The story of the birth of Christ is populated by a broad variety of people who — superficially at least — seemed to have no particularly significant qualifications for their involvement in the story.
The credentials for Joseph and Mary are humble at best: poor, young, alone, largely ostracized by family and friends. The shepherds were considered outcasts — not much better than lepers.
Simeon and Anna? Righteous, devout, and faithful. But given their elderly years, some might be tempted to dismiss their significance.
And the magi — while wealthy and significant, their significance was in a foreign land, so that their influence in Israel would not have been nearly so great.
And the lineage of Mary and Joseph? Yes, it includes luminaries like David and Abraham, but it also is overwhelmed by names that are completely unknown to contemporary readers, and even more significantly, contains a prostitute, an adulterer and murderer, and an incestuous relationship. Not exactly the kind of heritage you would expect for a Messiah.
So there you are — in the story of Christ’s birth are a large array of ordinary people and sinners whom God used to accomplish His amazing purpose of accomplishing Christ’s advent. And that list of names is a reminder that God uses seemingly ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary purposes. But the truth is not that God uses “ordinary” people, but that He uses ordinary people who are transformed by Him into useful servants by means of their faithful and submissive obedience.
Francis Schaeffer summarized it well:
In God’s sight, there are no little people and no little places.…Those who think of themselves as little people in little places, if committed to Christ and living under His lordship in the whole of life, may, by God’s grace, change the flow of our generation.
Words of Grace 