ncestry is important to almost everyone. In the early years we want to know the names of our mother and father and usually our grandparents. Then later in life we become interested in our great-grandparents. We may want to know their names if we are named after them. The author’s first and middle names come from his father and one of his great-grandparents. Sometimes we are named after someone famous. A wife might be a descendant of nobility, a king, a prime minister, or like most of us - no one special in the opinion of many in the world. Some of us keep genealogical records that date back for centuries. Others only know their family heritage for a couple of generations. But ancestry was very important to the Jews. This is obvious since the scriptures contain long lists of family names. The genealogical records did not include everyone. They included the males and sometimes not all of them either. Ancestry was especially important for the Levitical priests and lines of royalty. We will discover in this study and in the next one that ancestry was very important to Jesus’ parents too! It is also important to us.

Prophecy and Ancestry. Why are we interested in Jesus Christ's parents, grandparents, greatgrand parents , and distant family? We are interested for the same reason that motivated the apostle Matthew to record Jesus' genealogy. He wanted to know and he wanted us to know that Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus. Since the Old Testament prophecies predict the Messiah's ancestors, this is important information. It helps us to identify the Messiah. Two of the key prophecies predict that the Messiah's lineage can by traced back to Abraham and King David. So Matthew starts the genealogy of Jesus like this,