Transcript
We are called to be just like these wise men because we don't have the full picture yet. We are those that don't see Jesus, the risen Christ. We're relying upon the witness and testimony of others just like these astrologers were, and we're putting the pieces together hoping for a future coming of Christ. And Jesus tells us to store up our treasures in heaven. So when you and I are making a decision tomorrow to love somebody that's unlovable, to sacrifice our time and or our possessions for the good of somebody else, which is what Jesus is going to teach in his sermon on the Mount, we are reenacting what these wise men were doing where we are offering ourselves as a living sacrifice to Jesus. There is this way of living in a worshipful way in the same way that these individuals do. Now, do you know what's missing from this story?
The number of wise men? Did you see that There's no number of wise men. How many wise men are in your nativity at home? Usually it's how many? Three. Three, right? Because there's three gifts, gold, frankincense, and my, but it is likely that there were many more than three wise men that made this trek, but we're just not told. We're not told how many. There are a beautiful scene. Let's move to this next section, the flight to Egypt. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and warns him and warns him to flee Joseph. Then obeys fulfilling the prophecy of Hosea 11, one out of Egypt. I called my son. Now, just for you Bible nerds, Hosea 11 one, if you were reading Hosea 11 one, you would not look at that and go, that's a Messianic prophecy. And so when you go to seminary, you take a hermeneutics class.
This verse comes up because the writers of the New Testament are using the Old Testament in an interesting way. And so the question becomes, what is inbounds and out bounds in our interpretive method? How are we allowed to use the Old Testament and connect the dots from the Old Testament to the new Hosea 11 one is one of those examples. It's interesting how Matthew says this is. So one of the options is like, well, maybe Matthew knew this because Jesus just taught Matthew that he was fulfilling Matthew, his life story connected with Hosea 11 one.
But there's a range of different hypothesis and it does influence the way that you and I decide that we are going to interpret the Old Testament and what rules we're going to follow. This is the passage that is quoted. It says, when Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son very much in the context there. It's speaking of the children of Israel in their first journey out of Israel under Moses' leadership, but yet Matthew applies it to Jesus. Here's the thing that I wanted to show you. Matthew is taking the story of Israel and he's layering it onto the life of Jesus. Jesus is reenacting Israel's story. So here's Joseph has a dream and f flees and has to lead his family to Egypt. Who else had to flee to Egypt as a place of refuge?
Israel did right with Jacob and his sons. And so Israel has a significant part of their story is being in Egypt and then they are delivered from Egypt. Here we have Jesus. It's important for Jesus to be able to kind of replay the story of Israel because the life, one of the major things about Jesus is that he's going to do Israel, but he's going to do it well. He's not going to make the same mistakes that Israel made. So just keep that in the back of your head as we go through chapter two, and we go through chapter three because Matthew's just saying, do you see the parallels? Do you see when you cut a piece of wood and it's like you want to do some kind of, for me, it would be like crafting a guitar and you want the front of the guitar to be book matched, right?
The wood looks like it mirrors each other. That's the idea here of Matthew. He's like, do you see the book matching the parallelism between Israel's story and Jesus's story? So Jesus goes down there. I emphasize that mirroring pattern because it will guide us in our use of scripture. Do you know what this is called? What do you call this? It's a projector. What kind of projector? An overhead projector. That's right. It took me a little while to remember what it was called and you would stick on it. What are these called? Transparencies. Transparencies, that's right. Yeah. What else? I think technically they're called acetone sheets, right? Or overheads. They're overheads, transparencies. This is the image that comes to my head over and over again as you look at the design patterns
Of, and this idea of overlapping, because here the way that this was used when I was a kid was you would draw, you'd buy these sets where it's a map, but you could have layers. You'd have the base map, but then you could add a layer with roads, and then you could add a layer with geography, and then you could add another layer, another transparency with the names of locations, right? And you could write on it and they would layer up. So for me, this is the visual image of how Matthew writes and what he wants to see, he wants you to see is do you see how Jesus's life maps onto the children of Israel? And I think that's important for you and I because if that is the way in which God works, the question is, is what pattern am I in right now?
In fact, this ought to be a prayer for you and I this week. Holy Spirit, what motif in scripture best maps onto my life? Am I in a season where I'm a prodigal and I'm running against a way far from God and I need to be brought back? Am I the lost sheep that needs to be brought back? Am I replaying the story of Joseph where I've just been beat up by my brothers and I'm subject down here and I am kind of a victim just depending on the presence of God in a foreign land? Am I a Moses that's called the lead a people out of their bondage into their promised land? The question I have for you is what motif you see? Scripture is written in such a way that it contains these patterns, and I think you'll gain wisdom if you're able to recognize your motif.
Where does God have you? What principle, what pattern applies to your life in this moment? You're going to see this over and over and over again. Let's go to the third section. It's this of Herod's slaughter of the innocent. You're going to see a pattern here as well. Herod realizes that he's been deceived by the Magi. They also were warned in a dream to go back another way. And when Herod realizes it, it says that he flies into this rage and he orders the massacre of all male children, two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Bethlehem was just a small town, and so we're looking at baby boys between zero and two years old. It tells us in the text he's relying on the timing that the Wiseman had given him about when the star had appeared. And so he's calculating that. Well, that star appeared in the last two years. And so I need to wipe out boys that are under the age of two
Horrible, horrible scene that occurs. It's probable that this was maybe 20 to 15 little boys that were killed in this setting. And again, God's word is found to be true because he has warned Joseph that this would happen and Jesus is spared. But look at this in Revelation chapter 12, this tells the story of Israel. So there's a woman here in this grand scene, and there's a dragon being Satan, and it's an image of how this scene has played out. A couple of times in Israel's history, a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with a sun with a moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. Now that image goes back to Joseph in Genesis, having his dreams, right? Joseph was pregnant and cried out in labor. She was pregnant and cried out in labor and agony, and she was about to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in heaven. There was a great fiery red dragon having seven heads and 10 horns on it were seven crowns. It's tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. So this is the fall of Satan. The dragon stood in front of the woman who is about to give birth so that when she did give birth, it might devour her child. She gave birth to a son, a male who is going to rule all nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and to his throne, the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God to be nourished there for 101,260 days. So weird imagery, but again, it's this idea that, look, this happened with Moses and the babies. Remember in Exodus chapter one and two, Pharaoh says the same thing that Herod does and commands that these baby boys be destroyed, and amazingly enough it happens again.
In fact, Satan is just looking to devour this because Satan didn't even know when is the Messiah going to be born. And there's this constant battle that Satan is in against God's plan. In Acts chapter seven, we see the martyrdom of Stephen. We see the crucifixion. Satan is at work behind the scenes with an agenda using human rulers to try to bring about the destruction of God's people and God's plan. And yet we see the resiliency of God's plan over and over again. This event fulfills Jeremiah 31 15 where it says, A voice is heard in Rama, a lament with bitter Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children because they are no more. You remember that Rachel is married to Jacob. There's Jacob married to Rachel and Leah, Rachel's the favored wife. Rachel is buried in Bethlehem. Jeremiah is writing his prophetic letter from Rama, and he's describing how Rachel would mourn, Rachel would mourn the destruction of these.
Well, Jeremiah would mourn the destruction of Jerusalem. Rachel's mapped onto that, and then this kind of maps its way and layers onto the death of these baby boys. Do you see that? Are you seeing the layering, the mapping that's going on? It's pretty wild. Let's look at this last section as we run out of time here. Verse 19 and 23, we see Herod died. An angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph saying, get up, take the child in his mother, go to the land of Israel because those who intended to kill the child are dead. Have you ever heard of a guy in the Bible named Joseph interacting with dreams in Egypt?
You've heard that story. Do you see what I'm saying? It's just on repeat. It's the same name. The guy's named Joseph. He's having dreams. He's in Egypt. Isn't that crazy? So after Herod's death, this angel appears to Joseph in a dream telling him it's safe to return to Israel. Joseph takes his family back. But hearing that Aus Herod's son is still alive and reigning in Judea, he settles in Nazareth. This fulfills the prophecy that said that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. Now, here's the thing. That prophecy doesn't exist. This quote from Matthew is a play on words and it references loosely a Psalm. So if you have time to kind of go deep on, look at some commentaries about this last verse in Matthew, Matthew 2 22, you'll see some really fascinating stuff about what Matthew May be quoting from. And even the way when he says it fulfills the prophecy, it's written differently from like in chapter one, where it's like this was written. Matthew doesn't say this was written. He says, no, no, no. This is fulfilling kind of what was alluded to in the prophets.
Let's kind of wrap this up. Land the plane here. First of all, notice the guidance of God. In this passage we have as stars for astrologers. God's using stars for astrologers. He's using dreams for the magi and for Joseph, he's using the scriptures for the chief priests and the scribes, and he's using the witness and testimony for Herod. Do you see how God is making himself very apparent, very apparent. And the Bible says that God is able to be known. And if you are not yet a, you haven't surrendered your life to Jesus. If you're not yet in a place where you've made a personal decision to own it and say, I want to be a friend of God through Jesus, you need to know that the Bible teaches that God is a one who speaks to us and guides our life. He wants to walk with you through your life and direct your steps.
Now, I know nobody personally that's guided by stars, but these astrologers were, I don't know many people that have had angels come to them in dreams, but I do know many people that have found the guidance of God in the scriptures. And yet do you see the people who are farthest from God? In this text, it's the scribes and the chief priests. The ones who had the Bible are the ones who are not on their knees offering frankincense and myrrh. They're only five miles from the Messiah, only five miles from the Messiah knowing the location of the Messiah, hearing about a star. And yet they don't go and worship. And I think this morning there's a warning in this text for you and I that having God's word, having what we call as special revelation, not just relying on a star, but like a clear explanation of who God is and his planned for the world.
We have that. Are we reading it? Are we basing our life on it? Are we tapped into its guidance for our life? And then you have the witness and the testimony that was given to Herod. God has a plan. He has a plan for your life. He is not ignorant of what's going on in your life. In fact, he's the designer of you and the things around you. He's very capable of preserving his work. And that's the last thing I want you to see is the resiliency of God's plan. That God wasn't afraid to send his son into the world as a toddler, as a baby, even with a treacherous king that has murderous intent, even with religious leaders that completely miss the boat, God is able to accomplish his purposes. And so saints, there should be a great sense of comfort that you
Have this morning that God's plan cannot be thwarted by evil, tyrants or dumb religious leaders. He's at work in your life. He's got a good plan and he's invited you and I to be followers of him. Would you take encouragement from these seven verses? What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He didn't even spare his own son, but he gave up his own son. How will he not also grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God's elect? God is the one who justifies, who is the one who condemns Christ. Jesus is the one who died, but even more has been raised. He also is at the right hand of God and he intercedes for us who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword as it is written because of you, we are being put to death all day long.
We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. Know in all these things. Look at this saints in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. God loves you. He's for you. He's not against you. He sent his son Jesus into the world to remedy what is wrong. Whatever it is, whatever you say is wrong. He's come to remedy it. He can save you. He can rescue you from your present circumstances and your eternal destruction. And I'd invite you afresh to return to the Lord. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for being so powerful. So in control for directing when there was a need for direction for rescuing, Lord, would you find in us a group of people that are just worshipers full on worshipers? Before we even see the end, we want to be worshipers of you bowing down, saying You deserve all the glory and all the honor and all the praise. We love you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.