Dear Michele, What a sad story you have shared, but how great the love and mercy of God that He has made you a new creature in Christ and clothed in His righteousness! You have been washed and sanctified and you are His holy child. I am so grieved and angry that your mother would not protect you and the church did nothing to deal with the sin but ignored it! It would break my heart to give up a child too. Such hard things you have dealt with, but God is greater than all these things. He is a tender and loving Father. He binds up broken hearts. I wish you could have heard our sermon today! We had a guest preacher and he chose Matthew 1: 1-17 as his text. Usually the genealogy lists are not very interesting to me and I sort of plow through them to get on to better things. He brought out so many wonderful things in that genealogy. Below is from the brief notes I took. His sermon was much more detailed and better than this. One of his points he brought out was that the line of Christ shows a list of people who were notpeople of great status, but this list includes people who were gentiles, who were unknown, and even outcasts. Among the women were Rahab the prostitute, Bathsheba who isn't named but called the wife of Uriah, and Ruth the Moabite. Women had no status and their testimony was not even admissable in court. It even includes King Manassah who was a very wicked king. This is a demonstration of God's grace. The gospel comes not by power or by might, but by His gracious Spirit. We are included not because we deserve it or have earned it. We are not included among God's people because of our efforts, but are only included because of the blood of the Lamb. He has saved us, redeemed us, built us up for His glory. Revel in the grace of God! Jesus is the fulfillment of all the OT promises. In Christ there is life where there was death, righteousness, peace, rest, hope that is never diminished, that never disappoints, glory, purity, beauty, wisdom-- resources never to be exhausted.
