Genealogies, Anyone??

Yes...  I'll admit it ... I like to wander in cemeteries and I enjoy genealogies.  Not because I have a morbid fascination with death but because I value people's lives and feel a desire/need to honor someone who once lived, even if it is only to read their name on a gravestone or in a genealogy.
I don't find the genealogies in the bible boring - God has hidden some interesting details in what could be viewed as a boring list of names.  But God is not the author of 'boring' -  His creation and His word are equally beyond our limited ability to absorb all there is hidden therein.

 I was recently looking at the genealogies of Jesus.. the genealogy of Jesus through Mary, found in Matthew 1:1-17 and the genealogy  Luke records in Luke 3:23-38 that is Jesus 'legal' lineage through Joseph, his 'supposed' father.
 Both genealogies overlap from Abraham to David but then Mary's continues through Solomon and Joseph's continues through Nathan, - Solomon and Nathan both being sons of David.

In Jesus' lineage through Mary, we see from King David , a consecutive succession of kings - sixteen of them, while in contrast, Joseph's lineage contains no king after David.
We have Jacob's prophetic word over his son Judah recorded in Genesis 49:10 - "The sceptor shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes and to Him shall be the obedience of the people."   In plain English it is saying that "There will be a continuous line of kings from Judah ...  until the Messiah comes!"  And so we see it was ...  The continuous line of sixteen kings until the captivity to Babylon followed by the 400 years of silence - during which period there were no kings - until Jesus was born.

But there was another detail in Mary's genealogy that I found fascinating ....
As I studied this long list of Kings, I noticed something that caught my attention. Jeconiah is listed as 'the son of'  - not his father -  but his grandfather. I had to know why, and I found the answer  proved how the smallest detail of God's word does not return to Him void. When God speaks, we can always follow it with "and so it is already done!"

In Deuteronomy 29:18-20, God warns the Israelites  that if any man walked in rebellion and idolatry, turning away from the Lord God, that God's curses would come upon him and God would "blot out his name from under heaven!"

In Jeremiah 36:30,31, we read "Therefore says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah 'He shall have no one to sit on the throne of David and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat of the day the front of the night .. and I will punish him ....all the doom that I have pronounced against them..."
Jehoiakim was cursed by God for all his iniquity....  and it is his name that is missing in the genealogy of Jesus - literally blotted out!  It should be listed between Josiah and Jeconiah..

I can't think of a greater disgrace than to be blotted out - disowned- and not recognized in your family tree or lineage.

I think of the words of Jesus when He said there would be those who cried out "Lord, Lord!" but would be barred from the kingdom of heaven by His words, "I never knew you, depart from me!" 
Oh ... let us make sure that we are not in that number but that we stand and sing with countless saints the refrain of  Daniel Whittle 's 1883 hymn... 

"I know Whom I have believed, 

And am persuaded that He is able

To keep that which I've committed, 

Unto Him against that day."