Message: “Eight Jewish Surnames” and the Imago Dei (Matthew 1)” from David Carey Dixon

A message from the series "Sunday Service." Do you know your eight family surnames? Jesus’ genealogy reveals a steady heritage of Jewish ancestry all the way back, except that when you review the details of Old Testament history, you also find some Canaanites and a Moabitess in His family tree! Not so pure-bred after all! Besides that, Mary was an unwed mother, probably a teenager, so by today’s standards, she was clearly a candidate for eliminating the “undesired fetus.” Couldn’t God have done it some other way? In fact, restoration of the imago Dei in us required this “messy process” through the long chain of human generations that finally led to the incarnation. To reach the place of our true need, it had to be through the “seed of Adam, born of a woman,” so that He could come to us as our Kinsman-Redeemer!