Because we have this verse in Matthew 1 that says 21 “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”” and it doesn’t make any sense in the English, I decided to go ahead and tackle the wacky world of transliterations and translations. What do you do when languages have different alphabets and different sounds? Most things can be translated, but names are tricky – especially when sounds in one language don’t exist in others! English language translators today have it pretty easy – they can listen to someone speaking Hebrew and mimic *almost* every sound in Hebrew and Greek, but not all of them – I am sure you have heard the almost hacking sound that people make with their throat while speaking any of the Semitic languages and there is no English equivalent. So we are going to take the journey from Yeshua to Jesus, step by step through the last 2000 years, following the “paper trail” from the Septuagint translation of Joshua to the Tyndale Bible. We’re also going to debunk the “Hey Zeus” memes out there by pointing out that Zeus is the modern name for the god, not the ancient one.

Well, here we are with our last PG-13 teaching for a long time, thank goodness. I much prefer teaching for a general audience but it’s in the Bible so it would also be irresponsible to just pretend like this doesn’t exist. Bathsheba has an undeserved bad reputation, alongside Jezebel and Delilah as temptresses – but in Bathsheba’s case, that reputation is undeserved and I will prove it entirely from the original Hebrew and archaeology.

So this week we will be talking about one of the most admirable women in Scripture – a pagan-born Moabitess named Ruth. But we have a problem because of the Scriptural prohibition against Moabites and their descendants being allowed to join the congregation of Israel! How does Ruth break that curse against her and become the great-great grandmother of King David?

This teaching will be PG-13 for obvious reasons! How many of us would brag about one of our great great great…. grandmas being a pagan prostitute? Probably not many and even fewer people would want it on their genetic resume broadcast to the world but that’s exactly what we see in the Matthew 1 genealogy of Yeshua (Jesus)! In ancient times, a man’s genealogy was a sign of his honor and status – and so you would think that the Bible writers would never have told us about King David’s questionable lineage, but then they boldly proclaim it in Matthew too!

What are we missing? Well, maybe what we see as scandalous was looked at in an entirely different way by the Jews. So this week I will share why Rahab, like Tamar before her, was honorable and not shameful. This week we are going to explore the power of repentance and the absolute forgiveness of God – and what that means for us when we come into the Covenant through the blood of Yeshua.

This is our first PG-13 teaching so I must caution parents to either preview this or watch it with your kids. I give a warning at the beginning telling kids not to watch it without your permission. There is just no way to thoroughly discuss why Messiah’s genealogy was an honorable one without talking about the four women mentioned in it – and this week that means discussing Levirate marriage, sex, and cult prostitution. Tamar was a vindicated woman, but to the modern eye she appears a bit scandalous – it is important that our kids know how people in Messiah’s day would have looked at the women included.

This also ties in with Torah Portion Vayeshev.

It’s finally beginning! The first class in Context for Kids Gospel Studies – I am so excited! This is the first of five classes on Yeshua’s (Jesus’s) family tree or genealogy. Not only are we going to learn about Joseph’s and Mary’s families, but we are also going to learn about ancient adoption, record-keeping, some problems that popped up in Babylon, and how extra-biblical Jewish writings support the claims in both Matthew and Luke. We will also discuss the “missing links” – the three missing kings from the line of David – and how we see the same gaps in Old Testament genealogies. We’re going to learn why it was a very Jewish thing to do. I am also going to put a strong focus on preparing our kids to spot antimissionary tricks and lies so they won’t be fooled by ex-believers who want them to deny Yeshua as Messiah.

The next addition to our studies is actual practical discipleship, giving the kids ideas of things that they can personally do, or you can do as a family, to make God look good and to become conformed to the image of Messiah.

So, first we have this week’s episode:

And that episode talked about this past episode on David and Solomon:

and if you have not viewed the video explaining the rating system, here it is: