A blessing we don't deserve

I am still reading the Bible chronologically. So right now I am reading 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, and Psalms. It gets a little confusing at times, but I love seeing what all happened around the same time. So while I was reading all the lineage stuff in 1 Chronicles I realized a very important message: God can bring something amazing out of a huge mistake you have made.

Back in biblical days your lineage was very important. That is how God said he would bless Abraham. It seems everything was focused on your descendants. So ultimately the greatest lineage is Christ's. But once we look back at the people who make up Christ's lineage we see some people who made some big mistakes, but God still used them to bring His son into the world. Here are some of the people we see:

• Judah and Tamar: basically Tamar was Judah's daughter-in-law. Her husband/his son died and he was supposed to give his next son in marriage to her. Things happened and he didn't give his son, so she devised a plan to disguise herself and seduce the father. She ended up being pregnant with twins by her father-in-law. And one of the twins Perez is in the lineage of Christ.
• We all know my favorite story about Ruth and Boaz. Boaz is in Christ's lineage. Guess who his mom was...Rahab. She was the prostitute who helped the Israelite spies conquer Jericho in exchange for the safety of her family. She followed the Lord after that and was no longer a prostitute.
• And you always hear that Christ was from the line of David, but Solomon is the son that it continues with. Out of all the wives David had we see that the line of Christ comes from the woman he committed adultery with, Bathsheba. Solomon is the second son born from the two. The first died because of the consequences of their sinful encounter.

I am sure there are other examples of God using big mistakes to bring a blessing, but these few encouraged me. Whenever we make a mistake and indulge our sinful desires it is our responsibility to go on our knees begging for forgiveness. Once God has forgiven us and wiped that sin away we still have to deal with some possible consequences. Like in David's and Bathsheba's case the son they were so desperately trying to hide died. But even with our sinfulness God still can bring a blessing. That is just one more thing that God does for us that we definitely don't deserve.