What Is Your Weakness?

There is an old story about a water bearer who had two pots, one of which was cracked. I’m not going to recount the story here, but I will provide a link if you are not familiar with the story and would like to read it. The point of the story is that we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and we shouldn’t feel superior or inferior to others because of a given strength or weakness. Your weakness is, of course, none of my business. The Bible does say to confess your faults one to another, but, quite frankly, I have enough weaknesses of my own to deal with. I’d rather not deal with yours.

Apostle Paul wrote once about the different members of the body. He asked the question, “If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body?” His point was that different members of the body have different purposes. We need our eyes to see, ears to hear, hands to hold things, feet to walk, etc. By the same token, the Body of Christ has many members, and God has given each of us different abilities. We can easily see the importance of a good pastor, but how many of consider the importance of the one who comes in and cleans the church after service? Would you want to attend a church where the bathrooms never got cleaned? How long would it take before the entire building smelled? There are also people in the church to whom God has given a caring spirit. Many times you don’t pay much attention to these people, but when things are not going well for you, they have an encouraging word that helps get your heart right. They don’t have a position or a title in the organization, but the pastor wouldn’t be able to maintain the flock without them.

Casting Crowns did a song awhile back called, “Stained-Glass Masquerade” in which they posited that we have a bad (very bad) tendency to try to act perfect. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that, because I am a Christian, I should not have any faults. If that were the case, however, then James 5:16 wouldn’t make any sense. Sometimes God covers our faults, but sometimes He shows our faults off to others so that they can see what marvelous works can be wrought by Him through even such miserable wretches as we are. Matthew 5:16 says to let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, which is in Heaven. At first glance, that doesn’t seem very fair: If I’m doing the work, then why does He get the credit? Keep in mind, though, that if you are doing your work properly, then God will allow you to do things that you simply aren’t capable of doing on your own. Not necessarily what we would normally term ‘miracles,’ you understand, just things that you personally just aren’t good enough to do. Do you remember the story of Gideon? God kept telling Gideon that he had too many soldiers; if God allowed Israel to defeat an army that only outnumbered them by three-to-one or so, then the Israelites might start thinking that they could fight wars on their own. Even so, we have been given weaknesses by God so that we (and those around us) recognize it when God is working through us—God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.

Of course, Scripture also teaches us that we are not sufficient of ourselves even to think as of ourselves. Many of us have higher beings working through us without us even being aware of it. Unfortunately, many of those times, it isn’t God or His angels that are propelling us. It requires a great deal of time spent praying and seeking God to be sure which Spirit one is being led by.

Also remember that Scripture teaches us that we have all fallen short. If you start thinking that you can’t make a mistake, then you need to remember that you are still just a cracked pot. If you start thinking that you are just the worst person in the world, then you need to remember that the rest of us are cracked pots, too. The only reason that we have value is because God has granted us value. You are somebody because God loves you, not because of anything you can do.

The Women In Christ's Lineage

I want to make a couple of points before I really get into the topic at hand. First, for those of you not familiar with the term, ‘transliteration,’ it refers to trying to find a collection of letters in the alphabet used by one group of people, that will roughly correspond to the name of a person or place in another language used by a different group of people—particularly if the two groups of people use different alphabets. You may have noticed a number of different spellings for the name of the leader of Libya: Muammar Khadafy. His last name sometimes starts with a ‘Q’ or a ‘G’. The reason for this is that the national language of Libya is Arabic, and Arabic does not use the same alphabet that English does. In fact, Arabic uses many sounds that are not adequately represented by our alphabet (as does Hebrew). You may have also noticed that many names are spelled differently in the Old Testament, as opposed to the New Testament. This is because the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but the New Testament was written in Greek. Of course, many of the people in the New Testament were Hebrews, so their names were written using the Greek alphabet when pen met paper (papyrus?) for the New Testament. To be honest, transliterating names almost always involves some distortion, although a conscientious transliterator will strive to minimize the distortion. It is inevitable that some names converted from Hebrew into English, and the same names converted from Hebrew into Greek, and then into English, are going to have differences.

Secondly, in ancient times, women were often considered to be more or less second-class citizens; they were frequently left out of historical narratives. Even the Bible makes several references to women without bothering to mention their names. Think about it: What was the name of the woman at the well? How about the woman that was healed of an issue of blood? The woman with the pot of oil that never failed? I’m sure you can think of other examples as well. It was unusual that a man was mentioned in Scripture without being named, unless he had a very minor role in what was going on, but women were treated differently.

Matthew chapter 1 lists the genealogy of Christ from Joseph’s side of the family. Joseph wasn’t really His father, but, this lineage establishes that Jesus came from a line of kings (adopted sons of kings have been known to inherit the throne, but no one except Joseph and Mary knew that Jesus was Joseph’s adopted son, anyway). David, King of Israel, is mentioned, along with David’s son and successor, Solomon. After Solomon, Jesus’ lineage traces through the kings of Judah rather than Israel, but it is clear that Jesus was of Royal blood, and, had Israel (and Judah) not been under Roman occupation at the time of His birth, He would have had a physical throne here on Earth. Having said that, though, there are five women listed in Jesus’ lineage (four of them listed by name). These women were great women of faith.

The first woman mentioned in Jesus’ lineage is Thamar—spelled Tamar in the Old Testament. Tamar was the wife of Judah’s oldest son, Er, who died childless. As a result, the middle son, Onan, was required to marry her in order to raise up an heir for his late brother. Onan got greedy and tried to take advantage of his sister-in-law/wife while taking pains to ensure that no heir was produced (meaning that, when Judah died, whatever he had would be split three ways between the son of Onan and Tamar, Onan, and Shelah. These splits were generally not done evenly—the eldest got a bigger share. This means that the son of Onan and Tamar would end up with more of Judah’s stuff than Onan would); God took him. So, Judah’s youngest son, Shelah, was supposed to marry Tamar, but Judah, having already lost two sons, for reasons that were not entirely clear to him, after they married this woman, was understandably concerned at the idea of his youngest (and now only) son marrying Tamar. Judah delayed the wedding. But time passed, and the marriage still wasn’t happening, and Tamar wasn’t getting any younger, so she tricked Judah into himself doing the act that resulted in producing heirs to replace Er and Onan (those heirs being Pharez and Zarah). This, apparently, was very important in God’s plan; as I said, Tamar is one of very few women mentioned in Christ’s lineage. And, by the way, since Judah was only one generation removed from Israel (who only had one daughter, Dinah), I think that it’s safe to say that Tamar was not born of Israel.

The second woman mentioned is Rachab—spelled Rahab in the Old Testament. Rahab hid the spies that Joshua sent in to case the city of Jericho before the attack. She indicated to the authorities that had left the city through one of the gates shortly before, and urged them to hurry out after them. When the searchers returned from their fruitless search, she then helped the two spies escape the city. In return, they promised that she, and her family, would not be harmed when the city fell.

The third woman mentioned is Ruth. Ruth was born a Moabitess, but she converted to Judaism. She, like Tamar, became a young, childless widow, and ended up having to marry a near-relative of her late husband (he had no surviving brothers), but not until after she had plainly and confidently stated to her mother-in-law Naomi that where Naomi went, Ruth would go, and that Naomi’s God would be Ruth’s God. Ruth continued to take care of her mother-in-law, and did not abandon her.

The fourth woman mentioned is Bathsheba, and she isn’t mentioned by name. She is referred to as “her that had been the wife of Urias”—wouldn’t it have been easier for the writer to spell out her name? Bathsheba’s first husband, Uriah, was a Hittite. The Hittites were among the peoples that Israel was supposed to kill or drive out of the Promised Land when they came up out of Egypt, but did not. Now Uriah was fiercely loyal to Israel, even if he was not an Israelite by birth. It occurred to me to wonder if Bathsheba were a Hittite, too, but, the name Bathsheba comes from two Hebrew words, and her father, Eliam, has a Hebrew name, also, so it would seem that she was the first woman mentioned in Christ’s lineage that was actually an Israelite.

The fifth woman is, of course, Mary. I don’t think I need to say anything about her, except maybe that her name has been distorted by the transliteration from Hebrew to Greek to English. Whenever her name is transliterated directly from Hebrew to English, it is written as Miriam. She was named for Moses’ sister, the prophetess.

Consider, for a moment, that of these five women, three of them were not Israelites by birth. All of them shared in the belief system of the Israelites, but three were converts. Of course, with the understanding that, among other things, Jesus was a Light unto the Gentiles, it makes sense that His lineage was not purely that of chosen people.