Who is Jesus?
The book of Matthew begins with a list of names, many of which may be unfamiliar to us, especially if we don’t know much about the Bible (Matthew 1:1-17). Who are these people, and why does Matthew see this list to be so important that he starts of his book with this?
As we trace the lineage of Jesus’s ancestry we discover all kinds of people. Some of these are people well-known in the Bible, such as Abraham, while others we may have never heard of. As a descendant of King David, we see a bunch of good Israelite kings who are Jesus’s ancestors, and also a bunch of evil kings. Throughout the accounts of all these people however, one thing is constant, and that is the presence of God working throughout the generations.
Abraham was promised by God that through his descendant, all the nations would be blessed. Various prophecies foretold of the Son of David, through whom God would bring about salvation and an everlasting kingdom. While mankind had fallen into sin at the beginning of creation, God had been working through the ages to redeem us.
As such, Matthew begins his book by reminding us of everything that God had been doing up until this point, and how all of this brings us to Jesus.
Summary by Horace