels in the Bible, and I dug into it, I thought, Jesus' family tree, he comes from a dysfunctional family. I thought we need to get you here and talk about how interesting it is that the Son of God would enter humanity in the midst of a family that, like all of our families, has all kinds of dysfunction.

Isn't that true? You know, you and I didn't get to choose what family we were born into. But from the very beginning of this family, you want to say to God, you could have done better than this. I mean, because you go all the way back to Abraham, Isaac, then you get to those 12 sons of Jacob. Oh, there's so much dysfunction.

Oh, my goodness. And we know right then that this is the family he's chosen. He's going to be born into. And then when we turn the page to the New Testament, Matthew begins his gospel by giving us a genealogy of Jesus. He wants to show Jesus is this son of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Jesus is this son of David who is the son who's going to sit on his throne forever. But I think he's doing a little bit more than that with this genealogy by who he includes and even who he doesn't include. You go through the genealogy and it's quite surprising that in a Jewish genealogy, they would mention women at all. The first woman mentioned is Tamar who was Judah's daughter-in-law that he slept with and impregnated her.

Janae Cummings That's not weird at all. Tamar Chute You've got Rahab who is running this brothel basically when the Israelite spies come in and she ends up marrying into the family. And we discover a couple of generations later when we get to Boaz. Boaz is her son. And who does Boaz marry? He marries a Moabitess, Ruth.

Well, what is a Moabitess? They come from the family of Lot out of his incestuous relationship with his daughters. So, just so much of this. And then he takes care. It's interesting when he talks about Solomon that he is the son of David, but he really calls him, you know, the son of Bathsheba, wife of the Hittite. And so, it's like a reminder like you remember what happened here in regard to David taking her into his household. And all of those kind of prepare you for Mary. And, of course, even though she's a virgin and innocent, there's sexual scandal there, is there not? So, it's fascinating what he's doing there.

What is he doing? Because, you know, I grew up in a church and I never heard any of this. It was all sanitized. It was all, I thought, everybody in the line, everybody in the Bible almost was perfect. Obviously— All the way to immaculate conceptions, right? Exactly. And so, here you are, I mean, your book Saints and Scoundrels.

There's scoundrels everywhere. Why is Matthew telling us this? Well, I think there's three things about that genealogy. I think, first of all, if you just look at the form and shape of it, it's organized according to the anticipating the king, the king ruling over Israel, and then after exile and there's no king. So, he's saying something about the kingship of Jesus. And, of course, we know that's what Matthew wants to do in his gospel. But then getting back to the family, I think one thing he's doing is all of these women, except for Mary, are Gentiles. Well, that would be shocking to this first generation of Jews who would think that God was all about the Jews. And so, here's Matthew. And in a sense, he's saying to these proud Jewish people, God has always been about having a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. And he's been bringing them into his family, making them a part of his family since the very beginning of his family.

So, I think that's one thing he's doing. But I think it's also very significant. I guess when I present this to people, I want to look people in the eyes. And for me, most often, it's women that I am speaking to.

And, you know, you can be in a gathering with a group of women and everybody looks really good. But we know that no matter what group you're in, there are people who walk in and they have some secrets, and they have some sexual shame in their past. And there's a part of them that wonders if they could ever really be a part of God's family, or if they have gone too far, if they've done something too shameful. And I think what we have when we look at this genealogy from Matthew, we can say, let's see, do you have some incest in your family? Well, you can find a home here.

Have you experienced an unwanted pregnancy? Welcome to the family. And that there is no sin that could keep you from becoming a part of the family of Jesus. And that's also true for men. It isn't just women that had that in the lineage.

It's like men walk in those rooms like you're talking about with the same shame, thinking I'm too far. And then you look at who's in that line, you're like, whoa. Well, you got Abraham in that list, you know, and how he lies about his wife and jeopardizes her.

Several times. David, Judah, I mean, they're all there. And it gives us hope, doesn't it?

That maybe we could fit into his family? I wrote a newsletter for our church recently, and I said, we as Christians should be very comfortable wearing masks because most of us have been doing it for years. And it just talked about the fact that the whole idea of mask wearing, there's a word for it in the Bible.

It's the word hypocrite. It's putting on a mask so that people don't see the real you. And I said, I understand why there are times we don't want people to see the real us because we do have this shame. But the good news of the gospel is our shame has been removed.

Someone else has borne our shame for us. The problem comes not with, will God accept me? The problem is if I reveal who I really am, if people knew this about my family tree, how are the other sinners, the other scoundrels that I'm having fellowship with, how are they going to react to me? And that's, I think, the challenge why people resist being transparent about the reality of the dysfunction of their own families.

Absolutely. And so isn't it good news for us to know that Jesus welcomes into his family people who don't come from the, and I'm using air quotes, the right family? You see that here? And people who have less than perfect records, which is all of us. And he welcomes us in to call us brother, sister. And good for us to know that the person you look at and go, oh, that's a part of their background?

Well, we probably don't have to dig too far in yours before we're going to find some scandals and some messes. We're not as clean as we think we are. And what would the church be if it was a no mask?

And I know I'm not talking COVID, because we should be wearing masks. But if we could be real and honest and bring our shame to the cross in a community that everybody's done that, and we could look at each other with love, even though there's sin and guilt, and it's in the Bible, and it's in us, and it's been paid for. Unfortunately, we can tend to be stingy with extending grace to others.

Why do you think? I think some of that's pride. We want to think we're more worthy of being included in Jesus's family maybe than someone else, or we're the more natural choice. But what I found over and over again as I was scouring the Gospels for these stories of the scoundrels and saints that are part of the story of Jesus, the most significant thing I came away with was the generosity and the open-handedness of the grace of Jesus toward the worst of sinners.

What good news we have to share with the world. Maybe the world sees the church primarily as our finger pointed out at them, wanting to point out their sin or blame. But boy, what I see in the picture of the Gospels is this open-handed generosity of Jesus with grace toward sinners. Our friend Ron Deal has noticed that the blended family dynamic is present in Jesus's family tree as well.

And of course, Ron's ministry to blended families, he just wants to give encouragement to those who are in blended families and trying to make beauty from the ashes, whatever those ashes are that have brought them to their blended family. Jesus knows what you're dealing with, because that's a part of his background and his lineage as well. Talk about the nuclear family, Jesus' mother, his father, his siblings. I mean, I've always wondered, wouldn't it have been the worst to be Jesus' brother and have his mother always saying, why can't you be more like Jesus? And when the brother says, why do you always have to seem so perfect? And Jesus could say, because I am.

Well, let me talk parents first, and then we'll talk siblings. When we look at Joseph and Mary, one thing that strikes me is the first thing we're told about both of them is, you know, Joseph in a dream and an angel speaking to him and an angel coming to Mary. And it's clear when we read Mary's song, her Magnificat, that she has some understanding of who this child is going to be.

Because if you examine her song, she's praising God for proving true to his promise to Abraham and his promise to her ancestors. So, there's a sense in which she recognizes who this child is, that this is the child who's been promised ever since Genesis 3.15, that there was going to be an offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. So, there's a sense in which he understands that. Joseph seems to understand that. The fact that he listens to the angel and takes Mary as his wife, and he's told this is Emmanuel, God with us. But then we read the story of when Jesus is 12 years old and they go to Jerusalem and, you know, Jesus gets left behind at the temple and they come back and they're, you know, they're saying, you know, what are you doing?

And Jesus' answer is, don't you know that I must be in my Father's house? And I guess what I saw about Joseph and Mary is there's a sense in which they understood who Jesus was. But then there's this gap as well, you know, a lack of full and complete understanding. And I found hope in that too, because all of us, we have some understanding perhaps of who Jesus is, but maybe there are some still some gaps. And that's really good news because what it says is, and I just want to say this to anyone who maybe you've been exploring a little bit about who Jesus is, but you think, I don't have him figured out yet. So, I can't be ready to take hold of him by faith or I can't get in because I don't know enough, I don't understand enough.

Not at all. Jesus welcomes into his family people who understand some about him, but don't yet understand him fully. The people closest to him who should have known the most about him didn't understand. And yet they were a part of his family. And, you know, you gotta love this.

Joseph and Mary parents actually left him behind when they got in the minivan to drive away. Have you ever done that? You're a parent who's done that. You feel good about now, don't you?

Exactly. I had a night, this goes back to when I was a kid, my dad one night said, I'm going to go to Central Hardware. Do you want to go with me?

And I said, sure. So, we got to Central Hardware and whenever we'd get there, I'd say, can I go to the toy aisle? And I just wanted to see what was new in the toy aisle. So, he left me on the toy aisle looking at all the toys while he went to do his shopping. And I was having plenty of time looking at all the toys, everything. I thought, this is more time than I usually get in the toy aisle. And after a while, I think I'd seen all the toys in the toy aisle, but I just stayed there and kept looking and checking things out. And finally he came and said, okay, time to go. Well, what I didn't realize is he had gotten home with his purchases. And my mom said, where's Bobby? And he goes, I knew I forgot something at the hardware store. He had to come back and get me.

So, we've all done that. We've all kind of left our kids in the dust, but to leave little Jesus behind, you think you want to get in trouble with God, leave Jesus behind somewhere, right? The pressure for Mary and Joseph must have been like, oh no, we've lost God.

You know, that's a lot of pressure. So, he did have brothers and sisters. So, we don't know a lot about them. You know, the brothers' names are listed and it says he had sisters.

But what we know about them, what's revealed most of all, is we read this little phrase. And honestly, when I read it, it makes me terribly sad because it says about his brothers, they didn't believe in him. And I'm with you, you know, what was it like to grow up with a sibling who never talked back to mom and dad and always responded in love?

So, there's a part of me that I do have that thought of like, any of us who've had a sibling and like, if their good behavior is making you look worse, that's annoying. But how could you miss that he always loved you perfectly? You know, that he was always selfless, that he always spoke the best of people. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine how they didn't see something dramatically different in him and that that would cause them to believe in, but they didn't. In fact, you know, when he comes home to Nazareth and he opens up the scroll in the synagogue and basically is claiming to be the Messiah that Isaiah had written about and everybody wants to throw Jesus off a cliff. I mean, they want to put him away, you know, carry him off to the crazy bin. Now, it's interesting in the Gospel of John, it tells us at one point that they're kind of pushing Jesus out the door to go to Jerusalem for the feast because they say, you know, you can do your miracles there because there's going to be lots of people there.

And that's kind of curious. It's like they think, well, we don't believe you knew or anything, but if we can maybe write on your coattails to some greatness, if you're going to do these miracles, let's go do them where lots of people can see them. And so, they kind of push Jesus out the door to do that. But then this amazing things happens and it's not stated clearly, but we read in Acts and then later in 1 Corinthians, it says that James is one of those who saw him after the resurrection. It didn't tell us right there that he's talking about James, his brother, but we discover that later. And so, how great is it that Jesus would reveal himself, the risen resurrected Jesus would reveal himself to his brother James. And then, of course, we get to this book of the Bible written by James followed by a book of the Bible written by Jude.

These two have siblings. And what really fascinates me when I get to those books, now, if I'd been in that family and I was going to write a book, I would start it, I, Nancy, sister of Jesus, because I want to assert my credibility out there, right? No, not James and not Jude. They begin James, servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Jude does the same thing. So, their credibility is not built on being a sibling to him, but having him as their savior and being a servant to him. And that's really encouraging to me for a number of things.

I think it should be encouraged to everyone who reads it. I mean, don't all of us have someone in our family that's someone in our family who has not yet taken hold of Jesus Christ by faith, that they would fall into that line if they did not believe? And maybe we're thinking, you know what, if I were a better example, if I were a better witness, if I knew how to explain things better, then that family member would come to Christ. And I think the good news in seeing these siblings of Jesus is to recognize it's not too late.

And that to come to believe late is possible, a better late than never believer. And it gives us a sense of hope that maybe that person has not yet believed, but God is not done and that he can reveal himself to the most hardened, cynical family member you have in a way that would overcome doubts and overcome everything, overcome their passionate disregard for Jesus so that they become a passionate servant of Jesus, a passionate sharer of Jesus. That's what happened in Jesus' family. And I think that gives us hope for our own families. I can't imagine, first of all, I think we all have family members that we may be embarrassed about. And I'm thinking these brothers and sisters could have been embarrassed like, oh, this is the crazy brother. And then to think of the shame that they would carry and the grace of Jesus visiting them after James, after his resurrection. But can you imagine having the thought, I grew up with him, I saw him, and he probably reflected back on, now it all makes sense. But the shame and the grace, that combination would be hard. And I love their humbleness of these brothers talking about that because I think we all have that.

And even when you say scoundrels, have you experienced that in your own life of people rejecting Jesus and your family members or even thinking it's silly what you're doing? I certainly have family members that I think have not gone from spiritual death to spiritual life. And so in this, I find hope that better late than never faith is possible. I find hope too, just hearing you teach this, Nancy, because Jesus as a brother was perfect. And not just that he lived perfectly, but he loved them perfectly. He lived selfishly.

There's nothing else he could have done better to lead them to himself. The only thing that made the difference was the resurrection. And the only thing that's going to reach our family members or a friend or a neighbor is not how we live, although it's important. And we need to shine and be an example for what Christ looks like. But at the end of the day, it's the power of God.

Raising Jesus from the dead. Do we keep talking to him? Yes. Do we keep putting our kids under hearing God's word?

Yes. But ultimately, for anyone we love who does not know Christ, what has to happen is God has to reveal himself to that person. It has to happen supernaturally. And so what does that leave us to do? Pray.

And we think maybe that's the last thing. No, that's the first thing to pray and say, God, would you reveal yourself, just like you revealed yourself to James and just like you revealed yourself to Jude, reveal yourself in that way that they would not only finally recognize who you are and what you've accomplished on their behalf, but that they would take hold of you in a life-transforming way. If Jesus' personal model and his own speaking was not sufficient for his brothers and sisters to go, clearly, you are the Son of God, then our model and our speaking, we shouldn't expect that it will be sufficient. To your point, it is the work of God in somebody's life, which means we still speak and we still model, but we recognize that it's up to God to do the work in someone's life and that's why we pray.

That's why we trust in him. I keep thinking that maybe one of the reasons the brothers and sisters kind of didn't want anything to do with Jesus is because there are some people I've been around who are so godly that I don't want anything to do with them because it shows up my own shame. Are you talking about David and I?

That's what it is. You've been around people where it's like, I'm uncomfortable and the reason I'm ultimately uncomfortable is because I can see the sin exposed in my own life and so I'll avoid being with you because my own shame or my own sin comes to the surface when I'm with you and see I'm not there yet. They had to feel a little of that with Jesus. It's like, I can't be around him because it just reminds me of how far away from God I am.

Nancy, you started here. I think the beauty of the entire story is the grace that we see Jesus live and then model for us. There's scoundrels all around us. We're scoundrels and yet he never let that stop. The grace of, right? That's, I mean, that's— Well, we were yet enemies. Right.

Right. Christ died for us. You've written about not only Jesus' family tree but other saints and scoundrels in the Bible in your book and you've also done a video series on this book.

A lot of people watching this either on their own or in a small group. In COVID days, this is a great way to kind of virtually connect around a Bible study. If you go to our website, familylifetoday.com, there's information about Nancy's book Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus. You can order the book from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to order. There's also a link on our website to Nancy's website if you want to find out more about the video series. Again, our website is familylifetoday.com.

You can order Nancy Guthrie's book Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus from us or you can order by calling 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Everything we do here at Family Life is anchored in what we've talked about today. It's anchored in the truth of God's word, going deep into what the scriptures teach us about how we're to live with one another, how we're to love one another in our marriage, in our family.

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