The Book of Matthew Bible Book Shelf 2Q 2016

Why did Matthew go out of his way to highlight the troubled ancestry of Jesus? Because Matthew himself was troubled. He was a Galilean Jew who paid Rome for the privilege of taxing his own people. What a sellout.

Along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, on a bumpy road overlooking the lake, was a tollbooth where the local fishermen flung their taxes to whatever sellout Jew collected taxes for Rome. Little did a hated publican named Matthew know that one day he would get an unexpected cal...