2. God With Us [Matthew] - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

all right you guys this is this is our last week of Christmas in September right so our last week of Christmas Christmas baby Jesus stories so we've been here a month now in in chapters 1 & 2 of Matthew as we go through the book we're working through what Matthew called the genesis of Jesus remember the first words of the book the genesis of Jesus the Messiah son of Abraham son of David we it's the stories of Jesus's family history and then the circumstances of his birth and we're finishing those up today and remember the the reason why matthew has included these stories at the beginning of the gospel is not just because he's a historian and he geeked out on that kind of stuff and he wants to be complete because if he really wanted to be complete of course that there would be a whole bunch of other stories that he could have included that he didn't and there are other accounts of the life of Jesus in the New Testament that are considered complete that don't have anything about Jesus's childhood at all and so that we have to ask these questions as readers why are these stories here and they're here at least as we've kind of been exploring because they're they're meant to tell us something not just about who Jesus was but they tell us truths about who Jesus is and who he is for us as his people today and they illuminate the character in the reality of Jesus and so these stories today you know these are the stories that typically don't make it into the Christmas play so the flights to Egypt and these children being massacred and then like having to move back to their second choice town of Nazareth elected have you ever seen those like retold at the Christmas pageant play like no they've become hard to depict and it would kind of kill the mood of the whole thank goodness so so these are but they're part of the crucially part of the genesis of Jesus and these are stories again because we're familiar with them through the Christmas cards or whatever the during the holidays we tend to read these stories through whatever through rose-colored glasses so to speak and there just was Jesus and of course they run around and there's horrible crazy things happening besides birth or whatever and we just kind of move on with the story but Matthew has done something very profound in describing this part of the life of the infant Jesus and of his parents and I just I want us to as always to get to kind of try and disassociate anything you think you already know about these stories and just put yourself in the shoes of these characters of this young mother of this young father who's adopted the spontaneously generated son right in particular and and then like everything that happens to them I mean really try and think about what you would be thinking feeling if these were your circumstances you're a pregnant Jewish teenager and you like that's just crazy in and of itself like how that all went down and then you thought your fiancee was going to break the engagement but then he has a dream and then he doesn't like that's a crazy week in and of itself does that alone and but then you know then far away you know some Roman politician right the the whole empire that's militarized your whole ancient homeland over the last 50 years decides they're going to raise taxes and it forces everybody to go to their ancestral roots and take part of the census and so on and so you're now you're pregnant quite pregnant and you have to make this 80 mile trip on a donkey or horseback or whatever and so that's really inconvenient and uncomfortable and so then you have to do that and then while you're there somehow we don't know you get stuck there away from your mom away from your aunts away from your midwife or whatever from your hometown and you give birth in the town that is not your town just a man and you end up doing so under really like awkward difficult circumstances right and whatever this kind of cave or whatever is represented by the manger we don't actually know if it was like a stable a cave or spare room of a house we don't actually know but it was the whole point is that it was not ideal circumstances under which you give birth away from your family and then it gets even worse because of course there's this whole thing about these really strange magicians showing up from the far ancient East and they drop a load of cash in your lap that's actually pretty cool if that were to happen to you but you know it's kind of bizarre and then there's these like shepherds who keeps like filing in to want to see your baby and that's weird and they keep wanting to hold them and you like please wash your hands or whatever I don't know about it so satire Shepherd's you know so so that's all kind of like there's there's this moment of the birth and that's significant those were not told anything about Jesus having a Halo or him not crying I mentioned he cried and pooped like any young you know human did so was that but then then you know you like Jesus Emmanuel God with us and so on and then it just tanks like the things just go from okay and awkward an inconvenient to horrible horrible so you you're a young mom and you hear that there's Roman soldiers marching the five miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and they're coming for your baby and you have to flee in the middle of the night and start this 300 mile trek down south through the deserts of Israel and then of Egypt to get to most likely Alexandria Egypt where there's a big community of Jewish people living there and and and so on and on the way of course you hear this report that those Roman soldiers went through the whole village of Bethlehem and they rounded up all of the boys that have been born in the last two years and they slaughtered them and they're looking for your baby and that haunts you as you go down to Egypt and you're just stuck there you don't know anybody you know you have the Jewish community there but your family is not there and you're raising your blur in this place that's foreign to you and and there you go you're stuck there for the first years of your baby's lives and then you hear this report that like the big bad Herod who was trying to do all of this he dies until I finally the storms blown over you go back and you're going to settle in your husband's hometown if our son really is the Messiah we should go to the roof into this town of David where David was born and then you show up there and then you realize holy cow like Herod's son Herod's son who's about as bad as Herod was is the guy ruling ruling on the throne now and so like at the last minute you're like I guess where do we go we have to go back to Mary's hometown and so you make the 80 mile trek back up and then you you go back to your small little no-name podunk hill country town where the rumor mill is just churning and will continue to churn for decades about your mysterious pregnancy and that's that's about a three year period of Mary's lives now let's say that was your lives how are you feeling about your life right now right I mean really think about that really I mean you would I know that there are very difficult stories in the room right now very difficult life circumstances but I I dare say that this three years of this family's life is problem probably is the one of the most traumatic stories you could ever hear anyone tell I mean really think about that and why it's so why did Matthew include these stories it's like Jesus is here Jesus is here it's all amazing and then talk just practice and burn and if these stories of terror and tragedy what is going on here and if you and I were in Mary circumstances I think that we would find ourselves in a place that many of us do find ourselves then when when hardship or tragedy or on things unknown or fear hits our lives in some way we start asking right we start asking you know where is God what why is all of this happening to me and so on I mean can you imagine Mary's prayers while she is fleeing to Egypt and here's the report about the massacre in Bethlehem looking for her so I mean just what prayers did she pray that night and did she perceive those prayers as ever being answered yeah where where is God in moments like that it might have mind that's what these stores raised is where is God in the moments of the most horrendous evil or tragedies or fears that hit our lives the storms that that hit our lives and for many of us you know these things hit our lives and and it goes a few different ways I think some of us we we get disillusioned we get embittered or jaded because they're like if Jesus was really real and if he was good he would prevent this kind of stuff from happening to me or God would prevent this kind of thing from happening in the world for many people when these things happen in life they just ditch the whole thing you know because if God was real or if he was really good he would intervene and prevent this kind of thing from happening and it seems to me these stories in Matthews too are trying to challenge how we think about God and suffering and when the storms hit hit our lives and they challenged what I call is I think a very very common myth about Christianity in our culture which is I call it the myth of religious fulfillment it's the idea that I invite Jesus into my life and Jesus and so he died for me and my sins my failures and reconciled to God and so now I have all of these hopes and dreams and aspirations for my life and Jesus is gracious he's good and so of course he's going to help me make all of those dreams come true and then it doesn't happen or then the opposite happens then your nightmares happen and where is God and Matthew he's going to do some very profound things in terms of theology and quoting scripture but on the whole this section of stories has a very practical pastoral message to give to us which is where is God when it looks like the train has gone off the tracks and and terrors and tragedy strike your lives and and this story moves it that whole set of issues and questions in three and three movements I don't know if you've noticed them but there's three movements to this story and and each one kind of tells about something that happens it's horrible or terrifying or tragic and then it concludes by linking it up to some kind of fulfillment to the Old Testament Scriptures did you see did you notice that is it read through it there are three different times and so each one of these movements in the story is trying to explore or get at who is God and where is God in these moments of terror and tragedy and so let's consider them as we go through as we go through the story hi guys done let's start let's start from the top so Peter Peter would reading you know I was just thinking verse 13 when they had gone if you weren't here last week you're like huh Bay whose bed right so they is these these astrologists right these magicians from the far ancient east and they have been like working their astrological StarD charts whatever and they discerned that like some really important significant king was being born to the west thousands of miles and so they started this - you're just the craziest story in the world about they started this journey right and so they go to Jerusalem big Caravan where actually we're not we're nowhere told that there were just three of them did you know this I don't remember if Josh mentioned this last week we're just there were three gifts offered but we're told that the caravan was so huge that the whole city of Jerusalem was startled as like this thing showed up into town so it's probably huge huge caravan of people and quite a number of these astrologers and so they come and they ask the King of Jerusalem this question never asked a king this question where is the new king that was just born don't ever view me President Obama it would be like where is the real president you know it's just like no don't do that really bad idea especially don't ask that question to the king like Herod right this is deeply insecure and has a real violent streak so bad question like they didn't know what they were doing but it sets off this whole chain of event and so they just left right they dropped this huge load of cash essentially in in Mary and Joseph slap which they almost certainly are going to need over the next three years to do this whole journey that's ahead of them unless all of a sudden they say listen you're not safe right an angel appears to Joseph you got to get out of here and just you're a young mom you have a baby and then all of us you're not safe your baby has a price on his head you got to get out of here right now it's just horrifying - absolutely terrifying if this was you and so they flee during the night and they get up and they go and so here's here's terror and tragedy number one right Shirley Shirley where is God why is this happening why can't we catch a break it's just one crazy thing after another Shirley the train has gone off the tracks and Matthew says actually no actually no what what's happening here fits into a larger pattern have you ever heard of a story where God raised up a deliverer but then there's some insecure power-hungry king who uses oppression and violence to try and thwart God's purposes I wonder if I can think of a story like that before and Matthew's like yeah yeah and what did he say he says this Luca verse 15 he says so was fulfilled what the Lord said through the prophet out of Egypt I called my son now what prophet is he quoting you guys footnotes - look out there mm-hmm Hosea Prophet Hosea chapter 11 now here is what I think happens in most of our minds we think wow this is really remarkable so Hosea you know predates Jesus about 800 years and Hosea you know how dream and you watched a little movie and his dream about Joseph and Mary and going down to Egypt and coming out and then he predicted that it would happen and we're like wow that's so crazy Nostradamus but for real so right like that's how many people perceive what Matthew's doing here and then you know the the five of you who care about these kinds of things you go like Oh Hosea oh that's in my Bible so I'll just go up and go read the book of Hosea you know and see like I'm asking you like I have this really cool so you go look it up and what you read is this Hosea chapter 11 the context here when Israel was a child I this is Yahweh speaking through the prophet I love him and out of Egypt I called my son but the more they were called the more they went away from me they sacrificed to the balls and they burned incense to images it was I Yahweh says who taught ephraim to walk taking them by the arms but they did not realize it was I who healed them now just stop right there so where did the little movie the little movie screen of Joseph and Mary going down to Egypt did you see it play out anywhere right here mmm no yeah not only did you not see a little predict Nostradamus style prediction thing playing out right here what you see actually here is a recollection of the past this is the Prophet Hosea poetically reflecting on the past story of the roots of the Israelite people so Israel was a child I loved out of Egypt I called my son what story is those they are recollecting here he's reflecting the Exodus story so and actually in the Exodus story in Exodus chapter 4 Yahweh calls Israel my firstborn son he says to Pharaoh let my son go let my people go or let my son go it's interchanged in the Exodus story and sofa zaiah picks up this matter for that Israel is like Yahweh's child Yahweh's son and so he brought people out of slavery into from Egypt into the Promised Land and gave them this really good land and what does Israel do they go and worship other gods and so on and you always like what what well yeah I taught you to walk I mean I made you into a nation and you do this to me you know and they never look to me they didn't realize it's really a very powerful phone Hosea chapter 11 so what on earth is Matthew doing what's he doing right here welcome welcome to the wonderful strange world of how Jesus and the Apostles read and quote from the Jewish Scriptures and if your only idea in your head is Nostradamus style prediction then this is just going to be madly frustrating to you because that that's actually not what the New Testament authors are doing most of the time they quote from the Old Testament Scriptures Jesus and Matthew the Apostles they read the Jewish Scriptures as telling one coherent storyline that's moving forward that's all pointing forward there's all these unresolved tensions and so on with Israel and the covenants and sacrifices and so on it's all these dangling threads that are just left there as the story of the Old Testament comes to a close and they see Jesus and Matthew all the apostles they see is the the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus the gift of the Spirit as bringing all of these loose threads together right here and so he will use a passage like Isaiah chapter 11 but he's actually he wants you to think anytime this is going to be frustrating or exciting to some of you right anytime you ever see an Old Testament passage quoted in the New Testament they're never just using or alluding to the words that they've quoted they just assume you know the whole Bible inside out and they just assume you know the 24 other passages that are all connected to the one that they just quoted and you're just supposed to know all of that to make to make sense of it and so sorry I don't know what to tell you but I'll try and help recreate the trail for you at least right here so so what's he doing right here Matthew wants us to see something is is he wants us to see that is this the first time that some selfish powerful human has tried to thwart God's purposes to save and redeem his world and his people no no and so he wants us to see that in these events of the life of Jesus that the Train has not come off the tracks but actually we're replaying a whole pattern that's already taken place once in history and so Jesus as Israel's Messiah as the capital s son of God is replaying in his life the same story that Israel went through so here's a cool chart and some of your board right now but I don't care because this is cool so so think through why why has Matthew chosen these specific stories here and part of his because he's weaving a pattern into the early chapters of Matthew that recollect the story of the Exodus so for example you it begins with this journey to Egypt and then you have this oppressive king killing children now we're in the Bible do you have an oppressive King killing children well that's how the Exodus story begins doesn't it right with you the the Pharaoh is is threatened by the people of Israel and so he orders the the male Israelites when after they're born the children to be thrown into the Nile River and so you and so Herod Herod has become the new Pharaoh if Jesus it represents the new Israel and and the son of God fulfilling all of the purposes that God has been working towards all along then Herod becomes this this new Pharaoh and so you have God's Son called out of Egypt and then Matthews clever this is great so in the story of the exodus of course after they're called out of Egypt they go to Mount Sinai and they're 40 years in the wilderness and then they go through the Jordan River into the Promised Land and the way Matthew tells the story is Jesus comes up out of Egypt and as we're going to see here he settles in the town Nazareth and then what's the very next story it's Jesus passing through the Jordan so to speak and it's as if he once again he's the people of Israel he's doing and retelling in his own life the story and the fulfillment of the whole story of the people of Israel and then where does Jesus go right after that he goes into the wilderness for how long for forty days now not forty years that would I mean he would then he would have been like seventy or something like that afterwards so but the whole point is you see what Matthew is doing here he's trying to get you to see that even amidst the most horrific circumstances is God is God surprised or caught off guard by the evil of Herod answer no did God ordained the evil of Herod answer say no say it very quickly say it strongly and very quickly no definitely not definitely not but is God surprised this is how humans always respond when he tries to work his redemptive purposes if it generates resistance because would God gets involved it's threatened the status quo of how we think the world ought to be run when he introduces his upside down Kingdom and so Matt Matthews has a very it's very theological and quoting the scriptures and so on but it's a very practical point in the midst of this terror that Mayor Mary must be experiencing Matthew reminds us that that the train has not gone off the tracks yes this is a terrifying tragic experience but despite that evil God is still working His redemptive purposes which leads to the second movement in the story here it starts in verse 16 so Herod realizes that that he'd been outwitted by the astrologers he's ticked and so he does he he lives up to his stature as the new Pharaoh and he orders that all of the boys in Bethlehem two years and be be murdered given what archeologists tell us and so on about the size and scope of Bethlehem a couple thousand people you know we can just do averages based off of you know the birthrate and their culture and so on somewhere between 25 to 50 boys were killed that night absolutely horrifying and you're Mary and you received this news as you're fleeing on horseback with an infant through the deserts of Egypt that's just a bad day that's a really really bad day and the first thing that you would be tempted to think if this was happening to you is clearly God doesn't exist or if he does exist he's just abandoned ship clearly and Matthew comes along and he's going to invite us to consider another option another option that despite this for endeth evil what is god's response and once again what does he quote from he quotes from the scriptures verse 17 then what was said through the Prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled avoid well we'll read the quote in a second they quotes from Jeremiah here now if you view once again if you view what Matthew's doing as Nostradamus style prediction the little movie in his head Jeremiah saw the slaughter of these Bethlehem boys you know a little movie screen in his head and it was predicted and preordained or whatever then you've got a huge mess on your hands I psyched it ways right because then you have Lex so you're saying God preordained that this thing would happen and so on it just in and so but once again if you go read the four the five of you who care and you go read this passage in context in Jeremiah you realize like whoa there's something way more profound going on here so allow me Jeremiah chapter 31 hi guys done okay Jeremiah 31 so where do we start with Jeremiah lexa keep that up there let's just say Jeremiah he predates Jesus by about 600 years and the key event in the most traumatic and tragic event in Israel story happened in Jeremiah's lifetime which was the big bad empire of Babylon came and surrounded the city of Jerusalem besieged it for about a year finally broke through the walls of the city killed all kinds of people burned the city burned the temple to the ground and assembled all the survivors of Jerusalem a little way south of the city and the place called Rama and chained them all up and took them in a huge prisoner Caravan 2,000 miles over to Babylon into exile jeremiah watched this take place and much of the book of jeremiah is jeremiah seeing this coming and then grieving and mourning this whole tragic experience and that's what this poem is about this is what the lord says a voice is heard in Ramah which was the place where all of the survivors were in chained and the caravan begins in the Exile to Babylon mourning and great weeping Rachel weeping for her children refusing to be comforted because they are no more this is what the Lord now says restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears for your hard service will be rewarded declares the Lord your children will return from the land of the enemy and so there's hope for your descendants declares the Lord your children will return to their own land so what Jeremiah is doing is he's he's mourning and lamenting this loss and this destruction the death of some Israelites and the exile of others but then he sees this hope that Yahweh will stay true to his promises and somehow a remnant will come back and come back here to Jerusalem and God will still fulfill his promises to bring blessing to all of the nations through the family of Abraham so what's Matthew doing here what's Matthew doing now this is where again I'm sorry I don't know what to do this was a hard sermon to prepare because you just have to use such a Bible geek mass it is and so I don't know what to do except to kind of help connect the dots for us to see the real profound nature of what he's doing so so what what's happening here Wow who's Rachel who's Rachel yeah so rachel holds this this kind of iconic place in the biblical imagination she was the wife of she was one of the matriarchs of Israel and she was the wife of what patriarch of the family of Israel she's married to Jacob she's married to Jacob and you know the father of the 12 tribes of Israel and so on and so she's one of she's like Martha Washington in the Israelite imagination and if you read the story it's there's a story about how she dies in the book of Genesis you know it Genesis 35 of course we all know it right and so in Genesis 35 Jacob loved a Rachel she was the most beloved she had four woman's that he was sleeping with did Jacob was a bad did I don't know anyway we put it so he but he loved Rachel the most apparently and he she was the last of his wives to give birth and the last son that she gave birth to she died in childbirth Genesis 35 it's a very tragic story where she's weeping and grieving in childbirth and she's dying and then they're told that your giving you the sign you're going to give birth to a son and she says call him Ben Oni their last words which means son of my anguish and then she dies and Jacob is so rocked by this event that he can't bear to have his son being named something that would remember him remind him of his wife's death and so he changes his name to benjamine son of my right hand or Benjamin as we as we call him and where did Rachel die weeping in childbirth where does that take place if you read the story it takes place right outside of Bethlehem right outside of Bethlehem and oh I got a map here just for the ex to be extra gear on the deal all right here there so there you go so there's Jerusalem there's Nazareth Way wave toss-up I by the lake of galilee up there and then you have down south you have Jerusalem and then Rama which is where Jeremiah's talking about him and Bethlehem they're all like just a few miles from each other and so here's what Jeremiah is doing he's depicting Rachel as weeping from her tomb over the Israelites her children who will be gathered up some killed some taken off into exile to babylon and over the centuries her weeping reaches and mourns over the fate of the people of Israel and Matthew picks this up and here you have this story of yet more Israelite children being oppressed and being killed and Matthew is saying Rachel's voices and is weeping from her tomb reaching over even more centuries because here you had it's the same thing you have another pharaoh another king of Babylon another Herod warding God's plans selfishly trying to preserve whatever power they have left and using violence to do so and so Rachel it would be as if like a poet talking about George and Martha Washington weeping from their tombs over the deaths of 9/11 at the Pentagon a few miles north in New York and so and that's what Jeremiah is doing here and Matthew says their voice weeps still over the tragedies in our day which means this again this is all you know Bible geek and so on but think what's Matthew's saying here where is God in the midst of this tragedy what's God's doing he's he's speaking through his prophets that he that he grieves and he mourns the tragedy of the human condition he is not absent he's weeping he's grieving it's very similar to what Paul the Apostle says in Romans chapter 8 when he considers the corruption and the mortality and the tragedy of the human condition he says where is God he says God is through his spirit right there in the heart of our world groaning as in the pains of childbirth this is the groaning weeping God that's the biblical depiction of God emotions over the state of our world very powerful it may seem like he's absent and these stories would invite you to consider that God is actually grieving alongside of us which leads us to the last the third movement here verse 19 this is the last terror and tragedy that happens to this young family verse 19 after Herod died the angel of the Lord came to a dream and Joseph get up take the child back to the Land of Israel those who were trying to take the child's life are dead so he gets up and you're you're Joseph and Mary you're like finally we catch a break yeah so maybe the storm has finally blown over and so they go up to the land of Judah we're talking they're going back to the Land of Israel and almost certainly they're trying to return to Bethlehem this is where Joseph's roots are that's where Jesus was born they're going to settle down here if he really is the Messiah he should grow up in the town that David Wright Israel's first king grew up in but they go they go back and what do they hear they're like oh no Herod version two is Thomas from I like dang it I can't anything work out and so they're forced to make like what what are we going to do and so the last minute they makes the decision got to go 80 miles further on horseback so a lot of Jesus wrote a lot on horses a political kid right and not not ever for like happy reason and and so another 80 miles north where do you go where do you go so they go back to Mary's hometown to Nazareth and as we're going to learn later in the story this is the small podunk town where the rumor mill is still churning decades later as people are wondering who this Jesus is and why should we listen to him in his hometown and look at the way Matthew frames this so they have to go all the way back they are coleus is route reigning in Judah verse 22 they were afraid to go there and being warned in a dream they went up to the district of Galilee and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth so was fulfilled what was said through the Prophet that he would be called a Nazarene so once again you have some moment of disappointment or tragedy or inconvenience happen in the family's life and then Matthew reminds us there's there's a greater purpose at work God is still fulfilling his redemptive purposes despite the disappointment that this all represents now what on earth what's he doing right here so at least he quoted Hosea and we knew it he quoted Jeremiah and he knew it who's he quoting this time what he doesn't say does it what does he just say you know the Prophet the Prophet and so like this studious like one of you who has some sort of Bible software and you're like where does it say and the prophets he will be called a Nazarene and you'll like enter it in your can Bible Software and you'll get hit zero zero and the reason why is there is because this phrase is found nowhere in the entire Old Testament he will be called a Nazarene what what's happening yeah now there's something interesting so you notice he in the previous two times he quoted one prophet and then like actual words here he just says the prophets in other words he's not quoting just one particular prophet he's quoting an idea or a theme that runs through the prophets and here Matthew is at his total Bible geek geekiness this is he reaches his height here of Bible geekdom as because he's making a wordplay in Greek and in Hebrew at the same time and people have puzzled over this you guys Christian readers have puzzled over this line and Matthew for 2,000 years so I'm not going to wrap it all up right here but at least I'll give my opinion on what I think he's doing because it actually is really profound its Bible geek yes but it's really actually profound what he's doing right here so there's a well-known Old Testament promise about the coming king from the line of David it occurs in in the prophet Isaiah chapter eleven and the word that Isaiah uses is a metaphor to describe the coming king from the line of David it says in Isaiah chapter 11 it says a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse and from his roots a branch will bear fruit he's considering the fact that in the Exile it's as if the line of David got like a tree clear-cut top and you just have the stump but God is going to fulfill his promises to David and so this King future King the Messianic King coming from the line of David is going to be like a little teeny tiny shoot coming up right out of the growth of the old stump little green shoot that's what he's saying right here this metaphor and from the branch of the line of Jesse and of David is going to come on new a new branch a new king and Isaiah was the first one to use this metaphor but then Jeremiah picked it up Zechariah picked it up and so a very common kind of name for the coming Messiah was branch stick stick man correct well is a common ways as the Messiah was referred to in the Prophet now here's the here's the wordplay here so Z and this is all connected to Nazareth and so on so the name of Jesus is hometown at least as they move there after all of this is up there at the top left not cereth that's how you say it nazareth not set it and then in greek it got translated into Nazareth and then there you go that's the name of the town we have today the word that mass excuse me that Isaiah uses right here branch the Hebrew word for that is not there come on this that's clever you're supposed to chuckle a little bit I think like Matthew that's brilliant that's probably what you've done right there so nuts ax and then that word if you were to try and spell it in Greek letters is it's the the word Nazareth means stick town this sticks literally it's the stick it's I'm not I'm intended by him not me so he Nazareth is a tiny little village way up buried in the hills of Galilee no-name podunk hill country town it's the sex literally it is sick town and for Matthew he sees this connection here Jesus grew up in stick town and Isaiah said that the prot the Messiah will be stick man holy cow you guys come on that's great so so that's kind of so that's funny and we like wow this quote clever and Matthew is being clever but there's actually something more profound happening here because Isaiah developed this metaphor throughout the book and he he he saw that the future coming King from the line of David he would be this branch this new growth but then he goes on to develop in his poetry and prophecy is that this king is going to be rejected by his people and in fact this king is going to die and absorb the sins of his own people into himself in in his death and one of the most famous poems where he depicts that the rejected suffering servant King is in Isaiah 53 and can you guess what he calls the metaphor he uses to talk about the suffering servant king isaiah 53:4 he the suffering servant King grew up like a young branch like a root out of dry ground he had no beauty or Majesty to attract us to him no great appearance to attract us to him he was despised and forsaken by others he was a man of sorrows familiar with griefs surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering we considered him punished by God stricken by him afflicted but in reality he was pierced for our transgressions transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities the punishment that brought us peace was on him it's actually by his wounds that we are healed when when Jesus met and was trying to gather his first circle of followers we're told in the Gospel of John chapter 1 he came across this guy in the Fanueil and Nathaniel found out that Jesus was from stick town and what does Nathaniel say Nazareth she can anything good come out of Nazareth answer no no see that all of this is connected here Matthew wants us to see that even the place where Jesus grew up was a seeming disappointment to his parents actually becomes the symbol of what Jesus came to do he comes to address the human condition where is God where is God in the midst of the human tragedy and with all of these these three stories and he's trying to get us to see that the god revealed in Jesus he is Emmanuel and but he is not here to make all of our wildest dreams come true in fact you and I live in a world where God so honors the dignity and the moral decision of image bearing human beings that he has allowed us to create hell on earth and it's not because God is bad is because we're bad that's the point of the biblical story and so where is God in the midst of this huge mess that we've created and and what Matthews inviting us to see is that God has actually become subject to all of the same terrors and tragedies that we experience that's what these stories are about he's stick man he's the Messiah he's great he grows up in Nazareth which is connected through this elaborate wordplay I'll give you that but to the very profound idea that God has come in Jesus to redeem us by suffering on our behalf not to make our wildest dreams come true apparently they may come true they may not come true and Matthew saying that has nothing to do with the character of Jesus because what Jesus reveals is that the heart of God is to enter into the human tragedy because he he loves us He loves us utterly and that in Jesus got a subject to the evils and the disappointments and the tragedies Jesus was born with a price on his head and he will be executed where the price lemons and so whatever you know the myth of religious fulfillment the idea that Jesus is here to make my dreams come true it's so pervasive and I most of us you know if I were to you know ask and kind of tease that out most of us would say no of course I don't think that but then when our lives go south and we can't catch a break and everything goes wrong we end up ticked at Jesus because he's not making them our wildest dreams come true and it's like what's going on here and and Matthew chapter 2 has a very pastoral message for us it's that God is with us in the person of Jesus and Jesus went to his parents his youth every part of his life was marked by the disappointment of human existence and it's the same disappointment that marks most of our lives - and the only the only hope out of this whole mess that the story gives us then is that this suffering servant will bring healing through his wounds because God's love and commitment in Jesus to disappointing people whose flaws and failures have made our world what it is that his commitment and his love for our world and food each of us is so is so utterly strong and passionate that even our own sin and mortality and the evil that the Herod's and the Pharaohs caused can't overcome his love for our world and that's what the meaning of resurrection is the hope for our world is the resurrection of Jesus and that's where Matthew's Gospel is going to end and we'll get there in two years or something for that but but that's where the story ends the same baby born with a price on his head is the same Messiah crucified by the Romans and it's the same Jesus of Nazareth who was raised from the dead as the hope of the world and some man I don't know I know that there are stories of real hardship here in our met and I know that probably all of us have lives that to some degree or another marked by the disappointment of just things not going the way we wanted them to we all ask the question where is where is God and what has God up to surely he must be asleep at the wheel and Matthew two invites us to consider a different a different answer the God is with us and he is working out His redemptive plan but it does not look like what you thought it did and it might actually involve none of your dreams coming true which which forces us to ask ourselves why are we in this Jesus thing in the first place what are our real motives here what are we looking for and are we are we are we in touch with the real thing which is the heartbeat of this Jesus of Nazareth who is committed to show us the love and the grace of God and to give us hope by his resurrection from the dead things might get worse for a lot of us and and it forces us to focus in our hope on the only thing we have hoped in which is the resurrection of the Messiah from the dead and that's where I think Matthew 2 is trying to lead us so that's a light topic like that's a light place to leave us but I think it's the perfect place to lead us as we go into the bread in the cup here together in worship and as we have time to pray and to sing and to reflect I would just encourage you to ask yourself where are you at in terms of wise disappointment some of you are living a nightmare right now some of you are living with disappointment and just to be honest with Jesus about that and then to weigh your own motivations in your own heart and as we come to the bread and the cup this is this is the place where where Jesus knelt in the garden crying weeping over everything that was about to happen Jesus has wildest dreams were not coming true in the Garden of Gethsemane but precisely that road through suffering into resurrection is the way that he paved for us and our hope for the future and so let's just ask Jesus to to speak whatever truths we need to hear as we come to the bread and the cup here this morning let me close in a word of Prayer you

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

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Length: 48min 43sec (2923 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2017