Matthew 3

The Perfect Planner

Have you ever made an extremely detailed plan before? Maybe for a game or for a date with someone or just the plan for the day? I’m sure that most of us have made big plans before, though I know some of us prefer to just wing it. Now have you ever had one of those plans just work out perfectly? I know that it doesn’t happen like that often but sometimes God shines His favor on us and our plan goes off exactly like it is supposed to. Do you remember what that is like? seeing a conversation take the exact turn you knew it would, watching the player make the exact move you predicted. Man that feels awesome to have a plan go perfectly.

Now what if when you were making your plan you now get to see into the future. You know with one-hundred percent certainty exactly what will happen. How accurate do you think your plan will be now? It will be perfect every time. Without mistake. Now unfortunately we can’t make plans like that ourselves, but there is one being that can make perfect plans. Today we are going to continue in Matthew and see how God is the perfect planner and how that effects us.

We are still going to be starting off in chapter one, but I promise we will actually make it all the way through chapter two by the end of the sermon.

Again we need to remember that Matthew was trying to convince the Jews that Jesus was the promised Messiah. One of the reaccuring ways that he does that is the use of old testament prophecy.

First lets look at a scripture we read last week.

Matthew 1:23 ““Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).”

This is the first prophecy that Matthew drops to give his first piece of evidence. He is looking back to

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

How He was born and why to a virgin

Now to me it is not enough to just look back at that bit of scripture and say ok cool let’s move on. No the Jews knew the context of that verse and understood it better so we need to as well. We need to know exactly what that promise is and why it was given.

To understand all of that we have to have a quick little history lesson on the nation of Israel. Back in the ancient days of the nation sometime after the death of King David the nation split into two nations. In the north you had the nation of Israel. The king that sat on that throne was decided by whoever could gain enough power politically or through military force to take the throne. In the south was Judah. The king there continued following the line of David.

The nation of Assyria was growing at this time and starting to move their territory closer towards Israel. The northern kingdom of Israel made an alliance with the kingdom of Syria to stop the Assyrian expansion. Israel tried to convince their cousins to the south to join their alliance but the king at the time (Ahaz) did not want to align himself with such corruption that was happening in Israel. He refused the offer.

This made the king in Israel angry so he and all of the other nations surrounding Judah began attacking Judah trying to force them into submission. King Ahaz began to get scared and wanted to petition to Assyria to form an alliance with them so that Judah would be spared.

God sends Isaiah to king Ahaz to stop him from doing this. God wants Ahaz to trust in Him and not in the powers of man. So, when Ahaz is at first hesitant God says (through Isaiah) to test Him. Ask him for a sign from Heaven or Sheol. Something supernatural that only God could do.

Ahaz still preferring the powers of men refuses Gods offer saying that he does not want to test God.

God then tells him basically, ok I give up on you Ahaz, but to the house of David I will one day give a sign. A sign that only someone who has complete control over creation can produce.

God lets Ahaz know that his trust should always be in the one who created the world not in the world itself.

Lets look at one more prophecy before we break it down.

Matthew 2:6 ““ ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ””

We know that God told them how the Messiah would be born, but God even specifically named the place that He would be born in.

Again I feel like we need to look at the reference Matthew is making to fully understand the prophecy he is quoting here. Look at Micah chapter 5 with me.

If you like to follow along often and know that I typically use the ESV translation then you are going to notice that what I am reading is different. Sometimes other versions have a better translation of certain words and in this situation I feel like the KJV has the best translation of this passage, but I will spare you the thys and thous and I will read it from the NKJV

Micah 5:2-5 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting.” 3 Therefore He shall give them up, Until the time that she who is in labor has given birth; Then the remnant of His brethren Shall return to the children of Israel. 4 And He shall stand and feed His flock In the strength of the Lord, In the majesty of the name of the Lord His God; And they shall abide, For now He shall be great To the ends of the earth; 5 And this One shall be peace.

Where He will be born but more importantly Who He is.

First we need to understand what the book of Micah is so we can get the weight of this prophecy. You can think of Micah as sort of a court case against the Israelites made by God. God through Micah is telling them here are some of the ways that you have been messing up lately. Some of the things they are messing up are actually directly related to the last story about Ahaz and the Assyrians. Well God lets them know how the messed up but it isn’t just that. God is a God of mercy and love and compassion so He does not just leave it as a scolding. No like a good father He tells them how it will get better too. He tells them look you have to learn your lesson. You need to learn to depend on me so for a time I am going to take my hand off of you Israel. If you want to try it on your own I am going to let you have your shot.

Then once you have been trampled and you have suffered I will send a saviour. I will send a man to be born in Bethlehem and not only does God say where He will be born, He gives us His purpose here too. He will come to be a Shepherd. He will feed the flock and strengthen them. He will be known all over the world.

But here is the coolest part about this prophecy to me and the reason why I believe that King James has it translated the best. In verse two at the very end. He says that this coming shepherd is from old and from everlasting. There are two meanings here that are debated, but I find them both to be true. The first I believe is tied to the phrase from old. God is refferencing This longstanding promise of a Messiah. He is making sure that they know He is talking about the same coming saviour He has been promising for generations.

The second is the main reason why I went to the KJV for this as I do not thing ESV properly translates this word to english. The word here is everlasting. ESV has it as ancient days. Through my study of the text and cross referencing it to other times it is used in scripture everlasting is the better choice in my opinion. Why is that important? Ancient days is still in a time constraint. It is limited by human perception of time. Everlasting is eternal. Time does not matter to someone who is everlasting. God is telling them right here that this coming Messiah will be an eternal being. This Messiah will be God in human form. Five hundred years prior to the birth of Christ and God tells the Israelites that the saviour will be born in Bethlehem, He will be a shepherd to the people and known across the world, and He will be the eternal God of the universe.

So, we see God giving the promise of an incredible sign nearly a thousand years before the birth of Christ. At this time Ahaz and the rest of the line of David would have had no idea what God really meant by this.

We see God give another promise that gives them even more specifics five hundred years before His birth, yet they still did not understand who the Messiah was. They did not know when He would come.

But many understood still that God was good and that if He had a plan then they should be patient and wait on it. Notice that God does not say when He is going to give this sign or when the Shepherd would arrive. The same is true today. God promises to work all things out for good, but He does not tell us when that will happen. Sometimes we see the immediate fruits of our struggles and sometimes, like the Jews of king Ahaz’s time we never see it in this life. Yet God still promises that He will triumph and make something great come from our hardships.

We talked at the beginning about the perfect planner. The planner who knows the exact outcome of every decision before it is made. God is that planner. Since before the beginning of time God had a plan to redeem the fallen humanity. Matthew is showing us here that God is faithful to His plan. God thinks about every detail and plans out each step so that something great can happen. So, if God would plan out something all the way down to what tiny town Jesus would be born in, why would He not have a plan for you?

Be patient and trust in the perfect planner

That is what I want to encourage you with today. God has an incredible plan for each of us in this room. It can often feel like there is no plan. That life is chaos and you are just stumbling from one thing to the next without direction. I promise though that your life has meaning. It has a purpose. God has a plan for every person in this room to effect those around you. He is faithful to see the plan through and to use you for good. So if you are on the waiting side of things like the Israelites were then be patient. Don’t give up and lose hope. Let Gods fullfillment of even the smallest of promises made thousands of years ago encourage you that God will not forget about you. He will guide you and direct you so long as you are faithul and patient.