04 Why Your Nativity Scene Is Historically Wrong (Matthew 2:1-23)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome back to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the fourth talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we're going to look at Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 23. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast. They contain links to everything mentioned in the talk so you don't have to take notes. And you can also find those by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 4. Glad to have you along. We're starting chapter 2 today of Matthew's Gospel, and the first four chapters of his book function as basically introductory material to the life and ministry of Jesus. We have looked at the genealogy of Jesus, where Matthew made the point that Jesus is the Christ. He is the one descendant of Abraham and descendant of David who will fulfill the promises that God gave to them. And we also looked at Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus. God caused Mary, a virgin, to miraculously conceive a son, and then God acted to protect that child by speaking to Mary's fiancee, Joseph. Assuming that Mary was unfaithful, Joseph planned to quietly divorce her, but God spoke to Joseph in a dream. God told Joseph that Mary had not been unfaithful and that her son would be the promised Messiah who would save his people from sins. In obedience, then Joseph takes Mary as his wife and accepts Jesus as his own son, making Jesus his legal heir, and that puts Jesus legally in the line of David since Joseph was in the line of David. We also looked at the first of the four fulfillment passages, just to review briefly. Four times in these early chapters, Matthew quotes the Old Testament, and each quote is introduced in a similar way. He says something like this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. And I argued that Matthew frequently uses the word fulfill not to mean predictive prophecy, but rather to mean that a spiritual principle is shown in its fullness or completeness. We might say it's the epitome or it's an analogous reality. And as we discussed in the last podcast, Isaiah's prediction of a young woman who will have a son and name him Emmanuel finds its fullest expression in the story of Mary, an actual virgin who gave birth to a son named Jesus, who is actually God with us. What I'd like to do today is go over all of chapter two, and then we'll go back in later podcasts and dive into each of the fulfillment passages. But today I just want to get the big picture of the chapter and the flow of thought. Then we'll go back and we'll dive into all the details and the weeds and look at how each of those fulfillment passages figure into the context. So let's start with Matthew two verses one through three. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. When Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. So Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which is about five miles south of Jerusalem, and King David was also born in Bethlehem. Matthew doesn't tell us this, but Luke tells us in two four that Joseph and Mary had lived in Nazareth, but they had to return to Bethlehem for the census. The census required that everyone return to their hometown to be registered, so they left Nazareth and went to Bethlehem where Jesus was born, and then after he was born they stayed in Bethlehem. We don't really know why they decided to stay, but we can speculate. They probably suspected that their son would grow up to sit on David's throne given all the activity that's been going on around his birth, and where better for a son of David to grow up than David's hometown. Now many days after his birth the Magi come looking for Jesus. The Magi were important wise men from the east. Some of them were politically important priests and rulers. It's possible that these particular ones were important men, we don't really know. They probably came from the region that used to be the Babylonian Empire. About five hundred years earlier, when the prophet Daniel lived as an exile in Babylon, he became the chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. And God gave Daniel visions about the coming king of the Jews who would rule over all the earth, and some of these visions give a kind of timetable for when this king is to come. So if these magi were from Babylon, it's likely that they were familiar with Daniel's visions. They would have been handed down through the generations to them. At the time Jesus was born, there were still many Jews living in Babylon in that region, so it would be easy for the magi to be familiar with the prophecies. We don't know exactly how, but the magis had come to believe that a certain star would herald the arrival of the Messiah. It was a sign that the king had been born. Now it's not a given that the star moved with them while they traveled. The language is ambiguous about what exactly is going on there. In any case, they were right and they found the child. So God moved among these Gentile astrologers to have them come and pay homage to the king of the Jews. They go to Jerusalem where the King of the Jews reigned, and they meet Herod. At this time all the nation was ruled by King Herod. He's usually called Herod the Great to distinguish him from some of his sons who were also named Herod and later ruled in the region. Herod the Great was a ruthless and paranoid king. He always believed that someone was plotting to kill him and take his throne. The Jewish people hated him because he wasn't of Jewish descent, he was an Idumean. Idumea is the region in the south of Judea that used to belong to the Edomites. He was only king because the Romans had put him in power and he looked out for the Roman interests, and the Roman Caesar trusted him and gave him a lot of local power. And as he grew older, Herod became more and more paranoid. He killed his wife and a number of his sons when he became convinced that they were plotting against him, and his brutality was so well known that Caesar joked that he would rather be Herod's pig than his son, because his son was more likely to get killed. Herod systematically removed all possible rivals through treachery and murder. So to this paranoid king, it is not good news when someone arrives announcing that the king of the Jews has been born. We don't know how much of the story Herod actually believed, but he didn't want anyone saying that a son of David had been born who was the rightful king because the rumor alone could start an uprising against him. So the first thing he does is ask where is this child? Let's go on then with Matthew two four through six. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O 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. Now the chief priests and scribes actually get this one right. They note that Micah 5 2 says, A ruler will who will shepherd the people of Israel will be born in Bethlehem, which makes sense because Bethlehem was David's hometown, and this king would be a descendant of David. And this appears to be pretty much common knowledge. In John 7, we see the crowds debating who Jesus is, and they say this, this is John 7, verses 40 through 43. When they heard these words, some of the people said, This really is the prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scriptures said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So there was division among the people over him. So you can see the problem here. Jesus is on the scene, and he looks like he might be the Messiah, but apparently quite a number of people know the Messiah is supposed to come from Bethlehem, but Jesus was from Galilee, and so here the people are arguing about is he the Messiah or not? Well, he doesn't really come from the right place. So Matthew is telling the story of how this came about. He's explaining how Jesus of Nazareth was actually born in Bethlehem. Let's go on with chapter two verses seven through nine. 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 and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word 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. I don't want to get too much into that debate. Anyway, Herod tells the magi to search in Bethlehem, then come back and tell them where they find the child so that he too can worship the child, which of course is a lie. two seven tells us that Herod also asked them exactly when they saw the star because he's trying to calculate how old the child would be by now. And later when he seeks to kill the child, he searches out all the boys ages two and under, so it must have been a while since the birth and the star first appeared. Now this means our nativity scenes are not historically accurate. We set them up with the shepherds and the wise men all together, but it seems most likely from the text that the shepherds and the wise men never met. According to Luke, the shepherds arrived on the day that Jesus was born and did actually see him lying in a manger, but the magi come much later, by the time they come they probably meet a toddler. Let's look at two verses ten through twelve. When they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy, and going down into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down 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 in two hundred eleven when it says they worship Jesus, this is not a religious expression, it means they bowed down before him. They prostrated themselves on the ground as they would do to a king. It's an act of deference that he is a superior king, and then they present him with kingly gifts. God intervenes with another dream, he warns the magi in a dream not to return to Herod, and they sneak out of town going back by a different route. Now Joseph also has a warning dream. This is Matthew two verses thirteen through fifteen. 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. The angel warns Joseph in a dream that Herod is trying to kill Jesus, and Joseph responds immediately. It's not clear if he left that very night or if he packed up the next day and left in the middle of the night. In either case, the sense of it is that Joseph wasted no time in getting out of town. Now we readers know that Herod was using the magi as his spies and he intended to kill the child once he knew where to find him. But it's not clear how much of the story Joseph knew. Perhaps he knew all those details, and that's how Matthew knows, or perhaps Matthew found out by some other means. When Herod finds out that the magi have tricked him and left without telling him where the child is, he forms an even more evil plan. This is Matthew two verses sixteen through eighteen. 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 Rama, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted because they are no more. Now we're going to look at these fulfillment passages in a later podcast. But considering what history tells us about Herod, this action is quite in character. Killing anyone he felt was a threat to his throne was something that Herod did quite regularly. Outside of the Bible, history does not record this particular massacre of Jewish children, but that's not really surprising. Bethlehem was a small village, and there were probably not a large number of children under that age, and considering all the other evil actions Herod ordered, the deaths of these children went unnoticed by history, most likely because he committed so many other atrocities. Now Matthew skips ahead many years, let's go on with nineteen through twenty three. 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 would be called a Nazarene. Alright, Joseph stays in Egypt until he has another dream, and then when he returns to Israel, he has yet another dream that tells him to go to the district of Galilee. Now there are several conflicting theories on how to date this period of Jesus' life. I'm not going to get into all the weeds there, but basically Herod the Great probably died in four BC. So I think our best guess is that Jesus was between one and two years old when the family fled to Egypt, and he was probably between three and four years old when they returned, but we don't really know for sure. What we do know is that Joseph stays in Egypt until an angel tells him in a dream that Herod is dead and it's safe to return to Israel. It seems that Joseph intended to return to Bethlehem or that area, that was his homeland, but when he returns, he checks out the new political situation and he has another dream that warns him it's not safe to stay here. So what's going on is Herod the Great is now dead, and his kingdom has been split into several parts, each one is ruled by one of Herod's sons. Archelaus, who was the son reigning over Judea, which includes Bethlehem, was particularly threatening. History tells us that Archelaus was such a tyrant that the people eventually revolted and the Romans deposed him, which is why by the time Jesus is a grown man, Judea is ruled by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and not one of Herod's sons, because Archelaus had been deposed. Joseph was rightfully afraid to live in Judea. God confirms his fears and warms him not to return to Judea but to go to Galilee instead. Galilee was controlled by a different son of Herod, Herod Antipos, and he was not as much of a tyrant as his brother. He's going to appear later on in Matthew's gospel. Matthew doesn't tell us this, but Luke tells us that Joseph had lived in Galilee before Jesus was born, so he's returning to a familiar place. That's basically the story that Matthew gives us. And now what I'd like to do is kind of step back and look at why he tells us these particular events. Let's trace some of the themes that are running through this story. I would argue that Matthew is a really good storyteller and that he has shaped and constructed his story to make a point. And he has done his job so well that some people think he's making up fiction, but I don't buy that. I think he's just a good writer. He's telling a complicated story with intertwining repetition and illusion to make the points he wants to make. And I would also venture to suggest that Matthew tells the story this way because he sees God as the master storyteller who crafted and created and ordained all of the details to make it so. God constructed this story with repetition and foreshadowing and illusion, and Matthew is trying to bring that out. He's pointing to and reflecting on the inherent meaning in these events. So first let's start with the activity of God in this story. You'll remember that prior to this time there had been several hundred years of prophetic silence. It has been hundreds of years since there was a prophet in Israel, and all of a sudden God is active again. He causes a virgin girl to conceive a son. He gives a dream to Joseph explaining the importance of this son and how he was conceived. God arranges for this child to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. God arranges for pagan wise men to understand the significance of a star and that a king has been born. God warns the magi in a dream not to return to Herod. God warns Joseph in a dream to flee to Egypt and then gives him another dream when it's time to return and still another dream that sends him to Nazareth. So we see God playing an active supernatural part from beginning to end. And God gives Joseph an important protective role to play in the life of Jesus, and Matthew is telling that story to bring out the crucial part that Joseph played. Joseph chose not to divorce Mary and therefore gives her son legal right to the throne of David. Joseph protects the child from Herod and then brings him back to the land of Israel. Joseph chooses not to live in Judea, but instead takes his family to Galilee, which will have great significance in the story. As God acts to protect the child, Joseph is his primary tool for that protection. So Matthew is making a point of telling us God is supernaturally involved in the life of this child. This is no ordinary child. God has something special in mind for him. Second, Matthew includes a lot of geography in his story. As we saw from John 7, the crowds didn't know what to do with Jesus because he came from Galilee and not Bethlehem. And that was a big problem. Micah said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Most people know Jesus comes from Galilee. They don't know that he was, in fact, born in Bethlehem. So Matthew is explaining how that all came about. He tells us how it is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but grew up in Nazareth. He tells us that God brought Jesus to Egypt and then out again, which is a story the Jews would understand because as a nation, God took them to Egypt and then brought them out again. And finally, Joseph takes his family to Galilee, and as we discussed in a previous podcast, Galilee is looked down on by the other Jews, and Nazareth is a little village of no particular importance. Consider this story we have in John's gospel. This is John chapter one verses forty three through forty six. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Bethseda, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found him of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said to him, Come and see. That response by Nathaniel gives us a glimpse into how people thought of Nazareth. Now remember, Nathaniel is himself a Galilean, so even to a Galilean, Nazareth is nothing special. It's an insignificant village far away from the center of life in Jerusalem, and this is going to become a theme in Matthew's gospel. As we talked about in the first podcast, the Gospel portrays the life of Jesus as a journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and geography is important in Matthew's story. Now, third, notice that Matthew portrays the birth of Jesus as both a big deal and not a big deal. On the one hand, this is clearly a monumental event in redemptive history. God is actively, supernaturally involved in the birth of Jesus. This is the most unique, most important person in the history of the world, and he has a unique birth. There is no other human being like Jesus. God Himself has intervened to conceive this child. Joseph is told that Jesus is the promised king who will save his people from their sins. Matthew tells us that Joseph gives Jesus a legal, legitimate place in the line of David. Gentile wise men travel a great distance just to meet him. This is a big deal. All these things are extraordinary. On the other hand, his birth is marked by seeming failure and unimportance. His miraculous birth leaves his mother open to charges of immorality. This child could be seen as illegitimate, which was a serious stigma in that culture. Joseph's acceptance of him rescues him somewhat from that stigma and shame. Surprisingly few people seem to know anything about his birth. It's not broadcast across the nation. Herod didn't know about it until the magi arrived, perhaps a year later. The nation doesn't know about it. Herod has to ask them, where is the child? Who do you who is he? Where can I find him? And no one in Herod's court seems interested enough to go with the magi to see for themselves. They hear an announcement that the Messiah has been born from men who probably learned about it from the prophet Daniel, and they don't even want to check it out for themselves. Now it's possible they were too terrified of Herod to go, but it's also possible that they just didn't care. Herod's trying to kill Jesus, Joseph has to sneak him out of the country, a number of innocent children die because of his birth and escape. And at first we have this situation where the Messiah has come and he can't even live in his own country. And then when he does return, he has to go to some out of the way town in the middle of nowhere, far away from the center of life in Jerusalem. From that perspective, Jesus doesn't look like much of a big deal at all. He looks kind of like no one from nowhere. And those are two themes I think Matthew's going to play off of. Finally, Matthew tells this story to show how it resonates with the Old Testament. We see this primarily in the fulfillment passages. And in the last podcast, we talked about the significance of Isaiah saying a young woman would have a child named Emmanuel, God with us, and how that foreshadows the virgin birth of the Messiah. The Messiah who is himself, God with us, is coming to save his people. Matthew then compares the family's flight to Egypt with the Exodus, which we're going to look at in the next podcast. The city of Bethlehem is David's birthplace, but also the scene of this great tragedy because Herod kills all the Jewish boys under the age of two. And Matthew mentions this when he talks about Rachel weeping for her children, and we're going to again look at that parallel and what the significance of it is in a later podcast. And then even the fact that Jesus lives in Nazareth is significant, but because it fulfills what a prophet said he shall be called a Nazarene, and we're going to get into that one later as well. But the fulfillment passages are not the only comparisons to the Old Testament that I think Matthew is highlighting. Matthew is carefully crafting his story to point to the ultimate author of the story. God has so crafted history and revelation to tell this story and bring this out. Notice Joseph has the same name as one of the twelve sons of Jacob who became the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Old Testament Joseph was the son who was sold into slavery in Egypt and spent many years there as a slave and in prison. And the Old Testament Joseph is also given revelatory dreams. God gives him an understanding of dreams and eventually he ends up as Pharaoh's second in command. The Old Testament Joseph ends up sheltering his brothers and their family in Egypt when famine strikes the land of Israel. That of course saves them and eventually leads to them becoming enslaved in Egypt so that God rescues them through the Exodus. So the Old Testament Joseph saves the family of Jacob that will become the nation of Israel by bringing them to Egypt, and God accomplishes this in part through dreams. The New Testament Joseph saves the child Jesus, the hope of Israel, by taking him to Egypt, and God accomplishes that through dreams. So you see the parallels. Ultimately, in the Old Testament story, a child is born who God will use to lead the people out of Egypt, and that's Moses. Like Jesus, Moses' life is threatened at birth. Like Jesus, Moses must also flee the land of his birth and live apart from his people because the rulers are trying to kill him. Compare Exodus 419 with Matthew 2.20. I think Matthew is borrowing the language of Exodus. This is Exodus 4.19. And the Lord said to Moses and Midian, Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead. And then this is Matthew 2, 19 and 20. 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. So we see this resonance between the life of Moses and the life of Jesus, and this is part of why Matthew says, Out of Egypt I called my son, and we're going to look at that more in a later podcast. The story of the Magi has parallels in the Old Testament as well. When David's son Solomon is on the throne, he becomes so famous for his wisdom that foreign dignitaries visit him, and this is first Kings chapter ten verses one and two. Now when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones, and when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. Now later, when Isaiah describes the days of the Messiah, he pictures treasures flowing in from the nations, much like the Queen of Sheba brought gifts to Solomon, and then as Matthew tells us, like the Magi brought to Jesus. This is Isaiah sixty verses one through six. Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around and see. They all gather together, they come to you, your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then shall you see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and exalt, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you, a multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midiam and Epha, all those from Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and frankincense and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord. Now these Old Testament passages are not predictions of the Magi, but they are similar themes. In light of these passages, we can see the significance of the gifts the Magi brought and why Matthew might enchose to include the story of the magi. God has promised through his prophets that the nations are going to bring tribute to the Messiah. They would bring the promised king gifts of gold and spices, just as earlier the Queen of Sheba brought such gifts to Solomon. In the Magi we see a foreshadowing of the day when all the nations will proclaim that Jesus is Lord and pay him tribute. So in addition to the fulfillment passages, Matthew has drawn all these parallels with the Old Testament. Matthew's gospel was placed first in the New Testament because his gospel provides the continuity between the Old and New Testament. It acts as a bridge between the testaments, and here we can begin to see why. In these early chapters, Matthew is reinforcing the point he made in his opening chapter, his opening line. Jesus is the Christ. He is the one that all these predictions in the Old Testament are about, all these themes in the Old Testament are fulfilled in him. He is that one long promised descendant of Abraham and descendant of David. He's the Messiah who will fulfill the promises that God made to Abraham and David. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. I encourage you to take a few moments to visit my website. There are no advertisements there, only podcasts and Bible study resources designed to help you improve your skills and understanding, and it's all free. I don't take any donations and I don't have any ads. If you want to thank me, please join the mailing list, subscribe to the podcast, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician, Reggie Coates. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Your podcast feed may be limited to the last 20 or so episodes, but you can find all previous episodes on my website, which is WednesdayInTheWord.com. Thanks for joining me today. I'm Chris Onmarana, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.