“Out of Egypt have I called my son”

Transcript

So, as you know, we're going to be looking at the flight into Egypt, an event in Jesus' early life, which, you know, we're not told in Scripture what happened during this time, but it was an important part of the story of Jesus, of the life of Jesus, and we'll

take a look at a couple of these things. So what I'd like to do first before actually getting into the story, into the actual events, is just kind of set the stage a little bit for the world that Jesus was born into, you know, very quickly, and, you know, what the status of the Jews were during this time. We obviously know that Jews lived in Judea and in Israel, and it was a very volatile They were always fighting the Romans and the Greeks. They were very jealous about their autonomy when it came to religion and to cultural things, so we've talked about that before, but as we know, these are some of the things that we know. Babylon, captivity, Jews were moved to other places and countries outside of Israel, particularly into Babylon, obviously, the Mesopotamian area, but

they were scattered everywhere, and we're going to find out that they were forced to move to other places, but in other cases they went voluntarily, just like people, you know, migrate throughout the world today, looking for prosperity, looking for a better life for them and their children, so on and so forth. So one of the big dangers, I guess, and one of the big issues that the Jews had to deal with was the Hellenization of the ancient world. In other words, the spread of Greek culture, thought, and religion throughout the known world at that time. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, he, you know, conquered land up into Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, you know, he was just an incredible general and conqueror, and as he moved his armies to the east, he set up cities, named, of course, after himself, Alexandria, and so we'll look at that and how that played a part, and kind of what, you know, particularly in Egypt, because there was a very large city called Alexandria in Egypt, it was actually one of the first cities that Alexander founded, and in actuality he was buried in Alexandria as well, we just don't know where his tomb is, and, you know, a lot of people, archaeologists, have been searching for years and years for the tomb, the great tomb of Alexander the Great, and we know it was around because other great men went and saw it. There's a famous story about Julius Caesar going to the tomb of Alexander the Great and kind of having, you know, breaking down and crying because, you know, he hadn't done anything as great as Alexander the Great and he was the same age as him, so just interesting stuff like that. Alright, Antiochus Epiphanes, he was one of the leaders of the Seleucids up in the Syria area, and he was just a bad guy when it came to the Jews. He forced the Jews to accept Greek culture, he stopped temple sacrifices, he tried to stop circumcision, among other things. He actually invaded Judea and conquered Jerusalem. He went in, he broke down the walls, I think he took like 30 or 35,000 captives out of Jerusalem at that time, so he was a really tough guy. He hated the Jews because they were always pushing back on him, wouldn't pay the taxes, wouldn't submit to the Hellenization of Israel. So yeah, and this is actually where the revolt of the Maccabees come out, we're not going to talk about that, but the revolt of the Maccabees, a group, a very powerful family, the Maccabees fought against the Greeks and they got their independence for a short period of time until the Romans showed up. But there's always going to be a deep divide between the Greek Jews and the traditional Jews, the Greek Jews who have said, hey, let's take on some of the cultural aspects of Greeks, let's start thinking differently about things. Are these traditions really important in the modern world? And they tried to kind of integrate themselves into Greek society. The traditional Jews, on the other hand, particularly those that still lived in Israel in and around Jerusalem, they wanted nothing to do with it at all. They said, no, these are coming in here, they're trying to take away our religious traditions and our cultural traditions as well. And so this is where we kind of get the Pharisees are coming into play, because they were a very strict sect who really observed the law as we know. And this was a direct counter to the Greek influence that the Hellenize Jews were bringing into Jewish society at that time. They did not, for the most part, associate with the Gentiles. So they had their own areas, if they would go to different types of cities, they always had their own areas that they kind of stayed together. And that's really true in certain cities today. There's certain sections of cities that certain groups of people stay together. At the end of the day, people like to be around people that they feel comfortable with. You can see that in schools, you go into the cafeteria, you have certain groups of people eating together, and that's what they do, because they're friends and they feel comfortable, share a lot of the same things. And that's the same way with the Jews in any other ethnic group. People find places where they feel comfortable around people that they know, around people that act and look and speak like them. And this, of course, was the case with the ancient Jews. Yeah, so the other thing too was this idea of martyrdom in Jewish thought. Anytime the Jews would get violent, it was always about their autonomy. And this idea of dying for the cause of the Jewish people was something that was ingrained in a certain percentage of Jews that were living there. They would fight to the death against the influence of the Greeks and then, of course, the Romans. And we're going to see this play out, obviously, with the fall of Jerusalem. This hatred is just going to grow and grow against the Romans. Many Jews, as we talked about, are going to leave Israel for better prospects and they're going to take their beliefs with them. They're going to take their culture with them. They don't just throw it to the side and say, all right, I'm going to be a new person. I guess some people do that when they move. If it's going to be one of these deals where I'm going to the United States and I'm going to forget about my past and stuff like that, that of course happens. But the majority of people that move to a different country keep their cultural, ethnic, and religious beliefs. That doesn't mean they don't change over time, but they usually bring all of those things with them. And I'll give you an example. The Irish in and around Boston, right? They came and they brought their traditions with them, their religious beliefs, Catholicism, cultural beliefs, that type of thing. So major cities where they were in, Antioch had a major Jewish population, which is interesting because that's going to be one of the first cities that is going to, you know, where believers of Jesus are going to be called Christians. So there's going to be a sizable community of early Christians living in Antioch as well. And that's no accident. It shouldn't be a surprise to us. Alexandria, as we're going to get into a little bit, had a major Jewish population as well as other places in Egypt. Egypt is going to be home to tens, hundreds of thousands of Jews. So just keep that in mind as well. And this is going to be the time when the Septuagint is going to be translated from Hebrew into Greek. And that was done in Alexandria. Why was it done in Alexandria? Well, major Jewish population in Alexandria and Ptolemy, who was the king at that time, Ptolemy 11 or something like that, I can't remember. He was a real lover of information, a lover of knowledge in books. And that was really the reason why the Septuagint was written was for the king, Ptolemy, so he could have a copy of the holy books of the Jews. And so it was translated into Greek from Hebrew. And that's one of the reasons why we have the Old Testament. The Old Testament in its complete form thanks to the Septuagint. All right, so there is going to be, there's a scattering, a diaspora, the scattering of the Jews, the dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, both forced and voluntary, as we said. They were always in a state of conflict a lot of times, a state of being. They were Jews. It was the Jews against really the Gentiles. And that kind of plays out quite a bit, obviously, in scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. They are always being warned about integrating with other people, taking on their belief systems, particularly religious belief systems. And so religious Jews and observant Jews are going to keep this in mind. That doesn't mean that there were other Jews that were completely integrated into whatever society they moved to. There were, just like today. You have super liberal Jews, you have conservative Jews, and then you have Orthodox Jews who dress in a very distinct way depending on what sect of Orthodox Judaism they are from. And they stick out. People, like when we go to a meeting on Sunday, we see some of them walking, and they stick out. They have a particular, they dress obviously the same. Long beards, I can't forget, I can't remember what the curls, the little kids have the curls on the sides. So they still had connections to Jerusalem. A lot of them went up to Jerusalem for Passover and other holy days as the law instructed them. From Psalm 137, which is a psalm of sadness and of despair when the children of Israel were taken to Babylon, if I forget the old Jerusalem, and that was really the mindset of a lot of the Jews that lived in other places, they went to Jerusalem. And it is during this time where hundreds of thousands of Jews would come together in Jerusalem for the Passover. And Jesus is going to be, as we know, he's going to be in the mix of all of that. So the Jews, there were enough Jews living in the Roman Empire where they became important. You couldn't just say, who cares about the Jews? Well, they had to care about the Jews because they were important both politically and economically. They were making money for the Romans. They were good at business. So 10% to 15% of the Roman population were Jews. That's really interesting to me. So it's a pretty good political power base where you can kind of throw your weight around a little bit. And we know from history and from scripture, the Jewish nobility or the Jewish elite, the rich, had no problem playing political games with the Romans. In fact, Herod's family was very close friends with the emperor's family, Augustus's family. I think they grew up in the same house. So there was a closeness, particularly with the elites, with the Roman leaders. And they made deals with each other, that type of thing. The poorer Jews, they weren't part of that at all. And they saw a lot of this corruption and a lot of the different conspiracies and so on with the Romans, the elites working with the Romans to suppress the people, to suppress temple worship, that type of thing. We got a little taste of it when we looked at the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate working together to kill Jesus, to crucify Jesus. The synagogues are going to become the center of worship. We've talked about this in the past. Diaspora Jews were always in a state of tension between separation from the Roman Greek world and fitting in. I think we struggle with that as well as a community. How do we keep our separation from the world and

then also be in the world? We all have jobs. We all go to school. We interact with people in the world all the time. What does that look like? I think it's different for everybody, but there should be a difference between us. Just like there was a difference between the Jews and the Gentiles, there should be a difference between us and the world. And I'm sure that there were a lot of Jews during that time, brothers and sisters, that completely forgot about their ways, completely forgot about their history, their culture, their religion, and they completely embraced the Roman way of life. That's well. But in these communities that were outside of Judea, the synagogues became the center of Jewish thought, of culture, that type of thing. And we know, of course, that Paul and the Acts of the Apostles are going to use the synagogues as a center of preaching the gospel. So I think that's always pretty cool to me. God using really bad events, the diaspora, his people being scattered to different nations, being oppressed, but he's going to use that diaspora to his benefit to ultimately bring the gospel message not only to Israel, but to the world, to all nations. Here's a map of what Israel and Judea looked like during the time of Jesus' birth. You can see up in the north, Phoenicia is still around, Syria is still up there, Damascus is still around. Up in the north as well, you have the Galilee. This is where Jesus is going to spend most of his time. He's going to grow up in Galilee. Caesarea Philippi is up there. And then down in the south, you have Jerusalem and Judea and Idomia, which is Edom. And that's actually where Herod the Great is going to come from. He was an Edomite. He was a half Edomite, I guess. And a lot of the Edomites are going to convert to Judaism. And there is going to be a combination of Edomites and Jews in this area. The purebred Jews hated Herod because he was half Edomite. And so there was some tension there as well. But this is the place where Jesus grew up. He lived, right? And so one thing that's interesting to me as well, brothers and sisters, is down south you see Judea and Jerusalem and Bethlehem, all of these cities, Hebron. But in order to get up to the Galilee, you have to go through some area, which is interesting. And you have a couple roads there that go through. The great trunk road, which we're going to look at, and the coastal road. And these roads were very busy. They were the super highways of their day. And so these roads are going to play an important part in the flight of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus into Egypt to escape Herod. These roads went right down into Egypt. And so you have a relatively small area being controlled by different types of people. And this is where you had a lot of the friction going on between the Roman governors and the inhabitants of Jerusalem particularly. And Herod is going to play the political game for as long as he was alive, what, 40, 41 years, that type of thing. So he reigned a very, very long time. OK. So Gentile converts are also going to increase, which is interesting. There's going to be Gentiles who are going to convert to Judaism. And they were called God-fearers, people that were interested in Judaism. But as we know, they had a reservation, particularly the men, around circumcision, number one. And then number two, the dietary restrictions as well. The Romans liked to eat a lot of different unclean things, primarily pork. They loved the pork. And we know up in the north, when Jesus cast the devils into the herd of swine, you know, those Jews that herd of swine wasn't for Jews. It was for the Gentiles that were living up in this area. So here's a couple of quotes I like. God sent Israel into exile among nations only for the purpose of acquiring converts. OK. That is from Rabbi Eliezer from the third century. All the time they, the Jews, were attracting to their worship a great number of Greeks, making them virtually members of their community. So again, that's interesting. You had Greek converts becoming worshipers of the one true God. And so already we're seeing kind of the

groundwork being laid for the expansion of God's salvation, not only to his people Israel, but to the world. That picture right there on the right is a picture of Caesarea, which was where the Romans hung out, was on the water, very nice. It was a much better climate than in Jerusalem. And it was much more civilized than Jerusalem as well, from a Roman point of view. You know, no Roman wanted to spend a lot of time in Jerusalem. They're like, see you later, guys. I'm going to leave your wacky religion to you. And, you know, like Pontius Pilate, this is where he lived in Caesarea. All right. Very quickly, here is a map. Let's see what we got for time. OK. Never enough time. Here is a map in

French, right? I know you guys are French speakers. That's why I have it here. You can see where synagogues are located, ancient synagogues throughout the Roman world. All right. And then down at the bottom, look at all those synagogues that were found in Egypt at that time. Look at all of them. And so that should tell us something about the importance of Egypt in this story, obviously, but also about the Jewish communities that were still in Egypt. There were a lot of Jewish communities that were in Egypt, and we'll do a deeper dive on those. And so we're starting to see maybe God's wisdom in doing this, right? He specifically picked Egypt, obviously, to fulfill a prophecy, but also, you know, it made sense from a natural point of view. You're not going to go to a place that doesn't have any of your people, you know? You've got a little child here. You're going to make this long journey. You're not going to go where, you know, you don't know anybody or there's no community of your people. And so that's why I think they went down into Egypt. All right. Let's get into the actual story with that background information. Before we do, questions, comments, concerns, outrages. All right.

So this account is taken from Matthew, the first chapter. Luke also has this account, but Matthew is the only gospel that has this information and this depth, okay? So the first thing I want to point out when we're talking about Joseph is scripture describes him as a certain type of man, and we're looking at the 19th verse of the first chapter of Matthew. Well, verse 18, now the birth of Jesus was on this wise when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, so they were going to be married. Before they came together, she was found with child by the Holy Spirit. That's, you know, that's a major problem, I think, in a relationship, right? Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, okay? So that's how scripture describes Joseph. He was a just man. He was a caring individual. He's a loving individual. You know, he was quietly going to end the relationship. He wasn't going to make a spectacle of it because quite frankly, Mary could have been stoned. Mary could have been stoned for adultery, but, you know, obviously he had love and care for Mary and didn't want that for her, but, you know, he's definitely struggling with this,

and we know this because in verse 20 it says, but while he thought on these things, you know, I think we've all had times in our lives where you kind of get a big problem or a big situation, and we spend a lot of time thinking about it, a lot of time. It's, you know, it's something that you're almost obsessed with it. How am I going to figure this situation out? How am I going to get out of this situation? How did I get into this situation? And I think Joseph really was, you know, he's confused. He didn't, you know, he had a path that he was following and all of a sudden that all his plans are just blown up. So tradition, you know, has him as being older, we're not told his age, but he was given a great responsibility by God to care for his son, to care for Jesus, and to care for Mary, and he wasn't, he was selected because of that. He was selected because he was a just man and he was a good man for the job. And, you know, he was, his life was pretty, you know, pretty easy and smooth, I would imagine. He was going to, he was going to have a new wife. You know, he was looking forward to the future, and then all of a sudden, boom, everything changes. But, you know, God knew this. He knew that he was struggling with it. And he says to him, 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. How many times in scripture, and I think this would be a great kind of mini lesson for us, how many times in scripture has God through his angels said, fear not? Right, and I think it's number one, it's that the fact that people all of a sudden an angel appears out of thin air, it's going to freak people out. Okay, it'll freak everybody out of that. If we actually see an angel appear out of thin air, okay, we'd be fearful. But also, Joseph was fearful of the situation that he was in. He didn't know what to do. And so God, in his love, gives him direction. And God gives us direction as well. Not through dreams, per se, as Joseph, but, you know, he's given us his word. He's given us his scripture. And we can be guided by that. And we can help each other. We can say to each other, fear not. We can give advice, we can give strength. We can be like this angel that came to strengthen Joseph. He needed strength. You know, everything that he was thinking of was, you know, was fearful. He was upset. He didn't know what to do. You know, so, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, the angel says. Mary was, you know, completely innocent of any sexual immorality. She had, you know, just like Joseph had listened to the angel, Mary had listened to the angel. She had given her consent to God, just as Joseph gave his consent as well to God. And they had this big, you know, I don't want to call it an adventure, but, you know, the things that are going to happen very rapidly in their life is going to completely be changed. So we know, you know, as they get into us, we all know the story, Jesus is going to be born in Bethlehem. The wise men are going to follow the star to Jesus from the east. And there's, you know, when Luke uses this term two or three times, I think, but Mary kept all these things in her heart, not here. I forgot the T there. Mary kept all things in her heart. She pondered these things. She quietly thought about all of these things that happened to her, you know, angels coming to her,

you know, the birth in Bethlehem. These wise men now are coming, you know, the temple people. Remember what was said at the temple by Simeon, you know, just a sword will pierce your own heart, Simeon told her. You know, this child is born for the rising and fall of many in Israel. And so Mary is going to keep all these things in her heart. You know, what about Joseph? You know, Joseph was involved in all of this as well. You know, he was Mary's husband and he had, you know, I think he had a lot of thoughts. I would have a lot of thoughts if I was in this situation. And so the angel really says, you know, bring forth the son called Jesus, going to save his people from their sins. And his verse 24 is great. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep,

did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and took unto him his wife. And so there you go. They are husband and wife now. And, you know, this brand new marriage, there's going to be some serious stressors that are going to affect this marriage pretty soon. Okay, let's talk very briefly about Herod the Great, you know, this wacko that Joseph and Mary really have to deal with. You know, he's called the Great because he reigned for a very long period of time. He was a great builder. He was a pretty decent administrator as well. He was an incredible politician. He was around for a long time. He was also a maniac. He killed two or three of his sons. A couple of his wives got knocked off. Any time Herod felt that his throne was being threatened, he turned to violence straight up. And we know this from the account in Matthew as well. He's going to turn to violence during this as well. He's going to build the temple. I shouldn't say the temple. The temple is going to be massively expanded during this time. The Wailing Wall, the Western Wall, that isn't a wall of the temple. That's a wall of the base of the temple, that massive structure. He built that. You know, some of the great stones that they moved, you know, they're still amazed that they were able to move all of these stones. And so, it was relatively peaceful during this time from 7 BCE,

from 7 to 30. Yeah, actually, that should be switched around, I think, from 36 to 7 BCE. So, it was relatively peaceful. It was peaceful. You know, he kept things under control. And so, you know, Christ is going to use this time of peace to make a point in Luke 23. You know, he says, if they have done these things, speaking of his crucifixion, you know, if they have done these things in a green tree, speaking about peace and prosperity, what will they do in a dry? And that was the prophecy of the great destruction that was going to happen in AD 70 with Jerusalem, and just the horrible things that went on during that time, the killing, cannibalism, just awful people, you know, eating their children, killing. There was just an incredible amount of slaughter that was going on between Jews and Jews, and Romans and Jews as well. All right. So, chapter 2 tells us, Matthew, that the arrival of the wise men caused unease in Jerusalem. Scripture tells us that, you know, the wise men come to Herod, they go to Jerusalem, and they ask the question, where is he, is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him. You know, I think the wise men thought that everyone was going to know about this, that they would be celebrating the birth of the Messiah, the King of the Jews, but they weren't. It says, when Herod the King had heard these things, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him, and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. So he gets this information, and immediately, what does Herod do? He starts with his shenanigans, right? His craftiness is on display here. He smells a threat to his throne. These strangers come from nowhere, they've been following a star, they're looking for the King of the Jews. What? So, you know, they felt as if they had found the Messiah, and they had, but the Jews in Jerusalem weren't looking for the Messiah at this time. They were troubled. They had to gather, Herod had to gather everybody together and find out, and they said unto him in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, and he quotes from Micah the fifth chapter, verse two, about Bethlehem being the least among the princes of Judah. So I always found that interaction interesting, and Herod's like, yeah, you know, definitely find out what's going on with this King of the Jews. You know, I'm really interested in this. I would like to worship him. I'm gonna bow down to him. Great Herod the Great will bow down to the King of the Jews. You know, he privately calls the wise man. He tries to get all of the information, and what does he say? He says, 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 also. Wow, Herod is really, you know, this is good of Herod. He's gonna subjugate himself. You know, he's not gonna be prideful. He's gonna be humble. He's gonna bow down and worship. Sure, sure. So the star stops right over the house where Jesus was, the wise men go in, three gifts, so on and so forth. But, you know, God is still active in all of this. You know, God is still very active in all of this. Verse 12, and being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way, right? They didn't go back to Herod with all the information, right? I'll guarantee you that Herod would probably kill these wise men, too. And Herod wanted to kill Jesus as well, you know, and he was gonna find out where they were to make sure that this is an actual event, that there's an actual child, and you know 100% that once Herod got that information, he wouldn't be worshiping Jesus. He would be killing Jesus, and that's exactly really what he tried to do because, um, you know, in verse 13 it says, you know, 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. And that's exactly what happened. We know that the slaughter of the innocents took place, that all of the children were killed. They were slaughtered, the innocents. And there's a really, I like, you know, I like the emotion in that painting right there, you know, holding the child, these women. And there is a connection to Jeremiah in verse 18, and Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they are not. And there's a connection, brothers and sisters, back to Jeremiah, the 31st chapter in verse 15, where the, excuse me, where this is taken from. And this was right after the destruction of Jerusalem, and Jeremiah has the account of the destruction of Jerusalem, and all the people were being taken captive, and all the booty was being divided up in Rama. It was a city. That's where Nebuchadnezzar set up his throne and passed judgment on everybody. And that's also where all of the people and all of their goods was all divided up, and this is where they started their captivity. But specifically in Jeremiah, it talks about the women, the mothers, weeping as they watch their children go into captivity, families being split up, children being taken one way, mothers and fathers in another way. You know, it was a completely horrible, depressing, sad situation. And so that event is going to be used, you know, as a prophecy having to do with the slaughter of the innocents during Jesus's time. So there's a connection there. One connection in the Old Testament, great sadness, great violence and death, and during the time of Jesus, it's going to happen again, you know, the mothers of Israel weeping for their children. And so, you know, you can imagine, once again, Joseph, he gets the bad news from the angels, like, you gotta get out of here. You gotta go. You gotta flee, right? That's a powerful word, to flee. The angel says, hey, you know, get your things and just, you know, go for a leisurely jaunt down to Egypt. This was flee. You gotta move right now. You gotta go. Herod is gonna kill Jesus. You gotta go. And so imagine that stress. Imagine the thoughts that are going through Joseph's mind and Mary's mind. What is happening? Think about the upheaval that has happened in their lives in a very short period of time, you know? But they did. They listened to God. They left. They went down into Egypt. And so, again, we looked at this as a couple main roads there, the one by the coast and the one that goes down into Eilat and then right up. And so these were the two major roads. They were well-traveled. You always had people on them. It was relatively safe as well. There were different, you know, stopping areas that had, you know, soldiers to kind of protect, make sure that there weren't bands of bandits or robbers trying to take advantage of you. But it was a long journey. It was, I think it was about 300 miles that they had to journey down into Egypt. And it's really a repeat, right, of Israel going down into Egypt. A terrible thing had happened in their lives. You know, they were struggling with the famine and they had no other way we had to go. And so where'd they go? They went down into Egypt to

be saved by Joseph, which is interesting. And now we have Joseph again, another man named Joseph, a faithful man named Joseph. He's bringing the Messiah, the savior of the world. He's protecting the savior of the world. He's protecting Mary, the mother of the savior of the world, as they go on this journey down to Egypt. You know, I often wonder, what were they thinking about? You know, and there's a lot of different traditions that we'll touch on briefly. Some of them are interesting, some of them not so interesting, pretty wild. But anyways, here are the two roads. All right, so we're not told exactly what happens when they get down to Egypt. The scripture is silent. It doesn't say where they stopped at. It doesn't say where they live, what they did, you know. What was Joseph doing for a job? You know, he was a carpenter or a builder. You know, I'm sure they always needed someone that knew what they were doing in the construction field, just like today. Now, the Coptic Church, which is the Coptics, which are in Egypt,

one of the oldest churches or the oldest sects of Christianity. They have many stories of Jesus performing miracles as a child in Egypt. These miracles, you know, obviously these are traditions that the Coptic Church has, and they have actual, they've kind of mapped out where Jesus went according to their traditions. And it may or may not be true, you know, but we're gonna look at it go in a different direction from that. There are things called the infancy gospels, which are in like the book of the Gospel of Thomas, that type of thing, which are not obviously in scripture. They're part of the Apocrypha, the Gnostic gospels, and they talk about Jesus doing all kinds of different miracles. This is pretty interesting. He meets the two thieves on the cross here before, obviously, they were on the cross. Joseph's gonna fight off different types of demons that are seeking to kill Jesus. There's another story about palm trees bowing down to Jesus. You know, so a lot of these different traditional stories, so on and so forth. So the question can be asked, brothers and sisters, why Egypt? You know, why choose Egypt? Well, we know that God did it in order to fulfill his word, to fulfill his promise of the Messiah, to fulfill scripture, the prophecies found in scripture. Josiah 11 verse, you know, verse one, which is, you know, out of Egypt have I called my son. And he called his first, you know, he called his firstborn Israel, he called them out of Egypt, and he called his only begotten son out of Egypt as well. And so Alexandria, which is on the northern tip of Israel, right on the Mediterranean, it had close to a hundred thousand Jews living in it. There were other communities as well of Jews, different communities. As we've seen, we saw all the little dots there of where the synagogues were. Okay, so there were a lot of Jews still living in Egypt. In fact, there was a temple built on an island in the middle of the Nile, and it's called the Elephantine Temple. That's the name of the island. And it was built in the 500s BC. So right around the time Jerusalem is destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, they go down into Egypt. We know that they went down into Egypt because scripture tells us again. In Jeremiah, we're not going to turn to it, but in Jeremiah, remember, you know, Gedaliah was involved. He's going to be killed. There's the big, you know, there's a big internal fight about who's going to control the remnant of the people. And so Jeremiah goes down against his advice. He says, you go down to Egypt, you're not going to escape the sword down there. He says, stay in the land. God will protect you in the land. You will be prosperous. But they were too scared. Understandable, but they made the wrong choice because fear clouded their minds and it affected their faith. And I think that can happen as well to us. We can become fearful of a situation and it can cloud our minds as well to the power of God, to the love of God, to the strength of God. You know, the event in our lives becomes so big in our minds that it pushes out God, push out God. And we're like, you know, what am I going to do with this situation? And we can't be like that, brothers and sisters. We can't be so fearful of things in life that we forget about God, never forget about God. We can never lose hope about the wonderful faith that we have. And so many Jews are going to leave Israel during the time of Jeremiah and

they're going to stay there. A lot of them, you know, the Nebuchadnezzar is going to come down into Egypt and cause a lot of damage, going to take people captive as well. And a lot of Jews are going to be taken captive. But some of them are going to stay there to the point where they're going to be numerous enough, the community is going to be strong enough to, you know, to support a temple. They're going to worship there. It's one of the earliest kind of mosaics, I guess, of Joseph leading baby Jesus and Mary on the donkey. Dominic the donkey. Again, another traditional thing, particularly the Italians around Christmas time, they'll sing Dominic the donkey. All right, here's a couple interesting quotes, particularly about Alexandria. For so populous are the Jews that no country can contain them. And therefore they dwell in many of the most prosperous countries in Europe and Asia, both in the islands and on the mainland. So dumb people, they went where the prosperity was. They went where the jobs were. They went where the economy was the best. Here's another one from Philo of Alexandria. And while they hold the holy city where stands the sacred temple of the Most High God to be their mother city, Jerusalem, yet those which are theirs by inheritance from their fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors even farther back are in each case accounted by them to be their fatherland in which they were born and reared, while to some of them they have come at the very time of their foundation as colonists as a favor to the founders. So he's speaking of the fact that when Alexander the Great was active in and around Syria and Israel, he actually came down into Israel to destroy Jerusalem. And there's a great story. The high priest is going to go out there and say, look, I had a dream about you, this, that, and the other. And he really related on thick to Alexander. And Alexander loved it. He's like, yeah, definitely. You know what? I am all those things. I am fantastic. And a lot of the Jews are the soldiers during that time. Part of the deal that Alexander made with the high priest was, okay, if you give me some soldiers, I'll spare Jerusalem and we're going to be cool. And so some of the people volunteered, some of the soldiers volunteered to go with Alexander. And they're going to spend like 10 years with Alexander fighting back and forth in the Far East. And when they come back as a gift to these Jewish soldiers that stuck around with Alexandria, he's going to give them a portion in the brand new city in Egypt called Alexandria. That's pretty cool. He's going to give them land that they can farm and stuff like that. And that's exactly what happened. So that's really the beginning of Jews living in this city of Alexandria. Remember, brothers and sisters, we're talking about 100,000 Jews that are living in and around Alexandria and even more in southern Egypt as well. All right, here's a nice little picture of Alexandria during the time of Cleopatra, like 200, 100s, that type of thing. So very close to the time period we're talking about. Massive city, port city, very prosperous, very busy city, ships coming in and out, trade was incredible. The money that was involved here. It was a very prosperous place. And this is where the Ptolemies are going to set up their center of government in Alexandria. Very nice city, right in the water. Still around today. Here's the main causeway of Alexandria. You can see how big the city was. Again, prosperous city, lot going on. Kind of like a big city tale, like New York or Philadelphia or any of the major cities, Paris, England, that type of city. And here, this is always interesting. This is 30 BC, 30 years before around the birth of Christ. You can see the great harbor there. And then right over to the right, you have the Jewish quarter, which is right near the, it was right near the palace of the Ptolemies. So the, excuse me, the Jewish quarter was just kind of right in the middle. It was in the thick of things. This is where all of the Jews lived. And they're going to get along pretty good, but there's going to be a lot of friction too with the Greeks and the Jews, right? The Greeks always were looking at the Jews suspiciously. What's the deal with these guys? They take Saturdays off, pretty lazy. The circumcision was always freaky to the Greeks. And then they would stay to themselves as well. So they were always suspicious of the Jews. And that's going to, unfortunately, continue in the middle ages as well. That idea of the Jews, there were the Christ killers, they had these different beliefs. They didn't believe in Christ. They killed Christ, that type of thing. Lastly, here is the Elephi, the Elephi and Yahweh temple. And it's going to be around, you know, for about 130 years, 140 years, and they're going to build their own temple. So at one point, brothers and sisters, you know, there's going to be, the temple in Jerusalem was going to be around. There was at least one temple down in Egypt. There may have been more. And during the time of the Maccabees, there's going to be a third temple in Samaria. The Samaritans are going to build their own temple with the help of some rebellious Jews. They're going to go up there and they're going to, so there was at least, you know, two to three temples built by Jews throughout the world at this time. Not just synagogues, actual temples, places where they would go to worship. So there wasn't one temple, there was one temple in Jerusalem, obviously, along with other temples and other shrines to different gods. I just think that's fascinating that there were three other temples vying for control of the worship of

Jewish people throughout the ancient world. And so eventually, we'll end with this, brothers and sisters. They're going to leave Egypt again. You know, Herod, you know, was going to die. But when Herod, in verse 19, when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream. Again, angel of the Lord in a dream. This is how primarily things are going to be communicated to which is interesting because the other Joseph, he was also big into dreams, wasn't he? You know, so I think there's a lot of connections between the two. Verse 20, arise and take the young child and his mother and go into the land of Israel, for they are dead which thought the young child's life. Okay, great. So they went into the land of Israel. But Joseph is still kind of scared of the situation because he hears that Achilleus, who is Herod's son, he's reigning in Judea. And he was afraid to go thither. Notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee. So he kept on moving right up north, far away from, you know, far, far away from Achilleus, who actually, brothers, this is an interesting side note, the Romans are going to get rid of him after like four or five years of reigning just because he was such a maniac. You know, he was just as violent, even worse than his father. So interesting story. We're not told a lot about it in Scripture, but I think it shows the faithfulness of Joseph, the faithfulness of Mary as well, given these very stressful, very, very, you know, it was a very fearful time in their lives. Their lives are going to be completely turned on its head. And so I think it's just another example of faithful men and women hoping and trusting in God. And it was through their faith that, you know, Jesus is going to survive. He survives going down into Egypt. You know, you wonder what Jesus was doing down in Egypt as well. You know, what did he see? Who did he talk to? Where did they stay? You know, probably, they probably stayed in Alexandria, but, you know, we're not told. There were a lot of different communities down in Egypt at that time. You know, I think Joseph probably went where he felt safest and maybe where the jobs were as well. And so, you know, we know that Jesus is going to grow up and, you know, he's going to learn the law. Obviously, you know, God is going to be with him as his father. He is son. But he's going to be brought up by Joseph to love God, to love the law, to know the law, to know about God. And I think Joseph particularly should be commended because he was a just man. He was a man of faith and he protected the family that God had given him. Big job. Scary job. But he made it through. And we're not told. You know, Joseph kind of disappears from the gospel account. He's there in the beginning and then he disappears. And so, you know, some scholars have said that, you know, perhaps being older he died at some point, but, you know, who knows? But, you know, he was a just man. He was a man of faith. He listened to God and he acted in accordance with God's will and way. So, I think we should think on these things, just like, you know, Mary kept things in her heart and thought on things. Joseph thought on these things as well. We should think on these good things, these good things that we have in scripture. You know, Paul talks about that. He lists all of these wonderful things, whatsoever things are holy, true, that type of thing. He goes, think on these things. And we should be healing our hearts and minds with those wonderful, wonderful things of God.