You are a Christian. You believe in Jesus Christ. You believe he died on the cross for your sins. You believe he was resurrected. You believe he is the Son of God.

Is that enough? Sure.

But the Bible reveals there was so much more to Jesus. There was more to Jesus than the miracles he performed. There was more to him than his teachings.

In fact, the Gospels provided us with so much more about the identity of Jesus.

Identity is important. It is important for us to know who it is we follow as a disciple of Christ.

When we read what the Gospels say about his identity, we typically say something like, “Oh yeah, I knew that.” But do we really understand why it was important enough to write it down in the first place.

Matthew

Let’s take a look. Let’s start with Matthew.

The very first thing the Gospel of Matthew gives us about Jesus is the genealogy of Jesus. We are given his family tree.

(To think the recent interest in ancestry is a new thing! Really. Matthew was way ahead of any website promising to trace ancestry.)

Two significant facts about Matthew’s genealogy that are stated in the first verse of Matthew:

After stating his claim, Matthew sets out to prove it with the family tree.

But it was much more than ancestry. Matthew was telling us something about the identity of Jesus.

14

Fourteen

Matthew emphasizes the three sets of fourteen generations between Abraham to the Messiah. That long list of names in the first sixteen verses was given simply to make a generational claim.

But what is so important about three sets of fourteen?

Good question.

There are several thoughts about it. Most focus on the numerics.

Numbers were important to the Jewish people, particularly the number seven (14 is 2x7). 7 is the perfect number. So, 14 is doubly perfect.

One claim is on the combination of the three generations (3x14 = 42). 42 is a set of years mentioned in Daniel regarding when God would do something great.

Another suggestion is that 42 is like the pattern of creation. God created six days and then rested on the seventh day. 6 groups of this pattern are 42. Thus, Jesus is the culmination of everything God has done and as Jesus cried from the cross, “It is finished.”

Confused? Numbers. Calculations. Yeah, me too. But I get the point.

While we may not know exactly what the numerics prove, we are being told that the birth of Jesus was significant. There is something more going on than just another child being born.

Think about this: God promised Abraham. God promised David. God promised through the many prophets (even in Babylon as Matthew states).

Matthew’s claim is that Jesus is the fulfillment of those promises. Matthew does not stop here. Matthew continues through the next two chapters demonstrating this claim. we'll look at them later.

Know This

As disciples of Jesus, know that we do not follow just another person. We follow the one promised by God.