The People: The Outsider, The Excluded, The Undeserving, and The Insignificant
Week 2: The People of Advent
Read: Matthew 1
This week on Creative Thinking, we’re continuing our Advent journey, from the places of the story to the people who bring its pages to life.
In Matthew 1, we see the family tree of Jesus: a lineage filled with outsiders, the excluded, the undeserving, and the insignificant. It’s a story that reminds us: God’s grace is not reserved for the worthy, but extended to the willing.
Join us this week as we rediscover the wonder of the Advent — and who Christ came for.
The Family History:
“A descendant of David would reign forever.”
2 Samuel 7:16
1. The Outsider
“The Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
Ephesians 3:6
2. The Excluded
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3:28
3. The Undeserving
“Christ is the kind of person who is not ashamed of sinners — in fact, He even puts them in His family tree.”
Martin Luther
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—.”
Ephesians 2:4,5
4. The Insignificant
“We were made not primarily that we may love God, but that God may love us — that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased.’”
C.S. Lewis
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
John 3:16
The Outsiders welcomed, the Excluded included, the unsparing mercy of God toward The Undeserving, and the Insignificant chosen.
The Art: The Adoration of the Magi,1460
Giovanni di Paolo,
Tempera and gold on wood
10.5” x 9”
New York Metropolitan Museum
