Matthew 2:13-23

When I was growing up my grandmother subscribed to a magazine called GAMES. You can still buy it. I’m not really sure how much she enjoyed it, but she knew I enjoyed it. This magazine was filled with different kinds of games, most of which you played alone. There were word search games and crossword puzzles. There were pencil games and math puzzles.

There was one particular game that was included in most issues that involved pictures called “Eyeball Benders.” There would be nine pictures of common objects and you were supposed to guess what the object was. The reason it was so difficult is the picture was a close-up of just a small part of the object. Sometimes it was fairly easy, but sometimes there was no way you could guess. I found some pictures and thought I’d see how well you do.

Sink drain

Garbage disposal

Bubble wrap

Close up of camera

Button on camera

Close up of pants loop

Pants loop

Close up of stop sign

Stop sign

It’s possible to get so close to something that it’s difficult to see what it really is. You just need to back away from it and then it becomes clear.

We do that in our lives as well. Something will happen and it may not be till months or years later when we can look back and put it into perspective.

The same is true with the prophecies in the Bible. Turn to 1 Peter 1. There are hundreds of prophecies concerning the coming of Jesus in the Old Testament. Some say there are over three hundred that are fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Almost every area of his life was covered. Before Jesus was born some made sense to those reading them, but most of them didn’t. Peter says that even the angels didn’t understand them.

10Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. 12It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. (1 Peter 1:10-12)

It was not until years later when Matthew was writing his gospel that many of the prophecies concerning Jesus began to make sense.

Tonight we will three more prophecies about Jesus. Matthew’s purpose is to prove to his readers that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the anointed King who was to come. Matthew does this by pointing out the many prophecies Jesus fulfilled. And what we see is that while Jesus could have read these prophecies and decided to live them out, there are many he had no hand in fulfilling. And such is the case of the prophecies in our passage tonight. God, knowing in advance what would happen, spoke through the prophets about what was to come so that when it occurred we would know that this was indeed the hand of God at work.

Before we watch the video of our passage I want to show another video of a three-dimension piece of artwork.

Matthew 2:13-23 VIDEO

I don’t get very excited about modern art, but this one by French artist Bernard Pras is interesting. He’s known for creating works of art with common objects as he does here. You may not have been able to make them out, but this one uses a guitar, a sofa, a bicycle seat, and a piece of luggage, not to mention the dozens of other objects you’d probably have in your house.

I’m sure you did notice that the only way you can see what artist intended is to look at it only from the perspective he wants it seen from. If you look at it from any other angle you see the different pieces, but it’s impossible to see the big picture. You have to look at it from the end.

In the same way, God often uses common objects and arranges them in such a way that if you look at them in a certain way you can see exactly what he wants you to see. And that’s what’s happening here in Matthew 2. God is telling us a story that many of us have heard ALL our lives. In this story God puts common objects together in such a way that if you look at it from his angle you'll see exactly what God wants you to see – a picture of his Son – Jesus.

Some people don’t consider Joseph to be a very important character in the nativity story. He makes it into our nativity scenes, but he’s not really needed. We don’t have a single word he said recorded for us in the Bible. So the emphasis tends to be on the baby Jesus, Mary, the shepherds, and the magi. But in our passage tonight Joseph plays an important role.

Jesus is now about 2 years old. It appears that his family has gotten a house in Bethlehem and settled into life there and it seems that maybe Joseph’s family in Bethlehem has helped him establish himself there. And then something happens that is out of the ordinary. Magi show up with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Bethlehem would have had a population of about a thousand. So this caravan showing up would have caused quite a stir.

These men traveled hundreds of miles to come and worship Jesus. I mentioned that the word “worship” literally means “to bow.” The magi hadn’t traveled that great distance to establish diplomatic ties with the new dignitary; they came to humbly bow at his feet. That’s amazing considering the fact that these men neither knew nor worshiped God. They were pagans. Yet they traveled hundreds of miles to worship at Jesus’ feet while the Jewish religious leaders who were looking for the Messiah wouldn’t travel over the next hill to see him. How sad that those who should have been excited at the birth of Jesus were unmoved.

Then as mysteriously as they've come, the magi return to their homes by another road.

That night, Joseph is warned in a dream that the family needs to run for their lives. Joseph is told take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. He’s also told why – Herod is trying to kill the child. And Joseph immediately obeys. The picture we get is he gets up in the middle of the night to pack up his family and hit the road.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the faith not only of Joseph, but also of Mary? “Are you sure it was a dream from God? Maybe it was something you ate?” We are usually pretty good at ignoring what we don’t want to do and who would want to get up in the middle of the night for a trip across the desert? But they go.

We’re not told how far they traveled into Egypt. It’s estimated that there were over a million Jews living at different towns and cities in Egypt so it wouldn’t have been too difficult to find a place where they’d be welcomed, but the closest town would have required a hundred mile trip – on foot.

This brings us to our first prophecy. In Hosea 11:1 God refers to bringing his son up out of Egypt. When you read the passage it is obviously referring to the Israelites and how he delivered them from Egyptian slavery. However, when you look from the end you are also able to see how Jesus mirrored this passage.

We don’t know how much later it happened, but sure enough, just as the angel of God warned, Herod sent soldiers in search of the baby. When he realized the magi weren’t returning to tell him where the child was, he estimated about how old the child might be and had every male child under two killed. Again, with a population of about a thousand that means there were probably twenty to thirty children killed.

What’s amazing to us is that this didn’t make any works of history. No one wrote about it except Matthew. What that tells us is that compared to some of the other things Herod did this was fairly small. Last week I mentioned how Herod had killed his first wife, her mother, and even two of his sons. Later, when he knew he was close to his death, Herod gathered the prominent Jewish men of Jerusalem and had them locked up with orders to execute them when he died so that there would be mourning when he died. Fortunately, after he died his sister stepped in and the men were rescued. When you think of all the people Herod had killed it was probably easy to overlook the twenty to thirty babies killed I Bethlehem – unless you lived there of course. There probably wasn’t a family in Bethlehem that was affected.

This brings us to the second prophecy. Matthew quotes Jeremiah who said that crying was heard in Ramah. The passage refers to the crying that took place when Babylon attacked Jerusalem and took captives. Ramah is located just a few miles north of Jerusalem. As the captives were led away from Jerusalem to Babylon the first town they would have passed was Ramah. Matthew isn’t saying that the passage in Jeremiah prophesied the killing of these children, but that it mirrored it.

It wasn’t long before Herod died – less than a year. Herod’s death is well accounted for. He died sometime between the end of March and early April in 4 B.C. (You’ll remember our discussion about the error in our calendar we had Sunday evening). Herod was pretty sick and the Jewish historian Josephus says it was a painful and gruesome death. Even though he was sick and not quite in his right mind, Herod was smart enough to know that Rome would never allow one of his sons to take over so he deliberately divided the land he ruled among three sons. The reason I mention this is that just days before he died he switched which area two of the sons would rule over. He gave Archelaus rule over Judea and Herod Antipas rule over Galilee, the importance of which we’ll see in just a minute.

After Herod died God again speaks to Joseph in a dream.

Who has ever wished that God would speak to them? After hearing the things God spoke to Joseph I’m beginning to rethink that wish.

God speaks to Joseph again and informing him that Herod has died so it’s now safe to return. Again, it’s been less than a year. However, as he drew near to Jerusalem he started hearing stories about Archelaus. Shortly after he started ruling he had three thousand Jewish leaders rounded up and executed because they had opposed his leadership. Because of that Joseph took Mary and Jesus back to Nazareth – where Herod had originally planned for Archelaus to rule.

And we come to the third, final, and oddest prophecy of the chapter. Matthew says this too fulfills a prophecy. He said the prophets said that Jesus would be called a Nazarene. The only problem with this is there is no prophecy in the Old Testament that talks about the Messiah being a Nazarene. So what gives? What is Matthew talking about?

Here are possible explanations. In the previous prophecies Matthew directly quoted a passage from an Old Testament prophet. However, in this instance, he doesn’t quote a prophet he just says “this was said through the prophets.” In other words, there wasn’t a direct prophecy, there were just hints that this would happen. What were the hints?

First, the word Nazareth means branch. Several prophets referred to the Messiah as being of the “branch” of Jesse and David. So Jesus, the Messiah, grew up in Nazareth, a branch. He was called a resident of the branch.

Too, for whatever reason, Nazareth had a terrible reputation. There lots of areas like that.

In my hometown of Covington there were places that all you had to do was mention it and people knew it was not a good place. I don’t know what was wrong with Porterdale, but Porterdale had a bad reputation when I was in high school. At one time it had been a growing community with a thriving industry. It was a mill town and of course there are no mills there now. They had been shut long before we moved to Covington. But when I lived there no one thought very highly of it. They made fun of the people who lived there.

Nazareth had a similar reputation. You’ll remember Nathanael’s comment about Nazareth in the first chapter of John’s gospel when Philip told him he had found the Messiah and that the Messiah was from Nazareth. Nathanael replied, “Nazareth! Can any good thing come from there?” Nathanael isn’t saying something bad about the town; he was just repeating what everyone thought of it. Early believers were cursed as being Nazareens. Jesus bore that reproach, that he would be despised among men. There are numerous prophets who said that.

That brings me to the second point. By growing up in this small town that was often made fun of, God was having Jesus be associated with the lowly of society. And isn’t that what Jesus continued to do throughout his life. And that too was spoken of several times by the prophets. Isaiah, for instance, says that Jesus was despised and rejected.

I want to make a few points before we close.

First, there’s Joseph’s obedience. I already mentioned it how Joseph didn’t waste any time. He didn’t wait until morning, he got them packed that night and headed out to Egypt.

Think about what this meant for Joseph. He and Mary had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem expecting to stay only for a few days and then return home. They hadn’t planned on moving. Yet that’s what happened. Their family was back in Nazareth. They didn’t bring a wagon, loaded with their furniture, valuables, and furnishings. Joseph’s work was back in Nazareth. What would happen to that?

In the middle of the night, God said “Move!” Joseph didn’t argue with God. He didn’t ask God for “Plan B”. He didn’t wait to try to figure it all out. He just obeyed. I think that’s why God chose Joseph to be the step-father of Jesus. God knew his heart, that Joseph was sensitive to God’s will.

Second, there was God’s provision. When God calls, he also provides. God wouldn’t have sent Joseph to Egypt with Mary and Jesus and just said, “You’re on your own. Good luck!” They would need enough money to live off of while down in Egypt and God provided it for them through the Wise Men.

Does anyone in here have very much gold? No. Why not? It’s because gold is so expensive. Back then, frankincense and myrrh cost more per ounce than gold did. Joseph was not only given gold, but frankincense and myrrh. We don’t know how much he was given but even a few ounces would have made him a wealthy man. When Joseph left Bethlehem he probably could have bought that inn that turned his pregnant wife away and turned out the innkeeper. God had provided for Joseph and his family money to survive while they were in Egypt.

And third, there’s God’s plan. It was God’s plan all along that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem. He was a descendant of David and should be born in the city of David. It had been God’s plan all along for Jesus to be brought up out of Egypt just like the Israelites 1500 years before under Moses. And it was God’s plan that Jesus grow up in that small and unimportant town Nazareth where no one would ever think to look for one born “king of the Jews.”

What can we learn from all of this?

1. The safest place to be is where God leads you.

The magi followed a star, and it led them to the Christ-child

The magi followed God’s instructions in a dream, and they escaped Herod’s wrath

Joseph followed the angel’s instructions in a dream, and escaped to Egypt

Joseph followed God’s instruction in a dream, and escaped the wrath of Archelaus

The safest place you can be is in the center of God’s will. Whatever path you take in life, God knows where it will lead. How much better it is to follow the path that he leads than one we dream of.

2. A Christian isn’t exempt from troubles. Look at all the suffering and trouble that the birth of Christ brought about:

The Wise Men, avoiding the wrath of Herod

Mary and Joseph fleeing for their life

More than two dozen innocent babies killed by a mad king

This was just a baby, but it was God’s baby boy. Why didn’t God just get rid of Herod? Wouldn’t that have solved the whole problem? Perhaps, but probably not. Remember what Archelaus did.

Today we might ask why doesn’t God just get rid of the Devil. The answer is he will. In his time God will take care of all the evil leashed upon the world today, but God will do it in his timing and in his way. In the meantime God always gives us the strength to win every battle when we follow the path he sets before us.

3. God is in charge. You can always feel safe when you are living in God’s will. That’s not to say that bad things won’t happen to you, but you ca rest knowing God is in charge. Everything that happened in those months following the birth of Jesus was planned out by God. You can see his hand in the Christmas story every step of the way. God is in charge.

Guess what? God is still in charge. He didn’t leave Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem to go it alone. He didn’t leave them in Egypt to tuff it out. God is still on the throne. God is still in charge!