2.13-23

Who’s In Charge?

Matthew 2.13-23

• Chaos can break out in any number of places: work, school, ballgame, political event, etc. Eventually, someone might be heard saying, “Who’s in charge here?”
• Around the world: there is chaos, unbridled sin, violence, immorality, scandal, corruption; there are 6 billion people living and breathing on planet earth…the majority of them doing that which is right in their own eyes; pandemonium regularly breaks out during times of disaster; there’s political upheaval in numerous parts of the world; there are wars around the globe…someone might say, “Who’s in charge here?”
• The answer: GOD IS!
• Da 4:34-35 [Nebuchadnezzar, after his humiliation]: I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever: For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to Him, “What have You done?” NKJV
• Purpose: 4 evidences of God’s sovereignty

The Preservation of Life (13-15a)

• 13-15 The coming of the magi no doubt was a time of great encouragement and assurance to Joseph and Mary, confirming the wondrous words of the angels to them (Matt. 1:20–23; Luke 1:26–38), to Zacharias (Luke 1:11–20), and to the shepherds (Luke 2:8–14).
• But the rejoicing was short-lived. No sooner had the magi departed than an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, giving him a warning from God. This news was not of joy and hope, but of danger and urgency.
• From pheugo (to flee) we get our word fugitive, one who escapes from something or someone. The distance from Bethlehem to the border of Egypt was about 75 miles, and another 100 miles or so would have been required to get to a place of safety in that country. Traveling with a baby made the trip both slower and more difficult.
• Egypt was a natural asylum for the young Jewish family. During the period of Greek rule of the Mediterranean world, which occurred during the intertestamental period, Alexander the Great established a sanctuary for Jews in Alexandria, the Egyptian city he named for himself. Throughout the Roman rule that followed, that city was still considered a special place of safety and opportunity for Jews. The Jewish philosopher and historian Philo, himself a prominent resident of Alexandria, reported that by A.D. 40, a few years after the death of Christ, the city’s population included at least one million Jews. In the third century B.C. a group of Jewish scholars in Alexandria had produced the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. The Septuagint was used by much of the early church, and it was from that version of the Old Testament that many New Testament writers quote.
• The choice of Egypt as a place of refuge was natural; it was the haven for other Israelites in political trouble in OT times (e.g. 1 Ki 11.40; 2 Ki 25.26; Jer 26.21) and later, and was now safely outside Herod’s jurisdiction. For Matthew, it held extra meaning as the place where Israel’s history as the people of God began.
• It seems reasonable that Joseph used the valuable gifts of the magi (the gold, frankincense, and myrrh) to pay for the trip to Egypt and the stay there.
• God could have protected His Son in many other ways and in many other places, even in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, under Herod’s very nose. He could have blinded Herod’s soldiers, destroyed them by an angel, or simply have miraculously hidden the family. But God chose to protect Him by the very ordinary and unmiraculous means of flight to a foreign country. The commands to go to Egypt and then to leave were given supernaturally, but the trip itself and the stay there were, as far as we are told, marked by no special divine intervention or provision. The family was not instantly transported to Egypt, but had to make the long, tiresome journey on their own, just as hundreds of other Jewish families had done during the previous several centuries. To decrease the chance of being noticed, Joseph took the common precaution of leaving by night, probably telling no one of his plans.

The Preservation of Life

The Completion of Scripture (15; also 17-18, 23)

• Seven hundred years earlier God had told Hosea that “out of Egypt I called My son” (Hos. 11:1). Herod’s threat was no surprise to the Lord, who, long before Herod was born, had made plans to foil that wicked king’s plans against the true King. Furious at being deceived, he raged against the Lord and his Anointed One (Ps. 2:2).  Yet this was no narrow escape.  The One enthroned in heaven laughs and scoffs at the Herods of this world (Ps. 2:4).
• The reference to “My son” in the book of Hosea is to the nation Israel. It was a historical statement about what God had done in delivering His people from bondage under Pharaoh, calling them out from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Why, then, did Matthew interpret as predictive an event that occurred perhaps 700 years before Hosea and an additional 700 years before Matthew quoted Hosea?
• The setting of the book of Hosea is failure, decadence, and spiritual tragedy. Through the unfaithfulness of his own wife, Gomer, Hosea vividly portrays the unfaithfulness of Israel to the Lord. Gomer was a physical prostitute, and Israel was a spiritual prostitute. God’s chosen people had chased after false gods as unashamedly as Gomer had chased after her lovers. Though Hosea’s heart was grieved and broken, he continued to love his wife and sought to win her back.
• Despite everything, God promised to bring Israel back to Himself. Israel would suffer His rebuke and His judgment, but one day that people would return to their God, because He had called Israel to be His son. Thus God reminded His people of His great and long-lasting love for them. “When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son” (Hos. 11:1). He would not go back on that calling. When Matthew quotes the last part of that verse from Hosea, he applies it to Christ. Though Hosea was not knowingly predicting that the Messiah would also one day be brought out of Egypt, Matthew shows that Jesus’ return from Egypt was pictured by Israel’s calling from that same country many centuries earlier. The Exodus, therefore, was a type of Jesus’ return from Egypt with Joseph and Mary. As God had once brought the people of Israel out of Egypt to be His chosen nation, He now had brought out His greater Son to be the Messiah.
• Matthew sees striking parallels in the patterns of God’s activities in history in ways he cannot attribute to coincidence.  Just as God brought the nation of Israel out of Egypt to inaugurate his original covenant with them, so again God is bringing the Messiah, who fulfills the hopes of Israel, out of Egypt as he is about to inaugurate his new covenant.
• A type is a nonverbal prediction, an Old Testament person or event that illustrates some aspect of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the future but does not specifically describe it; the writer has no way to see the future antitype. God’s nonverbal predictions are as true and vivid as His verbal ones. But we cannot legitimately call a person or event a true Old Testament type except as the Bible itself tells us of it. The only certain Old Testament types are those given as such in the New Testament. No type is in itself visibly a type; such reality awaits the New Testament identification. When the New Testament uses something in the Old as a prefigurement of something that has occurred or will occur later, we can safely refer to the Old Testament something as a type. Ignoring such limits results in the freedom to allegorize, spiritualize, and typify the Old Testament by whimsy. Because types are veiled revelation, divine testimony to their identity must be given by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament text. Therefore, because of the specific association that Matthew gives here, we know that the Exodus of Israel from Egypt is a type of Jesus’ return from Egypt as a young child.
• In a still deeper sense Jesus came out of Egypt with Israel under Moses. As Matthew has already shown, Jesus descended from Abraham and from the royal line of David. Had Israel perished in Egypt, or in the wilderness, or in any other way, the Messiah could not Himself have come out of Egypt or even have been born.

The Preservation of Life…The Completion of Scripture

The Elimination of Enemies (16-20)

• The idea in Matthew 2:16 is better rendered as tricked. Either meaning, however, refers to Herod’s perception of the motives of the magi, not their true intention. It was not their purpose to trick or mock the king but simply to obey God’s command “not to return to Herod” (v. 12). The king, of course, knew nothing of God’s warning and saw only that the wise men did not do as he had instructed.
• Herod’s crime was made even more vile and heinous by the fact that he knew that the Child he sought to destroy was the Messiah, the Christ. He questioned the chief priests and scribes specifically about “where the Christ was to be born” (2:4). He arrogantly and stupidly set himself against God’s very Anointed (cf. 1 Cor. 16:22).
• The ruthlessness of Herod’s later years, particularly where a potential rival was concerned, is well documented; the victims included three of his own sons, as well as several large groups of actual or suspected conspirators.  It is thus not improbable that his fear of a potential rival should lead him to kill a few babies in Bethlehem.
• It is often observed that there are no other historical documents substantiating Herod’s “massacre of the innocents.”  But given the small size of Bethlehem and the rural nature of the surrounding region, there may have been as few as twenty children involved, and the killings, would have represented a relatively minor incident in Herod’s career, worthy of little notice by ancient historians who concentrated on great political and military exploits.
• That there is no extra-biblical confirmation is not surprising; the same can be said of Jesus’ crucifixion.  The death of a few children (perhaps a dozen or so; Bethlehem’s total population was not large) would hardly have been recorded in such violent times.
• The least of Herod’s intentions was to fulfill prophecy, but that is what his slaughter did. This prophecy, like that of Jesus’ return from Egypt, was in the form of a type, which, as we have seen above, is a nonverbal prediction revealed in the New Testament. In the passage (Jer. 31:15) from which Matthew here quotes, Jeremiah was speaking of the great sorrow that would soon be experienced in Israel when most of her people would be carried captive to Babylon. Ramah, a town about five miles north of Jerusalem. It was also the place where Jewish captives were assembled for deportation to Babylon (Jer. 40:1).
• Rachel weeping for her children therefore represented the lamentation of all Jewish mothers who wept over Israel’s great tragedy in the days of Jeremiah, and most specifically typified and prefigured the mothers of Bethlehem weeping bitterly over the massacre of their children by Herod in His attempt to kill the Messiah.
• Jeremiah 31:15 occurs in a setting of hope.  Despite the tears, God says, the exiles will return; and now Matthew, referring to Jeremiah 31:15 likewise says that , despite the tears of the Bethlehem mothers, there is hope because Messiah has escaped Herod and will ultimately reign.
• How do all these “dots” connect? I believe Matthew is telling us that Jesus is the new Israel. Jesus was subtly linked with Moses, whose life (among others) was sought by Pharaoh, but who God spared. Jesus was like David, who jealous King Saul sought to kill because he was a rival to his throne. Jesus was all that Israel failed to be, so that His journey to Egypt and back could be likened to the exodus, as Hosea referred to it in Hosea 11:1.
• Jesus’ journey to Egypt and back was like Israel’s captivity (both the Assyrian captivity of the Northern Kingdom and the Babylonian captivity of the Southern Kingdom). Thus Matthew draws the connection between Rachel’s weeping over the departure of her children. Though she wept, thinking they would never again return, God had promised they would return and would be restored to blessing. Does this not imply that the weeping of the mothers (and fathers) of Bethlehem, whose sons were slaughtered by Herod, would be short-lived as well? And all of this because of Jesus, the new Israel. As these infants were identified with Christ in their death, so I believe they are going to be identified with Christ in His resurrection and return in glory. Herod died, opposing the “King of the Jews;” these infants died because of their identification with the “King of the Jews.” How different their destinies will be.
• When Herod was dead, the greatest immediate danger to Jesus was over. In his Antiquities Josephus reports that Herod “died of this, ulcerated entrails, putrified and maggot-filled organs, constant convulsions, foul breath, and neither physicians nor warm baths led to recovery.”
• See photocopied notes by Phillips regarding Herod’s death…Part 1
• A rather fitting end, it seems, for such a man. Not nearly so fitting was the elaborate and costly funeral that his eldest son and successor, Archelaus, prepared in his honor—especially in light of the fact that just five days before he died, Herod, by permission from Rome, had executed another son, Antipater, because of his plots against his father.
• See photocopied notes by Phillips regarding Herod’s death…Part 2
• Herod the Great had long before earned the more appropriate title, Herod the Horrible, Herod the Hated. Leading up to his death, he could have been rightly designated “Herod the Horrendous.”
• The fact that the angel spoke of those who sought the Child’s life indicates that Herod was not alone in his plans to destroy his supposed rival. But like Herod, the other conspirators seeking the death of the Child were themselves now dead.

The Preservation of Life…The Completion of Scripture…The Elimination of Enemies

The Rejection of Messiah (21-23)

• 21-22. Joseph was not instructed to return to any particular city or region but simply to take the Child and His mother back into the land of Israel. But Archelaus posed another, more general, threat. In one of his numerous acts of brutality shortly before he died, Herod had executed two popular Jewish rabbis,Judas and Matthias, who had stirred up their disciples and other faithful Jews in Jerusalem to tear down the offensive Roman eagle that the king had arrogantly erected over the Temple gate. The following Passover an insurrection broke out, and Archelaus, reflecting his father’s senseless cruelty, executed three thousand Jews, many of whom were Passover pilgrims who had no part in the revolt.
• 23. It has been noted by nearly all Bible scholars that there is no one text which says, “Jesus will be called a Nazarene.” James Montgomery Boice calls attention to two key observations:
• First, we should note that Matthew introduces the verse by referring to prophets (plural, ‘through the prophets’), rather than saying, as he does in other instances, ‘This took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet’ (Matt. 1:22) or ‘For this is what the prophet has written’ (Matt. 2:5). This seems to indicate a general rather than a specific Old Testament reference.
• Further, he replaces the verb he usually uses in such introductory formulas (‘said’) with the conjunction hoti, which means ‘that.’ This is the only place such a substitution occurs in the Gospel. Matthew is probably not citing a specific Old Testament text but instead is referring only to a general teaching of Scripture. A right rendering of his words might be, ‘This was to fulfill the teaching of the prophets that he would be called a Nazarene.’
• Boice then shows that nowhere in the Old Testament do we find a prophecy which states that Jesus shall be called a Nazarene. How then can this problem be solved? In my mind, Boice provides us with the best explanation: Nazareth was a despised place, the kind of village we might refer to disparagingly as ‘Podunk, USA’ or ‘Endsville’ or ‘Dumpville’ or ‘Hicktown.’ It would have had that immediate ring to any Jew of that day who heard the name. What Matthew seems to be saying is that the prophets predicted the Messiah would be a despised person, the victim of slurs such as this.
• We know of Jesus’ teaching that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” only because of Paul’s later reference to it (Acts 20:35). The saying is not mentioned by any of the gospel writers, including Luke, who reported the account in Acts. John tells us that he did not even attempt to record everything that Jesus said and did during His earthly ministry (John 21:25).
• Nazareth was about 55 miles north of Jerusalem, in the regions of Galilee, where the Lord had directed Joseph to go. The town was in an elevated basin, about one and a half miles across, and was inhabited largely by people noted for their crude and violent ways. The term Nazarene had long been a term of derision, used to describe any person who was rough and rude.

·        It was a slang or idiomatic term for an individual from a very remote or obscure place (much like our contemporary words hick or redneck).

• That is why Nathanael, who was from Cana, a few miles to the south, asked Philip, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). The question is especially significant coming from Nathanael, who by Jesus’ own word was “an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (v. 47). Nathanael was not given to maligning his neighbors, but he was shocked that the one “of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote” (v. 45) actually could come from such a disreputable place as Nazareth.
• The early Jewish persecutors of the church apparently considered Jesus’ being from Nazareth as evidence that He could not be the Messiah, rather than, as Matthew tells us, a sign that He was. Tertullus, acting as attorney for the high priest Ananias and other Jewish leaders, spoke derisively of Paul before the Roman governor Felix as “a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5).
• Matthew is not saying that a particular OT prophet foretold that the Messiah would live in Nazareth; he is saying that the OT prophets foretold that the Messiah would be despised.
• Jesus’ living in Nazareth not only fulfilled the unnamed prophets’ prediction, but gave Him a name, Jesus the Nazarene, that would be used as a title of reproach, thus fulfilling many other prophecies that depict the Messiah as “despised and forsaken of men” (Isa. 53:3; cf. 49:7; Ps. 22:6–8; 69:20–21). The gospel writers make clear the fact that He was scorned and hated.
• It was therefore at lowly and despised Nazareth that the royal Son of God, along with the righteous Joseph and Mary, made His home for some thirty years.

• Jesus is the great divider of men…The contrast is clearly evident in Matthew 2. On the one side, there are the magi, who came from afar (and at great sacrifice) to find and to worship the King of the Jews. On the other side are Herod, the religious clergy, and the people of Jerusalem. Herod, at the extreme, seeks to kill the baby Jesus. The others merely appear to ignore Him. Whenever men come face to face with Jesus, they must decide whether they will fall down before Him as God’s promised Savior, or whether they will reject Him. As you have considered this chapter, my friend, you have been confronted by a choice: Will you receive Jesus as the promised Savior, or will you reject Him? There is no middle ground. There never has been. Whose side will you take, Herod’s or the magi’s?
• The second half of Matt 2 turned our attention more to the hostility that arises against the Christ child, his flight into exile, and settlement in obscurity.  Matthew foreshadows the similar reaction to Jesus which will characterize the final months of his life and which has recurred frequently throughout church history.  True believers, moreover, often follow their Lord in suffering and persecution.  Matthew reminds us that is part of God’s sovereign plan.  Suffering, rejection, and even death are never God’s final word for either Christ or His disciples.  But they often must precede exaltation.
• Haven chosen Him as Savior, are you ready and willing to bear the accompanying scorn and reproach? Are you willing to be despised? Rejected? Ostracized? Mistreated, misunderstood and cursed?