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The old rabbis of Israel had a saying. They said, people marry for four reasons. Some marry for passion, some for wealth, some for honor, and some, very few, marry for the glory of God. If they marry for passion, their children will be stubborn and rebellious. That is, given over to their own passions. If they marry for wealth, then their children will grow up to be greedy. If they marry for honor, then their children will be ambitious and ruthless, striving after the honors of this world. But if by chance or by providence they marry and they live for the glory of God, then their children will be righteous and they will preserve Israel. Our story begins in Nazareth. Nazareth was a little obscure town in Galilee, the northern part of Israel. It was a village like many others. There were simple Jewish people who went about their daily tasks. The men would work in the fields or in their shops. They would meet together to talk about, oh, perhaps the weather, to talk about maybe the latest Roman outrage that was perpetrated upon the Jews, a people in subjection. The women went about their tasks and met at the well, perhaps to talk about who had had a baby, who was sick, who had died. The children played in the streets. Sometimes they listened to their mothers when they called them in to dinner. Sometimes they didn't pay attention and went their own way. It was a town, a little town like many others. But when Sabbath came, all the families would gather together to the old stone synagogue. And there the old rabbi, the teacher in Nazareth, would read to them very carefully, very perceptively from the words of Scripture. He was a kind man, a good man. He wasn't a legal scholar. He wasn't one of these erudite teachers from Jerusalem like the people of Nazareth might see on occasion when they came through on their way to some place more important and just deign to stop by for a day or two and enlighten the populace. No, he was a very ordinary man, but a man to whom the Scriptures meant much. He was a man who was very careful and thoughtful and prudent as he taught the young children, the young boys of Nazareth, and brought them up to the time in which they would assume their places as men at the age of 12 or 13, men who worshiped God in the nation of Israel. Well, we pick up our story at one particular Sabbath day. After the regular service, the rabbi had a special announcement. Now, it wasn't a total surprise to his listeners, which you have to remember in a little village like Nazareth, very few things happened which no one was aware of. But it was with great joy that the announcement was received, and no doubt it went in words something like this. The rabbi stood before the congregation and said, Joseph, the son of Jacob the carpenter, having brought a satisfactory dowry, desires the hand of Mary, the daughter of Eli, both being of the house of David. And the rabbi would raise his hands in a benediction. May God bless their union. The following weeks were a time of joyful celebration. The old songs were sung again, the songs of joy and romance and love and marriage. We have an example of that sort of song in what's called in the Old Testament the Song of Solomon. And just to get a feel for this, let's look at a few verses. The Song of Solomon, Chapter 4. Verse 1, Behold, thou art fair, my love. Behold, thou art fair, thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks. Verse 3, Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Verse 7, Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee. Verse 9, Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse. How much better is thy love than wine, and the smell of thine ointments than all spices. It was a mysterious form of love, wasn't it? It was sensual and yet spiritual. And it could only be found in a nation which worshiped Yahweh, a nation which was pictured in the Holy Scriptures as being the bride of God, the wife of God, raised up from a little child when God speaks of bringing out of Egypt a little girl and raising her up and caring for her and feeding her and clothing her. And treating that little child as his daughter until finally she came to grow into a woman, and he loved her and married her. It's a picture of God giving His covenant to man, a covenant of love, a covenant that binds man to God in the greatest union, a union and fellowship which is best exemplified by the union of marriage. To these people of Galilee, to the people of Israel, marriage was a sacred covenant. It pictured God's love for His people. We read in the Song of Solomon, chapter 4, in verse 12, a pledge of purity. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up, a fountain sealed. It's a picture of purity, of a purity that is protected until it might be enjoyed by the rightful husband. It is a picture of the devotion that Israel should have shown to God. And it's a picture also of that which was assumed to be the condition of each bride who came to each man in Israel. For these people and in this time, betrothal or engagement was quite formal, quite binding. It had the aspect of a legal contract. It was as good as a marriage in the sense of law. If a woman were to be betrothed to a man, then she could not break that betrothal. She was considered to be the wife of that man even though they had not come to live together and consummate that marriage. If her prospective husband or husband were to die, then she would be a widow with property rights. If she were to be unfaithful to that promise, the law prescribed death. If she had been unbetrothed and were to commit fornication, it would be a totally different matter. There would be the possibility of dowries being paid, of marriages being made after that point. But if she were betrothed to a man and was then unfaithful with another man, the penalty was death. So the announcement of the rabbi brought about this period of betrothal, which might have lasted for these people something like a year, a suitable interval before the actual marriage ceremony and even before the bride would go to live with her husband. Finally, the time would come when the marriage would be finalized. And we read of the various incidents that take place at this time of the bridegroom coming in the procession to take his bride, of the virgins or the bridesmaids who go out to meeting, of the feasting and the joy, the wine of fellowship and joy, the special wedding garments, we read of those. It was an extraordinary, a wonderful time, a time in which all of the people of Israel, the families of the bride and the groom might look upon this and see recreated the love that they had for their husbands and wives and the love that God had for Israel. This time would finally come, and we can imagine that Mary looked forward to it with great longing. There would be months of waiting, however, anticipation, preparing of the feast, preparing of herself in mind and body to become truly the wife of Joseph. And in the meanwhile, ever-present would be the reminders that we've read here in the Song of Solomon, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed as my sister, my spouse. This was her promise, her pledge of purity. How much of our lives is awaiting an anticipation for something different? Perhaps we think something better just around the corner, maybe a job promotion, maybe a marriage proposal, maybe someone's going to put a million dollars in our lap. And we wait and we expect and we know that things are going to be better. And we have pictured in our minds as we look into the future, I know just how it's going to be. I know what will happen. But how many times does it happen? And how many times instead is it that what we might call fate, but what might really be the providence of God, steps in and those things that we thought we had in our grasp, where we had our future laid out for us, where there were no problems. All these things are overturned and changed in a moment and we can do nothing about it. Mary had her plans, a loving husband, a family, a quiet, peaceful life in Nazareth. All those plans were taken away from her. And the very thing that we're talking about happened to Mary. Fate intervened. Her life was changed and it would never be the same again. This is what we read and let's turn to it. Luke chapter 1. Luke 1 verse 26. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women. No greater honor had ever come to a woman than this, but it was an honor that carried an awesome responsibility. And we read in verse 29 that when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and she cast in her mind, the RSV says, she considered in her mind what manner of salutation this was. We get our first glimpse here of the character of Mary. She was a person whom we might call a great spectator. That doesn't mean that she didn't get involved in the affairs around her, but at every crucial point in Mary's life we read in the Scriptures that she considered or she pondered or she kept these things stored up in her heart and meditated on them. This was the sort of person Mary was, and if we follow her through this story, we might become people like that. Oh, we're so caught up, aren't we? We rush headlong from one thing to another. All of our lives are laid out for us, and we hardly have time to pause and consider and ask ourselves what does this mean or that. This little incident that happened, should I consider that? Is that God's hand directing me in another way? But when we go with Mary and we walk through her life, then when she stops to consider these things, then we have to stop too, and we have to ask ourselves, can we see the hand of God acting in these things? Can we find ourselves motivated by these considerations to see the example of Mary and live as she did? Mary's attitude is one of infinite wonder at the workings of God. It is an attitude that comes from careful Bible study, from frequent prayer. Verse 30, And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. Now, to find favor with God is at least an implication that Mary was looking for something. If we find something, we're generally looking for it. This may be an indication that Mary was, if not expecting it, at least praying at this time, may I be the one who is the mother of the Messiah. Now, how could this be? Well, we should say here that the general notion in Israel based upon the scriptures of the coming of the Messiah was something along this order. Despite what was said in Isaiah 7 and 14, that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, it was generally taken by the faithful in Israel that what this passage meant was that a virgin would marry a man who was of the house of David, and this marriage would then find its consummation in the birth of a son who would be, of course, the son of the man as well as the woman, but would also be the Messiah. The Jews apparently had an aversion, and of course, they were before the fact instead of after, but they had an aversion to this idea that the Messiah would literally be the Son of God. And the passages that they read, like Isaiah 7 and 14, which say a virgin shall conceive, they took in the more natural way, a virgin shall marry and then by the natural means conceive and bear a son. So perhaps this is the sort of prayer that Mary would have in her heart, that she might, through Joseph, beget the man who would be the Messiah. We continue, though, with verse 31. Gabriel speaks, He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Now, several very interesting things there. Maybe the first one that would strike Mary's attention would be this awesome statement. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest. What did that mean? Even David, the great ancestor of the royal line of Israel and Judah, even David was not called the Son of the Highest, the particular singular Son of God. And we can imagine at this point, Mary considers again, what does this mean? And perhaps she even misses some of the other parts of Gabriel's statement where he says, he will be given the throne of his father David. But it's true. We look at this and we see all of the aspects of Christ. We see Christ who was to be the seed of the woman, the first great promise given in Genesis 3 and verse 15, that the seed of the woman, not necessarily the man, but the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent, would destroy the power of sin in the world. We see that his name would be Jesus. We read this in verse 31. Thou shalt call his name Jesus, Gabriel said. Jesus was a name with a long… Joshua, we might say, was a name with a long and varied history in Israel. Joshua had delivered his people after Moses died, delivered them into the promised land and established them in that land and paved the way to the kingdom. Joshua means the salvation of God. Or if we put it in a verb form, he who will save. This was Joshua. This was Jesus. Jesus would be a Savior, one who with the power of God would save or redeem his people. He would be called the Son of the Highest. This leads us to the passage in Isaiah 9, which gives us the theme for our studies. Isaiah 9, verses 6 and 7. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end upon the throne of David his father to order it and to establish it with justice and with judgment from henceforth even forever. He will be called the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, because God is his Father, and he is the representative of God, and God is made flesh through this special man, and he will be given the throne of his father David to rule over the nations in peace and righteousness. We notice here in verse 6 I should say, notice this, unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given, because that child, that son, that was to be born of Mary would be the possession of all men, would be manifested through all men who would have the faith in his God and his Father. And we have to feel this way. We have to feel that he was born for our sakes, that we can enter into this story and we can follow the events leading up to the birth of Christ and following after it, and we can feel that he was born for us, that he is our personal possession, that even as a child we can almost tangibly pick up and touch and love this child who exemplified the love of God to all men. He was born to us. Back over to Luke chapter 1. We've left Mary here, gazing in amazement upon the angel as he brought his message. And the angel continues. Well, first of all, we find Mary asking a question. Verse 34, she finally gets a chance to speak. The angel has said, this child will be the son of the highest. And Mary says, how shall this be seeing I know not a man? Will this happen immediately or will it happen after I'm joined to Joseph? And how will this be? Mary is a little bewildered at the prospect. And now Gabriel speaks very plainly in verse 35. And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing, an extraordinary expression to be spoken of for a child or a man, therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee will be called the son of God. Now Gabriel uses an expression here. The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee. It isn't immediately obvious in the English version, but if we were to look at the backup words in the Hebrew and the Greek, we'd find that this phrase, the Holy Spirit will come upon thee, is reproduced from Genesis chapter 1 where we read that the earth was covered with darkness and there was chaos and disorder, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. It's a picture in each case of God as a mother bird, a hen perhaps, brooding over the eggs and then the chicks when they're hatched. It's a picture of vast creative power, the Holy Spirit moving upon the face of the waters. Vast creative power, the Holy Spirit moving upon Mary, but it's a picture also of a sensitive, a passionate love, the love that a mother has for her offspring, the tenderness and the care, and the Holy Spirit moved upon Mary and her womb was empty, and the Holy Spirit caused that a new creation would come into being. The Word of God was made flesh. God's image was stamped upon human nature. Paul talks about it in Hebrews chapter 1 when he says, We behold Christ who was the express image of his Father's person. And again, there's a figure of speech there. It's the figure of speech of perhaps the stamping out of coins or perhaps an impression stamped in a soft clay that it might harden. God has stamped his image upon human nature, and this is Christ, the express character or image of the Father's person stamped upon the flesh. The Word of God made flesh in the womb of Mary. Verse 36. And, behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for with God nothing shall be impossible. Now, we read in verse 24 previous to this that Elizabeth, when she had conceived the child who would become John the Baptist, had hid herself. So no one knew of these circumstances. She had been hid at home for the past five months. Now, it is as though Gabriel is saying to Mary, we will confirm this great promise by another miracle. And when I am gone and you wonder, did I really see a vision? Did I really experience this great thing? Then you will know because you can go to Elizabeth and you will see this older woman who had been barren for all of her life. Now she is pregnant with a child who will be the forerunner, who will be born months before and then will go before and prepare the way for the coming of your son when he is revealed to Israel. Because with God nothing is impossible. This is the answer to verse 34 when Mary said, how shall this be seeing I know not a man? And God provides the answer and he says, with God nothing is impossible. If you have the faith, you can move mountains. God will work through you to the accomplishment of his purpose. There is nothing impossible with God. And it was the quotation we might say drawn from Genesis 18 where Sarah, a woman of 90 years, was told that she would have a child of promise and she laughed. She wondered, how could this be? And she was told by the angel, is anything too difficult for God? Is anything too hard for God? And now we have that same question, that same statement made in the most forceful form is not only not too hard for God, there is nothing that's impossible with God. God can do anything he pleases for the forwarding of his purpose. And Mary said, verse 38, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word, and the angel departed from her. Mary knew the scriptures. There are two passages in the Psalms, Psalm 86 and verse 16, Psalm 116 and verse 16, which speak of the Messiah as being the Son of God's handmaid. They're rather obscure passages. They're not passages that would normally be understood and quoted by the Jews at this time. And yet Mary revealed something of herself, the fact that she had studied these scriptures, that at a moment's notice she could reach back into the treasure house of scripture and bring out just the right passages that she could see the purpose of God being worked out. And so Mary reaches into the scriptures and pulls out the passage and takes it to herself and says, Lord, behold me, the handmaid of the Lord. She accepted this particular proposal. It was necessary that she give her consent before the Holy Spirit work and bring forth a son. It was essential. The actual account of the conception is, of course, omitted from Luke. It's as though a veil is drawn across the picture. And it's a great mystery, isn't it? How God was made flesh in the womb of Mary. A great mystery. But really, isn't every life a mystery? And when we can't explain, even scientifically, the basis for life as we see it around us, how can we begin to explain how it was that God could have a son who would yet be man, who would yet partake of the frailties of human nature while at the same time he was the only begotten of the Father and impressed with the Father's image that he was God manifest in the flesh with a perfect moral character which he must struggle as a man to attain? How could it be? We don't know. We accept it. God with us, the Scriptures say. And how would it be for Mary to become one with God in such a way, to be joined together in a perfect union which must have been a foretaste or a preview of the union that we can all experience when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, God will at last be all in all, and we will be in God. How did this come about? How did it happen? What do the Scriptures have to say? I'd like to read a few verses, and I brought the Revised Standard Version because I like it better in this instance, a few verses from Psalm 139. As far as I can see with the Scriptures, this is a unique psalm, and it's unique in two ways. We may have occasion here just to mention the second way very briefly, but it is unique in two different ways. It is a psalm which portrays the words of Christ even before he was born. Let's look at this. I'm reading from the RSV, Psalm 139, verse 13. We could call it the Psalm of the womb. For thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb. That phrase, thou didst knit me together, I think in the authorized version, it's something like curiously wrought or worked. It is at any rate the particular Hebrew word that had to do with the weaving of the threads into the curtains that hung in the tabernacle where they were very cunningly or very carefully worked by a craftsman into the fabric that they would reflect the glory of God in this fabric, which symbolized perhaps human nature. We're told that the veil before the tabernacle symbolized human nature because it cut man off from God. And now we see here a picture of Christ speaking of himself as being knit together in this same special craftsman-like way by the hand of God in his mother's womb where the image of God, the glory of God, was being worked cunningly into the fabric of human nature. This is the figure of speech being used. And why? Because God was making his tabernacle where he might dwell with man. His tabernacle was being constructed in human flesh. For thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise thee. For thou art fearful and wonderful, wonderful are thy works. Thou knowest me right well. My frame was not hidden from thee. When I was being made in secret, intricately wrought, the same phrase, the same expression at least, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth, thy eyes beheld my unformed substance. In thy book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. And here we're just going to have to mention very briefly in passing, but there is linked together these two beautifully expressive thoughts. We've called this the Psalm of the womb where Christ speaks of being intricately wrought in his mother's womb. It's also the Psalm of the tomb because Christ had two births. First from Mary, his mother, in the natural way and yet being the Son of God. And secondly, he was born out of a tomb of the earth. His life was crushed from him. And in the silence of that tomb, just as in the silence of the womb, God created his Son again and breathed new life into this image of himself. And so we have a Psalm here which blends together two incidents. And we find Christ speaking twice in this Psalm. We have to understand its figurative, I realize. But we find Christ speaking when he was yet in his mother's womb. And we find him speaking again when he was in the tomb and dead. When he could say to God, thy eyes behold my unformed substance. You knew the days that were written for me. You promised that you would raise me to life. And when I awake and come forth from the tomb, I am still with thee. It's a picture of a man who was totally in the hands of God before he was born, after he died. And the Psalm concludes with the words, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. It's a Psalm perhaps that we could sing, a Psalm that we could recite in our hearts and our minds, knowing that God has been our God from the time before we were born, that God will be our God and our life even after we are laid in tombs. So it was with Christ, so it will be with those who are in Christ. In Luke chapter 1, we now return to Mary. As for Mary, what doubts would be in her mind? How would she explain? Who would she go to and tell now this wonderful thing that had happened? Pretty soon it would become obvious to all around her. But who would believe, who could believe, that this miracle had taken hold of this world and this little girl, this young woman, Mary? Would even Joseph believe? And all the time in the background there must have been echoing these statements, the pledge of purity, thou art pure and perfect, my bride, my wife. The calling of the Lord is seldom an unmixed pleasure. Blessings are not always enjoyable. Mary was most blessed among women, and yet her path through life became infinitely more difficult, and the things that she had looked forward to, a quiet home and family life, were rudely ripped away from her, and she was given something else altogether different, and it was called a blessing. Blessings are not always enjoyable. Sometimes the blessing of the Lord can be downright unpleasant when he calls us to his truth and expects us to do something in return. Oh, we say to ourselves to do some great work for God. If God just gave me the opportunity, what wouldn't I do for him? And we forget as we read the pages of Scripture that the great works so called in the Bible involve things like imprisonment, involve things like scandal and gossip and torture, involve things like slavery. This was to do a great work for God, to find yourself sold into slavery like Joseph was into Egypt, to find yourself cruelly tortured and then taken with ropes and dipped down into a pit of mud and mire like Jeremiah was. Oh, they were doing great works for God, but they suffered along the way. Are we prepared to do that? Perhaps the reason that we are not doing great works for God is because we are not prepared for what all it entails. Oh, we see the cheers, but not the tears. We see the crown, but not the cross. We see the spotlight, and we love that, but we don't like the shadows. We'd like to sit with Christ on a mountaintop and all the people gather around and listen in rapture to what we have to say. But then we read in Scripture, and we walk with Christ as He goes into a dark garden where men are afraid and flee in the night. We watch a man weep bitter tears. We watch him wrestle with the serpent in himself, and we're afraid. We're afraid to go into that garden. We are afraid to face the trials that perfect our faith. And oh, perhaps if we could choose the way in which we serve God and maybe even if we could choose the sort of trials that we would face and pick them out and circle the day on the calendar and say this particular day I will go and give testimony on behalf of Christ, and I might suffer, and I'll prepare myself and be ready. Maybe we could accomplish that, but it never works that way, does it? We always find that as we go about making our own plans, doing whatever we please, then all of a sudden God intervenes and presents us with a proposition or an opportunity that we might serve Him. And as often as not, and I can speak for myself at least, we come to that time and we say, oh, I'm just not ready. Maybe another time. Now if someone appointed to me a Sunday evening and said you will go to this place and you will lecture on the truth, that would be wonderful. I'd be perfectly happy to do that. But if instead I find on a Friday afternoon when I'm tired, when I'm not feeling good, when I'm thinking of what I'm going to do for the weekend and all of a sudden I'm presented immediately with this opportunity to preach the truth, as often as not, I might turn away and I'd say, oh, another time. If we could choose our own methods of serving God, then it might be easy. But God has prepared for each one of us a very special plan that we must fit into. We can't lay it out for ourselves. We must follow and be directed by God's providence. This was Mary. Mary had prepared herself by long prayer and meditation and reading of Scripture. All we have to do is look at Mary's song from verses 46 through 55, and we see that she quotes in this short span of 10 verses from approximately 10 different Old Testament books. And we've got to remember that this was a woman of probably 14 or 15 or 16 at the oldest because Jewish women married at that age in Israel, and here was a young unmarried girl who had so prepared herself from the reading of Scripture. Oh, I agree that very likely she was inspired to say these words, but God doesn't inspire people unless His truth is in their minds anyway. And Mary had prepared herself by the reading of Scripture to understand how God worked, to be ready, to wait for the time when He would reveal Himself. And she didn't know. Mary was an ordinary girl in Israel. She didn't know there was anything special about her. She had no notion whatsoever that one day all nations would call her blessed among women. She didn't know this. She was an ordinary girl, but she had prepared herself, and she had said, no doubt, if the time comes that I can do some work for God, I will be ready. And whatever it is and whatever form it takes, I will step forward and I will say, behold me, the servant of God. And she found it in an extraordinary way. As God in His providence was preparing to bring His Son into the world, He looked about for the instrument, for the receptacle to bear that Son, and He found her. And that very ordinary girl became an extraordinary woman. Verse 51. He hath showed strength with His arm. He hath scattered the proud and the imaginations of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away. These were the words of Mary in her beautiful song. There were no kings in Nazareth. There were no generals. There were no great scholars. There were ordinary people like you and me. God chose them, and He chooses us, not because we're special, but because we're ordinary. And He chooses us and He works through us, and He invests these ordinary people with the most extraordinary truth and holiness so that no flesh would glory in the presence of God, so that to God belongs the glory for all accomplishments. And we will never say that we are the wisest, that we are the most numerous, that we are the most mighty of people. We can never say that. All we can say is that God chose us despite our imperfections, despite our weaknesses. It's not difficult to believe that God exists, but sometimes it is difficult to believe that God takes personal notice of you and me. Sometimes it's difficult to believe that the same God who keeps the stars in their courses, the same God who rules the nations and causes them to do His will, that same God is also a Father who steps into the lives of each one of us, who cares for each one of us individually, as He did for Mary, who causes us from among all people of the world to be blessed with the truth and to be given a great commission. That, brothers and sisters, is very difficult to believe. That He yearns for us as a Father does for His children. Psalm 103, verse 13. Like as a Father pityeth His children, so the Lord pityeth them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days or his grass is a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. And the place thereof shall know it no more, but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him and His righteousness unto children's children, to such as keep His covenant and to those that remember His commandments to do them. God cares for us as a Father does in a pitying, merciful way for His children. Not a sparrow falls unnoticed to the ground, but God recognizes it, and we are told that we are worth many sparrows. We look at the simple, quiet, faithful life of Mary, this little sparrow, this little insignificant girl in Israel, and we are reminded that God cares for every one of us. The angel says to every one of us, Thou hast found favor with God almost before we ask for it. Even if we don't deserve it, we have found favor with God, and God has called us to His truth, and we learn the lesson that we are worth many sparrows in God's sight, that we are in fact God's children. Mary returns to her house, not yet to Joseph's house. She has received a wonderful blessing, but her path through life has become much more difficult. An unwed mother, an adulteress, we will see tomorrow that serious problems await her when she returns from Elizabeth's house back to Nazareth to face her friends and family. But Mary said some extraordinary words, didn't she? When the angel came to her and presented her with this great opportunity that involves suffering and sacrifice, Mary said, Be it unto me according to thy word. We said at the beginning, the words of the rabbi, remember them? There are some who marry and live for the glory of God. Their children will be righteous. Their children will preserve Israel. Mary married and lived for the glory of God. One special child of hers was totally righteous. We go forward 30 some odd years, and we find him in a garden. We find him face to face with the greatest trial that a man could face, and we find him using the words that his mother used when the angel came. She had said, Be it unto me according to thy will, according to thy word. And her son, 33 years later, kneeled in a garden and said, Father, not my will, but thine be done. And Mary's son preserved Israel.

Transcript

Our second class takes us to Matthew, and I should say here, if it isn't already obvious, that we will be going back and forth from the Gospel of Luke to the Gospel of Matthew back again. We will be trying to follow a roughly chronological order as we go through the circumstances of the birth of Christ. Now, we confront here with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the same sort of problem we have in the Gospels throughout, but it's particularly noted in this story of the birth of Christ. Why are certain incidents given in Matthew, but not in Luke? Why are other incidents given in Luke, but not in Matthew? And why is it, if we want the full picture, we have to take the two and bring them together, one after the other, in different sections? Well, I think particularly with these early chapters of Matthew and Luke, the answer is obvious. Matthew is written from the viewpoint of Joseph, and Luke is written from the viewpoint of Mary. Now, many commentators have recognized this, and they've given various reasons for it. Some have suggested that, for example, Luke, not being an apostle who followed Jesus from the very beginning, had to pick up the threads of the story after the fact, and that many of the stories that he puts into his Gospel, he has taken directly from Mary, and so it becomes perfectly logical, if we follow that viewpoint, there's a possibility, that Luke has filled in empty spots in his story by talking with, interviewing Mary, the mother of Jesus, many years after his birth, and getting her viewpoint of what happened. Now, Matthew, of course, presents us, as I said, the viewpoint of Joseph. There's a reason for that, too. If you remember, there are two genealogies of Jesus. We're not going to look at those in detail. We would if we had more time, but we don't. The two genealogies follow the same pattern, if we can make the most likely guess as to whose genealogies they are. The genealogy of Matthew takes the line of Jesus, the legal line, that is, through Joseph, his adoptive father. It is also, if we notice in the first verses of Matthew, the royal line. It goes through David, of course, but then from David, it continues through the kings of Judah, and this was the line which finally comes to Joseph, who then, by a legal process of taking Jesus as his son and giving him a name, then passed along the inheritance that came through the royal line of David. And though it can't be proven, I don't think it's too far-fetched to suggest that if there had been a king in Israel at the time Jesus was born, that king might very well have been Joseph. And so, in a legal sense, Jesus then, by becoming the son of Joseph, partakes of this royal line. Now, this provides us the reason why Joseph is more important in the book of Matthew than he is in the book of Luke, because Matthew is the gospel that portrays Jesus as the king, and it establishes his lineage and his right to the throne through his foster father Joseph. Now, while we're on the subject, I could mention that the gospel of Luke then, portraying a different genealogy, brings us to, if I remember right, the man's name was Eli, or Heli, who in the genealogy, we're not going to look at it in detail, but in that genealogy in Luke, he appears to be the father of Joseph, but the commentators have suggested with various reasons that he was actually the father of Mary. Joseph then would be the son-in-law of Heli, and in fact then this line, which is absolutely different than the line in Matthew, becomes the line of descent leading through Mary to Jesus, and then becomes the natural descent of Jesus. An interesting contrast between the two is, and it also fits into this pattern that we're elaborating, Matthew's genealogy begins with Abraham. It demonstrates that Jesus, when he finally came and accepted his place in this genealogy, was the son of Abraham and the son of David. He was the fulfillment of the Messianic hope of Israel. He was the one born to be king of the Jews, and in fact over in Matthew chapter 2, when the wise men come, they are coming to see the child who was born king of the Jews. And this aspect of Christ, that he was the Jewish king, that he was the epitome of everything good about Israel, that he was the one who was born to sit upon the throne of David, it becomes one of the great themes that runs throughout the book of Matthew. Now when we come to the Gospel of Luke, we have a different picture, and the genealogy backs this up. The genealogy in Luke, first of all, instead of going forward from an earlier age down to the present time of Jesus, the genealogy in Luke goes backward, and you might have noted that and wondered why. I have one suggestion. The genealogy is going backward because it leads from Jesus all the way back to Adam. That's very important. The Gospel of Luke then presents Jesus not so much as a Jew, not so much as the king of Israel, those aspects are there, I recognize, but the emphasis in the Gospel of Luke is on Jesus as the son of man, Jesus who was born to redeem all men. And so interestingly enough, the genealogy in Luke comes into play not at the time of Jesus' birth in Luke chapter 1, but we have to go all the way over to Luke chapter 3 to get that genealogy. Again, I think there's a reason. That is, the genealogy fits into the pattern at the very time that Jesus was baptized, and in fact, I would suggest, provides a reason why Jesus was baptized, that he was a part of the condemned line that began with the earliest father of the human race, with Adam. And so he was, in fact, the last Adam, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, who would bring man back to the Garden of Eden, who would redeem man from the sin and disappointment and difficulty and despair that man had found as a result of that first sin in the Garden of Eden. And so we see also in the Gospel of Luke that Mary is then portrayed as the woman who was promised in Genesis 3, and again, we're carried right back to the time of Adam, Adam and Eve, the seed of the woman who would bruise and destroy the power of the serpent or the power of sin. And so we have a completely different aspect in Luke to the one we have in Matthew. Now, that wasn't so much on my subject as it was just a general introduction to the theme here. Now we're going to have to look at Matthew chapter 1, and to start out with, why don't we just read Matthew 1 verses 18 through 25? We're not going to wade through all those names in the genealogy. I think we've covered that sufficiently. Matthew 1 verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily or privately. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take into thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Now, all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. Now, we know from Luke chapter 1, as we were discussing yesterday, that Mary, after she conceived Jesus, went to the land of Judah, to a little village. We're not told what a village it was, but we're told in Luke chapter 1 and verse 56 that she spent three months there with Elizabeth and Zacharias, her husband, that she spent this period of time, no doubt, communing with Elizabeth, because Elizabeth was one who could understand, for Elizabeth herself was the subject of a miraculous conception, a conception in her old age of the one who would be the forerunner of the Messiah. There's an interesting point there that I should have mentioned yesterday, but I omitted. Actually, I forgot about. That is that as Mary approached Elizabeth, then within Elizabeth's womb, the child moved. This was, of course, called scripturally the quickening, and as I understand, it is something that does happen at the fifth or sixth month. In fact, it may have been a little overdue, and Elizabeth might have been concerned as to why the child in her womb, this child of promise, had not moved, had not been quickened as yet, had not had this spirit of life as they saw it that would cause it to appear to be alive and manifest that living presence in the mother's womb. Now, it's a very exceptional thing. I think it's absolutely unique in the pages of Scripture, and just a little point in passing, that John the Baptist was called from before his birth to be the one who would be the witness, the forerunner of the Messiah. And he is absolutely unique, I think, in the pages of Scripture, a being who began his life's work even before he was born, who testified to his mother in that special way, though he knew it not, of the coming of the Messiah. I think it's an extraordinary thought, and it gives us some idea, I think, of the uniqueness of John the Baptist and this tremendous commitment that God made on his behalf that he had one purpose in life, and that was to show forth as a forerunner the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist was an extraordinary man, and we can't spend any time really talking about him. We don't have the time this week, but there are amazing pictures of this man, this man who cared so deeply for the hope of Israel and who so thoroughly submerged his own will and his purpose that he might show forth Christ. And of course, it's an example to us that we might all, in our own individual ways, be forerunners, be those who have gone before and shown to others what Christ is, those who have brought Christ to dwell with others, those who have shown forth Christ in what they do and what they say. So we're told that Mary spent three months with Elizabeth and Zacharias. This would obviously mean that by the time she returned to Nazareth, probably not having told Joseph, certainly not having told Joseph anything of what had transpired with the angel, by the time she returned to Nazareth, first of all, the friends and the neighbors, maybe the relatives would have begun to wonder what had happened to this young woman who had just so recently been betrothed, and then all of a sudden she disappeared for three months. Maybe the family knew, and maybe they didn't say, we're only speculating here, but at least the villagers would wonder what had happened. Maybe Joseph himself wondered why was she gone so long, and then she returned. And if it wasn't immediately obvious, it would become obvious very rapidly that Mary was with child. We're told in Matthew 1 and 18 that she was found with child of the Holy Spirit, which indicates to me that she wasn't telling anyone what had happened. I think that's reasonable. I think that when she was faced with this great miracle, she must have wondered, who will I tell, and who will believe me? And finally, in her mind, she reasoned this out. She knew, of course, that Elizabeth and Zacharias understood because the angel had told her. But she must have reasoned in her mind that it would not be the prudent thing to go and tell everyone around her what had happened. In fact, she wouldn't be believed. And I would just suggest that this is what she must have thought, that if God has chosen me in this special way to be used as the mother of the Messiah, then God in His own good time will also reveal to others, and God will pave the way over the rough places and the difficulties and bring me at last into a safe situation. And probably she didn't know what it would be. I feel that she would have doubted very much whether or not Joseph would accept her. But she left it in God's hands. There was nothing she could do but go forward as God had told her and wait for God to reveal Himself, reveal His purpose, and act in such a way that the difficulties would be removed. And if the difficulties weren't removed, they would simply have to be accepted and taken in their place as a part of the sufferings that were necessary. I think Mary was fully prepared for this. So she comes back to Nazareth, and she is found with child then. Perhaps her family realizes the situation, and then of course Joseph comes to find out. Now, an interesting point in verse 18. She was found with child of the Holy Spirit. We have to recognize here that this is Matthew's account after the fact. What Matthew is saying is, we of course know this child was of the Holy Spirit. As we're reading this account, it's obvious, looking backward. But he is also saying that she was found with child and no one understood why. So from Joseph's viewpoint, from the viewpoint of the people in the village of Nazareth, here was a woman who had apparently violated her vow of purity to her husband, or her betrothed husband. She was found with child. So we come to Joseph, and as I said, we're looking at this particular incident through the eyes of Joseph. What would be done now with those vows of chastity, of pure love that was held up in store for the one person, the beloved, the bridegroom? What was to be done with this? What would Joseph do now? I think it's a good question. I think it's a question that relates to all of us in many circumstances of life, because Matthew specifically says in verse 19, Joseph was a just man, and that word means righteous. He says at the very beginning to set up the whole situation, Joseph wasn't an ordinary man, he was a righteous man. And the question then comes to all of us, and we see it reflected in the attitude and the actions of Joseph. What does a righteous man do when he's confronted with the sin of someone who is close to him? When in fact he realizes, and this was all the knowledge that Joseph had at the time, seeing it through his eyes, when in fact he realized that he was the one who was grievously sinned against, that he was the one who would become a laughing stock in Nazareth, that here was the man whose wife had turned away from him. What does a righteous man do in that case? What would we do? Does a righteous man rebuke? Does he punish? Does he go to the courts and the judges and say, This woman has offended against me greatly. She should be punished to the full extent of the law. This sort of thing cannot be tolerated in Israel. Sometimes God is testing our reactions. Are we too quick to pass judgment? Do we always know all the facts? Do we stand up for our rights as though we had any, or do we instead seek to cover the sins of others? Do any of us know this sort of man? I think we do. I think sometimes when I'm shaving in the morning, I see him in the mirror. The man who would say, Oh, I know God can forgive, but he didn't give us the prerogative. The man who might say, God can have mercy on that poor sinner, but that's certainly not for me to say that that sinner could be forgiven. Do we know such a man as that? Do we know such a man as that who might stand up in the Ecclesia and say, There is sin here. We must take these sinners and make public examples of them so that others will not be led astray. We must use the full extent of the law. Wise men once said that most men want justice for others and mercy for themselves. Are we that sort of men? Was Joseph? Joseph was a righteous man. What does righteous mean? Does it mean strong and decent and kind and merciful and considerate, or does it mean harsh and arrogant? What is righteous? Joseph was righteous. Joseph looked back at his ancestry. I can imagine this very easily. He looked back at the other men in his line, and we can look with him. There were men there who were righteous. There are, in fact, in this genealogy in Matthew, the names of four women, and each one of these women was extraordinary in one way or another. And these four women illustrate certain things that we've just been speaking of, of judgment and mercy, of understanding, of harshness. Let's look at them. Matthew 1 in verse 3, and Judah begat Phares and Zerah of Tamar. Now, we won't look up the incidents in Genesis chapter 38, but what happened there? Tamar had been the wife of one of Judah's sons, and then he died, the wife of a second son, and then he died. And finally, Tamar was left without seed, knowing that, according to the law, she was supposed to bring forth a son to perpetuate the name of the house of Judah. One day, Judah decided to turn aside and go in into a harlot. He had refused all along, if I'm backtracking here a little bit, that's the case, he had refused all along to take Tamar and give her to another son, or to make any provisions by which the line would be continued. And then, one day, he goes into a harlot, the incidents done and passed and forgotten. Months and months later, he finds that his daughter-in-law Tamar has lain with a man and has conceived seed, and it isn't, according to the law, or so he thinks. And Judah immediately says, let her be punished, let her be put to death, a very righteous man, a very righteous attitude, of course, no one knew about his sin. And then Tamar says, the man who owns these particular items is the one that I lay with. And Judah recognizes that it was himself, and he says, she is more righteous than I. Another incident we see mentioned in verse 6, David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah, that is Bathsheba. David was a righteous man, we know that. He was a man after God's own heart, and yet he didn't always behave in a righteous way. And this particular portion of the genealogy is a portion that reveals the shame and the sin of David. David took the wife of Uriah and committed adultery, and then it was forgotten about her. At least he tried to cover it up. Maybe his conscience bothered him, but he pushed it aside. And finally, some time later, the prophet Nathan came to David, and he says, I have a story to tell you. There was a man with one ewe lamb that he cherished greatly, and there was another man with many lambs, and he came and stole away the one lamb of that man, and he violated that man's interests and property. And David was righteous and vindictive, and he said, the man who has done that deserves to die. Was that righteous? It was the law. Was it righteous? And Nathan said, you are the man. And David recognized that he wasn't being righteous after all, but that he was being jealous and harsh and hard and vindictive. Now, there are two other women in the line of Matthew's genealogy. They're mentioned in verse 5. Salmon begat Boaz of Rahab. Rahab was a harlot. Rahab was a woman who didn't belong in the house of Israel. She was a great sinner, and yet despite that sin and despite that degraded condition in which she was found, she had faith. And Salmon, who no doubt came into the land with Joshua, took this woman who had the great faith, and yet the great sin and the great shadow that hung over her, he took this woman and he covered her sins, and he brought her into his house and married her. Was that righteous? We're just asking. And finally, the fourth one, Boaz begat Obed of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabitess. Ruth came back into the land of Israel with her mother-in -law, Naomi, and she was rejected by the nearest kinsman, probably because she was a Moabitess, probably because he felt she wasn't worthy of his inheritance to bear children through him, despite what the law said. This was a Moabitess, and she was not a Jewess, and she was to be shunned and put aside, never mind that she claimed to have faith in the God of Israel. And so Boaz, who was not even the nearest kinsman, stepped forward and took this woman under his care, married her, and begot a child through the royal line that continued the line of David going on to the Messiah. Who is righteous? What would Joseph do since he is called a righteous man? He has found his wife to be with child. He knows it isn't his child. What will he do now? Let's look at the law. Deuteronomy 22, verse 13, If any man take a wife and go in unto her and hate her and give occasions of speech against her and bring up an evil name upon her and say, I took this woman when I came to her, I found her not a maid. Skip to verse 21. Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die, because she hath wrought folly in Israel to play the whore in her father's house. So shalt thou put evil away from among you. Let her be stoned. Maybe this wasn't any longer carried out. Maybe the Roman law didn't permit it. But at the very least, what Joseph could have righteously asked for was that this woman who had so desecrated his name and his character should be cast out of Israel, should be given proverbially what we call the scarlet letter, and should be shunned from the company of all those who called upon the name of God. This woman was an adulteress. Why didn't Joseph do that? Well, I can imagine that he looked about because he was a righteous man, and he was a kind and a decent man, and he understood through his own weakness, no doubt, that anyone is capable of sin. And so he looked about, I would imagine, for other possibilities, and we read of them. Deuteronomy 22 and verse 25. But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her and lie with her, then the man only that lay with her shall die, but unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing. And perhaps he must have thought, just perhaps, this is what happened. And if it didn't, why not give the benefit of the doubt to Mary? Or even a third possibility, verses 28 and 29. If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found, then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife. Now, just possibly, perhaps Joseph thinks this child was conceived even before the betrothal. And if that's the case, then Joseph contrives in his mind how this difficulty may be gotten around, that he will give Mary a private bill of divorcement. He won't use the full power of the law to punish her, but he will forgive. And he will give her a private bill of divorcement so that she might go away quietly, which allows for two possibilities. If the father of the child is known, then she might go and marry that man. And if the child of the father is not known or not to be found, then at least she might go away in privacy to have this child and not be a public scandal and a rebuke. So we see what a righteous man has chosen. Now I'd like to leave Matthew for just a moment and go over to John chapter 8. I want to read a few verses, and then I'm going to put these two incidents together, Matthew 1 and John 8. John 8, beginning with verse 2, and I'm going to read through verse 11. I'll just read the whole incident so it'll be familiar in our minds. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them. And the scribes and the Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what do you say? This they said, tempting him that they might have occasion, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground, and they which heard it being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. Notice the parallel between John chapter 8 and Matthew chapter 1. Here is a woman obviously caught in the act of adultery. There is no defense, really and truly is there, no defense for that situation. In each case we have a man who is thoroughly in a position to know. Jesus certainly was by the great divine power that was given him. Joseph certainly was because he knew nothing of the miraculous conception, and he knew that he wasn't the father of the child. So Joseph was in a position that he could know for sure, at least with the knowledge that any man might have, that this woman was a sinner. What do we have in these two parallel accounts? We have a hasty condemnation on the part of some, I can imagine that very easily, Mary in this obvious state of pregnancy returning to the village and all the villagers tongues wagging back and forth and the gossip that went about. Obvious condemnation for this woman, but the man who was in a true position to know did not condemn. He said in effect, I am not without sin myself and I will try to find a way to forgive and to cover the sins of this woman. I would suggest to you that God acts in many ways, that God prepared his son for the purpose that he would fulfill in more ways than simply giving him a revelation of the truth. I would suggest that God prepared his son as he prepares all of us for his kingdom in such a way that the affairs of life, the daily circumstances that we run across and that we learn of might direct our minds toward true principles. So there are two ways in which God teaches. God gives us his law, but then in his providence he gives us the circumstances of life that we can take that law and apply it to those circumstances, that we can make decisions, that we can understand as events work out what God's purpose really is and that we come to know more and more of that purpose and that will. I believe that this is the very thing that was happening here, that as Jesus grew older he must have recognized, because you can't hide this sort of thing, that as Jesus grew older he recognized in his father Joseph as he thought then until God revealed himself as his true father, that Jesus saw in this man Joseph, who called himself his father, a righteous man, but a man of kindness and understanding, a man who had taken his mother in and Jesus must have wondered of the circumstances until finally he understood and he understood the great love that Joseph had for Mary that would permit him to do such a thing. And so I can also imagine that in this incident there were the enemies of Jesus who had contrived this very circumstance, or at least who were happy to find this circumstance happening of the woman taken in adultery that they could bring to Jesus and they could say, what should be done with this woman? Because they knew if Jesus abode by the letter of the law he would say, let her be stoned. And if he had said such a thing then their response might very well have been, what should be done with your mother? In fact, this comes out in John chapter 8 and verse 19, for they say unto him after this incident, where is thy father? It sounds as though they knew something about the unusual circumstances of Jesus' birth. And finally they say in verse 41 of the same chapter, we be not born of fornication, and if you put stress on the we I think you get the implication. They are looking at Jesus, a man who had been born in questionable circumstances, and they said, this man proclaims to be a teacher in Israel? This man proclaims himself righteous? We don't know who his father is. We were not born of fornication. Who does this man think he is? This was the trap that Jesus avoided because Jesus usurped the power of the law with the mercy that comes from God, which is all-powerful, which covers a multitude of sins, and Jesus gave us a principle by which we can live. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. And we look around us and we see no man without sin except Jesus. And he declines to cast that stone. And he says, go, your sins are forgiven. Thank God for such a man. Back to Matthew chapter 1, verse 20, while he thought on these things, wondering what he should do, Joseph received a vision and a dream. He is asked now to accept Jesus as his child and take him into his house. When that child is born, it will be the son of Joseph because he is told this is a special child. And just like Mary now, he is brought into the sanctity of this covenant to understand that he has been given a great privilege, an opportunity, but also a great responsibility, that he is the one who will be the father of the Son of God. And he accepts it. He accepts it willingly and takes her into his house. He willingly bears the shame and contempt of Nazareth. Because if we look at it from the outside and we look upon this incident, and it's been enacted, I'm sure, many times in varying ways in human life, in every place. We look at this incident as we imagine other people might have. And we conclude, looking at Joseph in these circumstances, well, there's a man who was very weak or he was else a fool. And that's what Joseph was asked to accept. Either the suggestion that he was a weak man who couldn't wait until his true marriage before consummating it, a man who brought shame upon himself and his wife, or else, even worse, he was such a fool that he was duped into raising the son of another man and he didn't even know any better. That's what Joseph lived with and he accepted it. And he couldn't even explain it because no one would believe him. And he lived with that sort of a circumstance, the scandal and the gossip of a small town. And if you've ever lived in a small town, you know that people never forget. Twenty and thirty and fifty years later, they remember what happened. Joseph is told in verse 21, And thou shalt call his name Jesus. This was the very thing I'm saying, that in doing this, Joseph accepted as a public proclamation that he was the father of this son, of this child. He accepts the position and interestingly enough points out another aspect and that is that Jesus would not be recognized as the Messiah from his very birth, but he would grow up as though he were an ordinary child and an ordinary man and his Messiahship would be hidden. I think that's very important in the development of God's purpose. Though Jesus was divinely conceived, though he was literally the Son of God, he grew up as a man like any other man and no observer knew any different and he became one of us in that sense. And his divine parentage then would be established by the works that he did and finally, as Paul says in Romans chapter 1, he would be confirmed to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. Not that he could call himself the Son of God who claimed this as a right because of his birth. He had to prove his right to be the Son of God by the life that he lived. And so now Mary must go quietly to the house of Joseph. There will be no happy wedding, no bridesmaids and feasts, no laughing children around the bride and the bridegroom. There will instead be a cloud of suspicion and they couldn't explain it away. Peter talks about this, 1 Peter chapter 2, he says in 1 Peter 2 and 20, For what glory is it if when ye be buffeted for your faults ye shall take it patiently? But if when ye do well and suffer for it ye take it patiently? This is acceptable unto God. Now what is he saying? He's talking about the very sort of circumstance of Joseph and Mary. Neither one had sinned in this instance and yet they were being punished by the thoughts and the accusations and the innuendos of their friends. They were forced to live under a cloud of suspicion and they were forced, they felt that they must take this cloud of suspicion and live under it in a peaceable and righteous way and never complain and never fight back and never argue and never explain but accept. And they were buffeted for their faults and Jesus as he grew up must have recognized this and he must have seen, as I said, God develops his Son in this way and he develops all of us in this way by the circumstances of life. Jesus must have seen in Joseph and Mary the careful, patient suffering, the grace under pressure that he later exemplified in his own life and brought out to perfection and thereby through Joseph and Mary and their circumstances God was preparing his Son to face the same thing, to face slander, to face punishment, to face persecution because of imagined sins that he didn't have and always to turn the other cheek. And so we read, for even hereunto were ye called because Christ has suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps and Jesus followed the steps of Joseph and Mary and we follow the steps of Jesus and that patient suffering and well-doing that Joseph and Mary were capable of doing under God's grace didn't end with them. It had its outcome in the cross when Jesus died, when Jesus who had no guile and no sin turned the other cheek and submitted himself to a cruel death upon the cross, following on in the same actions, in the same way of life that he learned from his father and his mother. I think it's a tremendous exhortation to fathers and mothers today that if we do the right things now, there might be some strange way years from now when that righteous action is reproduced in our children because children watch and children learn from what they see their parents do. And so we conclude with Joseph. Mary is rightfully prominent in God's plan, but we shouldn't obscure Joseph. Joseph was the one whom God chose to be the father of his son, not the biological father but the spiritual father, the one who was given the responsibility of instructing this and raising it up. As Jesus would be a little toddler in the home, he would look to this man, strong and kind and righteous, and he would call him father. And I think it's a remarkable thing. This is what a man should teach his family. He can do it with his works as well as his words, and he can raise up his children so that when they see him and they call him father, they are being prepared to accept their heavenly father. And they see in the character and the attitudes of their human father the reflection of the love and the mercy and the understanding and the power of God who is their heavenly father. It's a tremendous responsibility that fathers have to reflect God to their children. What do we know of Joseph? We know that Joseph wasn't wealthy. We know that he wasn't a great scholar. We know that he wasn't influential, but we know that he was righteous. We know that he did his part faithfully and without complaint. We know that when God called upon him, he was ready. There's a man like Joseph in every Ecclesia, or at least there should be. He's quiet and dependable and kind. He doesn't get any headlines. He's not called off to speaking engagements. He's not called to serve on committees and take a prominent place. He just does what he is called upon to do in the best way that he knows how. He sweeps the floors. He turns off the lights. He closes the doors when other people are gone, and he's always there. He does the little things, which, after all, aren't really so little after all, are they? Jesus says, of such as this is the kingdom of heaven. We look at Matthew chapter 1, verses 24 and 25. Then Joseph, being raised up from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not, until she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. And, of course, with these verses we're carried over into the third session, which will be tomorrow, the trip to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, the coming of the shepherds. Now, I'd like to close our session this morning with a brief prayer. Our Father in heaven, may we always be strengthened by the example of thy Son, by all the examples of the righteous men and women of Scripture, that we might consecrate our bodies and our minds and our spirits to thy service, that we might understand more of thee and thy purpose, that we might make your character our characters, that we might be more and more like thee as we see the reflection of thy glory in the face of thy Son. In his name we offer this prayer. Amen.

Transcript

Someone told me once that the only people in the Bible who put things around their necks hang themselves. So, I hope that isn't the case. Forget about the collar. I should confide something to you. This study arose out of the impending birth of my son, that is, our son, nine barbers. And I can have a very real feeling for this subject, and I can understand, I think, much more than I ever said before, how fathers and mothers would feel for their children. And I think that in the experiences of the last few months, because I'm a new father, I've come to see something more of the love that God has for us as His children. And I believe that when Jesus was born, it was as though the only Son of God was born. And yet, when Jesus was born, then at that time and ever since, because of that birth of Jesus, we have all become sons and daughters of God, that through the birth of Christ, as we understand it, we can experience something more of what it means to be a Son of God. That God is calling all of us, His children, when He calls Christ into being. Now, our subject, let me fix this once and for all, our subject this morning is the basic Christmas story. We find it in Luke chapter 2, verses 1 through 20. This is the story that we generally have in our minds when we come to the Christmas season. And for that little brief span of time, everybody's happy and joyful, and you're going to the department stores and wonderful music is playing, and everybody smiles to one another, and people exchange gifts with other people that they probably didn't even talk to for most of the year. This is the romantic Christmas story. The pretty manger scene, the little smiling baby laid away in the manger, the mother with a halo around her head, smiling away there at the side. The soft music, the Christmas trees, the eggnog, the sleigh rides in the snow. It's a beautiful thing, Christmas. This is what we usually think of when we think of the birth of Christ. I think we're making a serious mistake, because while we grow older, and our perceptions of the man Christ should deepen and broaden year by year and the understanding of his life and his teachings, that as we do this with the life of Christ and the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ and the mediation that Christ has for us in heaven, we continue to grow and increase our knowledge, but yet somehow I think for most of us, and it was true in my case, that the birth of Christ is somehow put to the side, and it becomes maybe because of the traditional Christmas story, it becomes a children's story, something that we never grow beyond, and so we become or we remain children always in understanding the birth of Christ, and we see it in the very simplest terms and perhaps miss some of the deep significant lessons that God would have us learn from that story of the birth of his only son. It probably would be appropriate here to mention just in passing, and I'm not going to put any great emphasis on it, but as probably many of us know, the traditional date for Christmas is certainly off by a few months. At the very least, we don't know for a fact that December 25th was the time when Christ was born. There's no biblical basis for that at all. And in fact, many of the traditional things that have come to center around the Christmas story have their origins in various pagan religions and fertility rites and that sort of thing. So while we may be getting into difficulty as we celebrate Christmas in the ordinary way, I would suggest the greatest difficulty is what I was just saying, that these ideas of Christmas, of the Christmas carols and we three kings of Orient and little town of Bethlehem, that if we get so caught up in this, the biggest danger might be that we're missing the real significance of the Bible story, and it becomes, as I said, something of a children's game, a time for toys and laughter instead of deep spiritual insights that should be found there. It really happened to a young woman, as we said, who was probably 14, 15 or 16. I think that Joseph was not much older because if we go by the ordinary circumstances of Jews in this time, then a young man would marry at the age of 18 or 19 or 20. And I think that there's nothing in the biblical account that indicates that Joseph was an older man. That's basically a Catholic idea which is formulated for the purpose of proving that the other children, the ones who are called the brothers of Jesus, were actually his foster brothers and cousins, the sons and then the daughters of Joseph by an earlier marriage. I think there is no proof in the Scriptures for this sort of an idea. And in fact, it's much more likely that Joseph also, as with Mary, was very young. So it really happened to a young man and a young woman, not much older than children themselves. And I think there's an important lesson there. There's a lesson that God is no respecter of persons and that God can choose the very young to fulfill his purpose and that we don't need to be aged people who spent 30 or 40 years in the truth before we're useful to God. That God can choose and use anyone He pleases, even the very young, even the very inexperienced, to fulfill His purpose if indeed God chooses to do so. And in fact, do we say then that God chooses us or do we choose God? I think both are true. And I think that young people can be encouraged to make a commitment to do great things for God, to put themselves in a position where through their faith and their trust in God, God can work in them to do wonderful things. And perhaps we discourage that by saying to young people, you sit quietly and listen for X number of years before you take part in the meeting or before you go out to preach the truth. Young people should be encouraged. Like Joseph and Mary, they're capable of great and wonderful things if God is with them and if they are with God. Joseph and Mary is one of the greatest love stories in the Bible. It's a love beginning in the freshness of youth and maturing through the years, a love that was centered upon the development of a special child, and there were other children too. A love that made sacrifices. A love that was giving instead of taking. A love that was centered upon the fulfillment of God's purpose. And the Scriptures say what God has joined together, no man can put asunder. And the Scriptures might just as well say, and they do in other words, that what God has joined together, not even death, can put asunder. Theirs was a love that didn't even end at the grave side, but it will continue into eternity for that very reason, because it was a love centered upon God's purpose. A love that looked outside of itself and did all things and felt all things to the glory of God. This was their love. Luke chapter 2 and verse 1. And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. The laws of the Gentiles here served a divine purpose, and in a strange and wonderful way even Caesar, who was the mighty ruler of the world, became a servant of God. We see that principle throughout the Old Testament, men like Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, who even though they didn't realize what they were doing, were at one time or another God's servants. And Caesar here is fulfilling the same purpose. The great Augustus with his mighty armies and his multitude of bureaucrats that spanned the empire was no more than the lowliest servant, and he didn't even know it, because God used him and his decrees for the forwarding of his eternal purpose. And we see here also that because of this decree, the mother of Jesus came to be in the right place at the right time. And we see Jesus then, even before he was born, being pushed one way and another at the whim of a Roman emperor. Jesus himself being subject to the powers that be, even before he was born. And yet the wonderful thing that comes out of that is that God's purpose was being fulfilled. That even though Jesus, unbeknownst to himself, was being carried from one place to another just because an emperor said so, yet God was overriding this, and that emperor was the servant of God for the fulfillment of God's purpose. And it's a theme that is played out time after time throughout the Bible. And it's a theme that is echoed again when we come to that time, 33 years later when Jesus was to die, and again another Roman emperor made another decree, and criminals were punished and those who were guilty of treason, for so they said Christ was, were executed. And Christ again became no more than just a piece of flesh, a piece of merchandise that was to be processed by the Roman Empire and in this case put to death. Jesus subject to the powers that be, and yet God's purpose, God's eternal purpose was being fulfilled in his death as it was in his life and in his birth, that all things work together for the glory of God. We are told in verse 2 that this taxing or enrollment or census was the first one made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. There was in fact, and we have to remember that Luke was a very careful and precise historian, there was in fact a second census which is referred to in Acts 5 and verse 37, a census that happened about 10 years later. And an interesting side-light is that for many years the critics of the Bible said that Luke had really fouled up his genealogy, his chronology that is, because he had placed the birth of Christ 10 or 15 years earlier, later than it should have been, and yet they just did not have the evidence of that earlier census. But later developments, later external sources, secular sources, have proved that Luke did indeed know exactly what he was talking about and he placed the first census and the second census in precisely the right places as it was proven out by secular history. And we read that all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city, and Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, into the city of David, which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. Now, it was probably not decreed exactly by the Roman authorities that every man should return to the place where he was born, but the Jewish mentality would be this, according to their law, a man would be restricted and confined, and his true place of residence would be where his family had grown up for his father and his father before him had been born. And this, of course, is based in the law of the inheritance. As we know, the 12 tribes coming into the promised land, each tribe received its allotted inheritance and it was divided and subdivided to the families and the individuals. So that when it came time for a census or a taxing, the Jews themselves would then say every man should be counted in this census in the place where his family originated. He should return, even though he was living in a completely different place, he should return to the place where his family had received their inheritance. And so Joseph returned to this place, being of the house and lineage of David, Bethlehem, of course, the city of David, the city of David's family, their inheritance in Judah. It's also been suggested that Mary really didn't need to return because this sort of a census would probably have only involved the male members of the society. But if that were the case even, then it's easy to imagine that Mary would avail herself of the opportunity to go back because she could hardly have been unaware of the prophecy that said that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. And so here became the opportunity or the pretense for Mary to do that very thing that she might have known already that she should do, and that was to go with Joseph, despite the hardship of the trip, to go with Joseph to the ancestral home and there to give birth to Jesus at the right place, at the right time, the providence of God working in conjunction with the powers that be for the fulfillment of God's purpose. And so they went. It was probably a three or four day journey. And we have to imagine this. There were no super highways and no fine air conditioned cars to drive you along from one motel to another or one restaurant to another. There was instead old beaten paths that wound through the wilderness. There were thieves and robbers on every side. There was fear of wild animals. And so they would travel in this way, and instead of a fine restaurant there would be a pack of food carried with them, dry and stale. Instead of a fine hotel to stay in with air conditioning and hot showers, there would be a little camp by the side of the road or maybe some distance removed from the road, perhaps in caves, so that they could build a campfire and they could scare away the wild animals or they could be protected from criminals, thieves that might attack them. This is the way they traveled. What did Joseph and Mary discuss in those evenings by the fire? They were cut off from the past by the hand of God. They had had a course set for their lives and God had intervened and said, no, don't go this way, go that. And they had gone. They were cut off from the past by the hand of God and they didn't know what the future held, but they went forward in faith. That could be us on that road. In fact, we're on a road and we don't know where that road ends and we don't know what twists and turns we're going to take along the way. But we're told in Scripture, commit your way into the Lord and put your trust in Him and He will bring to pass the fulfillment of His purpose. Trust in the Lord. Oh, it seems so easy, doesn't it? If we're well fed and we've got money in the bank and if we think we know where we're going next week or next year and we have our lives all laid out in front of us, then it's easy, isn't it, to trust in the Lord? But what happens when darkness comes or disease? What happens when we're paralyzed by fears in the night? When we're afraid of what the day will bring? When we're afraid for our jobs? When we're afraid for our families? Then is the time that we really have to remember, as Joseph and Mary did in their time of uncertainty, how essential it is that we trust in the Lord. Not just when the sun is shining, but when the clouds obscure its sight. And so they traveled a route that took them from Nazareth in the north, not directly through Samaria to the south on the way to Judah, but rather if you can envision a map, they traveled from Nazareth over to the Sea of Galilee area, then around to the east through a territory called Korea, then back across at Jericho up to Jerusalem and Bethlehem beyond. This was the normal way in which a Jew would travel from Galilee to Jerusalem, into Judah. And it's an interesting contrast that some 30 years later, the sun that Mary carried in her womb would make that same trip, and yet he would go directly through from Nazareth, from Galilee to Judea, and he would go directly through Samaria, and he would find there people of faith who had been shunned by the Jews for hundreds of years, and he would find them at the well, and he would give them the water of life, and he would not be afraid of the traditions that shunned those like the Samaritans who were unclean, but he would confront those traditions, and he would find people who loved God and who wanted to serve God. And so they traveled through Perea, and they would cross Jericho, and they would approach Jerusalem. And I'd like to look at a couple of verses here, and you might say this is very fanciful, but if you don't think this has any meaning, I would be perfectly happy to let you pass it over and dismiss it. To me, it is a beautiful picture. It is filling out the scriptural picture in a way I think that God allows us to do as we use a bit of, I hope, spiritual imagination to understand the Bible story. And the verses I want to look at are in Zechariah chapter 9. So as you turn that up, I'll describe what's happening. Zechariah chapter 9, verses 9 and 10. Now, we've taken the story, and we found Joseph and Mary coming down from the north to the south, approaching the city of Jerusalem, because if you understand the trip that would be made, they would have to go right by or right through Jerusalem on their way to Bethlehem, which was just a few miles to the south. And so we find them. They climb the mountains. They stand at the top, and you look down at the beautiful city of Jerusalem in golds and whites, and the temple is dazzling in its purity, an awesome, a majestic sight. It is the place which God has chosen to put His name out of all of the earth. And they approach this city. I think it's easy to imagine that they're approaching in the evening of the last day, only a few miles left to go, and they must hurry on. They would like to stop and look at the city, but Mary's tired. Perhaps she's beginning to feel the pangs of intending childbirth. And so they approach the city, and the city stands awesome and silent. And they come to the city, and no one notices, and they pass by under the very walls of the city. And the prophecy of Zechariah that we're looking at here provides an echo and a background for this scene. Zechariah 9 in verse 9, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy king cometh unto thee! And he was passing by in the womb of his mother. He is just in having salvation. He is lowly in riding upon an ass. And there was Mary, the child in her womb. The king was coming for the very first time to his city, and the city recognized it not. And with a brief glance Mary and Joseph passed on by, and the city was silent. They looked back. The city had not recognized its king, who was meek and lowly in riding upon an ass. And they passed over the hill, on to Bethlehem, and it was night. But one day, one day that king will come again to his city. One day he will, in the words of Zechariah, cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. And he shall seek peace unto the nations. And his dominion shall be from sea, even to sea, and from the river, even to the ends of the earth. One day that king will come again to his city. No longer will he be ignored. No longer will he be rejected. But he will be received as the king who will rule over the nations. And Jerusalem will open its arms and receive him who is the king of glory. And its doors will be thrown wide, and the king of glory will come into his city. And all men will rejoice, because God's dominion is established through his Son. It didn't happen that day, but it will. One day it will happen. Back to Luke chapter 2. Out of this apparent disarray and this disorder in the laws of Caesar and the laws of the Jews, out of this whole mix of various circumstances, yet the right people come to the right place at the right time. And God's Son is born in that very place which God had decreed 700 years before would be the site of his Son's birth. And so we read in Luke chapter 2, verse 6. And it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered, and she brought forth her Son. Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law, Paul says in Galatians 4 and 4. And he was born under the law so that by his life and his death he might redeem those who were under the curse of that law. And he might provide a way of escape. He was made as we are, a man subject to the curse of Adam, to vanity, to vexation, to sinful flesh and death. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn, and they were forced to go to the stable. We know the story. No human setting can improve upon the luster of this jewel that God provided for our salvation. If Jesus had been born in a palace, he would have been no more the Son of God than when he was born in a manger. And in fact, God is teaching us that he chooses the weak things and the foolish things to confound those who are strong and those who think they are so wise. Those who think, how could a king be born in a stable? And God says, my son and my king will be born there. And in fact, he will not be a great king, but he will be a fragile, crying baby. This is the way God works. When God's people cry for deliverance, he doesn't go and find the strongest and the wisest and the mightiest man to deliver them. When God's people cry and long for deliverance and salvation, God causes that a little baby that you could hold in your hands would be born. And from that inauspicious beginning, God would bring salvation to his people. There was no room for them in the inn, and Jesus throughout his life repeats this theme. Jesus says, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open unto me, I will come in and make my abode with him. But even before he was born, he was standing at the door and knocking, and he was turned aside, and he was sent into the stable. Do we have room for Jesus in our lives? Or when he comes and knocks, do we say, well, yes, you can come in, but the guest room is filled. And if you'd like to maybe go down the road to the motel, or if you'd like to use the garage, or if you'd like to stand aside and take your proper place, we'll find room for you. But it won't be the best of accommodations. Is this the way we approach Christ, or is this the way we receive Christ when he comes to us? All his life he was a stranger and a pilgrim. The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nets. But the Son of Man stands at the door and knocks. And even yet, even yet though he sits enthroned at the right hand of God, even yet he's looking for a place to dwell with each one of us, even yet he's an outcast and a stranger and a pilgrim who wants to find a home in the lives and the hearts and the minds of every one of us if we receive him, and if we don't shut him aside to a lesser place. And we read that at the same time, verse 8, There were in this country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. They were simple men. They were men who stayed outside, who worked hard for a living. They were quiet men. They sat together around the campfire, probably, and the sheep were scattered about. And sometimes there was a rustle or a noise, and they knew that perhaps a thief or maybe a wolf had entered into the flock, and then they arose with their crooks and their weapons, and they went forth and repelled the enemies, but then they would return again to the campfire as their fathers had done and their fathers before them, quiet, simple people, shepherds on the hills. And yet they were very special people. I think we could say that they were God's favorite people, because out of the ranks of men like those shepherds, he had chosen Abraham and Isaac. He had chosen Moses. His great king had once upon a time been a shepherd who sat on a hillside and sang hymns of praise, and the only audience he had were the sheep round about him. These were God's favorite people. In times past, God had spoken on the mountainsides and by the brooks and the streams, and he had talked to men like these shepherds. But now the light had gone down in Israel. The sun had vanished. Now God no longer spoke by open voice. And now, instead, there were mean-spirited men in long, flowing robes who strove quietly about a temple and argued about technicalities and called that religion. And they said that the men who sat on the hills were sinners because they didn't take their own particular interpretation of the law. But God was about to reverse that whole process, and God was again once more going to reveal Himself to these simple men of the hills, the shepherds. And we read that, verse 9, Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were so afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not. Now, let's think about these shepherds for a minute. And again, I'm going to take us to a passage in the Old Testament that you might not immediately think is relevant to this subject, but bear with me. Micah, chapter 4. Micah 4. Now, we're probably familiar with Micah, chapter 5, in verse 2, But thou, Bethlehem, though thou be little among the thousands of Israel, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel. An obvious fulfillment in the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. I want to back up a few verses. I want to get the theme that Micah is developing here, as he stands and looks forward 700 years into the future. Let's look at Micah 4 and verse 8. And thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come even the first dominion. Now, the tower of the flock in the Hebrews is an expression of a name, which is Migdal Eder, the tower of the flock. And this was, in fact, a place near Bethlehem where special shepherds would watch over special sheep. These were the sheep that were being kept in the very last days before they were to be transported up to Jerusalem to be offered as sacrifice. And so, at the tower of the flock, these shepherds would watch over these sheep and would wait for the time when they should take them up to the temple. This will come in to be very important in a minute or two. And thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come even the first dominion, the first dominion of God's kingdom, which means the first place where God chose to make His kingdom visible to men was on the hills of Bethlehem. And when He said through the angels, a child is born this day for you in the city of David, He was saying, this child is the beginning of My kingdom. And the very first place where this kingdom will be proclaimed will be on the hills of Bethlehem. Unto you will it come, O Migdal Eder, the tower of the flock. Unto you will it come, the first dominion of the kingdom. And these shepherds heard these wonderful words. The kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem. Now, why dost thou cry out aloud? Verse 9. Is there no king in thee? There was no king in Israel. Is thy counselor perished? There were no counselors worth the name. For pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail, and just a mile or two away across the hills, a woman was in travail with child. Be in pain and labor to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail. For now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field. We skip to verse 13. Arise and fresh, O daughter of Zion, for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass, and thou shalt beat and keep as many people. And I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth. The Lord of the whole earth was revealing himself through the birth of his special son, who would be the dominion of his kingdom. And we read in verse 2. Thou Bethlehem, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, who shall be ruler in Israel. When his goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting to this time, he was slain from the foundation of the world, this child yet unborn. Therefore will he give them up until the time she which travaileth hath brought forth. Verse 4 of chapter 5. And he shall stand and feed, which is a word that means to be a shepherd. He shall stand and be a shepherd in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. For now he shall be great unto the ends of the earth, and this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian will come into the land, this man who is being born in Bethlehem, this man who is the first dominion of God's kingdom. Now back again to Luke. Chapter 2, verse 10. And the angel said unto them, fear not. How many times it is that when an angel appears to a man or a woman, the first thing he says is fear not. And I think it's perfectly natural, because if an angel were to appear to us, the first thing we would do is tremble in fear. And yet do you realize that an angel will appear to each one of us? At some time probably when we least expect it, and we'll say the time has come, the time for the judgment. Will we fear? You can bet I will. And yet always when the angel appeared and the person feared, there was always that response, fear not. And it's repeated throughout the scripture. And Jesus picks it up himself and he says, fear not little flock, little flock of sheep, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. And it's a great source of comfort to me to know that even though I might fear, I can hope for. I can expect that word in return from the angel who says to me, do not be afraid. God desires to give you his kingdom. And if you just put yourself in the right place and if you trust in God, that kingdom will come for you. I'd like to look at the angel's proclamation here. Each word is so important. Fear not, he says, or they say. Fear not. So much of our lives is fearful, isn't it? Sometimes we're afraid to get out of bed in the morning. You don't know what's going to happen. And God says, fear not. Because if God be far as he can be against us and he who spared not his own son but delivered him up for our sakes, will he not richly give us all things? Why should we fear? Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings, good tidings being the gospel, the good news of salvation, good tidings which will bring to you a great joy and a rejoicing and a comfort and a peace and a happiness which shall be to all people. I'm coming to you, the shepherds, the angel says, but this is going to encompass all people and all men are going to partake of this same hope. For unto you is born this day, unto you, and this is what we've emphasized each day, that Jesus is born to us, that it is as though he is born anew in each of our lives and when we think about his birth we realize that God sent his son for each one of us as an individual. For unto you is born this day and there is an immediacy, there is a feeling of immediate necessity about this. He is born this day and it's very important. And it's another theme that's repeated throughout the Bible. Jesus was going about from one city to another and Zacchaeus was in a tree that he might see and Jesus said, Come down, Zacchaeus, for this day I will abide in your house. And Paul preaches to the Athenians and he says, God winked at your times of ignorance, but now he commands all men to repent. This day is the time. And there's something immediate about that, there's something that should sink into our hearts that if we don't do today what we should, tomorrow it may be too late, and if we don't reach out today to do God's will and bring his truth to others, tomorrow the darkness may come and no man can work. Unto you is born this day in the city of David, linking Jesus with David his ancestor, linking Jesus with the man who was the first great king from Judah and Jesus the last, the one who would reign upon the throne of his father David forever and ever. There is born to you a Savior, which is the meaning of the name Jesus, who is Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, and he is the Lord, he is the ruler of the universe. And this shall be a sign for you, you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angels a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men. And there's another passage here, let's just drop back for one second to the last part of the book of Job, Job chapter 38. I'm going to use this for a bookmark so I can flip back a little quicker. Job chapter 38 verses 6 and 7. God is speaking to Job, and he is telling Job of his awesome power, and he says, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Job 38 verse 4. If thou hast understanding, tell me these things. Who hath laid the measure thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Who laid the cornerstone of the universe when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? He's speaking of the creation when God by His decree from heaven, by His word sent forth and created the worlds, the universes and the earth, and caused light to come in vegetation and life. Where were you when I did these things? God said. And obviously Job must answer, I wasn't. And now again, at the beginning of a new creation, when God through His Son is establishing a new heavens and a new earth wherein will dwell righteousness, and it all begins with His Son, at the beginning of a new creation the morning stars sing together and the shepherds on the hills hear their song. And all the sons of God in the heavens, the angels that behold His presence, shout aloud for joy when the foundations of the earth are laid and the one who will be the cornerstone of God's temple is brought into being. And while we're in the Old Testament, there's one other passage. We think of Jesus, the little babe in the manger, and we look at Isaiah chapter 1. I find this beautifully expressive. Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 3, again one of those little cameos that seems to be calling to be lifted out of its context and put in another place to reflect a greater light upon this incident of the babe in the manger, Jesus born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 1 and 3, God is rebuking His people who are a disbelieving, a slothful, a selfish people, and He says, verse 3, The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. And picture this, in a little stable there in a manger lies the child who will be king, lies the child who will grow to be the ruler of the earth, the Lord of all things, the king of all creation. And outside is darkness, and Israel doth not know. And the people round about do not consider that their king is lying in their midst. And yet, is it fanciful? Is it just imaginary to suppose that even there the ox and the ass in the stable will look and wonder what is happening, and they will be quiet as they are in the presence of their owner and their master because He's the master of all things. And yet Israel, which should know, doth not consider. And the people sit in darkness while the great light is in their midst. Luke chapter 2, verse 15. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph in the bay, blind in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the sayings which were told them concerning the child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. Now remember what we said about Middal Edir in the tower of the flock. If these were in fact special shepherds, then the very next thing they might be doing would be going into the temple and making known in the very center of Jewish religious life what they had seen. And this might have been the very thing that then provoked those like Simeon and Anna to lift up their heads and know that their redemption was drawing nigh, for there had been born in the city of David a child who would be Savior. And then we read in verse 20 that the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God. So they went to one place to tell, and then we read that they returned, which would be possibly that they returned to their own homes. And as they went, they continued this story, and they became the first Christian missionaries, the first ones who declared the coming of Christ. Verse 19, and again we see Mary. Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Mary is almost a spectator and not a participant. She takes a detached view, which sees the single incidents around her as part of a great design of God, little threads being woven into the fabric of her life, some dark and some golden, and yet God knows the pattern. And she has the faith to recognize that as these things are being worked out, that she must ponder them, that she must meditate, that she will one day know and understand the perfection of God's purpose, and she will marvel at the handiwork of God. And we can do the same. And as we ponder our lives, sometimes the experiences are difficult and bitter, sometimes they're joyful, and yet altogether they're placed and put in their proper places by the great Master Weaver who is designing the fabric of our life that one day it will be a beautiful piece and it will reflect his glory and his work in our lives. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them. It was truly a miracle. It was one of the greatest of all miracles, the birth of the Son of God. And yet isn't every birth a miracle and a mystery? Isn't it like a replay of creation where again life comes into being and we rejoice at the power of God? Isn't every child a holy child because it receives life from a God who is holy above all things? Isn't every child a gift from God because God has given us all things? Because God is showing through continued life His continuing love and forgiveness and mercy upon us? Isn't every child a special child? Like Samuel or John the Baptist or even like Jesus? Because it comes from a God who cares for all His creation and that child is to be dedicated by righteous parents to the service of God even as Joseph and Mary dedicated their child? Like Joseph and Mary, many of us here have been entrusted with future kings and queens who will reign over the earth and who will apply to the nations the lessons that they've learned from their parents. May we be given the strength, the wisdom and the faith to teach them in the right way that they might truly grow up as Jesus did to be kings and rulers to reflect the glory of God. And in fact, aren't we all children of God? And we see in the birth of this Son, this special Son, our birth, and we are born again for we recognize that Christ is born in us and that we come to reflect the glory of Christ and that we manifest our sonship as He did by the love that we show for one another and by the service that we give unto God. This is the great lesson then of the nativity of the birth in Bethlehem that God so loved the world and He loved us that He gave His only Son that He sent Him into the world to live and to die for us and He expects us to love one another as that Son has loved us. This is what John speaks of when he says there has been given to us power that we might become the sons of God, that God whose Word was made flesh will be made flesh again in us if we take that Word and become sons and daughters of the living God. But after all, this sonship is not what we do, it's what we receive. And we go into the manger and we see the child and we recognize the great gift that has been given unto us. Sonship is not what we earn, it is what God has given to us out of His mercy. Behold the amazing gift of love the Father hath bestowed on us, the sinful sons of men to call us sons of God.

Transcript

The class was finished and a couple of folks asked questions that there was one thing I should have said because it led to a misunderstanding. That is, back over to Luke chapter 2, our class yesterday carried us through verse 38 and I purposely didn't have verse 39 read because I think there's a gap in time there. Now if you read Luke 2 and 38 you find that as this incident finished then we move into verse 39 and we're told when they had performed, that is Joseph and Mary had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth. Now that appears to be saying that immediately after they left the temple they went to Nazareth and I was stating in the class that I felt they had made their home in Bethlehem and they continued there for a period of time. Now this appears to be a contradiction, my way of reconciling that, and I'm not the only one, is that between verses 38 and 39 there is a large gap of time, maybe as much as three or four years. We have, if I could just give the framework, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem, Jesus is born, on the eighth day he's circumcised, on the fortieth day after his birth they go to the temple, which is just a short distance from Bethlehem, the sacrifices are offered and there we saw Simeon and Anna, and then my conjecture, my supposition is that they return to Bethlehem and they remain there for somewhere between a year and two years. We'll see the reason for this today because we're going to see the wise men coming from a great distance and finding Jesus as the child, he's called the little child, no longer the baby, and finding him in a house, no longer a manger or a stable, they come to Bethlehem and Herod inquires of them, when was the time you first saw the star? And they told him approximately two years. So there seems to be the picture here of the wise men coming much later than the shepherds did, perhaps as much as two years, or at least approaching that time, and they find Joseph, Mary and Jesus still in Bethlehem, which gives us the implication that after this long period of time, since Joseph and Mary were still there, they must have chosen to make their home in Bethlehem. There are several good reasons for this. One that we might mention would be perhaps their fear of the scandal and the gossip that would be their lot if they returned to Nazareth. So according to this sort of a timetable, the wise men come, they leave again and return to their own lands, and as a result of their coming, Herod's anger and hatred is aroused, and Joseph is warned in a dream to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt. And they go into Egypt, possibly when Jesus is somewhere between one and two years old, and they remain there. And again, this would be a conjecture. It's easy enough to imagine they remain there maybe even several years, we can't be sure. But then when they heard that Herod had died, they returned, and it was as though they were going into Judea. We're told this in the last part of Matthew 2. But Joseph received another dream that turned him aside to Nazareth. Now it would seem natural that they would be going back into Judea if that's where they'd been living already before they had gone into exile. So it looks as though all along Joseph had intended that they make their home in Bethlehem, but finally he was turned aside by the dream that came from God to go into Nazareth. Now that's the basic framework of what's happening. And then we finally find Jesus at the age of four or five or six possibly finally coming with his family to make his home in Nazareth, in Galilee. Now the only difficulty with that is if we read continuously Luke 2 verse 38 and then verse 39, it appears as though they leave the temple and go right back to, or right to Nazareth. I think then that there is a gap of time between verse 38 and verse 39 into which we fit all the stories that we're going to consider today, which is Matthew chapter 2. And I should mention that this is only one possibility. There are a couple of other possibilities for reconciling what looks to be a contradiction or a difficulty. But I think this is the one that makes the most sense and takes into account the most of the facts in the most reasonable way, and you can take it or leave it. Okay, put that aside. Now into Matthew chapter 2. I'm suggesting then that as much as two years has passed, or a year and a half, and then we are told that after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, then there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. How did the wise men learn of the birth of Christ? Again, several possibilities here, and we'll just mention them quickly. It's suggested that because Daniel was in Babylon and that he received a prophecy that spoke of the 70 weeks or the 70 periods of seven, and because that time period was about to run out or at least a few years from coming to a conclusion, it's suggested that some of the wise men, the magicians, more likely the scholars of all sorts of knowledge in a place like Babylon, would recognize, remember Daniel, the great man, the great ruler, would remember his prophecy and would realize then that a king was about to be born in some particular place and then God would intervene with the revelation to lead them there. Others suggest that the Persians were the ones because the Persians were very interested in numerology and astronomy and they would be particularly concerned with the stars of the heavens and special signs in the heavens. Now, I wouldn't say definitely that either of those possibilities is wrong, but I have what seems to me a more biblical possibility as to where the wise men came from, as to from where the wise men came. Okay, let's look at a couple of passages then. Psalm 72, these are really prophecies and they're going to develop this thought. Psalm 72, which as we recognize, I think, even before we turn to it, it's a prophecy of the kingdom, and that's obvious, of David's greater son who will rule over the earth and righteousness, but as our brother was suggesting in the last class, often prophecies have more than one fulfillment, the first fulfillment being an initial and partial fulfillment, which serves as sort of a guidepost leading us on to the greater fulfillment in the future. And I think the same thing, that sort of thing is happening here. Several verses in Psalm 72, verse 10, the kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring presence. The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Sheba and Seba were territories in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, peopled by Arab nations. Verse 11, yea, all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him. So we see we're going from the particular and the precise to the absolute. There were a few kings that brought gifts, then all kings would bring gifts, and this is sort of what I'm saying, a two-step fulfillment. And verse 15, speaking of the king who would reign, the Messiah, the son of David, he shall live and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba. Prayer shall be made for him continually, and daily shall he be praised. So again, we have Sheba mentioned as one of the Arab lands to the south of Israel, and gold is brought from Sheba to be given as a present to the Messiah. And the parallel there just seems so precise, even if it's a partial and imperfect fulfillment when Psalm 72 is considered as a whole. But still, the point is there that gold is brought from Sheba and is given to Christ, and Sheba being one of the Arab lands, we have a direct link then perhaps with Matthew chapter 2, just a suggestion. Now the other prophecy that gives the same picture is Isaiah 60. Remember that Simeon said, as we were looking at it yesterday, that this special child Jesus who was born would be among other things a light to lighten the Gentiles. Now Isaiah 60, which Simeon could have been thinking of among other passages, reads as follows, verse 1, Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people. But the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. It's a picture of Gentile peoples, and especially kings for that matter, coming to the rising of a bright light to be found in Israel. And if we have any doubt that this refers to the Messiah, all we have to do is go back to the real beginning of this prophecy. And remember the chapter division sometimes in Isaiah and other books don't mean that much. The real beginning of the prophecy is Isaiah 59 and verse 20, where we're told that the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob. And so when the Redeemer himself was born, as we have been studying the last couple of days, then a great light arises in Israel, and Gentile kings come to bring gifts and to worship this particular Redeemer, this special Redeemer. Now that doesn't tell us much all by itself, but in verse 6 we're told something of more detail about these kings who come. We're told in verse 6, the multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah. All they from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and incense. And again, we have a direct link with Matthew chapter 2 and the gold and the frankincense and the myrrh that were brought by the wise men. They bring, in the prophecy of Isaiah, they bring this from Midian, from Ephah, from Sheba. And in verse 7, the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebioth shall minister unto thee, and so forth. Now, as we said, here's possibly another prophecy that has two fulfillments, and the obvious one brings us into the kingdom age when all nations will be giving their glory and their presence and their gifts of service and sacrifice to God and to Christ, His representative at Jerusalem. But if there is an initial fulfillment, then these wise men are bringing their gifts of gold and incense and they're coming from Arab lands, Midian, Ephah, Sheba, Kedar, and Nebioth. I think that's an interesting point. I think it's something that might even be fulfilled in a strange way in the future when Christ does return, that the Arab peoples in the land have great wealth. And perhaps it isn't too far-fetched to imagine that at some point after Christ is returned and the kingdom is being established, that these Arab peoples, not in mass, but at least in part, will turn to Him and will give service to Him and will bring Him the gifts that they possess. And in fact, if we watch the signs of the times, we recognize that within the next few years, most of the wealth in the whole world is going to be concentrated in the Arabian nations, particularly Saudi Arabia. Great wealth that could be brought to Christ. Not necessarily that Christ needs the wealth, but as a symbol of devotion and recognition and service to the King who will be set up in Jerusalem. So you can perhaps put that on the back burner and consider that as a possibility in the future. Back to Matthew chapter 2. Now you'll notice, I suggested in both Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60, that these men were kings. And of course, it's a popular thing, as we know something more of the traditional Christmas story than most people, it's a popular thing to say that when we have this fine old Christmas carol that begins, we three kings of orient are, well, we recognize that we don't know for sure that there were three of them. We don't know for sure that they were kings, and we don't know if they came from the orient as such, the orient being even further to the east. Well, I'm suggesting that they could have been kings, but don't quote me on that as something dogmatic. But based on Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60, these indeed could have been kings who came from the Arabian nations. As to there being three of them, of course, that's only based on the idea that three gifts were given, and otherwise there's no basis in Scripture. And with that sort of thing, we can dismiss most of the Christian songwriters as being Bible students. They just don't quite get it all together. Okay, the wise men came. We know they traveled a great distance. We can suppose that they traveled in their journeys past cities and oases, that there were comfortable places that they could have stopped, but yet they were following a great light that led them on. In their determination, they brought to Jesus a gift that was greater even than gold. They brought him their obedience. And it's the greatest thing that we can bring to God, that we can bring to Christ as his representative. We can give wonderful gifts. We can give of our money. We can give of our energies and our efforts. And sometimes we're very proud of the fact and we become like people that Jesus spoke of in his parables, those whom he saw in the temple, who would cast in of their great abundance and would think they were doing wonderful things. But the greatest thing we can give to God is our obedience. And this is the gift, the true gift that the wise men brought. What did we learn from the wise men? We learned that they submerged their problems because they had a common goal. They may have even come from different places, and then as they began to follow this great light led on by the knowledge that at the end they would find the king, they were brought together. And perhaps they didn't even like one another. Perhaps they argued. Perhaps they had problems. But it is easy to imagine that their practicality would urge them to submerge their problems and their difficulties because they had a common goal and they traveled together and they were called wise men. And if we're wise, we realize that we're following a common goal, even though we might disagree about particulars, even though in this sort of an analogy, some of us might think we should climb right over the mountain and others think we should go around. But yet we're both going. We're all going to the same goal. We're seeking the kingdom and we must travel together, which is just another way I think of expressing what Paul said that we should be subject to one another, that we should love one another, that we should submerge these difficulties because we are all one body and we have one head and that head is Christ. What was the star? Again, I'm going to make a suggestion here which might be new and I'm not in doing this saying that other possibilities are far off the mark of you're free to keep the thoughts that you have perhaps developed already. I'm just offering another suggestion. What was the star? Some have suggested that the star was what's called a supernova, a great star explosion in the heavens and there are different possibilities suggested by astronomers who've looked into this thing as to how this might have happened. Others figure that the various planets that can be seen at particular times from the earth like Mercury and Venus got together in a sort of a special conjunction in the heavens that would be seen late in the evening or early in the morning and this was a sign that the astronomers were looking for. Others suggest something special like a comet or a meteor that they then saw in the heavens and they followed. I don't particularly like any of those suggestions. It's because I have what I think is a better one and you can follow my reasoning and if you think so, wonderful, tell me about it later. If you think I don't make any sense, keep it to yourself. What do we know about the star? We're told that the star was seen by the wise men that they could follow it to Judea. We're told that the star led them first to Jerusalem because that's where they found Herod. Now, we're told or at least we're not told that Herod saw the star. Apparently he was blind to it, whatever it was. So it might be reasonable to suppose that this was a star or a great light that could be seen by some and not seen by others and as I'm going through these points, I'll just mention here, maybe you'll see where I'm getting, but in Exodus, remember that the glory of God became a great light to the Jews and became great darkness to the Egyptians who pursued after them and in fact became a wall through which they could not pass as they were seeking to follow and attack the Jews who were fleeing from Egypt. Okay, enough of that. The star disappeared from the wise men's view after they reached Jerusalem. We see this in verse eight and verse nine and it reappeared suddenly because we read verse nine and lo which is behold the star which they saw in the east went before them. It's the idea that the star brought them as far as Jerusalem and they didn't quite know where to go from here and they were asking and then again as Herod had told them you must go to Bethlehem as they started toward Bethlehem, lo or behold the star appeared again and led them the rest of the journey till it came to the place where the young child was. What else do we know about the star? We know then as a sort of a conclusion that the star changed directions because unless they were coming from the direct north, we suppose in any of our possibilities they were coming from the east, let's figure out the directions, they were coming from the east, they came to Jerusalem following the star and then finally the star led them south a few miles to Bethlehem. So a very strange star isn't it that can change directions besides the fact that this star would lead them to a precise place. And if we can imagine here what was happening then it was almost like a procession. Here was the star leading them in a rather strange way apparently not too far away that they couldn't tell the exact direction that they should go, leading them and they followed behind in a procession and finally the star stopped over a certain place and they knew they had come to their destination. Now if we put all this together, what do we have? We have a remarkably similar picture to what happened to the Jews as they left Egypt. They followed a great light, the glory of God. The glory of God led them out of Egypt and they followed. Sometimes during the day the glory of God disappeared and became a pillar. At night it could be seen brightly, at least this is the one way of reading the narrative. Sometimes the great light, the glory of God's presence, the pillar of fire, sometimes it stopped and they knew that they must camp and wait for further direction. And finally when they got to the promised land it disappeared or more particularly it was taken, the glory of God was taken and made its presence in the tabernacle and later in the temple. So what we have here is the wise men following in a sort of procession, following a great light which was called a star and yet was it a star or was it in fact the glory of God leading the way to bring others to his son who was the true light of the world. I think that if we see this as a direct intervention from God and we don't bother in looking out into all the possibilities and science that have been suggested around us, then we may be coming closer to the truth of the matter. Verse 3, When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. For they had come into the city, now they were wondering where should they go? Where is he that is born king of the Jews? And so Herod hears and if you know something about the man Herod you know that when he hears and when he is upset, the whole city is upset too. And we know that because Herod was a man who if you ever crossed him, you might as well write your will. Herod put to death even one of his wives and even some of his children. He was in fact finally toward the end of his life a madman, consumed with the idea that others were plotting against him to take his throne. He was a very wise man, a very cunning man, but apparently his depravity, his eagerness for power, his ambition finally drove him right over the brink. And he becomes practically a caricature of the rulers of this world who are led astray by the pursuit of power and riches and can't see in their very midst that which is much greater than the world can offer. And when Herod had gathered together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written, and thou, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah, for out of these shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel. And of course that's a prophecy from Micah 5. We've mentioned it once before in one of our other classes. Herod had to turn to those who were the scholars in Israel to find out where the king was to be born. And yet when he heard of his birth, he determined at that point to kill him, to remove any opposition to his own rule, his own authority. Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem. The name Bethlehem means the house of bread. Out of the house of bread came Jesus who was the bread of life, who was in fact the bread that came down from heaven, the manna of God, such that if a man eat, he would never hunger again. And so Herod says in verse 8, speaking to the wise men, being very crafty and cunning, and that's just the way Herod could be. Herod says in verse 8, Go and search diligently for the young child, and when you have found him, bring me word again that I may come and worship him. And of course we know what he was plotting. He was plotting the death of the child to remove anything that opposed him. Go and search. And when you find him, come back and I will come and lay everything before him, he who will be the true king in Israel. What a lie it was. What a despicable lie. And yet there's a lesson there, I think, that if we take the attitude of Herod and if we say to others, you go and search and you find what's right and wrong and then you come back and tell me, rather than saying, if this is the truth or if this is the king, let us go and find it or him, then we can be guilty of the same lie. If we send others as our representatives on our behalf to find the truth for us, to live the truth, to preach the truth, and then we say, well, you come back later and get us, just like Herod said, we are deceiving God and we are deceiving ourselves. And we may not be those who literally would seek the death of Christ, but we are doing what Paul says in Hebrews 10 is, despite our scorn to the one who died for us and we are treading him underfoot and we're treating him as an open, shameful and contemptible thing, that he is not worth enough that we would go and find the place where he is and seek to obey him to the best of our ability. And so the wise men come, in verse 11, and they enter into the house. Remember we said this is now a house and not the stable, indicating that Joseph and Mary have apparently taken up residence here. They saw the young child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold and incense and myrrh. Gold is a symbol of tried faith. It's used by Peter in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 7. It is a comparison of the preciousness of faith which has been tried by fire. I think that's important. They came and they finally, when they arrived, offered the gift of a tried faith. You know, when we begin our journey in the truth, our probation and our sojourn through the world leading to the kingdom, we have a faith, no doubt, but it's a faith that hasn't been tried. But when we finally come to the end and find Jesus, if we can present to him the gift of a faith that has been tried in the fires of life, that has been purified in difficulties and persecutions and hard decisions, then in fact it will be a gift that is worth much. It will be a gift that has been tempered by obedience and by long, careful looking forward to the end. It will be a tried faith, which is, in the sight of God, even more precious than gold which perishes. They brought also frankincense, which is a symbol in scripture of the prayers of the saints, Psalm 141 and verse 2, Revelation 8 and verse 4. And finally they brought myrrh, which symbolizes self -sacrifice and was used in preparing bodies for burial and was in fact used in the burial of Christ. So they brought three gifts, one which symbolized kingship, the gold, the gold of the king, and the gold of a crown. One which symbolized Christ's role as a mediator between God and man, the frankincense, the prayers of the saints that arose to God as a sweet smelling savor. And they brought myrrh, the symbol of death, burial, self-sacrifice, speaking of the sacrificial role of Christ in giving his life for the sins of the world. And so the three gifts then speak of the three aspects of Christ's work on our behalf. And if we take them in the reverse order, we have first of all myrrh, his sacrifice. Secondly, Christ as a mediator through the frankincense that arises in prayer. And thirdly, Christ is the king who will come and reign. Likewise men, we follow the star. We travel a long road, but we keep our eye on that which is set before us. And God says in his holy word in the Old Testament that his word, his scriptures are a light unto our path, a lamp that leads us forward, that gives us light in a dark and perverse and crooked and cruel and evil world that leads us onward through the darkness toward the light of God's kingdom and God's glory. We follow a long road, and some of us fall asleep along the trail, but we know that when we come to the end we will find all of those who have accompanied us on the journey, along with the wise men who took one journey and found a babe in a manger, but perhaps we suspect then began a longer journey of service and devotion to God and will in fact at the end of that journey like us find not a baby in a house, not a baby held in his mother's arms, but will in fact find a king upon a throne. What happened to the gifts? I think it's a reasonable supposition that the gold itself, if it was worth much, if there was much of it as a matter of fact, would then be used providentially to sustain the family as they fled into Egypt, because here was Joseph already who perhaps left one job in one home, had gone into Bethlehem and the times were difficult and he wouldn't have much to take care of his family, and now again he's being asked to leave and go into Egypt. Well, there were large communities of Jews in Egypt and there the little family could be sheltered and protected, but here they were again going into another strange place and the gold then would be providentially provided to make that trip and to support them perhaps until Joseph could find work to take care of his family. What happened to the myrrh? Is it too far-fetched to suppose that Mary, with a sword piercing her own soul also and knowing that this child that was born to her would be a child destined to die and die in a special way? Is it too much to suppose that Mary, as she took the thoughts of God and kept them and pondered them, might also take the myrrh and keep it and wrap it up and cherish it and look forward to the time in sorrow and yet with joy that that myrrh would serve its purpose, that the gift of the kings who came from the east, which showed the kingship of Christ even at his birth, would then seal his perfect life as he was prepared for burial? I don't think it's too far-fetched. I think in fact that could have been what Mary did, waiting for the sacrifice of Christ. Now we move into the second section of Matthew 2, verse 13, and when they were departed, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt and be thou there until I bring thee word for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose he took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt and was there until the death of Herod that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. This portion of Matthew could be called the Egypt section. It is the anti-type of Old Testament history found in Genesis and Exodus. Our brother in our previous class was pointing out to us how God operated in Old Testament times and this becomes a pattern of what God does in the New Testament with his son. There was a plural son in Old Testament times who was called the firstborn and this was the nation of Israel. This nation of Israel then gives way to a certain extent in God's purpose and we come to the New Testament and we find that to a certain degree this Israel is rejected or at least set aside for the time being while God now begins to work with an individual son who is also called his firstborn son. So there is his firstborn in the plural national sense and the firstborn in the singular individual sense which is Christ and we find Christ undergoing the same sort of trials in his early life leading up to the time of his ministry and even his death and his resurrection. The same things that we see happening to Israel in the Old Testament. We see him going down into Egypt being delivered out of Egypt all for the preservation of his life. We see him thereafter as a matter of fact being baptized which was patterned by the nation of Israel being baptized in the Red Sea. After his baptism we see Jesus going into the wilderness where for 40 days he was tempted and was perfect and showed himself truly to be the firstborn of God in his perfect obedience. Which again was patterned by the 40 years trek of the Jews in the wilderness leading to the promised land. We have so many analogies like this developed in Christ and Christ of course is the true Israel, Israel meaning the prince with God. Christ is the one who truly deserves the right to be prince or king and to rule with God because of his perfect obedience. Christ becomes therefore the true Israel as he was in fact the true Judah, the one who Now we call this the Egypt section also because of Joseph. Like the first Joseph in Old Testament times, this Joseph dreamed dreams and God gave him special revelations and then he acted. Like the first Joseph, this Joseph led Israel and the person of Christ into Egypt that his life might be preserved and then saw that it was in fact preserved and finally Israel and the person of Christ, the hope of Israel returned out of Egypt back into the promised land. And so they fled into Egypt. We have to imagine this scene like we do the others. This little lonely family wondering where God is going to send them next and yet they obey because they are told. And Joseph takes this initiative and moves as God has told him not knowing where they will go, not knowing where they will finally wind up, but going forward in faith because God has said this must be done. And we think of the sort of trip it was and here they were already cut off from their family and now another step would be taken and who would know what would come of them. It's almost as though they're submerged and buried in Egypt until the time that God calls them back. Do we have that kind of faith? Do we have the kind of faith that would accept what God tells Joseph here? Be thou there in Egypt until I bring thee word, not saying oh wait six months or so but saying be there until and until is such a word we don't know the end of it. And this was Joseph and this was their situation. We I think have the same philosophy if we can truly say if the Lord will we will do this or that instead of trying to circumvent his purpose and step around it and go forward and do our own thing and say tomorrow I will go into the city and do this or that and buy and sell. But if we say with all that we do or if at least that thought is implicit that if the Lord will these things will happen and if we truly commit ourselves into his hands then I think our way through life will be led in a much better a much more faithful way than if we try to take our fate into our own hands. What about this prophecy verse 15 out of Egypt have I called my son. As we've been hearing this week Hosea is a very enigmatic prophecy and I think there as our brother has been developing in the book of Hosea. There is God's loving treatment of his nation Israel under the figures of an unfaithful wife being brought back to him or perhaps a wayward child as we read in Hosea 11 a child that was going astray until God takes that child and lifts it up and carries it in the right way and sustains it until it goes forward. And so this theme is the theme of God's continuing love for his nation and there is a second that works right in with it and that is Israel's continuing rejection of him and so we have God's love is shown through the many wonderful things that he did to the nation of Israel caring for them as a father does for a child and yet they rejected him and we carry this forward to the book of Matthew particularly the gospel of Matthew even more than the other gospels and we see in the gospel of Matthew two main themes we see God's love for his people and giving them a king and we see secondly a sort of the what's the musical word you have one sound and then the alternate sound the opposite this sort of a thing where there is first of all God's love and giving his people a king and secondly as a result of that there is the people's rejection of that king there is love shown by God to man and then there is man's rejection of God's love it's shown throughout the book of Matthew here was God sending his son to be king and bring peace and redeem Israel and here was Herod the the pseudo king of Israel rejecting this offer and right through Christ's life in his ministry the same thing is done and his parables reflect this of the son who comes from his father to the vineyard and the father says surely they will reverence my son and I will send him to them and yet they reject the son they reject God's offer of love this is indeed what is happening here and we're seeing the pattern of Christ's whole life and what happened at his birth that here was God's offer of love to the nation of Israel and it was rejected and this rejection is shown in Herod's brutal murder of the children of Bethlehem after Jesus had left we read of this in verse 16 then Herod when he saw that he was mocked of the wise man because they had turned aside and gone the other way without returning to tell him where the little child was when Herod saw that he was mocked he was exceeding wrath and sent forth and slew all the children of Bethlehem and in all the coast thereof from two years old and under according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise man there's our two -year period that we were talking about before then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet and Ramah was there a voice heard lamentation and weeping in great mourning Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not in this citation from Jeremiah chapter 31 verse 15 we have together life and death the life of Christ being preserved but at the same time the death of the other children to be found in Bethlehem the birth of God's only begotten son the death of other children the creation itself subject to vanity and here in fact is the reason why God sent his son into the world that all the world is subject to the hatred that was exemplified by Herod killing and being killed hating and being hated turning aside from God in every particular and this is why Israel needed God's son the picture is a broad one we won't bother especially with the analogy in Jeremiah which speaks of Israel itself as being the children of Rachel first carried into the land of captivity then brought again you'll find it in Jeremiah 31 verses 10 and 15 and 16 and 17 that is the basis the foundation of this prophecy but what we see here is a sort to me a sort of broad overview of what human history has been that there have been deaths in the midst of life that even as God works his purpose there are so many who turn aside there are so many who perish without hope and there have been many Rachel's throughout the history of this world this earth and mankind many Rachel's who have wept for their children that died who have wept for their husbands who have wept for their fathers because Israel rejected their God because mankind rejected the offer of hope and love and truth and this is in fact what we see the human condition around us and so we read in verse 19 when Herod was dead behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt saying arise and take the young child and his mother and go into the land of Israel for they are dead which sought the young child's life and he arose and took the young child and his mother and came into the land of Israel but when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod he was afraid to go thither notwithstanding being warned of God in a dream he turned aside into the parts of Galilee and now as I suggested at the beginning this is where to fit together the two parallel gospels this is where we put Luke 2 in verse 39 they now come into Galilee into the city of Nazareth and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the he shall be called a Nazarene why was it that Joseph intended that he felt that Bethlehem near Jerusalem would be the right place probably because it was the city of David and here was David's greater son probably because it was the proper home for the son of the highest in that it had the greatest rabbis just a few miles away in Jerusalem there was the temple in the center of God's worship there would be the best schools here would be the best opportunities and the best training for God's son at least Joseph thought so and yet he was wrong God sent his son into Nazareth into a little secluded backwater of Israel it was as though in the minds of the ordinary Jews to live in Jerusalem or in Judea was to be in the holy place this was the place where God had chosen everyone who was anybody wanted to be in Jerusalem but God took his son and said that's not the place for you go into Nazareth go into Galilee and there they went back into the area which was called the court of the Gentiles which was almost separated altogether at least in the minds of the devout from the worship of the God of Israel it was a place where there were as many Gentiles as there were Jews it was a place which was dirty and despicable in the minds of the true enlightened Jewish people who worshiped at the temple and it was in fact a life which would lead Joseph and Mary back to scandal and gossip back to neighbors who would look as Mary passed in the street and would whisper to one another and say you remember Mary she was the one who left and came back she was pregnant and in fact this no doubt gives rise to some of the things that were said of Jesus later say we not that thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil we be not born of fornication as you were and God took Joseph and Mary and Jesus as he grew up and put them into this very situation that Jesus might grow up and experience this sort of rejection this sort of hateful attitudes to be found in other people that he might learn perhaps to comfort those who have experienced the same difficulties those who have sinned and so it was better to grow up in lowly despised Nazareth to be the son of a poor carpenter to have a shadow of doubt hanging over Christ's life in his existence it was better to do that than to be a king or the of a king sitting in a palace and waiting for his turn to reign because thereby God was preparing his son through suffering that he might bring salvation to himself and salvation to others and we see in the life of Christ the scenes that came out of this childhood a poor childhood we see Christ talking of the grinding and the baking of the mother mending the garments which would only be done I suppose by the poor or the middle class family certainly not by the rich of perhaps Jesus speaking of the woman searching for one lost coin and how many of us search diligently for a lost coin unless we desperately need that coin and what it can buy and maybe again when Jesus speaks of the poor widow going to the judge we have just a little insight into his later life as it developed and Joseph died and Jesus was left as a child or a young man growing up observing his mother struggling against difficulties pleading with a judge to take her cause because she had a large family to raise and there was no one to help this is the way God prepared his son and why should we expect that he would prepare us for his kingdom in any different way why should we expect that our way through life is smooth and all shade and no sun beating down upon us and no difficulties and no opposition why should we expect that God would treat us better than his son and in fact if we put it the other way around this was indeed the best way to treat his son and God loves us so much that in our difficulties and trials of life he's treating us the same way because this is the way we are prepared for his kingdom and so we see in Jesus that no man need ever be ashamed of where he came from how he makes the living as long as it's honest no man need ever be ashamed of what accent he speaks with because the Galilean spoke with a special accent no man need ever be ashamed of what he wears or where he lives nor should any man ever glory in those things because they are all secondary to the purpose of God and we read as a conclusion what was said in Jeremiah chapter 9 speaking of this very sort of situation Jeremiah 9 verse 23 thus saith the Lord let not the wise man glory in his wisdom neither let the mighty man glory in his might let not the rich man glory in his riches but let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness judgment and righteousness in the earth for in these things I delight saith the Lord