Matthew 1:18–2:23

0:00 so I've become convinced of something in my 47 almost 48 years I guess it's not I've not been an adult that long but I guess for 27 or 28 years or so I have been an adult and I have become convinced of something in those years and that is that in this modern world with all of its digitized stuff one of the best things you can do to live a calm and contented life is learn to ignore stuff you just got to learn to let stuff wash over you without you giving it a whole lot of notice and at no time of the year is that more true i think than at christmas you have to learn to ignore stuff you got to learn to ignore ads on the tv and on the computer that are trying to get you to buy this or that thing that you don't really need you got to learn to ignore junk mail that piles up in your mailbox.

0:53 You've got to learn to ignore hawkers at the mall that are just crying out for you to try the latest cologne or perfume or hand lotion or whatever it is at the nearest kiosk. You've got to learn to ignore stuff. And the fact is, there's a lot in this life that you can ignore. But let me tell you one thing that you really can't ignore. That is the birth of a baby. The birth of a baby changes everything.

1:23 I mean, you can say, like the Christian books tell you to, you can say all you want to, that the little tyke is going to just be a welcome addition to the family, but not the center of the family's life. You and your husband or your wife can tell each other that all you want to. But if you have kids, then you know that no matter how many times you say that, it's only ever partially true. The little tykes tend to worm their way into the center of life. I know this because I have three of them, one of whom was born 15 years ago today, my daughter, Juliet.

1:58 Today is Juliet's 15th birthday. So I'm not going to make you sing to her as much as I would love to embarrass her like that. But on the count of three, would you all just say, happy birthday, Juju. Ready? One, two, three. Happy birthday, Juju. Happy birthday, Juju. Juliette's birth, 15 years ago today, hit our family like a meteor. She was the third child, which means for those of you who have three or more kids, you know that when you go from two to three, you have to move from a man-to-man defense to a zone, which changes everything.

2:34 It struck our family like a meteor. Jesus' birth didn't just strike a family like a meteor. It struck an entire city and an entire nation like a meteor. That's what we're going to see here today at the end of Matthew chapter 1 and on through chapter 2. Jesus, the king, the rightful king of Israel, the man who has a legal claim to the throne, had been born. And that causes across an entire city, across the capital city of Israel, an immediate reaction in the world around him.

3:08 Some people respond to him with faith and obedience and worship. Others respond to him with murderous recoil. And the question is going to become this morning, if all of those different people reacted to Jesus' birth in all those different ways, then how are you and I supposed to react to him? What are we supposed to do in response to Jesus coming to earth? Well, let's take a look at our text this morning. We're just going to read, starting in Matthew 1, verse 18. And we're actually going to read all the way down through the end of chapter 2.

3:40 So let's start reading Matthew chapter 1, verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king,

4:43 behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. And they told him in Bethlehem of Judea for so it is written by the prophet and you oh 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 then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to Bethlehem saying go search diligently for the child and when you have found him bring me words so that I too may come and worship him after listening to the king they went on their way and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down

5:43 and worshipped him. Then opening their treasures they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod they departed to their own country by another way. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Out of Egypt I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Ramah weeping in loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children.

6:41 She refused to be comforted because they are no more. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he should be called a Nazarene.

7:17 Well, you can see in this chapter and a half or so that Jesus' birth caused massive reverberations, not even just across Jerusalem and Judea and Israel, but all the way across to Babylon, which is where the wise men came from. From Joseph's house to Jerusalem to the halls of Herod's palace itself, even all the way to the towers across the desert in Babylon, it's clear that something had happened here with the birth of Jesus that demanded a response. And the fact is, it's always that way with Jesus. Everywhere Jesus goes in the story of his life, he demands a response from people.

7:52 You don't just ignore him. You either accept what he's saying about himself or you reject it. Well, the same thing, friends, is true 2,000 years later, just as much as it was true 2,000 years ago. The world may not want to face it. They may want to try to mask it by trading joy to the world for holly jolly Christmas. But even today for you, the fact that Jesus was born, even more the fact of what he said about himself, means that you've got a choice to make.

8:28 Will you believe him or not? That's really the main idea of this passage is what Matthew is pushing on his readers. You cannot ignore the coming of Jesus. Nobody could. So let this be the day that you decide to give up and believe. You can't ignore the coming of Jesus. Nobody could. So let this right here, December 22, 2024, be the day that you finally decide to give up and believe in him.

9:00 But what does that mean, give up and believe in him? Well, I think this passage that we've just read invites us to understand that it doesn't just mean a cold kind of formal acknowledgement. fine, I believe that Jesus existed. It demands a response, a kind of belief that is much deeper, that it's a matter of the heart moving toward Jesus. I want to show you four ways in this passage that Matthew calls us to respond to Jesus. Here they are. Number one, worship him as God. Number two, bow to him as king.

9:31 Number three, trust him as savior. And number four, love him as friend. Those four things. Worship him as God, bow to him as king, trust him as savior. love him as friend. And we're just going to kind of march through the story as it's laid out in Matthew 1 and 2. So point number one, the very first thing that Matthew wants us to know about Jesus and our response to him is that we should worship him as the incarnate God. That's what he says. So if you look at Matthew chapter 1 verse 18, this is on the heels of this genealogy that we studied last week. After the genealogy, the list of fathers and sons, Matthew tells the story quickly, it turns out, of Jesus' birth in this second half of chapter 1. He approaches it with absolutely no nonsense, right, in verse 18. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. If you look at it, it's actually very kind of odd, because Matthew doesn't even actually show us the moment of the birth of Jesus. He doesn't even say something like, and Jesus was born. It's just, this is how it

10:33 happened. And then you get the story of Joseph listening to the angel so that he doesn't divorce Mary. And then you just get this oblique reference down in 25 that he knew her not until she had given birth to a son. It's almost like we missed it. Like it's about to happen and then oh it's already happened. He doesn't even say and so Jesus was born. It's very kind of odd. Why does he do that? Well because Matthew wants your eyes throughout this whole section 18 through 25 of Chapter 1, he wants your eyes and your mind on one particular truth that is of critical importance.

11:07 And he says it over and over and over again. And even the story of Joseph talking to the angel is all about this one particular truth. And what is that? It is that Jesus was born to a virgin. He was born to a virgin. If you give it three seconds of thought, you'll realize that ought to be impossible. That should not be able to happen. And yet Matthew wants you to know that it did. He says it over and over again. He'd already hinted at it up in verse 16, up in the genealogy, when unlike all the other entries in the genealogy, he just refused to say that Joseph was the father of Jesus, like he had for all the other generations.

11:48 But that was just a hint. Like you read that at first, if you don't know anything about the story, and you're kind of thinking, well, that's odd. Why doesn't he just say that, you know, Joseph begat Jesus? Well, you're supposed to think that's strange, but you don't know why yet at chapter 1, verse 16. But here, in the verses that we're looking at today, you can see that same point that Jesus was born of a virgin made utterly plain several times during the story. So, Joseph finds that his fiancée, Mary, is pregnant.

12:19 In verse 18, it says very clearly, before they came together, right? But then before he can divorce her, he's visited by an angel who tells him that even though this is true, he should take Mary as his wife after all. The angel explains she hasn't been unfaithful. She's been chosen by God to give birth to the Messiah that's been waited on for centuries. Verse 20, he says it very clearly. What is conceived in her is not natural. It's from the Holy Spirit. Matthew also quotes Isaiah 7 there in verse 23 when he uses this prophecy.

12:51 that the birth of the Messiah would be to a virgin. See that in verse 23? Behold, the virgin shall conceive. And then to put the matter beyond all doubt, at the very end there in 25, he says that Joseph didn't know her, which means sexual intimacy. He didn't know her until after the baby was born. So Matthew wants your eyes on the fact that Jesus was a virgin. He wants to drive that into your head. And the reason that he wants to drive it into your head is because it is important.

13:25 Now, why is it so important? I mean, the virgin birth gets knocked a whole lot of times, even sometimes by people who call themselves Christians. They'll look at it and just say, well, that just seems kind of like a legend. That just surely that didn't happen. And even if it did happen, why do we need to believe it? What does the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin mean? How does it function in the story? Is it just like a magic trick that's just there to set apart the uniqueness of Jesus somehow? Well, there are a few reasons why it's so important. Let me tell you what those are. First of all, one of the reasons, I'm going to give you three reasons why the virgin birth is super important to Christian theology and our understanding of Jesus.

14:01 Number one, it shows us just at the base level that God does miracles. And he does different levels of miracles too, right? I mean, there are certain things that you look at and you're like, that's cool. And there are other things that he does and you're like, that's incredible. That ought to be impossible. Well, the virgin birth of Jesus is in that upper level. Because this is not just life out of barrenness. Like Mary's cousin Elizabeth, for instance. Elizabeth wasn't a virgin. She was just barren. She just hadn't had any children yet.

14:34 But we've all seen circumstances like that, right? We've all seen circumstances where couples will try for years and years and years to have a baby, and all of a sudden, bam, there's a baby, right? Well, prior to that, you would say the same thing about a family in that situation as you would have said about Elizabeth. She seems to be barren. right but then god acts in that barrenness and brings life but here it's something even greater it's life out of literally nothing life where there has been and in fact cannot be life everything about how incredible that line from silent night is it's it's so artistic and so beautiful when when the author of that song writes the line raise raise the song on high The virgin sings her lullaby.

15:22 You ever think about that? A virgin, by definition, doesn't sing lullabies to a baby. And yet, that's what the author of that song recognized. This is an incredible miracle. Life where there should be no life and no possibility of life. I mean, you see that that's really the heart of Christianity, right? I mean, right there in the virgin birth, there's a little picture of what God does when he brings a person's soul to life.

15:53 A place where there is no life and where there should be no life, God brings life. Friend, when you become a Christian, that's what you're doing. You're saying, God, I know that my soul is dead, and I know that there is no possibility that my soul will ever come to life. And yet, I know that you can do the impossible. So through Jesus, bring my dead soul to life. Turn my heart of stone into a heart of flesh and make me come alive to you. Second thing, another thing about the virgin birth.

16:25 Theologically speaking, the virgin birth helps us as human beings to get our head around exactly who Jesus is. That he is both God and man, nothing else and nothing less. Now think about it for a second. How does it do that? How does the virgin birth help us as human beings to get our heads around the fact that he is 100% God and 100% man? How does that work? Well, I mean, think about the other ways that God could have done this.

16:56 Let's just say that the eternal son of God had been incarnated in heaven, right? The Father, the Spirit, on the throne of the Godhead, the Son, right, you know, in the sapphire courts. He's incarnated. And boom, boom, there he is. Jesus, fully grown, right? And then he comes down to earth. He just, you know, sort of descends to earth instead of ascends. Well, it would have been hard for us to accept that Jesus was human in that kind of scenario, wouldn't it? It would have been really hard for us to accept that he was human because he would have been so different from us.

17:34 But what if he had been born through just normal means? A man and a wife come together and a baby is born and the incarnate Son of God is there, right? What if that had happened? Well, then we'd have been tempted to doubt his divinity. We would have said, no, you're exactly like us. Your origin is precisely like ours. There is nothing different about you. And we would have said, there's no way that you can be God. But this right here, the virgin birth, this is perfect.

18:06 This is like the Goldilocks, just right. He's different from us. And yet he is like us. Born just like we are, but conceived so utterly different. He is both man and God. And the virgin birth helps us understand that. Here's the third thing. Mostly, though, mostly for Matthew's purposes, the virgin birth solves in an absolutely, I think, astonishing and beautiful way.

18:41 It solves a fatal problem that had fallen on the dynasty of King David. We talked about this just briefly last week, but I want to explain it to you again. Because this is the main reason, in the wake of the genealogy, that Matthew wants to put your eyes on the virgin birth. So here we go. In order to be the king of Israel, if you're going to ascend the throne of the kingship of Israel, you had to have two things. First of all, you had to be a blood descendant of King David. So no other house, no other family could be a part of it. It was blood descendant of King David.

19:13 And second, you had to have a legal claim to the throne. In other words, as the centuries went on, there was a sort of legal right to the throne that would pass down generation after generation after generation. And you had to be the guy who was holding that at the time, right? So, that's what Matthew is laying out in his genealogy. He's tracing that legal claim to the throne. And in all cases but one, also blood descendants from David. So, let's think about this in terms of Jesus. Did Jesus have the first thing?

19:44 Was he a blood descendant of King David? Well, yes, he was. He was a blood descendant of King David through Mary. Did he have a legal claim to the throne? Well, Joseph had a legal claim to the throne. He's the guy that's in line. You ever think about that? This little carpenter, 17, 18 years old, however old he was. He's the rightful king of Israel, right? It is King Joseph the Great. Except he's not. He's not a king. He's a carpenter. Why? Why isn't he a king? Well, part of it is because they got conquered by the Babylonians and the Persians and the Greeks and the Romans.

20:18 They're under the foot of these great empires. But there was another problem. The other problem was that way back in Jeremiah, Joseph's great, great, great, some odd grandfather, Jeconiah, had been cursed. In other words, God had promised that he himself would prevent any blood descendant of Jeconiah's from ever sitting on the throne. So Joseph, as a blood descendant of Jeconiah, could never be king. And if Jesus was going to be a blood descendant of Joseph then, well then he couldn't be king either because he'd also have been cursed.

20:57 So you see where it's going? Because of the virgin birth though, Jesus was not a blood descendant of Joseph. And therefore he wasn't a blood descendant of Jeconiah the cursed. He was adopted by Joseph legitimately, which passed on the legal claim to the throne. to him but he wasn't the offspring he wasn't the blood offspring of joseph which means that he wasn't under the curse of jeconiah blood descendant of david not under the curse of jeconiah and has the legal claim to the throne i think it's it's worth just marveling for a second just looking at that story that's been playing out over centuries by the time jesus gets here just marveling for a second at god's precision and his amazing sense of drama it's incredible what god has done here it's a mind-blowing surprise solution to a seemingly impossible problem i mean look there we could stop here and i could apply this to you right i could apply this to

22:00 to our own problems look if you have a very complicated problem even one that's been going on for centuries god can solve it so trust in him right everything will be good fine i could do that kind of application but i think sometimes it's really healthy for us as christians to not say how does this apply to me but rather kind of take our eyes off of ourselves and take our eyes off our own problems for a second and just marvel at what God did right there just kind of see the twinkle in the father's eye just kind of see the delight on his faces we stand in awe at what he's managed to pull off here I mean you start to think about it you start to roll it over in your head that curse on Jeconiah way back all those centuries ago it was devastating because what it meant is that the only people the only men that were even eligible to wear the crown of israel were going to be stopped from wearing it by god himself checkmate no king ever for israel but then all of a sudden

23:00 all of a sudden this one little baby is born his mother is a descendant of david his adopted father is in the rightful line of kings and finally the herald angels can sing glory to the newborn king It's incredible what God has done. I want you to see something else, too, just in this section about what Matthew says about Jesus there at the end of verse 23. See that little parenthetical there? They shall call his name Emmanuel, which when you translate it means God with us.

23:34 You ever stop to think about the wonder that's contained in those three little words, God with us? i mean just think about it jesus is god he's the god of the universe the one who created the cosmos the one who handed down the law the one who split the earth and devoured cities who reigns on the throne of heaven jesus is that god with us not just among us that's not what it means. It doesn't mean that God, you know, came down and just, you know, sort of floated through the midst of humanity. That would be a form of God with us, right? But that's not what that means.

24:21 It doesn't just mean among us. The whole point of this thing has been that God, the second person of the eternal Godhead, identified with us, became one of us. He's been born into our experience of life he's with us not just in proximity but in experience he's experienced what we experience hebrews says that he's had the same temptations that we have had that we have had he's lived through what we live through the christmas carol says pleased as man with men to dwell what an incredible thought God with us and even more in Jesus Christ God is with us now instead of being against us I think we tend to take it for granted that God is just supposed to be with us God is supposed to be for us God is supposed to make our lives better that's his job. But friends, the Bible could not be clearer that apart from Jesus Christ, God actually

25:28 is implacably against us because of our sins. We are at war with him because we rebelled against him. Every single one of us is deserving of God's punishment, God's anger, God's wrath. We're worthy not of his love and compassion and grace and mercy and all the good stuff, but we are worthy of having him ferociously opposing us. And yet here is Matthew telling us that all of a sudden, in Jesus, God is with us.

26:01 He's for us. Friends, that's the reason he came. That's the reason he came. It was his very mission. When you look down at verses 20 and 21, what the angel says. His mission is in his name. Joseph, son of David, Don't fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Call him Jesus because of his mission.

26:32 You know what Jesus means? It's just an old, there would have been thousands of people named Jesus. It's actually just the name Joshua or Yeshua in Hebrew. And if you translate it, it means the Lord, Yahweh, saves. call him the Lord saves because he will save his people from their sins. Friends, there's a world of meaning in that too. An absolute world of meaning. What does the name Jesus say?

27:05 It says, Yahweh saves. And then the angel says, because this one who is Yahweh will save his people from their sins. Where God was once against us, he is now with us. He is now for us because of what Jesus has done. And the most important thing that you can do this Christmas is not finish up the Christmas shopping. It's not watch the football. The most important thing you can do this Christmas is to acknowledge that and worship Emmanuel, God with us.

27:39 Number two, bow to him as king. Bow to him as king. So with the beginning of chapter 2, we fast forward a little bit in time. We're probably 6 to 18, maybe 24 months. It's not exactly clear. 6 to 18 to 24 months into the future. Mary and Joseph apparently are still in Bethlehem. But the baby Jesus is now probably not the baby Jesus anymore. It's probably the toddler Jesus. It's probably what we're dealing with. And you can see down in verse 11 that they're no longer in the stable. They've moved into a house of some kind.

28:11 The basic story that unfolds here is simple enough. Sometime after Jesus was born, some men that the Bible calls wise men or magi from the east. So that would be Babylon. Babylon was the great city in the east. So when it says they came from the east, that's where they came from. Came from the east. They show up in Jerusalem talking about the birth of a new king of the Jews. I mean, you can imagine it. Here they come, right, on there. Maybe they were on camels. I don't know. The song tells us they were on camels. But they came in, right? And they're like, where's the king? Where's the king? And they're like, well, Herod's up in the palace up there.

28:42 No, no, no. The newborn king of the Jews. We've seen it in the stars. Where is he? It's an incredible moment. We don't know much about these guys. They're probably not kings. Like the old song would have us believe. We three kings. They're probably not kings. Probably they are astrologers. Who had some knowledge also of the Jewish scriptures. So Babylon again makes sense. Because you still had a good number of Jews still in Babylon, sort of post-exile, right?

29:17 Remember they took the whole nation to Babylon? Well, when they came back, some of them would have stayed. And some of them would have kept copies of the Old Testament. So these Babylonian astrologers had copies of the scriptures available to them. And they also had a few Jews who still were studying those scriptures to explain it to them. So they had a lot going for them. Verse 2 says that they were alerted to this new king's birth by the rising of his star. Now, the fact is, we really don't know what that star was.

29:48 And people have given all kinds of guesses. Maybe it was a supernova in the sky. Maybe it was an angel that sort of led the wise men to where they were supposed to go. Maybe it was a particularly bright star up in the sky. It's unlikely that it was a gigantic flaming ball of gas that got that close to the earth, right? and it would swallow the earth up. That's probably not what it was. It was something other than a star that was actually sitting on the earth. That's not what it was. I personally, now this is not really Bible anymore. This is just me.

30:19 I personally happen to think the best case has been made by a guy named Colin Nickel in a book that is no longer in print. You can still find it, but it's very expensive, but I'd still tell you to get it. It's called The Great Christ Comet. The Great Christ Comet. And it's fascinating because what he does is that he takes modern astronomical computer simulations or whatever. And he lines them up with the Bible and sort of makes a case that this was a comet that did all kinds of stuff in the astronomical zodiac thing up in the sky.

30:54 That the Babylonian wise men would have recognized and they would have said, oh, that means that there's a king that's been born in Israel. That's the case that he makes, and I think it's a brilliant book. But however you understand this star, the purpose obviously was to lead these wise men from this distant land in Babylon all the way to Bethlehem to see the Messiah. So the wise men get there. They're not discreet. What they're claiming, this new king has been born in Israel, quickly makes its way around town, including to the palace of Herod.

31:25 So Herod summons them, finds out from his own Old Testament scholars where the Messiah is to be born, and tells them where to go. If you're going to find the Messiah, if you're going to find this prophesied king, you need to go to the town of Bethlehem. And why Bethlehem? Well, because it's a city that's rich in royal connotation. This is the birthplace and the childhood home of King David the Great, right? So Bethlehem. When you hear that word, it ought to just fill your mind with crowns and gold and glitter. That's the kind of city that Bethlehem was.

31:58 Herod was hoping, of course, that the wise men would go there and find the little baby and come back and tell him where the baby was. But that was certainly not because he wanted to worship him. Herod says to the wise men, so that I may go worship him too. But you can almost hear the just like oily grossness in his voice, right? Tell me where this baby is because I want to worship him too, right? That's not what he wanted to do. He wanted to kill him. So the wise men, having been pointed to Bethlehem, they set out, they find Jesus, who's probably now a toddler, and they bow down and worship him.

32:33 They bow their knees to him as a king, and they present him with these very costly gifts. I want you to notice a couple of things here. One, I want you to just notice that this is an immediate fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham that the nations would ultimately be blessed by his offspring. You see that? It's the Babylonians coming to the king of Israel and bowing down to him and offering him kingly gifts. An immediate fulfillment of that promise.

33:05 I want you to notice a couple more things, though. I want you to notice the different responses of people as this news kind of makes its way around Jerusalem. First thing that you should notice is the immediate impulse to self-preservation by King Herod. You see that, right? Herod hears word that the scriptures have been fulfilled and a new king, the Messiah, has been born five miles away from him. And what is his response? I will keep my position at all costs.

33:37 And if the cost is slaughtering hundreds of babies under the age of two, I'll do it in order to keep my position. His response to Jesus was just hostility and self-preservation. That's a common response to Jesus. It is a common response when people are confronted by Jesus. Because what they realize is that when you acknowledge Jesus for who he is, when you embrace him in faith, things change. Like quickly, life changes.

34:07 There become new pressures on you to change the way that you're living. I wonder if you have any of Herod in you. Like when I tell you, when I tell you that the king has been born, that you're a sinner and you need him to save you, And that means that you need to give your whole life to him. What happens in your heart? What machinery in your heart starts to run? And you start coming up with reasons why this isn't relevant to you. You start coming up with objections to what you don't like about Christians or Christianity.

34:41 Maybe you think back to some old commitment that you made decades ago to never have anything to do with organized religion. And you say, no, I'm recommitting to that. I'm starting to see who Jesus is, but no organized religion for me. My friend, don't you see what all that is? Don't you see what all that is? That's a king coming to you outside the walls of your fortress and all the little soldiers in your brain standing up at attention to fight and preserve what you've already got.

35:15 Let me give you a better response for when Jesus confronts you. lay down your weapons and ask him into the fort lay down your weapons and open the gates because every defense listen this is important every defense that you are making against jesus coming into your life is a defense against your own joy every defense you're making is a defense against your own joy and your own eternity.

35:54 Don't be like Herod. And in contrast to that, of course, is the wise men themselves. I mean, Herod had everything he needed to come to Jesus in faith. He had this rich picture of the Messiah in the scriptures. He had these scribes to teach him. And the scribes are interesting to me because they get word that a new king has been born in Israel. And Herod says, hey, where's the king supposed to be born? And they go, Bethlehem. It's five miles away, for crying out loud. Wouldn't the scribes who know the Old Testament most want to go to Bethlehem, maybe with the wise men, and check this thing out?

36:29 But they don't because they're completely apathetic. They don't care. They've been reading the Bible all their lives. But when the thing that they've been waiting on for a thousand years finally is said to have happened, for some reason, they don't care. Don't put yourself in their shoes either. Do you know what apathy to Jesus is? it's rejection of him. Apathy is rejection. It's like I said at the very beginning. You can ignore a lot of things.

36:59 You can be apathetic about a lot of things. You cannot ignore Jesus. To ignore him is to reject him. But the wise men, I mean the priest in Herod couldn't go five miles to check this thing out. The wise men saw a star in Babylon 600 miles across the desert. and they came. Whatever little they knew about the Messiah, they believed on, and they believed, and they acted on. They took this massive journey with a totally uncertain end, but they believed, and they acted on their faith.

37:36 You can see their response there in 11 when they do finally see him. He's just a child. He's a little toddler playing with a toy or something, but they bow down and worship him. The gifts there, they're all kingly gifts. And Christians have sometimes seen other symbolism there too. You got gold as king, frankincense was a common tool of priests, and then myrrh is a common burial ointment. So there may be, the wise men may have been speaking or gifting better than they even realized. But all three of those are also just gold for kings.

38:07 Frankincense and myrrh were also perfumes used by kings. So they're honoring him as the king. Look, Jesus confronts every single one of us with a choice. Are you going to respond with self-preservation? Are you going to respond with apathy? Or are you going to respond by bowing your knee and honoring him as king? That's what you've got to decide this Christmas. Here's number three. Trust him. Trust him as savior. So the story continues in verse 13.

38:40 Herod is furious that the wise men don't come back to him. So he launches plan B to destroy this new king. If he could have just carried out a kind of surgical strike if the wise men had come and told him where the baby was, he would have done that. But it doesn't happen. Launches plan B to destroy the king. But before he can act on it, an angel warns Joseph to take his family and flee into Egypt until Herod dies. So that's what they do. That's when Herod gives this order to kill all the infants under two years old. If I can't find him in a surgical strike, I'll just kill everybody who might have a claim to this.

39:14 This story of the flight to Egypt and the killing of the infants is organized around two quotations from the Old Testament. You can see them there if you look. At first, if we look at them sort of honestly, at first those two quotations just look really kind of like slightly awkward glosses on the story. So Jesus goes into Egypt with his family, and then he comes back. and so it just kind of looks like Matthew finds a random Old Testament verse that says God's son would be called out of Egypt, and he slaps it in there.

39:46 Slaughter of the infants causes this heart-rending sadness throughout the land, and so it kind of looks like Matthew just finds another verse in the Old Testament about a mother weeping for her children, and he says, See, the prophecies are fulfilled. That's what it looks like. But there's way more to it than that. One thing you've got to understand about biblical prophecy is that biblical prophecy is not primarily just future telling. I say that this thing is going to happen a hundred years from now, and then it happens.

40:19 It's not primarily that. There is some of that, right? I mean, the fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem was one of those sort of this is going to happen, and it did, right? But usually, biblical prophecy is more like a seed sort of growing and blooming into a full-grown tree. That's more what it's like. You have these themes in the Bible that start out really small. Sometimes it's just a phrase or a sentence, you know, kingship, for instance. It starts out in Genesis. We've seen it as we've studied it. It starts out as this tiny little thing and then eventually grows into this great tree with David and then beyond, right?

40:52 So it's these themes that grow and swell and develop. And when the New Testament writers then say that these prophecies have been fulfilled, what they mean is that these themes have finally swelled and grown to their fullest intended meaning. That's what it means. Like, there's no more development here. This is the whole tree. Well, that's what's going on here. And what Matthew wants us to see is that a couple of those themes that run throughout the Old Testament story have now reached their full-grown meaning. So let me show you what he does here.

41:23 Look at the first one, verse 15. So this is when he says, you know, out of Egypt I called my son. That line there is actually from the prophet Hosea. And it's talking just very flatly about Israel's delivery from slavery in Egypt. That's what he's talking about. Back in Exodus, God in this prophet is exalting over that. And he's calling Israel my son. I called my son out of slavery in Egypt. It's really not about the Messiah at all. Okay, so if that's true, is Matthew just misusing the verse?

41:55 Is he just misapplying it? It's about Israel, and he applies it to Jesus. He's just misusing it. Well, no. No, because one of the swelling themes of the Old Testament is how the nation of Israel eventually came to be represented by one person. She came to be represented by her king. So he was always, the king was always seen as representing, even sort of summing up the entire nation in himself.

42:26 And now that office of king, of representative of the nation, has fallen to Jesus. He is Israel because he is Israel's king. So there's nothing inappropriate at all about taking a verse about the nation and applying it to the king. And what's God doing by saying that? Why is that important? It's important because basically what God is saying here through Matthew's book is, listen, if you thought the exodus was a great salvation, you haven't seen anything yet.

42:59 Watch what I'm going to do with this king of Israel. You see what's happened here? Those themes of kingship and of exodus, salvation from slavery to Egypt, to sin, right? They've reached their full growth here and they've come crashing together. The king, which represents the nation, is going to lead an even greater exodus than the one from 1200 or 1400 BC, whenever that was. Something similar happens in 18. And the key to understanding what's going on is to understand why this place, Ramah, was so significant.

43:34 Why is there weeping in Ramah, right? Well, we know from Jeremiah. Ramah is actually the place where the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, gathered all the Israelite captives together in order to take them into exile. Ramah was the place where you either got killed if you were important in a certain way, or you got chained up behind a wagon to be taken 600 miles across to Babylon. Ramah was where that happened. And it was a place of unspeakable tragedy and sadness. And the reason Jeremiah says it exactly like this is because the grave of Rachel, Jacob's wife, the grave of Rachel was nearby.

44:12 And so Jeremiah says she, Rachel, weeps for her children as they're put in chains and they're carried away. Okay, so again, is Matthew misusing this? No, what he's saying is that the tears of the exile The tears that the nation of Israel has cried have now finally come to their climax in the death of these infants. In the raging of this Gentile king against the Messiah and the resulting death of the infants.

44:45 Rachel's tears, Matthew is saying, for her children Israel have finally reached their height. Okay, so Jeremiah says that. He's got that verse. But do you know what comes immediately after that verse? Do you know what comes immediately after that verse? The end of the tears. It's what God promises right after he talks about Rachel weeping for her children. In the very next few verses, you get the end of the tears in the establishment of the new covenant by the Messiah.

45:23 See that? What Matthew is saying is that with the birth of the king, now, with the birth of the king, Rachel's tears have reached their full, and yet they are about to be dried. So what's he doing here? What's Matthew doing with these quotations? He's letting us in on why Jesus came. And we saw his mission back in chapter 1. It's to save his people from their sin. And what's Matthew telling us here? Well, he's telling us a little bit about what that means.

45:55 He came to redeem his people from a slavery that is greater and worse and more tyrannical than slavery to Egypt. And he came to end an exile that is greater than the one inflicted by Babylon. It's an incredible story, isn't it? If we're going to truly understand why Christmas and the birth of Jesus is so wonderful, we're going to have to understand exactly what Jesus has done.

46:28 He has ended an exile. He has ended a slavery, not that was just inflicted on us, but one that we inflicted on ourselves by our sin. And understanding that, that this is a self-inflicted slavery, self-inflicted exile, it makes the gift of salvation really hard to receive, doesn't it? It makes the gift of salvation really hard to receive because in the receiving of the gift of salvation, there's also a confession that you need it.

47:07 A couple of years ago, there was a pastor who wrote an article in the New York Post right about Christmastime, and he was making this point that some gifts are just harder to receive than others. I mean, if, you know, let's say someone gives you a nice box, and you open it up, and it's got two books in it. One of them is a diet book, and another one is called How to Not Be a Selfish Person. To receive that gift is to make a confession. Yes, I agree that I am fat and obnoxious.

47:41 Well, receiving salvation from Jesus is a similar kind of thing. It's to say, yes, I agree that I am a rebel against your rightful authority. I'm part of this world's evil. I contribute to it. I make it worse. And I need to be saved. I need you to stand in my place and give me life. That's hard. But it's true. You need to embrace him as your savior. Here's number four. Trust him as friend. Trust him as friend. So the story continues on with this one last episode. Herod dies.

48:12 The angel tells Joseph it's safe to come back. But then Joseph hears that Archelaus, who is an equally evil son of Herod, to Herod, is reigning in Judea now. So instead of going back to Bethlehem, back to Jerusalem, he takes his family to his own hometown, which is Nazareth in Galilee. So Matthew ends this whole chapter in verse 23 by saying, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. Now, that line about Jesus being called a Nazarene, it actually doesn't appear in those words anywhere in the Old Testament.

48:46 It's just not there, that he would be called a Nazarene. So what does Matthew mean? so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. Some people have just accused Matthew of making it up. He's just making it up. But that is not what's going on. Again, Matthew deals in themes that take their shape throughout the story of the Old Testament. And Matthew doesn't intend for this to be understood as an exact quotation anyway, like the other ones in this chapter. And the reason we know that is because there are ways in Greek that you set off what's meant to be a sort of exact quotation, And then there are ways that you set off an illusion, right?

49:23 And Matthew does that when it comes to the Nazarene. It's just the elusive one, right? So what Matthew is doing here is pointing to another theme in the Old Testament. And that theme is that the Messiah would not be a figure of honor and glory. Instead, he would be a figure of derision and rejection. And guess what? Nazareth fit that bill perfectly. Nazareth was famous in Israel as being just this backwater town full of poor, pathetic rejects up in Galilee.

49:58 There was even a saying that people would say, can anything good come out of Nazareth? So Matthew sees this theme of the Messiah being a figure of derision in the Old Testament, and he connects it rightly and poetically to the fact that Jesus, the Messiah, the rightful King of Israel, the King of kings and Lord of lords, he's not known as Jesus of royal Bethlehem. He lives his life being known as Jesus of Nazareth, of all places.

50:30 You can see the significance of that, right? Jesus, the Son of God, who could have stayed on his throne for eternity and been praised by all the angels in the universe for all of eternity, stood up from that throne and took on our flesh and came down to where we are. Jesus wants to be not just our God, not just our King, or even just our Savior, but also our friend. One who identifies with us and comes to us where we are in order to love us and save us.

51:06 Thou who was rich beyond all splendor, all for love's sake, became as poor. I want you to listen to me. No matter where you are, no matter what you've done, Jesus has stepped down into your muck because he loves you. He's come to where you are. He's come to you even in the midst of anything you've ever done. And he's offering you salvation and love and friendship with the king. Trust him.

51:37 Take his hand. Bow down to him and you will be forgiven. What in the world is keeping you from doing that today? I want you to take a step back and look at the movement that takes place from the beginning of this chapter to the end of it in the course of just a few verses we have gone from Emmanuel God with us and where is he who has been born king of the Jews, all the way down to he shall be called a Nazarene.

52:22 Do you see what Matthew's doing? He's almost tracing the descent of the Savior through this story. From God and king to Nazarene. From kingship to derision. From the star of Bethlehem to the ridicule of Nazareth. This is the beginning of a long story. It's a story that ends at the cross. And here in the very first act of it, in the first two chapters of Matthew, we get to watch Jesus the King stepping down into our muck, becoming one of us so that He might save us from our sins. Friends, that's why we do Christmas.

52:57 That's why we worship Him. That's why we bow down to Him. That's why we trust Him. That's why we love Him. As the King who the rich beyond all splendor, all for love's sake, all for our sake, became poor. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we praise you, we honor you, we worship you, bow down to you, trust you, and love you because of who you are and what you have done for us. Our God, we pray that you would never, ever let us lose sight and lose love of those things.

53:34 Lord, we pray that even as we celebrate, even as we do all the things that Christmas sometimes demands of us, O God, we ask that you would fill up our hearts with worship and honor for you, the King of kings and Lord of lords. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.