Matthew 2.13-23

I know its Friday and we are all tired from the week. Keep up the hard work of getting up early to EAT THE BOOK and continue carrying out God's purpose for your lives, DAILY. I know its hard, but just remember, the nations are blessed by our daily discipline of following Jesus, one day at a time. Keep up the great work!!!!!!

Read this passage:

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
 ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
 ¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
 ¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
   weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
   and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”


 ¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” ²¹ So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. ²² But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, ²³ and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”

This passage is a very familiar passage. It is read probably every year around Christmas and yet it is a passage that is not really fully understood. It is driven by quotations from the Old Testament. And I know when I read the Bible, I just sort of skip over these quotations and I don't think a lot about them. The problem is, they are the key to understanding the meaning of the passage. Whenever you see an Old Testament quotation, it is being quoted for a very important reason and we have to ask the question, "Why did the author quote this passage here?" After looking at these three quotations, this narrative about Jesus escaping to Egypt and returning from Egypt won't be just information, but will have significant meaning into the who Jesus is and what he is coming to do.

So let's look at the first passage and OT (Old Testament) quotation:

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

 ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Here is the third of four dreams seen at the beginning of Matthew. This dream consists of an angel coming to warn Joseph to take baby Jesus into Egypt in order to escape Herod and his soon coming massacre. Joseph obeys, which is a common pattern seen in his life in these first 2 chapters. And if you remember, "If you will just obey, God will save the day!!!"

And then comes this quotation about God calling his son out of Egypt. This quotation comes from the book of Hosea 11.1, and what is interesting is that it is not a prophecy about Jesus at all, it is about the nation of Israel. If you read the context of this quotation in Hosea, it says this:

¹ “When Israel was a child, I loved him,
   and out of Egypt I called my son.
² But the more I called Israel,
   the further they went from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals
   and they burned incense to images.

This is not a prediction about what Jesus is going to do. If it is, Jesus, the Messiah, is going to drift away from the father and sacrifice to other gods. That is definitely not the case, and that is not what Jesus does. So why is Matthew quoting this passage here? He is using it not as if Jesus was fulfilling this prophecy, but as if Jesus is experiencing the same situations that this prophecy is talking about the Jews experiencing. Just because a passage is from the prophets doesn't mean it is predicting a future event. This is actually more the exception than the rule of the books of prophecy in the Bible. Rather, Matthew is using this quotation to show that just how Israel was rescued out of their slaver in Egypt and brought to the promised land, so Jesus is experiencing the same thing the nation of Israel did. He is being persecuted by governments (Herod) and God is going to rescue him from that persecution from Egypt and bring him to the promised land. Jesus is like Israel. What happened to Israel in the past, those same kind of things are happening to Jesus now. And since after Israel was brought up out of Egypt, received the law, entered the promised land and ultimately failed in their purpose to bless the nations, God's plan was for Jesus to come and show us what being Israel, the people of God, is supposed to look like. So Jesus is showing the people of God in the past, the nation of Israel, what it means to be the people of God, and he is showing the people of God for the future, us, what it means to be the people of God. He is the New son of Israel. He is our ultimate example. 


So now we come to our second quotation:

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

 ¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
   weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
   and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

What the angel said to Joseph was going to happen came true. Herod sought after Jesus and tried to kill him. As we see in verse 16, Herod had all the boys in Bethlehem killed who were two years or under. Although this is a terrible event, it is not as huge of a massacre as we have made it to be in the past. Because Bethlehem was a very small town, the number of boys under two probably would have been around 20 or so. 

But what do we do with this quotation from the book of Jeremiah? Always remember that any time there is a quotation from an OT book, the author isn't just referencing that specific quote but is referencing the entire context of that quote. So this quote comes from Jeremiah 31.15, but Matthew isn't just wanting his audience to think about that verse, he wants them to think about that entire chapter. 

The context of this verse is that the people of Israel have been taken captive by the Babylonians in 586 BC. As they were leaving Jerusalem and being taken captive to Babylon, which is to the north, the first village they would have passed through would have been Ramah. So symbolically, the weeping in Ramah refers to the loss of children. In its original context it is referring to the nation of Israel being taken into exile. In Matthew it is referring to Herod killing all the baby boys in Bethlehem. But that is not the entire context of Jeremiah 31. If you read the entire chapter you will see it is a chapter of hope. Although there is this weeping passage about being taken captive, God is promising his people over and over again that he will bring them back and establish a new covenant with them, a new deal that will reinstate them as the people of God. This is the hope that Matthew is preparing for in his book. Although Herod killed all these kids, like the Israelites being taken captive to Babylon, mourning will occur. But just wait, because because something great is coming. Specifically here, Jesus bringing about a new covenant, a covenant based on the grace that he offers through his death on the cross. 

Jesus isn't just the new son of Israel, he is also bring a new covenant. And no we come to our last OT quotation:

 ¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” ²¹ So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. ²² But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, ²³ and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”

When Herod died, he left his kingdom to his four sons who would serve as tetrarchs (rulers over specific regions) over four different regions of his kingdom. Archelaus was notorious for being a wicked ruler hungry for power and originally he was going to be the tetrarch over the northern region of Galilee. But on his deathbed, Herod made a switch and Antipas who was going to be ruler over the southern region of Judea (where Bethlehem was located) was then given the northern region of Galilee and Archelaus was given the southern region of Judea. Very early on in Archelaus' reign, he had slaughtered 3,000 Jews because of some issues in the temple, so Joseph was afraid to go into Archelaus' region. They preceded to go to the northern region of Galilee were they were from originally, because Antipas appeared to be a lesser threat. 

Matthew says this happened to fulfill what was said in the prophets, "He will be called a Nazarene." The problem with this is that nowhere in the OT is anything ever said with this wording. So here is what seems to be a problem, Matthew is quoting something from the OT that isn't there. But this isn't really a problem at all. Here is the only time when Matthew quotes this verse by saying it comes from the prophets, plural. Not just one prophetic book, but from all of them. Matthew is not directly quoting a specific passage but is referring to a common theme from the OT. And Matthew is basically using Jesus' traveling route to make a play on words about who Jesus is. Jesus went to Nazareth, this obscure little village in Galilee. What is Matthew trying to say here?

Matthew is trying to show that not only is Jesus the new son of Israel, and that he is bringing a new covenant, but that he is also the savior of the Jews beginning a new ministry. 

Matthew is making a play on words with the Jesus being called a Nazarene and the Hebrew word, Nezer, which means branch and signifies a king from David's line. Read Isa. 11.1:

¹ A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
   from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. 

This passage is referring to the messiah that is to come is one who will be a descendant of David's, the son of Jesse. 

And not only is Jesus like the nation of Israel in that he came up out of Egypt from oppression, and he experienced pain with the loss of the children but is bringing a new covenant, and that he is carrying out a new ministry as the savior of the world in the line of David, we also are like Jesus in these three areas as well.

We are now the new Israel, the people of God and we will be oppressed by the world around us. Yet, although we will experience pain in this life, we have been promised a new life in the life to come, we have hope in the new covenant because of Jesus' death and resurrection on the cross. And we are now part of the kingdom of David that Jesus is reigning over and we are to carry out his ministry here on earth by blessing all nations!!!!

So remember, Bless someone today.