Today we will be going over the second half of Matthew chapter two and these events continue on from what we looked at last week. Last week we talked about these foreign wise men coming into the area looking for Jesus. King Herod talked with these guys and tried to use them to find Jesus’ location. But God warned them not go back to Him, and after they worshipped Jesus, they avoided Herod and left the area. And that’s where we left off, but let’s keep going now in Matthew 2.
Read Matthew 2:13-23
There have been a lot of angel appearances in the last few weeks as God has been guiding His people through these events. God told the wise men to avoid Herod as they left and right on the heels of that here in verse 13, Joseph is being warned of Herod’s plot. And can you imagine receiving this sort of information? As a parent this would be really hard to stomach. The warning says that “Herod is seeking the young child TO DESTROY HIM“. That’s some really strong language, language that likely reflects Herod’s deep insecurity and paranoia, and Herod was well known for issues like this. So, I want to take a minute and get a little history on this guy Herod who is giving these orders.
As I said Herod was known for his insecurity and paranoia, he left a legacy of murder and destruction in his wake. The first casualty of this was his brother-in-law Aristobulus III. Herod was afraid that the Jews would prefer Aristobulus over him and try to make him king in Herod’s place. And so, at a party in 35BC, right in the middle of the party, Herod orders his brother-in-law to be drowned. Six years later in 29BC Herod is dealing with jealousy in regards to his wife Mariamne the first, he actually brings charges of adultery against her and I’m not sure if this was true or not, his own sister is the star witness and his wife’s mother is forced to testify as well under threat of execution. Needless to say, he won the case, and his wife was executed. His mother-in-law then somehow tried to take power and declare herself Queen, but Herod wasn’t going to have any of that either and just executed her without trial as well. Then a year later he suspects his brother-in-law from another wife of conspiracy against him and executes him too.
He then goes somewhat quiet on the jealousy and violence front for about 15 years and actually does some noteworthy things, such as importing Egyptian grain to the country to combat hunger in the wake of a major drought. He had work done on the temple mount and the rebuilding of the second temple. He even helped establish and financially support the early Olympic games. But towards the end of his life, the jealousy issues and the paranoia started taking hold again and over the course of a few years he suspected three of his own sons of conspiring against him and had each one of them executed. And we know that he kept standing orders to kill quite a few people when he himself died, you know, just to make sure he got to the last of them.
This is some crazy history, but I just wanted to get to know this man a little bit, because Joseph is being told that this man wanted to see young Jesus destroyed. And if he’s willing to kill his extended family, his own wife, and his own sons when he feels threatened, you had better believe that he had no issue coming for young Jesus.
And so, the Angel told Joseph to grab baby Jesus and grab Mary and run to Egypt. And maybe Egypt seems like a strange option in light of Israel’s history with Egypt, but Egypt really made a lot of sense for them at this point in time. It wasn’t too far, it was about 100 miles southwest of them, getting to Egypt would put them outside of Herod’s jurisdiction, and it’s believed that there were probably about a million Jewish people living there at that time so they would kind of fit in to the area.
Once again, we see Joseph faced with some pretty important news and a call to action. Not long ago it was, your fiancé is supernaturally pregnant, and you can go ahead and still marry her. Now it’s the king of this region is looking to kill this Child so it’s time to run. So obviously Joseph has seen, understood, and experienced a lot at this point and he’s immediately obedient. He wakes up, gathers the family, and they take off. But now this small family was on the run for their lives, for the life of their small Child, the Child who is the very turning point of all of human history and in the middle of the night they are on the road bound for Egypt.
But what happens next is horrible. Let me read verses 16 through 18 again.
Read Matthew 2:16-18
So now we see that Herod is coming to the realization that the information on the Child’s location doesn’t seem to be making its way back to him. The wise men ducked out, they avoided Herod, but like we talked about last week there is a very good possibility that there was a lot more of these guys then the three we typically see at Christmas time and the news probably made its way back pretty quick if this caravan of foreigners was exiting the area without coming by to see Herod. So, Herod is angry, it says he was exceedingly angry, he had pointed the wise men towards Bethlehem based on the Micah 5 prophecy, with the agreement in place that they would come report His location to him when they found Him. Now we know that God intervened and stopped this report from happening, but there is obviously some terrible fallout from this situation.
Remember when the wise men had first got there, Herod had spoken with these guys and was trying to get whatever information he could out of them. Verse seven from last week tells us that Herod worked with them to try to figure out when the star had originally appeared. He was trying to lock down the approximate age of the Child, perhaps just to better be able to identify Him, or maybe he was already planning to take the extreme measures that he is about to here. Based on the information that Herod had received from the wise men he was confident that the Child had to be two years of age or younger and so he sends out a decree and he sends out soldiers to put to death every male child that is two years old and younger.
Can you imagine the horror of living through this? I mean there’s the just general horror of witnessing this going on in the community around you. And then there’s a whole level of horror above that for the families that will actually lose their little boys as a result of Herod’s paranoia. There are secular historians out there that try to dispute whether or not this event actually took place, because there isn’t a record of it in secular writings. But it’s really not too hard to comprehend why that might be the case. I mean information availability is much different now then it was even 30 to 40 years ago and not to mention a 100 years ago or especially in the ancient world. But even with the amount of information that is available to us now, there is still so much going on in this world, unbelievable tragedies, humanitarian crises’, suffering, struggle, genocide, oppression. And if we don’t go looking for it, we may never even hear about it.
I think of places like Yemen, there has been one of the worst humanitarian crises is the world going on in Yemen for years now. Extreme poverty and famine have led to mass starvation and especially hard hit are the children. Even all the way back to 2016 and 2017 the available numbers count about 130 kids per day starving to death. It’s literally heartbreaking to see and hear the stories that have been coming out of there. I think of people fleeing places of extreme violence and difficulty, places like Libya where men, women, children, babies are daily trying to flee into the Mediterranean Sea and cross to places like Italy and they are so desperate to get away that boats are overloaded and dangerous and so many of them end up sinking. Thousands upon thousands of people are dying in these waters. Last December two boats went down and 164 people died, March 17th a boat went down and 70 people died, April 4th another boat went down and over 90 people died and these are just the first ones that came up. There are entire nations being oppressed. There are specific people groups within nations that are being oppressed, even rounded up and basically enslaved.
All that to say that those are just some examples of terrible things that we don’t really hear about all that much even in our day. And so, people have tried to discredit this account of Herod ordering the execution of these children because nobody, but Matthew ended up writing it down. But the ancient world was also full of terrible things happening and news didn’t spread as quickly and as far as it does today, and Bethlehem was a small town and probably easily overlooked in the big scheme of things. Herod killed his own kids so why would we think it’s so farfetched for him to kill others while trying to eliminate this new King. This is God’s Word and God had Matthew make a record of this horrible event that took place. And then Matthew there in verse 18 quotes Jeremiah 31:15.
Read Matthew 2:18
When we started in Matthew chapter 1, we talked about how Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience first and it’s interesting because Matthew sometimes relates Jesus’ story to Israel’s history even if sometimes the passage wasn’t directly talking about Him. And maybe this was just part of Matthew’s writing style or maybe he was seeking to build a connection between the Jewish reader and the present reality of Jesus. And when doing that this time he uses this passage that talks about Rachel who was really regarded as like the mother of Israel, she was Jacob’s wife and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. Rachel ended up dying when giving birth to Benjamin and she was buried in this place called Ramah. But what happens later in Israel’s history is that Israel is taken captive by Babylon and many of them were actually brought in captivity through this place called Ramah and the picture here is a mother grieving for her children in that place as they suffered. And Matthew is relating that picture that they would understand to now what these mother’s and these families would be going through not under Babylon this time, but now under King Herod as their children are being savagely taken away from them.
And so, to recap, Joseph was warned and ran with Mary and Jesus down into Egypt. After they got away Herod in his attempt to eliminate Jesus killed every male child 2 years of age and younger. And that brings us to these last verses of Matthew 2 and let me read these:
Read Matthew 2:19-23
Herod has now died, and we don’t know exactly how long has passed since they ran down into Egypt. We don’t know how old Jesus is at this point. There are even crazy stories out there that people have made up, saying that Jesus trained in Egyptian magic during this time and all of His miracles are a result of this. It’s kind of a cool story, but it’s absolutely ridiculous and these guys weren’t even that good, even Moses was used by God to out miraculous all of the best Egyptian magicians during the Exodus account and he’s no Jesus. But again, Herod’s dead, Joseph is told that they are good to head back into Israel. We know that this had to be at some point before Jesus turned twelve because they are already back at that time in Luke’s Gospel. But they head back into their homeland, and it sounds like they are headed back into the region of Judea but they hear that Herod’s son Archelaus was now on the throne and this guy was doing his best to out evil even his own father. There’s an account that apparently, and we won’t go into the whole story, but Archelaus sent down an order that resulted in 3000 people being killed inside of the temple. This man had issues just like his dad did and so Joseph once again is warned by dream, and they turn towards Galilee instead and end up in the city of Nazareth which is the very place where Mary was when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and started them down this incredible world altering path. They’ve come full circle geographically. And that’s kind of the end of the overview of the passage.
But what practical considerations can we take away from today? We’re moving through the history of God’s plan unfolding. But today brought some hard elements to the table. I mean the big picture here is seeing Jesus’ family moved to safety in Egypt and then their return back at some point later, but kind of sandwiched right in the middle there is this moment where these children and their families were caught up in the middle of these events in an utterly devastating way. And you know history shows that Bethlehem was pretty small, and it’s believed that somewhere between like 10 to 30 young boys probably lost their lives from Herod’s decree, and maybe we could look at that and be like, oh ok that’s not that many or as many as I thought. But, if you were the mother, father, or sibling of one of those boys I’m sure we wouldn’t be like “oh I’m glad it was only 10-30”. Sometimes the numbers can make us callous. The statistics can mask the heart and the humanity. And when I look at this situation it has to remind us of the reality of sin’s effect in this world and that there is real evil, real problems, and there will be people that will be hurt and suffer as a result. I mean I am sure we have all felt this reality at times, we have all been the recipient of other people’s sinful actions, but some obviously have and will face this at a far worst level then maybe we have or ever will. Just like these young boys in this passage and their families. They faced some of the worst of it.
Bad things happen in this world because the world has fallen because of sin and because people themselves are sinful. Sinful people do sinful things and other people get caught in that and suffer as a result. I want to go look at a passage that describes some of this. Let’s go to 2 Timothy chapter 3.
Read 2 Timothy 3:1-4
So many of these things when acted out by someone can lead to devastating results for other people. The reality is that mankind has a terrible track record of sin, hurt, death, destruction, and so much more in its wake. But what we need to know for today is that God always maintains a thread of hope, so to speak, even through the worst of things. For these families going through these terrible events in Matthew 2 they probably couldn’t see it yet and I don’t know if they ever came to understand, but even in these most horrific of circumstances, hope was on the move, the Messiah was on Earth at that moment moving forward towards the salvation of His people. God was working towards the incredible even if this sin infested world was trying so hard to tear it down and these children lost their lives in the midst of it, but even in great tragedy there was still hope, because Jesus was alive, and I so hope that some of these families came to know that.
If we open our eyes to what is going on around us, we’re always going to find those that are suffering in our communities. I guarantee you there are plenty of families, plenty of children in these communities that struggle with food insecurity, they don’t have enough to eat, there are families and children as well that are unhoused and can’t get back on their feet without intervention, there are people struggling with addiction that maybe started with something so simple as a painkiller prescription or trying to cope with a traumatic event, but the chains of the substance addiction are really strong and these days we’re losing so many to fentanyl poisoning. Then there’s human trafficking, there’s domestic violence, there’s gang issues, and so much more.
Because of sin there are so many things in this world that can break people, even destroy people like Herod was doing. But we know now who that Child is, that was fleeing with His family that night. That Child, Jesus, is literally hope in human form. He is the embodiment of everything worth hoping for. So, we can sit here today knowing that there is a hope in Christ, there is a hope in the salvation that we have in Him, that exists through all of our life circumstances. That even in the midst of the hardest of things there is still yet for us that constant thread of hope because of Jesus Christ. And that doesn’t mean “Oh I have to put on a fake happy face”, not at all, this deep-rooted hope and even joy that we have can actually exist right alongside grief, mourning, sorrow, pain, abandonment, and any other hurt or difficulty. Because some of the storms of life are hard, they’re really hard, and we’re going to feel it, but they can’t extinguish the hope that we have in Jesus and we have to understand that even as we minister to one another, and to others. But storms don’t last forever and in the middle of it, it sure helps to have those that care, around us, and even so much more to know Christ. Because He is the ultimate storm shelter, He is hope. He is the one when the disciples thought they were going to die on the boat in the raging storm that looked right into the literal storm and said, “BE STILL” and the storm listened. Where else should we go, but to Him?
There are people out there struggling and we’re not immune to the storm and the struggle either. These families in Matthew 2 we’re facing incredible hardship and grief at the loss of their children. They had to be struggling, I hope people came to help. There are so many situations in this fallen world that bring incredible difficulty, and in many cases, people don’t just need a drive-by theology lesson, they actually need help, they need love, and they need care, they need to be shown the compassion that Christ has for lost and hurting people, because we’re no different and hopefully we have just come to know the storm shelter of hope in Jesus Christ. The words of the Gospel of course need to be shared, that’s where the power and the hope lies, but what we need to understand today is that often times the real actual help becomes the bridge for Gospel hope to cross over into very difficult circumstances. And that’s our role, we’re to be missional servants and Kingdom Ambassadors of the Gospel. We bring the help and the hope of Jesus Christ.