Sun 16 Dec

When you are pulled over for a random breath test by the police one of the first things they ask you for is your license to verify who you are. When you go into a bank to open a new account one of the things they ask you for are documents to verify who you are. When you go to board an international flight you will be asked for documents including a passport to verify who you are. Sooner or later someone will ask you for documents to verify who you are.

When Matthew started writing His Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, people were starting to ask who is this Jesus who did all these miracles – calming storms. healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead. Just who was this Jesus doing all these things.

So, in order to verify who Jesus is, Matthew began writing his account of the good news of Jesus. And his starting point was a genealogy. Unless people knew your family history the Jewish people weren’t interested. They needed to know where you fitted in the big scheme of things concerning the nation. And so the genealogy Matthew used to verify who Jesus was indicated that Jesus is the Christ. He was a son of Abraham. He was a son of David. He included many different people in His family tree.

The genealogy would show that Jesus is an historical person. It would point out that Jesus is the Christ, the One they had longed for to come. When the Christ came they rejected Him and the documents verifying who Jesus is. What is your response to the Christ?