The Exodus, Exile, and Return of God’s SonMatthew 2:13-23 sermon transcript

1/7/18

Charles Spurgeon is often called “the Prince of Preachers,” and he’s known very much for preaching lots and lots and lots of sermons in his time as pastor in London, but he also wrote a few commentaries on books from the Bible, and one of those was on the Gospel of Matthew. And, as he was talking about these opening chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, he used a phrase that I really liked; he was talking about the coming of our Prince on a “pathway paved with prophecies,” and you can see that really obviously in chapters 1 and 2 of the Gospel of Matthew.1 Matthew wants to show us a lot of different ways that Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecy. And Matthew does it a little bit uniquely, a little bit differently than the other Gospel writers. On ten occasions, he’ll use the exact phrase, or almost the exact phrase, “this happened to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.”2 So, he’ll tell a story, he’ll tell something that happened in Jesus’s life, and then he’ll add this comment, “this happened to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet,” and then he’ll quote an Old Testament verse or passage of Scripture. There’s an eleventh occasion where he does something almost exactly like that.3

But it’s very important for us to think about that before we dive in. We have an understanding of what prophecy and fulfillment means, and it’s important that we examine that from time to time. As we come into the Gospel of Matthew and the New Testament more general, what do you think about when you think about prophecy and the fulfillment of prophecy? Matthew’s Gospel helps us think maybe a little bit differently than we might expect about the nature of prophecy and fulfillment. If you think about prophecy as “prediction” only, you won’t understand the Gospel of Matthew rightly.4 You’ll misunderstand almost all of these passages where Matthew points to Old Testament Scripture, because ten out of the eleven times where he says, “this happened to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet”—ten out of eleven times the Old Testament verse he quotes is not a future-tense prediction about something in the future.5 And so he’s doing

1 Charles Spurgeon, The Gospel of the Kingdom: A Commentary on the Book of Matthew (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1893), pg. 8.

2 Matt. 1:22-23; 2:15, 17-18, 23; 4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:35; 21:4-5; 27:9-10.3 Matt. 3:3. To clarify further, there are many other quotations of Old Testament Scripture in Matthew’s

Gospel, but all of the others are spoken by characters in the story, mostly by Jesus himself. For example, we hear of the scribes and chief priests quoting Micah 5:2 in Matt. 2:4-5, and we hear of the devil quoting a couple of verses from Ps. 91 in Matt. 4:6. Throughout the rest of the Gospel of Matthew, I count 24 occasions of Jesus quoting Scripture. But my focus here is on occasions where the narrator of the story, Matthew, interjects a comment to point us to how the unfolding story connects with specific Old Testament Scripture.

4 So argues David L. Turner, Matthew (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), pgs. 22-23, who writes, “The notion that fulfillment entails a specific biblical prediction being ‘fulfilled’ (occurring) in a NT event is simplistic at best. This is mainly due to mistakenly equating prophecy with prediction…. Prophetic prediction contains the prophet’s revelational foresight of a future event (cf. 2:4–6), but Matthew’s fulfillment quotations more often contain Christian hindsight in which a historical event from the Hebrew Bible serves as a pattern for a NT event that it anticipated…. Also, biblical prophecy is primarily not prediction but covenantal admonition, which utilizes the rehearsal of past events as well as the prediction of future events to motivate present covenant loyalty.”

5 The exception is Matt. 21:4-5, where Matthew quotes Zech. 9:9. Matt. 12:17-21 also includes an element of futurity, and Matt. 1:22-23 also speaks of a future event from Isaiah’s vantage point, but this one is to be viewed distinctly because a first fulfillment occurred during Isaiah’s lifetime, as Pastor Barry indicated in last week’s sermon, and as most students of Scripture have recognized.

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something different. He’s taking his lead from Jesus’s own teaching, and Jesus’s understanding of his own relationship with the Old Testament was much bigger than just prediction of future events, right? Jesus said that he fulfilled all of the Old Testament; all of it is connected to Jesus; all of it finds its fulfillment, its completion, its solution, its resolution in Jesus and the work that he came to do. And Matthew really wants us to see that in very specific ways.

Our passage this morning in Matthew 2, verses 13-23, has three of these Old Testament statements, so we’ll get some specific examples to see how Matthew does this this morning, but before we get into the passage, I just want to talk one more time about what Matthew really wants us to see about Jesus. He wants us to know that Jesus is the Son of God. That is a very big statement. You and I might talk to somebody who doesn’t know anything about Jesus, and we might tell them, “Well, Jesus is the Son of God.” And I think most of the time when we say that simple statement, we mean, “Jesus is the eternal Son of God.” Jesus is the Son of God who has existed forever in eternal relationship within the Godhead, within the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have always existed in this relationship. God has always been a relational God for all of eternity, and that relationship is defined by this Father-Son relationship with the Spirit in there as well.

But what does it mean to say that Jesus is the Son of God? Matthew wants to show us that there are layers to that statement. Matthew does want us to see that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, the way that we typically think about that. But he also wants to show us, from the Old Testament, that there are other ways that Jesus is the Son of God. First, he wants us to see that Jesus is the royal Son of God. We could go to lots of passages in the Old Testament where you would find that the king of Israel, David particularly, is called “the son of God,”6 especially in 2 Samuel chapter 7, the passage that is the Davidic Covenant, where God promises that a descendent of David would sit on the throne of his people forever and ever. And it’s the king of Israel who is “the son of God,” the royal son of God. Well, Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is the fulfillment of that as well; he is the royal Son of God; he’s the true descendent of David, the one who fulfills the Davidic Covenant, the one who will sit on the throne of his people forever and ever. So, Jesus is not only the eternal Son of God; he is also the royal Son of God.

But also Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is the human Son of God, and he’ll show us this in various ways, but it comes out actually more clearly in Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s genealogy of Jesus is different from the one that Matthew’s presented to us, but Luke takes Jesus’s genealogy all the way back to Adam, and then at the very end of that genealogy in Luke chapter 4, I think it is,7 you see that Adam is called “the son of God.” And so it is that, as many of the New Testament writers point out, Jesus has come as “the last Adam.” He’s come as the head of a new humanity; he is the fulfillment of everything that humanity was supposed to be. He is the truest human; he is the perfect human, and so he is “the Son of God” in human form; he is the human Son of God as well.

But it’s this last one that I’ve listed here that Matthew really wants us to see most clearly in our passage this morning and more largely in his Gospel. Jesus is also the national Son of God. If you think about the Old Testament, there’s another way that “the son of God” language gets

6 See especially 2 Sam. 7:14; Pss. 2:7; 89:20-27.7 Actually, Luke 3:23-38.

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used, and it gets used as a reference to the nation of Israel. The first time is in Exodus chapter 4, when God is talking to Moses and telling him, “You’re going to talk to Pharaoh, and you’re going to tell Pharaoh that it’s time to let my son go.”8 And he’s going to bring his firstborn son, the nation of Israel, out of Egypt, and there are several Old Testament passages that refer to the nation of Israel as God’s son. Matthew wants us to see that Jesus fulfills that aspect of being “the son of God” also. Jesus is the fulfillment of the nation of Israel,9 and that’s one of the things that Matthew really wants us to see this morning in the passage we’re looking at the end of Matthew chapter 2. Jesus is the national Son of God, as well as the eternal Son of God, the royal Son of God, and the human Son of God.10

So, let’s see how Matthew pulls this apart for us. We begin by looking at Matthew chapter 2, verses 13-15. Let me just read these verses. The section breaks down into three parts really easily, and each part concludes with one of these fulfillment statements from Matthew, where he points back to Old Testament Scripture. So, Matthew 2:13-15: 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.” Now, just to remind you of the context. If you remember from last week or from earlier in the story, the magi have just come to Jerusalem; they followed the star and they came to Jerusalem to talk to Herod, and they asked Herod about this “king of the Jews” that had been born, that they’d seen his star, and Herod inquired from the scribes and the chief priests as to where the birth of this king was supposed to be. And they identified Bethlehem, looking back to Old Testament Scripture. Well, Herod told the magi, the wise men, to “go and visit the child and then come back and tell me where he is because I want to go and worship him, too.” Well, as they were going on their way, they were warned in a dream that they should not go back to Herod as he had instructed them, and so we come up to the story now, when the magi have left. They’ve gone to see baby Jesus, who’s a little toddler at this point it seems, and they’ve now gone back to their own home, Persia or Babylon, or they’re on their way, and they’ve gone a different way so that

8 See Ex. 4:22-23. Cf. also Jer. 31:9; Hos. 11:19 For more on this idea, see Brent E. Parker, “The Israel-Christ-Church Relationship,” in Progressive

Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenant Theologies (edited by Stephen J. Wellum and Brent E. Parker), pgs. 47-63. He highlights how the Old Testament presents the nation of Israel as a type that the New Testament shows Jesus to fulfill. He argues, “[N]ational Israel in terms of its role, vocation, calling, and identity is typological of Christ and thus rules out the notion of a future national role of Israel in the plan of God….[W]ith the arrival of the antitype, namely Jesus Christ, the type is surpassed since the ‘antitype fills the role of the type in a way that makes the type unnecessary and effectively obsolete’” (quoting Paul Hoskins). He goes on to conclude, “[Jesus] is the true Israel, the faithful Israelite, in that he fulfills all that God had promised and intended for the nation of Israel. Identifying Jesus as the ‘true Israel’ is a shorthand way, while recognizing that the term Israel is not applied to Jesus in the NT, of concisely describing who Jesus is in realizing and completing the destiny and function of national Israel in the plan of God.”

10 Interestingly, there is one other way that the Old Testament uses the phrase and the idea of “the son of God” that the New Testament writers do not connect to Jesus. In several places, angelic beings are referred to as “the sons of God” (see Job 1:6; 2:1; Gen. 6:2 perhaps; Ps. 82:6). The fact that New Testament writers never connect Jesus with the angelic sons of God idea should give us pause in seeing Jesus as connected to the angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews is intent that Jesus is the Son of God in a way that specifically goes beyond the class of angelic beings should also make us more hesitant to see the angel of Yahweh as some kind of so-called “pre-incarnate” appearance of the eternal Son of God.

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they don’t have to go back through Jerusalem so that they don’t have to see Herod. When they’re gone, after they’ve left the family—Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, living in a house in Bethlehem for the time being—an angel comes to Joseph in the middle of the night in a dream and gives him some orders to go to Egypt, to flee to Egypt and stay there “until I tell you.” So, he doesn’t tell Joseph how long you’re going to be there; he doesn’t tell him what’s going to happen exactly. He just says, “Here’s the reason I need you to flee immediately: Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” That’s a very powerful word: to destroy him. And so, Joseph awakes in the middle of the night and immediately gets up to take the child and his mother and go down to Egypt, as he’d been commanded.

Now, I want you to think about this for just a minute. The estimates about how long a journey this is are different, but from Bethlehem to the border edge of Egypt is at least an 80-mile journey,11 and if you go further into Egypt to areas that are habitable and that were known to have Jews living there,12 you could go up to about 150 miles.13 So, we’re talking about an 80-to-150-mile journey, on foot, or on camels or donkeys or something. Estimates suggest that it could’ve taken at least a week, maybe as much as a month and a half to get there.14 Now, think about this: you’re traveling with a toddler, on foot, for over a week before you get to your destination. My wife’s birthday was earlier this week, and we took a car and drove for two hours with a toddler to celebrate her birthday in Dallas, and it was a rough ride. And so, you can imagine the difficulty that this family had, traveling with a toddler for a week or even a month, on foot, on camel. I suspect that Jesus was a more well-behaved toddler than my own…but still, there are things that have to be attended to and challenges that accompany this kind of journey. Nevertheless, Joseph doesn’t ask any questions; he gets up and he does what he’s been told by the angel. He travels into Egypt.

Now, here’s where we begin to ask the question, “Why does Matthew care to tell us this story?” And Matthew cares to tell us this story because of this Old Testament prophecy that he quotes at the end of verse 15. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet—and then he quotes the prophet Hosea. Now, Matthew’s Bible didn’t have chapter numbers and verses like ours do, but we know this in our Bibles as Hosea chapter 11 verse 1. And so Matthew is wanting us to see this event, this going down into Egypt, Jesus going down into Egypt and then so that he will come out, as a fulfillment, a completion of this Hosea chapter 11 verse 1.15 Let me try to set

11 So writes Michael J. Wilkin, Matthew (The NIV Application Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), pg. 110: “The Egyptian border lay approximately eighty miles from Bethlehem.”

12 Cf. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (vol. 8; edited by Frank E. Gæbelein; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), pg. 90, who writes, “Egypt was a natural place to which to flee. It was nearby, a well-ordered Roman province outside Herod’s jurisdiction; and, according to Philo (writing c. A.D. 40), its population included about a million Jews.”

13 Cf. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (The New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), pg. 79, who writes, “While Roman Egypt controlled territory nearly as far north as Gaza, even the nearest parts of Egypt proper (Pelusium and the eastern branches of the Nile delta) would be at least 150 miles from Bethlehem, so more than a week’s journey is indicated.”

14 So suggests Barry J. Beitzel and Kristopher A. Lyle, Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels (Lexham Geographic Commentary series; Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2016), n.p., who write, “Matthew does not tell us where they settled in Egypt, but if Alexandria (which had the largest Jewish population in Egypt) was their final destination, the journey may have taken about 45 days.”

15 It is interesting to note that Jews have never recognized Hos. 11:1 as a Messianic prophecy. See Craig L. Blomberg, “Matthew,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), pg. 7, who writes, “The exodus event was regularly seen in the

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the stage a little bit for you so that you understand what I think Matthew’s up to here. You’ve got to kind of get your imagination geared up for what Matthew’s trying to do here. Think about it like this: Matthew sees what’s happening in Jesus’s life as though it were a kind of stage production, so that Jesus is embodying in himself the history of Israel. Jesus is telling the story in his own life the history of Israel. The big fancy word that gets used sometimes is that he is recapitulating the history of Israel, and Matthew wants you to see it.16 So, think about it like this: you’re reading Matthew’s Gospel, you’re sitting in the audience and you’re watching a stage production. The stage production is entitled “The History of Israel.” Act 1—so, the curtain rises and Act 1, the title card comes up: “The Exodus.” The part of the nation of Israel is being played by Jesus. Now, how do we know this? Because of the Scripture that Matthew quotes.

Now, at the front end, I’ve got to tell you a personal, biblically-formed conviction that I have. This is one of those things that I will die for. I believe that when the New Testament writers quote Old Testament Scripture, they are always, always, always quoting it in context. Said negatively: I believe very strongly that New Testament writers never, ever, ever, ever misuse, twist, distort, or take Old Testament verses out of context. They don’t give them new meaning; they don’t change their meaning; they use them in their contexts. And that drives me, every time I see an Old Testament quotation, to go back and think about what’s the context? What was Matthew wanting his readers to see.

And so, when you go back to Hosea 11:1, it’s very obvious that Hosea is telling the history of Israel. Hosea 11—he goes back to the beginning of the history of Israel to talk about the exodus: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” And the “my son” is the nation of Israel. God took them out of Egypt at the beginning of their historical life as God’s son. And Hosea is telling that story, and if you read the rest of Hosea 11, you can see that he’s telling the story of how God’s son was disobedient and rebellious and idolatrous.17 It goes right into how they failed to live like God’s son ought to live. But here’s the kicker: in verses 10-11 of Hosea 11, he looks forward to a day, after judgment, after punishment, after exile, to when God is going to bring them back out of Egypt again.18 And so Hosea, like several of the Old Testament prophets, looks forward to the

rabbinic literature as a type of the salvation of the messianic age to come…. However, there are no extant Jewish uses, before or after the first century, that explicitly link Hos. 11:1 with this typology or suggest that it was ever understood as explicitly messianic.”

16 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 91, who writes, “Jesus is often presented in the NT as the antitype of Israel or, better, the typological recapitulation of Israel.”

17 Cf. Tracy L. Howard, “The Use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15: An Alternative Solution,” Bibliotheca Sacra 143:572 (Oct-Dec): pg. 322, who writes, “The Lord called the nation of Israel His son, whom Pharaoh was told to release so that they could go and worship the Lord (Exod. 4:22–23). However, Hosea 11:2 reveals the sad result that instead of worshiping the Lord the nation committed the sin of idolatry. Matthew then viewed Jesus as the obedient Son, who would inaugurate the new ‘exodus,’ in contrast to the disobedient son Israel, who after the first Exodus miserably failed to keep the covenant. All that Israel should have done, Jesus did by exhibiting obedience instead of disobedience.”

18 Cf. Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), pg. 108, who writes, “In Hosea, the past exodus with which Jesus identified (Hos 11:1) was the historic sign of the covenant anticipating a new exodus (Hos 11:11). By quoting the beginning of the passage, Matthew evokes the passage as a whole and shows how Jesus is the forerunner of the new exodus, the time of ultimate salvation.” See also Howard, “The Use of Hosea 11:1”: pg. 321, who writes, “Hosea 11:10-11 describes an eschatological ‘exodus’ from Egypt. The exodus would be a starting over for the nation. This would occur at the inauguration of the ‘age to come.’ Hence if Matthew had in mind all of Hosea 11 and was attempting to present parallels between the life of the nation and the life of Jesus, it is plausible that Matthew saw Messiah as the One who

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return from exile, the restoration of the people of Israel, the prophesied return of the people—they view it as a “new exodus,” another exodus that God is going to accomplish.19 Matthew wants you to remember all of that; Matthew wants you to see that what’s happening in Jesus’s life is telling that story.20

And so, when you look at the stage and you see Jesus, you see that he’s playing the part of the nation of Israel. There’s another character on stage. The part of Joseph—now, think back to the story of Genesis; before you get to the exodus, how did the nation of Israel, the family of Israel—how did they get to Egypt?21 Because that’s the story that’s being told, right? Jesus is going down into Egypt; how did they get there? Well, if you remember the later chapters of the book of Genesis,22 it was a man named Joseph. It was a son of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. Joseph, who was an Egyptianized Jew—he was a ruler, next to Pharaoh, second in line—so the part of Joseph, the Egyptianized Jew in the book of Genesis is now being played by Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, Joseph the husband of Mary. And so, like in the book of Genesis, Joseph takes the nation of Israel into Egypt, so here, in the unfolding of Jesus’s life, Joseph takes Jesus down into Egypt. In Genesis, there was a threat; the reason to go down into Egypt was that there was a threat. The threat in the book of Genesis was a great famine; the threat here is Herod. Herod wants to destroy the Son of God, and so it is that in the book of Genesis a famine threatened to destroy the national son of God, even before they got started. So here, Jesus, the Son of God, is being threatened to be destroyed before he even gets out into his public ministry.

And so, Matthew is pointing out attention to the exodus here, through Hosea 11. He could have pulled a lot of different verses to point us back to the exodus, but he goes through Hosea chapter 11 for a particular reason. I think we’ll see it as we move through the rest of this story. So, as we go down to verses 16-18, the scene is going to change here. Let’s read these verses and the story will be familiar to us, I’m sure: 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 that 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 and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” So, Herod realizes that the magi are not coming back. Enough time has passed that he gets wise and says, “Okay, they’re not coming back. They’ve deceived me. They’ve disobeyed my orders.” But he is not to be deterred; he wants to eliminate this threat. Now, think about that just for a minute: this great king—well…he is called “Herod, the Great,” and he does have a lot of power—but this king is threatened by a baby. I mean, when you look at a baby, you don’t typically feel threatened. But

will lead this new exodus for Israel and hence inaugurate the new age.”19 This is a major theme of Hosea. See, outside of Hosea, Mic. 7:15-16; Isa. 11:11-16; 19:19-25; chapters

40-66; Jer. 16:14-15; 23:7-8. Each of the Gospel writers draws our attention to the fulfillment of this “new exodus” in Jesus in different ways.

20 Cf. France, Matthew, pg. 81, who writes, “Thus, far from Matthew’s having seized on a convenient use of the word ‘son’…in relation to Egypt and illegitimately transferred it to a quite different kind of situation involving a different kind of son, this quotation in fact expresses in the most economical form a wide-ranging theology of the new exodus and of Jesus as the true Israel which will play a significant role throughout Matthew’s gospel.”

21 This line of thought was prompted by Turner, Matthew, pg. 89, who notes, “Perhaps Matthew wants his readers to remember the family of Jacob sojourning in Egypt to avoid famine in Palestine (Gen. 46).”

22 Genesis 46-48, specifically.

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this great man of power feels incredibly threatened. He was a paranoid fellow, after all; he feels so threatened by this baby that he goes out to slaughter other babies. He goes out with the hope that he will kill this particular child.23

Now, it’s important to just get our bearings here a little bit. It’s hard to even think about this very much, to think about the horror of what Herod has done here. But in a town like Bethlehem, a backwaters town in the first century, probably a population of about 1,000 people, with the birth rate that we know of from the first century, we’re probably looking at about at most 20 baby boys being killed. But that doesn’t minimize the horror of what’s going on here. Whether it’s 20, whether it’s one or 20 or 1,000—someone killing babies is just atrocious to think about.

But he looks back and he considers what he heard from the magi—the thing that they told him was when the star appeared. Now, the Bible doesn’t tell us when the star appeared in relationship to any of these other events. It doesn’t tell us did the star appear when Jesus was conceived? Did the star appeared when Jesus was born? Did the star appear sometime before or after that? It doesn’t tell us. So, we don’t know exactly, but Herod does his mathematical calculation and determines, “Two years old is safe. Two years old will cover everybody.” And so he kills all baby boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding area; he sends out his soldiers and they do the deed. It’s not surprising that this is not recorded in any other history because Herod did lots of other terrible things where he killed thousands of people at a time, including families with children, in bigger cities than Bethlehem. And so, it makes some sense that this wouldn’t appear in any other historical records.24

But, again, that raises the question: why does Matthew, of all people, draw our attention to this story? Why does Matthew want us to see this? And it’s at this point where even us, who are less familiar with our Old Testament than Matthew’s original readers probably were—right? You’d grant that, wouldn’t you? You don’t know your Old Testament as well as Matthew’s Jewish readers, probably, right? But, for even us, who don’t know our Old Testament as well, it’s hard not to already think back to the book of Exodus again, because Matthew’s already turned our attention to the exodus story. It’s hard not to think about that story from the Old Testament where another ruler killed baby Hebrew boys, or attempted to at least. Remember Exodus chapter 1: Pharaoh of Egypt felt threatened by the size of the Jewish population in Egypt, and so he told the Hebrew midwives, “If they give birth to baby boys, you should let them die.” Of course, they disobeyed—you remember the story. Well, the Pharaoh didn’t stop there; he said, “Well, I’ll give an edict out to the populace of Egypt and tell them, if they see any Hebrew baby boys toddling around, they should kill them.” It’s hard not to connect these two stories, and so this is where we begin to think, “Well, maybe there’s more connection here between Jesus and Moses, so that Jesus is being presented as a new Moses perhaps.” Because you remember that it

23 Cf. N. T. Wright, Matthew For Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-15 (London: SPCK, 2004), pgs. 13-14, who writes, “At the heart of the Christmas story in Matthew’s gospel is a baby who poses such a threat to the most powerful man around that he kills a whole village full of other babies in order to try to get rid of him.”

24 Cf. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (Word Biblical Commentary 33A; Dallas: Word, 1993), pg. 35, who writes, “The fact that there are no other unquestionable references among contemporary historians to the killing of the infants may not be surprising if, as seems probable, the number killed was around twenty. Among the atrocities of Herod, this event in a small unimportant village would hardly have demanded the attention of historians.”

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was in that context of Pharaoh’s edict to kill all the baby boys that Moses was born and then preserved and delivered.

But Matthew actually turns our attention away from that story. We’ve got to follow Matthew’s lead here.25 What does Matthew want us to connect this event to? He quotes a verse from Jeremiah’s prophecy, Jeremiah 31:15. And so, he takes us all the way into the future, way ahead from the story of the exodus. He quotes Jeremiah 31:15 which is a reference to the exile, the exile of Israel, the exile of Judah, the southern kingdom, more particularly, probably. Jeremiah 31:15 refers to the grieving and the mourning that went on when the Jews were marched off to Babylon. So, what is Matthew wanting us to see here? Well, the curtain’s gone down after Act 1, and now the curtain comes up, and the new title card for our stage production entitled “The History of Israel”—the new title card is “The Exile.” So, Act 2 is “The Exile.” So, the theatrical production moves forward about 850 years in history (1446 BC26-586 BC) according to Matthew’s driving us here. So, the part of the nation of Israel is still being played by Jesus…with a twist. The part of the Babylonians, who come into Jerusalem, destroy the temple, and slaughter many Jewish people and Jewish families, and then march the rest off to Babylon—the part of the Babylonians is here being played by Herod.27

So, here’s where the twist comes in: the baby boys that Herod kills could represent the Jewish people slaughtered by the Babylonians. Because, think about the exile for just a minute; think about the Babylonian army marching into Jerusalem, destroying the temple; there was combat that happened; there was fighting that went on. The Babylonians killed lots of Jewish people when they marched into Jerusalem and the surrounding areas.28 And then, the rest of the people they marched off and carried them off into Babylon.29 So, you’ve actually got two groups of people here; you’ve got the Jews who were executed and slaughtered, and you’ve got the Jews who were preserved alive, marched off into exile but preserved alive. And so, it seems that, if the baby boys that Herod kills represent the Jewish people slaughtered by the Babylonians, then Jesus more precisely is playing the part of the Jewish people driven into exile by the Babylonians, so that Jesus, again, embodying the history of Israel, must go into exile himself. He must experience an exile as well, because you remember there were two things that really happened in the exile: God’s people were under God’s judgment; they were under the wrath of God; they were exiled from their home because they had rebelled against God; but, at the same time, the exile was a way that God preserved for himself a remnant. God always keeps for

25 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 94, who questions the connection to Moses as well, writing, “It is difficult to see a real parallel with Moses, since Pharaoh’s edict was general and before Moses’ birth, whereas Herod’s edict is specifically for Bethlehem and came after Jesus’ birth. At best the parallel is tenuous.”

26 The date of the exodus continues to be a topic of debate. I am slightly inclined to favoring the earlier date of 1446 BC, following the arguments of, among others, Bryant G. Wood, “The Biblical Date for the Exodus is 1446 BC: A Response to James Hoffmeier,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50:2 (June 2007): pgs. 247-258.

27 Cf. Wilkin, Matthew, pg. 121, who helpfully summarizes, “Jesus’ life events fulfill analogically/typologically the correspondence between Israel’s mothers sorrowing over their exiled children at the time of the Babylonian captivity and Bethlehem’s grieving mothers at the slaughter of the innocent boys. Herod’s attempts to eliminate the newborn king of the Jews correspond analogically to an earlier attempt by a foreign power to wipe out God’s chosen people, but Jesus’ advent also marks the arrival of the comfort to Israel promised to the Jews who had been sent into exile in Babylon (2:17–18; Jer. 31:15).”

28 See 2 Chron. 36:17.29 See 2 Chron. 36:20.

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himself a remnant of faithful believers, and so even in the exile, God held people who were faithful to him in exile, who remained faithful to him. So, it seems that Jesus is playing the part of these Jewish people who were preserved in exile.

The quotation here from Jeremiah 31:15—it’s really important again to consider the context. I encourage you to go home today and read all of Jeremiah chapter 31. Verse 15 is the only sad verse in the chapter; it’s the only negative verse in the whole chapter. “A voice was heard in Ramah.” Ramah was a little town outside of Jerusalem that was a place that they would’ve marched through on their way to Babylon.30 So, on their way, as they march out to Babylon, as they’re going into exile, they pass through Ramah. There’s grieving; there’s this weeping and loud lamentation that’s going on. But then Jeremiah mentions Rachel. Think about Rachel for just a minute. Rachel was one of Jacob’s wives back in the book of Genesis. She was the one who bore him Benjamin and Joseph finally.31 Rachel is depicted here by Jeremiah as weeping for her children. Now, there are two ways that people typically take this: Jeremiah could be using Rachel as a way of symbolizing the Jewish women of the time who were grieving at the loss of their children in Babylon.32 Or, Jeremiah could be suggesting with his Spirit-inspired, prophetic insight that the spirit of Rachel in the grave, the spirit of Rachel in place of the dead is watching the history of Israel unfold and at the exile of her descendents, in the place of the dead she is mourning and grieving at the loss of her descendants as they go into exile and many of them are slaughtered.33 Either way, there’s appropriate grief at the exile of God’s people.

But here’s the thing: if you go to Jeremiah 31, in the very next verse, God commands, “Stop weeping! No more weeping!” The whole chapter of Jeremiah 31 is a chapter of hope; it’s a chapter of hope beyond exile; it’s a chapter of hope for restoration of the people of Israel. One writer summarizes really easily, so I’ll just read what he says: “Immediately after the lament of Jer 31:15, the prophet launched into a series of glorious promises. He foretold the return of Israel from exile (Jer 31:16-20), the repentance and restoration of Israel (vv. 21-30), and finally the institution of the new covenant (vv. 31-34).”34 Jeremiah 31:31-34 is one of the most well-known, most gloriously presented prophecies about the new covenant. The author to the Hebrews quotes the whole passage. That’s in this chapter, Jeremiah 31. Matthew is drawing our attention to that here at the beginning of the story, and so what he’s wanting to do is to say, “This is an awful time. Jesus is having to go out of his homeland, having to go down into Egypt, babies are being

30 Cf. Blomberg, “Matthew,” pg. 9, who writes, “Ramah was six miles north of Jerusalem; departing captives from Judah’s capital had to go through it on the road to the lands of the northern invaders (Jer. 40:1). Ramah was thus about the same distance north of Jerusalem as Bethlehem was south, along the same road.”

31 See Gen. 30:22-24; 35:16-18.32 So suggests Blomberg, “Matthew,” pg. 9, who writes, “Rachel was uniquely qualified to be personified

in this fashion: she died ‘on the way’ to the promised land (Gen. 35:19), her last words expressed her sorrow (Gen. 35:18), death in childbirth proved the extent of her motherly love, and as mother of Israel, she does not forget her children (Isa. 49:15). That Rachel’s children, along with the other sons of Jacob, also had to leave the promised land (Gen. 42–50) adds to the appropriateness of this personification, although Rachel herself had died by that time.”

33 Cf. France, Matthew, pg. 86, who writes, “Jeremiah depicts the grief of Rachel not during her life and for her own children, but in her grave as she watches her ‘children’ (her later descendants, the exiles from the kingdom of Judah) being ‘lost’ not through death but by being deported to Babylon.” I would demur and say that some of her descendants were indeed lost through death.

34 Charles L. Quarles, Sermon on the Mount: Restoring Christ’s Message to the Modern Church (NAC Studies in Bible & Theology; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2011), Kindle location 802.

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slaughtered, but the time for the end of the exile and the end of mourning has come!”35 The dawning of the new covenant is coming.36 But just like in Jeremiah 31, there’s a bit of a delay because in Jeremiah 31—Jeremiah’s already told them, told these Jewish people that he’s talking to and writing to and thinking about, he’s already told them back in Jeremiah 29, “You guys are going to be in Babylon for about 70 years.” But two chapters later, in chapter 31, he says, “After that, you’re going to come back to the land; after that, you’re going to be restored to faithfulness to God; after that, you’re going to have a new relationship with God where there’s full forgiveness of sins and there’s a new, inbred, Spirit-empowered ability to obey God and live with him!” But that’s going to be delayed. Jeremiah doesn’t tell us that; Jeremiah doesn’t know that, perhaps. But just like in his day there was a delay, so here; there’s hope that’s dawning with Jesus’s birth, but it’s Jesus’s death that is going to bring in the new covenant. It’s Jesus’s death that’s going to accomplish the restoration of God’s people fully. It’s Jesus’s death that’s going to bring in the full return from exile. Because the New Testament writers seem to be aware that, even though the people are living in the land, even though the Jews are in the land of Israel, they’re still experiencing exile because they’re separated from God and they’re still in rebellion against him. Jesus is that solution to that. Matthew is trying to show us that that is what Jesus has come to do.

And so the curtain goes down and we move into the third act here: “The Return of God’s Son,” verses 19-23: 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.37 And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so

35 Cf. James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), pg. 41, who writes, “In fact, the only reason for the reference to Rachel weeping for her children who have been taken into exile is the command to ‘restrain…from weeping’ (v. 16). Instead of looking back in sorrow, the survivors were to look forward in hope. There was hope for the exiles in Babylon because they would return to their own land, and there was hope for Israel because the Messiah escaped Herod’s wrath and would return to his own land from Egypt. That may be what Matthew intends when he cites Jeremiah 31:15 as a prophecy.”

36 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 95, who writes, “Jeremiah 31:15 occurs in a setting of hope. Despite the tears, God says, the exiles will return; and now Matthew, referring to Jeremiah 31:15, likewise says that, despite the tears of the Bethlehem mothers, there is hope because Messiah has escaped Herod and will ultimately reign….Jeremiah 31:9, 20 refers to Israel = Ephraim as God’s dear son and also introduces the new covenant (31:31-34) the Lord will make with his people. Therefore the tears associated with Exile (31:15) will end. Matthew has already made the Exile a turning point in his thought (Mt 1:11-12), for at that time the Davidic line was dethroned. The tears of the Exile are now being ‘fulfilled’—i.e., the tears begun in Jeremiah’s day are climaxed and ended by the tears of the mothers of Bethlehem. The heir to David’s throne has come, the Exile is over, the true Son of God has arrived, and he will introduce the new covenant (26:28) promised by Jeremiah.”

37 I forgot to comment on this part of the story. The angel initially only commands Joseph to return to the land of Israel. Apparently, he wasn’t specific about where to go. We would assume that Joseph would naturally return to Bethlehem. However, while he’s traveling, he hears perhaps from other travelers news that Herod’s son Archelaus is reigning over Judea, which is the region where Bethlehem and Jerusalem were. This news troubled Joseph because Archelaus was much like his father. So, Joseph became afraid, thinking that this new “Herod” would be a threat to his family. Apparently, the angel visits him in a dream again and confirms his fears, and so then Joseph decides to go to Galilee. More specifically, he goes to Nazareth, where one of Herod’s less volatile and more sensible sons is ruling, Antipas. Now, Luke’s Gospel tells us that this is actually where Joseph and Mary lived before she became pregnant (Luke 1:26-27; 2:39), so this is why Joseph chooses Nazareth. But, Matthew wants us to see God’s sovereign guidance behind Joseph’s choice; Scripture has dictated that they will return to Nazareth!

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that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. So, Herod dies, Herod the Great dies, and Joseph and his family are in Egypt. How long were they there? It doesn’t really give us a good indication; maybe as long as a year, but we really don’t know how long they were there. Herod died and so the angel comes to Joseph in a dream again and tells him, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel.” Now, it’s interesting to note that that phrase, “the land of Israel,” is only used here in the New Testament. It only appears here. It’s so common in the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, in Ezekiel, who prophesied the return of God’s people to the land of Israel.38 But only here in the entire New Testament is that exact phrase, “the land of Israel,” used. Just an interesting little tidbit that might have some significance.

But the angel actually says something here that does connect Jesus to Moses. This is going to be a theme that Matthew wants to draw out in different ways, that Jesus is not only the embodiment of the nation of Israel, so that he actually experiences his own exodus and exile, but he’s also going to be a new Moses who delivers out, delivers the rest of God’s people in a new exodus. The angel says, “Those who sought the child’s life are dead,” and this is almost an exact quotation of Exodus 4:19. So, if you remember, Moses killed an Egyptian and then ran away, and ran and fled to Midian and spent 40 years in Midian. Well, the time has come for him to return and so God is speaking to him: And Yahweh said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” It’s that last phrase that the angel seems to pick up on.39 It’s real subtle, and so, right now this is in the background, so that Jesus is this new Moses figure—it’s something Matthew wants to draw our attention to, but it’s not the main focus here. It will come up later in Matthew’s Gospel, to be sure.

But with this emphasis on returning to the land of Israel, I think we’re looking at the stage production and we’re seeing that the return of God’s Son, the prophesied return from exile is the new placard for Act 3 of this stage production. But what has happened for Matthew, it seems, is that the story has moved up another 580 years, and now we’re at real time, so that the prophesied return from exile is actually happening in Jesus in the time. He’s not just telling the story; it’s actually unfolding in his life. So, the nation of Israel is still being played by Jesus, but here he is the righteous remnant of one. He is the perfect obedient Son of God who embodies the nation of Israel in their purposes and in their relationship with God. He is the Messiah who represents God’s people, and so he is now coming back to the land of Israel to pick up his commission and go forward with it.

But at the end of the passage Matthew gives us the strangest of his eleven specific Old Testament formula quotations. Notice the way it’s different. He went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets—(plural)—might be fulfilled, that he would be

38 I count 28 occurrences in the Old Testament, with 20 in Ezekiel alone. This detail was pointed out by John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), pg. 126, who writes, “Though both Matthew and Luke use ‘Israel’ quite frequently, the full phrase ‘the land of Israel’ is not found elsewhere in the NT. OT uses are particularly concentrated in Ezekiel. Exile and Restoration are frequently in focus (privilege lost and regained). Ez. 20:42 could be particularly in mind: ‘You shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country that I swore to give to your ancestors’.”

39 Cf. Quarles, Sermon on the Mount, Kindle location 617, who writes, “The angel of the Lord took words originally spoken by God to and about Moses and applied them to Jesus in order to signal that Jesus would somehow be like Moses.”

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called a Nazarene. And so, Matthew is not quoting a single Old Testament verse,40 and to make things even more complicated, if you were to just pick up a concordance or a do a Bible search online, you won’t find the city of Nazareth or the word “Nazarene” appear in the Old Testament ever. And so, it makes it very difficult to know—I wonder if Matthew’s original readers would’ve picked up on what he’s after here a little bit more easily than we do—but we can only do some guessing. But let me give you the point, so that you don’t miss that. Jesus will not be known as “Jesus of Bethlehem.” That would make sense; he was born in Bethlehem, and if he were known as “Jesus of Bethlehem,” then it would be easier for people to make the connection to David, that he’s the descendent of David and the Messiah who would come from Bethlehem, but instead he will be called a Nazarene.41 And the word “Nazarene” simply means somebody who comes from Nazareth, the city of Nazareth. But why? Why is this important? And that’s the question that’s a little harder to answer.

So, a Nazarene is someone from Nazareth, but why is that significant? We don’t know much about the origin of the city of Nazareth. It’s a little village; it seems to have become a village sometime very, very late in the Old Testament period. It didn’t exist throughout most of the Old Testament. So, let’s use a little bit of imagination and consider: if you’ve got a couple of families, perhaps, that want to move out to the country, and they want to start a new village—now, if these families are Jewish families who are their putting their hope in the coming of the Messiah, it might be expected that they would name their new village something that highlights that hope. And so it’s possible that the city of Nazareth, the village of Nazareth was started in a way that it was named that connected it to the Hebrew word netser. Netser…Nazareth. You can kind of hear the connection. But it’s not clear that the word “Nazareth,” the city name, actually comes from this Hebrew word, but maybe.42 We don’t know. So, if somebody is hoping for the coming of the Messiah, they might pick up this Hebrew term netser because in one Old Testament passage, this word is used—and it gets translated into English as “branch”—and it gets applied to the coming Messiah. You can see Isaiah 11:1; this is where it appears most prominently; Isaiah 11:1 everybody acknowledges is a Messianic prophecy: There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a netser—(that is, “a branch,” is what you’ll see in your English Bible)—from his roots shall bear fruit. And several verses go on in Isaiah 11 describing the ministry of the coming Messiah. So, it could be that Nazareth is a village that’s named for the coming “Branch,” so that these families got together and they’re looking forward the coming of this Davidic descendent, this Messianic Branch.43

40 Cf. Blomberg, “Matthew,” pg. 11, who writes, “The fact that this is the only place in the entire Gospel where Matthew makes reference to ‘prophets’ in the plural (rather than a singular ‘prophet’) as the source of an OT reference suggests that he knows that he is not quoting one text directly but rather is summing up a theme found in several prophetic texts.”

41 Cf. Boice, Matthew, pg. 42, who writes, “Matthew seems to be saying is that the prophets predicted the Messiah would be a despised person, the victim of slurs such as this. He would not be known as ‘Jesus of Bethlehem,’ with its honorable Davidic overtones, though he had been born in Bethlehem. Instead, he would be called ‘Jesus the Nazarene.’”

42 Cf. Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (The New American Commentary 22; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), pg. 70, who asserts that Nazareth “does not derive from nezer.”

43 This idea is developed from the comments of Wilkin, Matthew, pg. 116, who writes, “A more likely suggestion is that Nazareth was originally settled by people from the line of David, who gave the settlement a consciously messianic name, connecting the establishment of the town with the hope of the coming neṣer (‘Branch’) of Isaiah 11:1: A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch [neṣer] will bear fruit.”

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Matthew says, so that what was spoken by the prophets—(plural)—might be fulfilled. This is the only place in the Old Testament, in Isaiah, where the word netser comes up and refers to this Messianic descendent. But the term “branch,” the English term appears several times in the prophets, and it’s translating a different Hebrew term. So, maybe they connected the two because they’re synonyms,44 and so a passage like Jeremiah 23:5 could’ve been connected to that: Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch—(a different Hebrew word, but it means basically the same thing)—and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. So, perhaps what Matthew is doing is picking up on this prophetic stream that there is going to be this “branch” that comes, and Jesus is that “Branch.”45

But, more prominently is just the simple idea that Jesus is going to be coming from Nazareth. He’s going to come from Nazareth. Matthew wants to emphasize this probably because the Messiah, somewhat shockingly, is going to be despised. And if you remember anything about Nazareth from the New Testament, you know that that’s kind of the attitude that gets presented about those who’ve come from Nazareth. You remember the comment from Nathanael in the Gospel of John: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”46 And that’s a reflection of the typical attitude towards Nazareth in Jesus’s day; it’s a hick town; it’s a backwater place; it’s a place where nothing interesting happens. And so, why would the Messiah come from there? If Matthew’s thinking about that, then he’s picking an Old Testament theme that shows that the coming Messiah would in fact be despised and not recognized as significant.47 You could think about David, speaking as a prophet in passages like Psalm 22, where he describes the suffering and rejection of his future descendent, or Isaiah describing the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53.48 All of that could be packaged in this term “Nazarene,” because it refers to someone who’s despised and not thought well of. But, again, we’re kind of guessing here, and that’s the best that we can do probably to see what Matthew’s after specifically. But he will be called “Jesus of Nazareth,” and it will not be a flattering term. In the Gospel of Matthew, in fact, one person will refer to him a Nazarene, and it’s not in a good light. Do you remember the night Jesus was arrested, he’s on trial, Peter’s out in the courtyard denying him, one of the servant girls comes up to him and says, “You were with Jesus the Nazarene.”49 She’s not flattering Peter by that association. She’s saying, “You were with Jesus that rejected hick guy from Nazareth.” And

44 So suggests Wilkin, Matthew, pg. 118: “The indirect discourse of Matthew’s allusion to ‘the prophets’ allows him to draw on both the Isaiah 11:1 neṣer prophecy as well as the substance of several Old Testament prophecies that relate to the wordplay conjured up by the ‘Branch’ motif.”

45 Cf. Charles L. Quarles, A Theology of Matthew: Jesus Revealed as Deliverer, King, and Incarnate Creator (Explorations in Biblical Theology; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), pg. 81, who writes, “The Hebrew consonants that make up the Hebrew word branch (Isa. 11:1)—n, ts, and r—are shared by the words Nazareth and Nazarene. Thus, Jesus’ hometown is the ‘Branch place,’ and Jesus is a ‘Branch person.’”

46 John 1:46.47 Cf. France, Matthew, pg. 94, who writes, “The most promising approach paradoxically takes its cue from

the very non-existence of Nazareth in the OT—it is a scriptural non-entity. For someone to be ‘called a Nazorean,’ especially in connection with a messianic claim, was therefore to invite ridicule: the name is in itself a term of dismissal if not of actual abuse.”

48 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 97, who writes, “He is not saying that a particular OT prophet foretold that the Messiah would live in Nazareth; he is saying that the OT prophets foretold that the Messiah would be despised (cf. Pss 22:6–8, 13; 69:8, 20–21; Isa 11:1; 49:7; 53:2–3, 8; Dan 9:26).”

49 See Matt. 26:71. Most English Bibles translate her statement as, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth,” but the Greek is more accurately rendered by the HCSB and the NET Bible as, “This man was with Jesus the Nazarene,” which helps us see the connection back to Matt. 2:23.

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even further in the book of Acts, the Christians became known as “the sect of the Nazarenes”50 or those who followed Jesus of Nazareth. And so it’s not a flattering term; it’s a term of derision.

And that is where we begin to think about—why does Matthew care to tell us all of this? What does he want his readers to get from this, besides a little window into the identity of Jesus? He is the fulfillment of the nation of Israel in a certain, but what does that mean? Why is that relevant for Matthew’s readers and ultimately for us? Well, I think it has to do with Jesus’s identity as God’s Son and the connection that God’s people have with God’s Son, because, you see, we are God’s sons, and the connection, then, comes to recognize that the treatment that Jesus as God’s Son received is the treatment that God’s sons should also expect to receive in the world.

Let me remind you of some texts that bear this out. And if you need a reminder of your identity, let’s start there. Galatians 3:26—for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. So, if you’re a believer in Jesus, you are a son of God. You’ve been adopted into the family of God; you are God’s sons. And so that brings with it certain expectations about the way that we’re to be perceived in the world. Jesus taught us this in Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew 10:24-25: A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. (That sounds really good.) If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household (those of his family, his adopted brothers and sisters, the other sons of God that have been adopted into the family). They treated Jesus badly during his life, so will the world treat the rest of his family. In John 15:20, the night before Jesus died, he reminds his disciples of this as well: Remember the word that I said to you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. This is a somber note, and the story of Jesus’s birth is a somber story in a lot of ways. We celebrate Christmas, we bring out the tinsel and the lights and the ornaments, but the story has dark tones. And it should because the light of the world is coming into a dark world, and that means conflict, that means clashing, that means pain, that means suffering. It meant it for him, the embodied, eternal, royal, human, national Son of God, and it means it for those of us who are connected to him by faith. Trusting in Jesus doesn’t make life easy; it does make life good in the midst of the suffering. But Jesus set us up for this; he didn’t give us any expectations of some kind of disconnection from the world. He gave us realistic expectations of hostility and conflict and persecution.

The apostle Peter picks up on this and develops it probably most fully. 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 12-16: Beloved, do not be surprised by the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings—(you share the Messiah’s sufferings)—that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. It’s important for us to remember that the term “Christian” was also not a nice term. To be called a Christian in the first century was not a compliment. It was not something a Christian was eager to say. “I’m a Christian”—that might be the way that we most easily self-identify when we talk to somebody—“I’m a Christian.” Well, in their world in the first century, that would not have been the quick way to

50 Acts 24:5.

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identify themselves. Instead, other people said, “They’re Christians!” And it was a way of deriding them and mocking them, and here Peter says that if you’re suffering because of your connection to Jesus, if you’re suffering because of your faith in Jesus, you have a unique opportunity to glorify God in that circumstance, in that situation.

Peter could’ve said, “If anyone suffers as a Nazarene,” because we are those who follow Jesus the despised, rejected, crucified…and resurrected Nazarene. Let us never forget that and let us not be ashamed of it. I think we can all expect in our political and cultural climate in this country for Christianity to become less favored. It already has in my lifetime. I expect things to get worse, not better. And I’m not sad about that. I’m not grieving; I’m not complaining about that…yet. But I’m looking with hope that in and through the things that become more difficult that what Peter challenges us to will be true in my life and in yours, that we won’t be shocked by it, that we won’t look around when Christians are killed, when Christians are persecuted, when we see it in our schools, when we see it in our neighborhoods, that we won’t be shocked and appalled, that we will endure it and that we will see it as confirmation that we are following in our Savior’s footsteps. He was the rejected and despised Son of God, and yet, he is now the resurrected and glorified Son of God. And that, too, is our destiny for the future. That’s where our hope really lies: resurrection and glorification with our Savior. So, I hope you’ll fix your eyes on that hope, no matter what happens, no matter what trials, what difficulties come in 2018, I hope you’ll fix your eyes on Jesus and the way that he endured suffering in his life, but particularly with the promises of hope to come.

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