Sundday sermom Matthew 2:16-23 Part 3
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Are there any announcements?
Please pray for Art Stubbs as he texted me this morning to sahre that his dad passed away. And please continue to pray for Mikey who lost his mother recently.
The next Revelation Bible study is on Thursday, February 10 at 6pm, hope to see you there!
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Introduction
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to FCC where we worship God in spirit and in truth, one verse at a time, one book at a time.
I wanted to take a moment to say thanks to each and everyone of you for your service to the Lord, to the church, to your families, friends, and communities.
When we surrender our lives church, we move from being a taker to a giver.
And I think it is important to always remind ourselves that Jesus’ ministry is one of serving.
And always remember, “If we are serving, we are not swerving!”
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” – Martin Luther King Jr
So let us serve as the Holy Spirit leads!
Read Matthew 2:16-23
Read Matthew 2:16-23
Prayer
Prayer
Lord Heavenly Father,
We thank you that your mercies are new every morning and your compassions fail not! We have gathered here today Lord to worship you in spirit and in truth and ask that you would fill us with a double portion of your Spirit and that are time together in the Word would be fruitful and life changing. So come Holy Spirit and do a work in our hearts today! For our hearts desire is to be more like you, to live like you would have us, and to love like you desire.
In Jesus Name we love You! Amen
Review
Review
We have come as far as verse 16 in this amazing narrative of this Young Child.
And we can see right away that the minute he was born, that not only was prophecy fulfilled, but men wanted to not only worship him, but also to take his life, and there was fierce hostility as we will see throughout this gospel.
Last week we focused in on the seriousness of anger and how it unfolds in a persons life when it is not dealt with:
Anger turns into resentment when it is not dealt with.
Resentment is unforgiveness and if not dealt with will turn to bitterness and we read in Hebrews last week that bitterness defiles many:
Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled;
Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
So we must forgive church, we must forgive!
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Personally, I believe that when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we come to the place of accepting the forgiveness that he extended to us because of the finished work on the cross. And it is accepting and believing by faith that we are forgiven that we extend forgiveness to others.
Therefore, forgiveness begotten, is forgiveness bestowed upon others.
The forgiveness of God that we have recieved church, should compel us to quickly forgive others, lest a root of bitterness grow in our hearts and defile us.
Two thoughts and we will move on:
Forgiveness can be an event or a process depending on the level of the offense. And example of this would be someone cutting you off in traffic for some of us we forgive rather quickly, while others this is a longer process.
Remember last week when I shared the story of Dr. Bigger’s daughter being brutally murdered? For him and his wife, forgiveness was not an event, but rather a process.
Forgiving my father who had taken his life, was not an event, but rather a process.
But the bottom line is: The quicker we forgive church, the less we suffer!
When I think of unforgiveness, I think of the parable of the unforgiving servant:
Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”
2.5 Unforgiveness produces suffering and even torture church...
Who do you need to forgive?
Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men.
Here is a terrible illustration of what men will do to get rid of Jesus Christ. If a man is set on his own way, if he sees in Christ someone who is liable to interfere with his ambitions and rebuke his ways, his one desire is to eliminate Christ; and then he is driven to the most terrible things, for if he does not break men's bodies, he will break their hearts.
Herod should have realized that the Magi were not tricking or mocking Him (as some translations put it), but rather it was God working, the One who traps the wicked in their own deceptions:
He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them.
“He frustrates the plotting of the shrewd, So that their hands cannot attain success. “He captures the wise by their own shrewdness, And the advice of the cunning is quickly thwarted.
When we think of Bethlehem we must remember that it was not a huge town, but rather small.
So when he put to death all the male children under two in Bethlehem and its surrounding vicinity, scholars believe it was 20-30 children.
Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying: “A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more.”
This is third fulfilled prophecy in Matthew thus far, with more to come church.
The first mention of Bethlehem in Scripture is in connection with the death of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel (Gen. 35:16–20).
Rachel died giving birth to a son whom she named Benoni, “son of my sorrow.” Jacob renamed his son Benjamin, “son of my right hand.”
Both of these names relate to Jesus Christ, for He was a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3), and He is now the Son of God’s right hand (Acts 5:31; Heb. 1:3).
Jacob put up a pillar to mark Rachel’s grave which is near Bethlehem and when you visit there on a tour they always point to Rachel’s grave.
Jeremiah’s prophecy was given about 600 years before Christ was born. It grew out of the captivity of Jerusalem. Some of the captives were taken to Ramah in Benjamin, near Jerusalem; and this reminded Jeremiah of Jacob’s sorrow when Rachel died. However, now it was Rachel who was weeping. She represented the mothers of Israel weeping as they saw their sons going into captivity. It was as though Rachel said, “I gave my life to bear a son, and now his descendants are no more.”
Jacob saw Bethlehem as a place of death, but the birth of Jesus made it a place of life!
Because of His coming, there would be spiritual deliverance for Israel and, in the future, the establishment of David’s throne and kingdom.
Thus says the Lord: “Refrain your voice from weeping, And your eyes from tears; For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, And they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope in your future, says the Lord, That your children shall come back to their own border.
Israel would one day be restored Jeremiah writes and this promise was fulfilled.
But he gave an even greater promise that the nation would be regathered in the future, and the kingdom established:
(Jer. 31:27ff). This promise shall also be fulfilled.
Very few people today think of Bethlehem as a burial place; they think of it as the birthplace of Jesus Christ. And because He died for us and rose again, we have a bright future before us. We shall live forever with Him in that glorious city where death is no more and where tears never fall.
So we see a dual purpose with this prophecy in that it was fulfilled when Israel was exiled and here when these mother lost their children church.
It is only natural to ask the question as to why would the Lord who is overseeing the protection and providence for the raising of His Son not also protect these innocent little children from this murderous and completely undeserving attack by Herod?
There occur some things in life in which we should honestly take the position that we really do not know why the Lord allows them to happen, however we must also keep in mind that He is in control and that all of His actions are taken for the noblest and most benevolent of reasons
It is also the case that many evil things that happen in this life are simply the result of the sin of man and that when God created man as free moral agents that He considered the risk of doing so worth while, knowing of the great good that would later come as a result of the outpouring of His grace upon undeserving men’s lives
It has also been suggested that these babies were the first martyrs for Christ, and that since most believe that Christ’s death atones for the sins of those who do not know any better and have not reached an age of accountability, that these babies will be given the crowns of martyrs in heaven.
It is a sad note here that this verse in Jeremiah reveals that these women ‘refused to be comforted’, for we Christians should never refuse to be comforted, for the Lord will always give us His comfort in all of our affliction if we will but let Him do so..
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
You don't have to be alone in your hurt! Comfort is yours. Joy is an option. And it's all been made possible by your Savior. He went without comfort so you might have it. He postponed joy so you might share in it. He willingly chose isolation so you might never be alone in your hurt and sorrow. - Joni Eareckson Tada
God is a God of love and therefore a God of comfort.
I am sure that we can all relate to refusing to be comforted in the midst of pain, loss, suffering, trail and tribulation.
Let’s humble ourselves and allow God to comfort us and much of the time he does this through others.
Now when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead.” Then he arose, took the young Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
Here we see Jospeh having another dream and an angel of the Lord speaking to him.
Notice when he knew it was the Lord, he immediately responded church.
He arose and went.
There was no delay.
There is a nugget here church!
There will be times in our lives that God will speak to us go do this or that and should we not respond quickly, we will fall out of the perfect will of God for our lives.
There is other times we sense him leading us somewhere and we do not know where, therefore, we need to wait and pray. He will often give us greater directions on which way to go or not to go!
How do we learn obedience?
though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
One mother writes:
When my oldest son, Jack, was three years old he took three things with him everywhere he went: his blanky and two stuffed dogs named Be-yo and Other Be-yo. One Sunday morning as we were getting ready for church he found a backpack and asked if he could fill it with toys to take in the car. I said yes. He went about filling it and soon was ready to go. I had a class to teach that morning, and we were already running a bit behind.
As we were driving down the street, Jack took out each toy. About ten minutes away from home he asked with worry in his voice, “Dada, did you get blanky and Be-yos?” I replied, “No, you always get them.” With his lower lip dipping a bit now, he asked, “Can we go back?” But we didn’t have time to go back.
I wanted to go get them, but we couldn’t. I also knew he would be ok without them. A few minutes later I looked back at him and saw tears welling in his eyes. But he didn’t make a sound. He sat there, silently obeying my words. He didn’t fight back or negotiate. He learned obedience through what he suffered.
It is possible to learn obedience through suffering without our sin being the result of the suffering. Some things will come into our lives like a forgotten Be-yo, and we will wonder what happened. How did we get here? What must we have done? The answer may be that we’ve done nothing extraordinarily sinful, but there is a lesson to be learned. If Jesus, being perfect, had to learn, we, being sinful, must learn too.
In suffering, we learn obedience. We learn what it’s like to trust in the goodness and love of God. We learn to trust him in all things – not only in good things. In the darkness, God can be trusted because he is working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). Though some terrible things may be included in that “all things,” taken together with the whole of our life, God will work it ultimately for our good and his glory.
So, when suffering comes, as it inevitably will, we can suffer under the mercy of God. And somehow through it all, he’s bringing us to a closer experience of himself. When we suffer, our heart breaks open to God in ways that it can’t otherwise. And what has Jesus given us at a time such as that? A throne of grace.
Herod died a gruesome death church:
But with this Jospeh yielded the voice of God and went to Israel.
Now when he arrived he quickly hears that Herod’s son Archelaus was reigning over Judea now.
Archelaus was as wicked as his father, like father like son the old adage goes.
And yet again in a dream, Joseph loved to sleep church, he was warned by God in a dream to leave and go to Galilee.
The bottom line here is that Joseph yielded the Lord’s voice and he walked by faith. When God spoke he followed and because of his obedience Jesus would make it to the cross.
And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
So Joseph went back to his home town and I find this really interesting.
You know who said that he would be a Nazarene? The prophets said it. It just didn’t get written down until here, but it did get written down here. But you want to know what’s so beautiful? Matthew doesn’t even give a bit explanation. He just says “the prophets said, He shall be called a Nazarene,” which tells me that it must have been common knowledge that the people knew what the prophets said that about the Messiah. That was common knowledge, I believe.
He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
Thus says the Lord, The Redeemer of Israel, their Holy One, To Him whom man despises, To Him whom the nation abhors, To the Servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise, Princes also shall worship, Because of the Lord who is faithful, The Holy One of Israel; And He has chosen You.”
Remember this:
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Our Lord and his birth was in Bethlehem, he had an exodus into Egypt, ravaging at Ramah, and a name of Nazareth. The place was so despised – now listen – the place was so despised that Nazareth and Nazarene became a synonym for somebody despised. When somebody said to you, “Oh, you Nazarene,” that was a term of derision. In fact, when the early church was started, they used to say that to the Christians as a kind of a knock, kind of a joke.
We have to the close of Matthew 2 and I have only one question:
Philipp said to Nathaniel that he had found the Messiah, Nate replied can anything good come out of Nazareth? How do you respond? Do you respond to Jesus like Herod with rejection and anger? Or do you run to Jesus when he says come to me all who are of weary and of heaven laden? Take my yoke and learn of me for I AM gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls...
Which do you choose? Life or death?
Prayer
Prayer
Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
THE LORD BLESS YOU!
YOUR MISSION STARTS NOW!