Today, we will be talking about the events that follow on the heels of the birth of Jesus Christ. By way of background, to get us up to speed a little bit and understand the context here, we have talked in previous classes about the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. We talked about the conditions that had to be right, namely the Pax Romana, the Roman Empire being established that brought a level of peace and stability to that part of the world that had not existed before. This would allow Jesus Christ to come, would allow the church to be founded, would allow the message that He brought to begin to be spread to the human race there. We talked about the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah the priest as he is offering the incense in the temple there in Jerusalem, telling him that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a son who would become John, John the Baptist, the prophesied Elijah who would come and prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. We talked about Gabriel's appearance to the young woman Mary, or Merriam, and telling her that she would supernaturally conceive and give birth to the Messiah. We talked about her visit to Elizabeth, her elderly relative who is now expecting pregnant with the one who would become John the Baptist and their interaction there together. We talked about the timing of John the Baptist's birth and Jesus Christ's birth, their conception in birth, and how that could not have happened on December 25th, but most likely happened either on the Feast of Trumpets, Jesus Christ's birth, or on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles. And then we talked about the specifics of Christ's birth and how the traditional view of that, as most people envision Christmas to be, is almost entirely wrong in every detail. We'll cover a little bit more about that today as we get into the story here. And we closed by talking about some of the lessons we can learn from the lives of the individuals there and how God chooses to do things. And then last time, in our last class, we talked about Joseph and Mary bringing Jesus to the temple after her days of purification were complete. We talked about Jesus being circumcised, and we went through the different laws in the Books of Moses that describe the sacrifices in the background for that. And then we saw also the prophetic messages of Simeon and Anna, who were there serving faithful servants of God for many years, who were allowed to see the Messiah in person before they passed from the scene. So today we pick up the story in Matthew 2. And hopefully, if all goes well, we'll cover the first 23 verses of this today. If we do, that'll be a record for this class. So we'll see how that goes. A lot of times, we're only getting through half a page of the harmony or so. But there's a lot of good, fascinating background today that I want to share with you. So start off picking up the story here in Matthew 2 in verse 1 with the visit of the wise men. And so we read the story here. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. And of course, it's a very popular Christmas tradition and story with, you know, you've probably seen the manger scenes with the wise men there around the manger and Joseph and Mary and the baby there and the shepherds and the cows and the sheep and all of this. We discussed previously a lot of that is totally false. And we'll see that is true of this case here, in this case too. So the man, magi, is the word here. The magi are wise men.
You might think back to the example of Daniel back when the Jews were defeated by Nebuchadnezzar and were taken into captivity in Babylon. Daniel would have been, along with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, would have been considered one of these wise men. And these were men who were renowned for their knowledge of science. They were generally advisors to the kings. They were knowledgeable in astronomy, medicine, calendars, astrological computations, which ties in with the calendars, and so on there. It says here they were from the east and what is to the east. I have a map here to share with you. You have the area of Judea right here along the Mediterranean coast. And to the east we find the areas that the Israelites, courtesy of the Assyrians, had been exiled over into these lands. And likewise, the Jews, when Nebuchadnezzar defeated Judah and captured Jerusalem, he exiled the people over into this area as well. So when it talks about wise men from the east, it's possible, don't know for sure, that these wise men might have been from some of the Israelites that were transported, exiled over into that area. Might have also been Jewish because the Jews were exiled into that area. And actually, even to this, even to the last century, there were literally hundreds of thousands of Jews still living in places like Baghdad in modern-day Iraq and so on. How did they get there? Well, many of them went there back in the 500s BC. And then again, after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, you find Peter and his epistles referring to, well, we find reference to Israelites and Jews being in Babylon even in that day in the first century. So this exile has continued on up for many, many years here. So it's possible that these were Israelites or are Jewish wise men, as Daniel was. We just don't know for sure. I'd like to comment here on this word worship. Let me back up just a minute here.
And I've come to worship him. And I want to mention this because our concept of worship, we think of worshiping a divine being. To us, worship is coming to services and singing praise to God. It's praying to God, this sort of thing. The Greek word here, however, means something quite different here. And I want to mention this because many times in the Gospels we'll come across the same word worship. It's used probably a dozen or more times. And we get the wrong idea if we think of our view of worship. The word actually means literally to kiss the hand.
And you might think, for example, of somebody kissing the ring of the Pope. I think that's a continuation of this custom. It's been around for thousands of years, probably predated the Gospels by many, many centuries. And basically what it means is you bow down to someone or kneel down to show honor to someone of a higher status, particularly royalty or nobility or so on. That's what the word means here, is you're showing obeisance to somebody of a much higher status, kings or queens or nobility. It doesn't mean you're literally worshiping them as a divine being. And we find in the Gospels, it's worded that many people come and they worship Jesus. It doesn't mean they're acknowledging Him as God. It means they are honoring Him, bowing before Him, because of a miracle He has performed or something like that. It doesn't necessarily mean they are acknowledging Him as God. And that is the case here. They are coming to worship the newborn Jesus because He is the King of the Jews, not because they view Him as the Son of God here. So we need to understand that and mention that because, again, this word crops up again and again in the Gospels as we go through this. Actually, it's mentioned several times in this account as well. So I just want to make sure we keep this meaning in mind as we go through the Gospels, lest we get a wrong impression as to how some of the people did view Jesus in that time. So continuing on with the story in verse 3, When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. Now, why did this news disturb Herod? We know from sources such as Josephus, and I covered this in one of the background messages to the Gospels about the political situation there at that time. And Herod was paranoid. He had a series of fortress palaces scattered around the land there. He had a palace in Jerusalem. He had the Herodium fortress palace near Bethlehem that we talked about a class or two ago. He had Masada, the very famous fortress on top of a mountain out near the Dead Sea. He had one on the other side of the Dead Sea over in Jordan where John the Baptist is beheaded that we'll talk about later. He had seven different fortress palaces like this in all scattered throughout the land so that anywhere he was within his kingdom he would be within a fairly short distance of reaching the safety of one of his fortress palaces there.
Most of these were staffed or stocked with supplies of water and food to withstand a siege of up to 10 years or so there. So again Herod is quite a paranoid individual there.
And we'll talk about that as we go through the story here.
Now there is another factor at work here, and that is one that actually I don't remember ever being discussed or talked about in the church before, because there is an enormous threat to Herod. Herod is pretty much a vassal of the Romans. He was appointed king by the Roman Senate. So he is very much tied in with the Roman Empire, which of course extends all that around the Mediterranean to this side. So Herod is kind of their man, their anchor for the eastern flank of the Roman Empire. And you may be wondering about what this big colored area is out here. There was another empire that Rome was contending with for literally several hundred years. It's called the Parthian Empire. As a matter of fact, Rome and the Parthian Empire had been fighting and contesting over this area here for several decades leading up to this period. Parthia covered basically the entire area of what is today Iraq and Iran. It covered basically the area too, if you're familiar with biblical geography, what used to be the entirety of the ancient Assyrian Empire, the ancient Babylonian Empire. And now those empires have fallen centuries earlier, and they've been succeeded by the Parthian Empire. This is also again the area into which the ten tribes of Israel have been exiled, as well as the Jewish tribes. So there was probably, don't know how much, an Israelite component to this empire as well, and possibly some Jewish component as well because of the peoples who have been exiled into this area. So again, the Parthians of the Romans had fought over the Middle East here for several decades leading up to this time. In 53 BC, this is about a half a century before where we pick up the story here, the Parthians had defeated a Roman army under General Crassus. Some of you may remember that name if you've ever studied Roman history. They killed him and 20,000 Roman soldiers, which is a devastating defeat in that time. They also took another 10,000 Roman soldiers captive there in the Parthian Empire. It's one of the most devastating defeats in the entirety of the history of the Roman Empire, and it was courtesy of these people, the Parthians over here. Even Herod himself was involved in some of these wars. The Parthians actually drove the Romans out of this area here in 4039 BC, actually defeated the Romans, drove them out. Then under Mark Antony, another famous name for Roman history, they managed to regain some of this territory here. Herod the Great had helped drive out the Parthians out of the land of Judea here in 37 BC. So 30-35 years before the story picks up, Herod is out there fighting these Parthians, this huge empire off here to the east of the Roman Empire here. Now, at this point of the story where we're reading now in the Gospels, there's kind of an uneasy truce between the Romans and the Parthians here. And as a matter of fact, the Euphrates River right here is basically the truce line between the Roman Empire to this side and the Parthian Empire over here. As a matter of fact, around this time, some Romans and Parthians meet for peace talks, and they meet actually on an island in the middle of the Euphrates River there because that was, again, kind of the truce line. So there's all this story, this backstory in here, that isn't mentioned at all in the Gospels. Again, fascinating, fascinating.
Geopolitical situation is taking place here. So put yourself in Herod's shoes now as we look at this story here. Herod is getting on up in years. He's about 70 years old. At this point, he's rained by ruthlessness for all this period. He's killed many of his rivals, whom he considered contenders for the throne. He's had his own wife, Mariam, or Mariamni, murdered.
He has killed three of his sons, including the one who is to be his heir. He's killed his mother-in-law, he's killed his brother-in-law, who happened to be the high priest, had him drowned in his swimming pool down in Jericho, where one of his palaces was.
He's killed his Mariam's grandfather. They're very famous. Now, these are just the notable people that he's killed. This doesn't include the dozens, hundreds of others that he's killed, trying to maintain his power, who were just not important enough to be recorded in history, and thus were never written down. So put yourself in Herod's shoes. This is him. He's there at his palace in Jerusalem, and suddenly this large caravan of some pretty impressive wise men shows up from the east, from somewhere out here in the party, an empire. He had, again, personally fought with, alongside, fought against, alongside the Romans, several decades earlier. Now, why do I say this was... well, let's see, actually, one more illustration here to show you here. This is an illustration of the Parthians were very noted horsemen. They had outstanding cavalry, and that's one way they were able to defeat the Roman legions under crassus, because the Romans were in their infantry formations, and the Parthians riding on horseback using bows and arrows were much more mobile and were able to decimate the Romans. So why do I say that the wise men showed up in a caravan? Caravans were basically the way you travel for safety in that day and age, because that's a long distance, could have taken months to travel literally from the Parthian Empire to Jerusalem. And you travel in caravans for safety, because you're crossing these uninhabited areas where there are a lot of bandits hiding out, waiting to take advantage to attack the caravans and steal everything on them. And what are they carrying in this caravan? They're carrying gold, among other things. So they would have been a tempting target for bandits and outlaws and small armies out there. So in that day and age, if you were traveling a distance like that, you didn't go. Just three wise men on your camels with your gold there mounted with you. You traveled in a caravan of several dozen to perhaps several hundred people, including a lot of heavily armed men, to protect the caravan. So this again gives us a little more flavor to the story when these wise men show up in Jerusalem. It's not three wise men. It's probably a caravan of maybe up to several hundred individuals who show up there in Jerusalem. And that would not have been unusual in itself, because Jerusalem is right along one of the major trade routes there and would have had traders and people passing through all the time. But several hundred people, several dozen, several hundred showing up from Parthia, that's a different story. That would have definitely gotten Herod's attention there. So continuing on with the story, notice also that they did not come to Herod first. Herod heard about it there. So this also has to make Herod a little bit nervous here, because he got all these Parthians showing up. They're in Jerusalem, and what are they asking? They're asking, where is the king of the Jews? Yes, David. That was exactly what I was going to say.
Right. Herod is the king of the Jews. His title was King of the Jews, as appointed by the Roman Senate. So they want to know where the king of the Jews is. He says, hey, I'm the king of the Jews. What's this about another king of the Jews? Herod's paranoid, but the old saying, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. That's the way Herod is, no doubt, viewing this here. Reminds me of the quote from Shakespeare, Henry IV. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown, I think. And the meaning of that, the significance of it in Shakespeare's play, is the man who was wearing the crown, Henry IV, had his successor murdered so he could take the crown. And he knows, as he's thinking about this, well, somebody's plotting to murder me. So that's where that saying comes from, and that's no doubt true of Herod, too. Herod didn't necessarily murder to take the crown, but he certainly murdered to preserve and hold on to his crown. So the news, that a new king of the Jews had been born, and this bunch of men from Parthia who show up in Jerusalem looking for the new king had to be very threatening to Herod. And that's why it says in verse 3 that Herod was troubled. Actually, let me back up to that. Yeah, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, because if Herod is troubled and he's upset, he's disturbed, and if Herod gets into one of his moods of paranoia, literally no one is safe in Jerusalem, because you don't know what he's going to do. I'll talk about that a little bit more later here. All Jerusalem is troubled because Herod is troubled, and they know if Herod is troubled, there's trouble. So again, he had already killed many people to protect his throne. There's another historical factor to plug into this as well. Let me move back up here.
As we see from a number of times in the Gospels, we'll talk about this in the future, there was an expectation based primarily on Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy, which we'll cover in a few weeks coming up here at the beginning of Christ's ministry. There was an expectation that the Messiah was to appear on the scene soon. It's very interesting that, based possibly on that, possibly from other sources as well, many of the Roman historians of that period wrote about these expectations. I have a few quotes I'd like to share with you here. This is from Setonius. There had spread all over the Orient, an old and established belief, that it was faded at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world. No doubt from Bible prophecy is where this originated. This is what a Roman historian says. This prediction the Jews took to themselves, and accordingly they revolted. This was part of the belief driving the Jewish revolt in 70 AD, and then again in 132 to 135 AD, the Bar Kokhba Rebellion. Another quote, there was a firm persuasion that at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and the rulers coming from Judea were to acquire a universal empire. That's from the famous Roman historian Tacitus in his book Histories. Josephus also writes, About that time one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth. Of course, Josephus is familiar with the Messianic prophecies because he himself was a priest before he turned traitor and joined the Romans. This is part of the culture and background too, that Herod, being a king there for the Romans, is no doubt aware of these prophecies of the appearance of a Messiah that were common, not just among the Jews, but among the Romans, among the Roman Empire at that period.
Back to the story with Herod then, after years of these men who were in Jerusalem asking about a newborn king of the Jews. So what does Herod do? Here's are these rumors of people asking about this. And when he, Herod, had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So Herod obviously is aware of some of these prophecies here. But notice here what he asks them. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So Herod knows that these men are asking about somebody titled the king of the Jews, which again is his title here. But what he asks the wise men is where the Messiah is to be born. Because Herod knows this king of the Jews and the Messiah are one and the same. The wise men aren't looking for Messiah. They're looking for king of the Jews. Herod knows, though, who he is looking for, who he is concerned about, is the Messiah here. So why does he ask the priest and scribes where the Messiah is to be born? The Christ, the Messiah. Why does he do that? What are his intentions? Well, his intentions, we'll see in a few verses, are to kill the Messiah. Now think about that. That's really pretty staggering here. And this again ties in quite a bit with Mr. McMaster's sermon there about the pride and so on. Because Herod knows his Bible, to some extent. Not that he's a big Bible scholar, but he's aware of these prophecies. He knows the Messiah is to come, who is to reign and to rule over Israel. And what does Herod determine to do? He determines to kill this Messiah that God Himself has prophesied repeatedly is going to come.
So what's he doing? He is openly defying God.
I mean, think of the pride and the arrogance of this man. That that's what he's doing to do. He's going to cold-bloodedly murder the Messiah. He wants to know where he's been born. And he says to the wise man, so I can worship him. No, so we can kill him. Just the vanity and the arrogance there to defy God is staggering in this individual here. So continuing on, we see how his plan begins to unfold. Verse 5, So they, the chief priests and the scribes, said to Herod of where the Messiah would be born, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. And this is quoting, if you want to write it down, Micah 5, verse 2, But you, Bethlehem, ifrata, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are of old, are from everlasting, or from eternity, basically there, because acknowledging that he is a being who has existed from eternity. So continuing on with the story then, in verse 7, yes, Steve? It's interesting when you back up even one verse there, it might apply, but maybe this also would bring a chill down his spine. If you read this, he is now gathering myself in truth, O daughter of truth, he has laid siege against us. They shall smite the judge, which would be Herod, of Israel, with a rod upon your cheek. I would have probably been pretty chilling for him to realize that.
Yeah, good point. Excellent point. Thanks for bringing that out. Yeah, it actually ran over that last night, but yeah, it didn't include it in here.
Yeah, very good point. So yeah, continuing the story here in Matthew 2 and verse 7, then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, find that interesting. He does it secretly, because again, he's paranoia, so he doesn't want things to get out of hand, so he wants to keep control of the situation. So he does this secretly. Let's see, get a little bit away from my notes. When he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared.
Now this is interesting, too, because here's the mention of this star.
And what becomes evident as we read through this is a couple of things. One is, the wise men are the only one who can see the star. Because where's Herod? He's in Jerusalem. Where's Bethlehem? It's about five or six miles south of Jerusalem. So the star is led, the wise men, all the way from somewhere in the east, somewhere in the Parthian Empire for hundreds, maybe a thousand miles or more. And Herod is five miles away in Jerusalem, and he and his advisors don't notice the star. I think the obvious implication we draw from this is the wise men are the only one who has seen the star there, which tells us something about the nature of the star here. And also, as we read through the story, sometimes the star is moving. It's led, the wise men, from way over there to the east to the area of Jerusalem. And sometimes it stands still, as we see in just a few verses here. So this, of course, is not something, an actual star or planet or comet or conjunction of planets or whatever, which a lot of ideas out there about the nature of this star. This shows this is not a literally a star or planet or something like that. And, of course, in Bible prophecy, a star is used as a symbol of an angel. To me, it seems obvious this is an angel manifesting as a star. It looked like a star to the wise men, and that's why it's called a star there. So this is apparently an angel in some form who is guiding the wise men to their destination. So continuing the story in verse 8, and he, Herod, sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the young child, and when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also. Worship is the same word that we talked about earlier to bow down to or show obeisance to. So, of course, Herod really has no intentions of worshiping. His intentions are to kill him, to eliminate this other contender to the throne, and he wanted to know the exact location where this child is in Bethlehem so he can kill him. So this is what Herod is doing. Notice also, too, as part of the Christmas story, how Herod refers to Jesus at this point. Doesn't call him a baby. He refers to him as a young child.
So Jesus, by this time, is probably between one and two years old. Because, again, these wise men have been traveling for months from far over off to the east here, and now Jesus has grown up quite a bit. He's no longer a baby. He's probably between one and two years old here, as we see from this terminology here. And the shepherds are long gone from the scene by the time the wise men show up. Again, a flaw in the traditional view of the Christmas nativity there. So continuing on in verse 9.
When they heard the king, the wise men, they departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. So, again, the star is moving and then staying still right over Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem. And nobody in Jerusalem can see it. Only the wise men do. So, obviously, again, this is an angel appearing manifesting as a star. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, again, Jesus is not down in the stable in the, as we talked about earlier, the place where the animals are kept underneath the house. He's now in the house, possibly the same house, possibly a different house. We don't know. It's not that specific. They saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshiped, or bowed down to him, showing obeisance there. And, of course, the typical nativity scene just falls all apart at this point because the details, what you see in the nativity scene, is just totally wrong here. So, the wise men are visiting Jesus long after the shepherds are gone, and Jesus is no longer in a manger. He's up in the house with his mother, and now he's somewhere probably between one to two years old. So, continuing on, verse 11, And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And one of the study questions I sent out last night was, what is the significance of these three gifts? And I know, let's see, where's Tony? Yeah, Tony, you did your homework on this last night, didn't you? Sorry, pick on Tony here today. Anybody give any thought to the significance of those three gifts here? Yes, Vicki? Gold was where I became frankincense to the great precisely. Precisely. Glad somebody did their homework there. We actually published this in a good news article six, seven years ago, something like that. It's part of a larger story, but let's look at a few scriptural references here. Gold, there's actually so many references to gold. We can't turn to them all, so I didn't include those. But it's long been recognized as a gift for royalty. You'd come to kings and you would bring a gift of gold to them there. And in this case, the chosen king of the Jews and the one who will ultimately be king of kings and lord of lords was given gold there because he is royalty. He is a king. That is why he is born to be a king. Frankincense, you might write down Exodus 30 verses 34 through 37.
Go through this fairly quickly here.
And the eternal said to Moses, Take sweet spices, stack thee on an onyika and galvanum, and I have no idea what those spices are. And pure frankincense with these sweet spices there shall be equal amounts of each. You shall make of these an incense a compound according to the art of the perfumer, salted, pure, and holy. And then skipping down a verse to verse 37. But as for the incense which you shall make, you shall not make any for yourselves according to its composition.
It shall be to you holy for the eternal. So this special incense that was made for the priesthood was only for the priesthood. That formula, that recipe, you might say, was not to be used by anyone else. It was reserved strictly for the priesthood there. And of course, as we know, Jesus Christ would serve as our high priest. This was foreshadowing that fact. Just as the goal foreshadowed the fact He was born to be a king, this foreshadows the fact that He is to be our high priest.
And myrrh, what was myrrh used for, as Vicki pointed out, myrrh is well known as a perfume from that time. But because it was a perfume, it also had other uses. When a person died, this perfuming agent was wrapped with the body and the burial shroud to cover up, frankly, the stench of the decaying corpse there. So it was closely tied in with burial practices. And of course, Jesus' own body would be buried in this manner.
We see that from John 19, verses 39 and 40. And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes about a hundred pounds. That doesn't mean a hundred pounds as a measure of weight, but as a monetary weight, a monetary unit that it's talking about here, a very valuable amount of spices there. Then they took the body of Jesus and bound it in strips of linen with the spices as the custom of the Jews is to bury.
So we see there the significance of the myrrh. So here in these three gifts, that doesn't mean the wise men are consciously thinking of that. I don't think they are. I just think, again, this is one of the ways that God brings about some of these incredible details that we're seeing in the Gospels to spell out what is going to happen in His purpose and His plan for the Messiah. Yes, Lynn? Well, the timing on the basis of the gifts is very important to us, too, because there's a good thing here. And if we're not only using the word of the modification of the Gospels, we're up to eight actors.
Yeah, uh-huh. I think you need to write that up and send it in. Actually, there was a very valuable use for it, which we'll get to in just a minute here. Yes, David? Yeah, precisely. Yeah, another one of the study questions I sent in is, how many wise men were they? Well, most people three, because there's three gifts. Well, no. The Bible doesn't say. It says there were these three types of gifts.
There may have actually been other types of gifts that Luke didn't write down because it wasn't pertinent to the story there. And, of course, we talked about earlier, the wise men probably came as part of a caravan of a hundred or more people. They're complete with armed guards to protect the gifts that they're bringing there. Yes, Tim, you have a very serious look on your face. Priests for burial. For burial. Yeah, it was used as a perfume to cover up the stench, frankly, of the decaying corpse there, as we see from John there, to signify that he would die as the sacrifice for mankind, the three roles, king, priest, and sacrifice.
Yes, David? I'm just wondering how this is applicable to what is going to happen to the right men as they're going to have to leave the whole obviously with these helpful purposes. It's probably the frankincense that the murder of the king has made his intentions clear yet. So, yeah, they're bringing gifts to a newborn king, and even they don't understand the symbolic significance of it.
I think that's the point of the story here. Luke doesn't tell us. He just lists the gifts. It's only from comparing it with other scriptures that we understand the significance of those gifts.
Maybe this is probably a way to facilitate being able to do that. Exactly. I think this is very interesting because, yeah, what is God doing? God is obviously protecting them. We'll see in just a moment here. They're warned by an angel.
We actually find that in the very next verse here. Actually, let's go ahead and turn to that. Verse 12, "...then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod..." Now, this is actually talking about the wise men. The wise men are warned in a dream. And later we'll see that Joseph is warned in a dream as well. So, yeah, God is actually giving these gifts that will finance their flight to Egypt and probably sustain them for a year or so that they are in Egypt.
And maybe enough left over that when they come back after Herod is dead, that Joseph can buy some property and maybe build a house and start a business, his construction building business there as well. So, yes, God is not only protecting the family, but He's also providing for them as well by sending these gifts there. So, yeah, no doubt they obviously wouldn't have lathered themselves up with all the spices and so on. They would have probably sold it to help finance their living expenses there for a period of a couple of years there. And God miraculously provided that for them, because they certainly didn't expect that to come their way. But God knew it. God knew what was going to happen before the wise men started heading out here bringing these gifts to them. New Herod's nature knew what was going to happen there. So, as we'll see from prophecy in just a moment here. Continuing the story, verse 12, then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, the wise men departed for their own country another way. So, again, they couldn't read Herod's mind. They couldn't read his intentions. So, God intervenes and divinely warns them to get out of there, because otherwise Herod might have killed them. Of course, that might have precipitated another war with Parthia. We don't know. But clearly God preserved the wise men, too, and warned them to return back home and not go back through Jerusalem to Herod. But they had directly from Bethlehem out and back to safer territories there. Continuing on, verse 13, Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. This is clearly a serious situation. God warns the wise man, and He also warns Joseph here. Verse 14, When he arose, Joseph arose from sleep, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed for Egypt. Notice here, too, when did they leave? They left at night. Probably right that moment, because again, Joseph is sleeping. He sees this in a dream, and they arose by night. They leave at night, because at night, nobody can tell which direction you're heading there. So actually, if you look on your map on the back, just above the word Judea, you'll see Bethlehem there, and you'll see the dotted lines. Those are the main roads of that day. There's what's called the ridge route that runs along the central spine of mountains between Hebron down there, and Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, and then on up north.
Probably what they do is they just take this road down to Hebron, and then take the road that branches off to the west, to the Mediterranean coast, and then onto the Via Morris, the interstate highway of the day, and right down into Egypt. So it's probably no more than four, five, six days' walk to get down to Egypt from there. You can walk about 10-12 miles a day, so that makes perfect sense. Bethlehem is located right on this ridge route. So yeah, that's the most they would have got out of town as quickly as they could. So yeah, they made a beeline there for Egypt there, in accordance with the warning from the angel there. Verse 15, and it says, "...and they were there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord, through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I called my son." That's a quote from Hosea 11 and verse 1. The context is substantially different here, but Hosea 11 and verse 1 says, "...when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." This is a prophecy of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to become God's people there in the Promised Land.
Essentially, what Matthew is doing is taking this prophecy and applying it to the one who is the king and the redeemer of Egypt, personifying Egypt, you might say, just like we would say, George Washington is the father of the country, the father of Americans, and so on. This is kind of applying a personification of one person, personifying the nation here. So Jesus, again, is the king and the savior and the redeemer of Israel. So Matthew is applying that prophecy to him there. That's not the meaning of the original prophecy, but that's the way Matthew is applying it here. Well, I'm actually going to talk about this in a sermon coming up, hopefully in July here. Talk about a number of issues like this that help us understand better the mindset of a lot of what's going through the minds of the writers of the Gospels and Jesus when they apply some of these writings out of the Old Testament. I think it'll be fascinating stuff you have never heard before, and I'd never heard before until last year or two. So continuing on, verse 16, Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, as we might expect. And he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem, and in all its districts, referring to the surrounding small towns of maybe a few dozen to a few hundred people, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. So several things to point out here. Herod is obviously covering his bases to protect his throne. So he orders the slaughter of every male child, two years and younger. So this again gives us some idea of the time frame that the wise men may have been, may have first seen the star a year earlier, indicating the birth of the Messiah, or the king of the Jews, rather. And so maybe Herod is playing it safe and says, okay, I'm going to make sure, so I'm going to kill all of them from two years old and under to make sure I get the right one. And he doesn't limit the murder to just Bethlehem, but to the surrounding towns as well. Bethlehem in that day was probably about the size of Nazareth. We talked about that in an earlier class, probably a couple hundred people, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, maybe. There were probably in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 boys, two and under, in that area that would have been murdered at this time. Now, some people read this. I just read this last night and researching this, that one critic of the Bible who's looked at this says, obviously, Matthew made this up because it's not recorded anywhere in any other history book there. Well, frankly, the person showing their ignorance in that statement, because this type of murder and brutality was unfortunately all too common when it came to kings and rulers in that day.
If they viewed somebody as plotting against their throne, they wouldn't go in and kill just the kids. They would wipe out the entire village. That was just the way it was done. You did not leave an enemy alive. You did not leave another person who wanted the throne alive. You wiped them all out. And that's indeed what Herod did when he came into power there. The nobility in Jerusalem there, the others who might have been viewed as a legitimate heir to the throne, he killed them all, wiped them out. Josephus talks about that.
As we saw earlier, he killed his own wife, killed his three sons, killed the high priests, killed his brother-in-law, killed his wife's grandfather, killed his mother-in-law there to get rid of others that he considered a threat to the throne. So this was just routine. That was the way it was done. And Herod was such a brutal people, brutal ruler, he probably killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people. So it's not surprising that this would not be recorded in any other history book. It was it was old news, you know, it was small news. There were much bigger items there. So that's just the unfortunate reality of the brutality of the world at that time. So, and of course, as we see, this is from Josephus and from this, this is very much in keeping with Herod's character, his paranoia and his ruthlessness in dealing with threats to his throne there.
So continuing on, verse 17, Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Rhema, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more. And that's quoting directly from Jeremiah 31 and verse 15.
And one of the questions I asked, study questions, was what's this about? Why is Matthew throwing Rachel into here? What would she have to do with this story? And again, this helps give you a little insight into the way the Bible writers are thinking. Anybody know what would be the connection between Rachel and Bethlehem and the murder of these infants?
Okay, no takers. Well, didn't expect it necessarily, but yeah, yeah, David.
Yeah, Rachel was viewed as, along with Sarah, as one of the matriarchs of the country, of the nation. She's a very honored person there. And yeah, so in that sense, the children, the literal children of Israel or Judah, would have been viewed as her children, because she's, again, the mother of the nation. Like again, we call George Washington the father of the country there. We know that's not literally the case, but symbolically it is, and that's what is what is being referred to here. There's also an interesting story from back in Genesis. If you remember the story, Rachel died in childbirth, and where was she buried?
Where was she buried? Well, let's take a look at that. Genesis 35, verse 16.
Then they journeyed. This is talking about Abraham and the people there. Then they journeyed from Bethel, which is about 10 miles north of Jerusalem. And when they were traveling south, and when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath, which is another name for Bethlehem, anciently, Rachel labored in childbirth, and she had hard labor. Now it came to pass, when she was in hard labor, that the midwife said to her, Do not fear, you will have this son also. And so it was, as her soul was departing, for she died, that she called his name Ben-Oni, but his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died and was buried on the way, or the route, or road, to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem. So Rachel is actually buried right outside Bethlehem.
And if you go there to this day, you can see what is called the tomb of Rachel, right by the road there, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, just north of Bethlehem there. So what this is saying, Matthew is taking, you might say, some poetic license, and he's essentially saying that Rachel in her tomb is weeping for her slain children.
It's really a very heart-wrenching story here, there, symbolically here. This is what the tomb would have looked like back in the 1800s. It looks very different now, and certainly looked much different back 2000 years ago when Matthew is writing this. But the tomb is still there, and a lot of Jews go there to honor and to show their respect for Rachel, even to this day.
So in this prophecy, she's figuratively weeping for her children who are murdered by an Edomite, King Herod here again, very poetic, very touching. So Herod had these 15 or 20 baby boys murdered there with no regard for the families in the heartache that he's causing here, again just showing the kind of character, the kind of evil, brutal character King Herod was. And again, he did this much worse than this on other occasions here. But one thing to keep in mind is who and what is really behind this, because that's the really important story, and we learned that back in Revelation 12 and verses 3 through 5.
And another sign appeared in heaven, and this prophecy jumps back and forth in time somewhat. Another sign appeared in heaven, Behold, a great fiery red dragon, and we know who that is, having seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on his head. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to earth, against stars symbolic of angels. This is referring to Satan's rebellion against God, the Father in heaven. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, referring to Mary or Mariam, to devour her child as soon as it was born.
So again, this is jumping from the angelic rebellion back before the time of Adam and Eve to the time of Jesus Christ's birth and also the rebellion again. We know Satan will be cast to earth again, knowing that his time is short. So again, time is all jumbled up in this prophecy here. But the point is who is behind it here, and that is Satan the devil. And verse 5, she bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God and is thrown. Of course, that happened 33 and a half years later, and he is crucified and he is resurrected to be caught up to God and is thrown. Again, the shifting of time in there here. So Satan's plot is foiled here, as we see from this prophecy in Revelation. But this is actually, if you think about it, the third time that Satan has tried and failed to kill the Messiah. Can anybody think of some of the other times he tried to thwart God's plan and prevent the Messiah from being born? Yes, Dave? Well, one time the media effort was baptized, and one was going to go over to Satan and try to get into the name of that decision and lose his title there. Right, right. Yeah, good one. I actually hadn't written that one down, but good. Yeah, two others on a much larger scale. What happened with Adam and Eve? Satan tried to influence them to sin to bring upon themselves the death penalty so that they would die, hopefully before they would give birth to the Messiah who would be born. There's a descendant of Eve, and Adam for that matter. Another time, think back to the story of Esther. And what happened to the story of Esther?
Mordecai tries to have the entire Jewish nation wiped out. Wiped out here several hundred years before this story here. To commit genocide, wipe out the entirety of the tribe of Judah who are in exile over there in the lands of Persia there. And of course, if Satan were able to pull that off, yes, the Messiah had to be a descendant of Judah because the scepter would come from Judah. Satan knew that, so he plots to exterminate the entirety of the Jews. So there's at least three different times that Satan tried to thwart the plan of God. Actually, four, including the one Dave brought up there, of trying to thwart God's plan there by eliminating the Messiah, by either killing him or, as Dave pointed out, trying to get him to sin, to disqualify himself from that. So Satan is really the one at work who's been at work, for instance, since Adam and Eve's time to try to thwart God's plan.
So continuing back to the story here, back in Matthew 2 and verse 19.
But when Herod was dead, and I'll digress a minute here to talk about this, because again, it sheds insight on Herod. According to Josephus, and you can look this up online if you want to, just do a Google search for death of Herod Josephus. And you can read about this. They don't necessarily recommend it, because it's not a pretty sight.
According to Josephus, Herod died a terrible death from the symptoms. He appears to have been suffering from some kind of venereal disease there. He's reported to have smelled so bad in his last weeks and days that no one could stand to be in the room with him for more than a few minutes. The stench was so overwhelming from his body that he's literally decaying there. Don't want to gross you out, so I won't go into more details about that. But that's that's kind of the the tenor of what Josephus records about Herod's death. Now, as he was dying, which was a long process, took months, someone commented that no one would mourn for Herod when he was gone. And when Herod heard that, he ordered several hundred of the noblemen, the respected men of Judea, to be rounded up and brought to the stadium in Jericho, because Herod is dying at his palace in Jericho. And he orders them to be locked in the stadium with orders that when Herod dies, his soldiers are to go in and massacre several hundred respected Jewish leaders there in Jericho, because he knows that people aren't going to mourn for him, but he's going to make sure there's going to be mourning in the land of Judea when he's gone. So he orders that several hundred innocent men are to be rounded up and killed. Now, fortunately, that did not happen, because cooler heads prevailed, and it didn't happen.
Well, actually, one version of the story I heard is that one of Herod's son, his heir, was convinced this was a bad idea, because it would lead to civil war in the kingdom. So, in the interest of the nation, he counter-manded Herod's orders. Well, Herod's on his deathbed when he orders this. And unfortunately for him, Herod recovered for several weeks or several months. And when he found out about this, he had a big banquet for his allies and so on. And the main entertainment at the banquet was to have this son brought in and slowly strangled over with a garret over the course of the banquet. In other words, they would serve a course to Herod's guests, while another man is there slowly strangling Herod's own son.
And they'd bring out another course, and they'd tighten the garret a little more, and so on, until his son is strangled there, his entertainment, for his guests. Again, this is the kind of man that Herod was. A terribly brutal individual. So anyway, enough of that. So Herod does die at his palace in Jericho. Part of his last request is that he be buried at the Herodium, which we talked about in a class several weeks ago. And just a couple of years ago, three, four summers ago, his tomb was actually found. This Israeli archaeologist Ehud Nasser had been searching for it for about 20 years. And this is the base for the pediment for where his coffin would have been placed on top of this. And you can see this is on the side of the hill of the Herodium, looking out. And you can see part of the area toward Jerusalem and Bethlehem down here at a much lower elevation. So this is what he found is the remains. This pedestal, you might say, that Herod's coffin would have been placed on. They did find a lot of fragments of the coffin and were able to reconstruct what it looked like, but had been smashed to tiny bits. Because obviously, after Herod died, it shows what his subjects thought about him. They went in there and smashed his coffin to bits. Nothing was found, any bones or anything like that. But that's the sad end of Herod. He was buried there at the Herodium where he had requested to be buried. So continuing on, we're about to wrap up here. Matthew 19. When Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, take the young child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young child's life are dead. Then Joseph arose and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
Again, I might just mention that probably the gifts help provide for them to cover their living expenses during this period of probably a year or more, and probably also help them get established once they move back to Judea. Next verse, 22. We are going to make it through twenty-three verses today, a record. But when he heard that Archalaeus was reigning over Judea, instead of his father Herod, when Herod died his kingdom was divided up among several of his sons, one of whom was Archalaeus. As we see here, Archalaeus is an apple who doesn't fall far from the tree because Joseph is afraid of him and is not going to move back there. So, being warned by God in a dream, again, here's another divine warning, Joseph turned aside into the region of Galilee.
So, apparently, reading between the lines, Joseph and Mary want to settle back around Bethlehem. Again, this is their ancestral homeland. Both of them are descendants of King David, and that's where David was from. But God is actually continuing to take care of and protect them, so he says, don't do that. Archalaeus is the ruler over there, so instead they move back north to Galilee, again about a hundred miles north of Jerusalem. And this is, as we'll talk about in order, that different prophecies shall be fulfilled. And verse 23, Joseph came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. So, one of the study questions that was sent out last night was, where do we find the prophecy that Jesus would be called a Nazarene? Anybody find that?
Well, don't feel bad because I didn't find it either. It's not there.
So, why is this written? Why does Matthew include that in there? Well, a couple of possibilities. Notice, first of all, how this is worded, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. In other words, not written down. Or not written down in one of the prophetic books we have, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and so on there. Spoken, but not written down. Maybe that's the simple solution. It just was simply never written down. It was spoken. It was understood, known by people as a spoken prophecy, but never written down.
That's one quite simple solution to it. Another possibility is that this was recorded in a book that was never included as part of the canonical books of the Bible, the accepted books of the Bible. The Bible itself does refer to several different books that existed at that time that we do not have today. An example of that, Jude refers to the book of Enoch, and quotes a prophecy about the Lord returning with tens of thousands of his saints. There, Joshua and 2 Samuel quote from a book called the Book of Jasher, which we don't have.
No idea what that's about. There are also writings referred to called the, quote, the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. There's one called, I think, the Acts of Solomon that's referred to. There's one called the Book of Shemaiah the prophet and Ido the seer that's mentioned in 2 Chronicles, and several others. There's at least 12, 15 different books that are referred to or quoted in the Bible that we don't have anymore.
So that's quite a possibility there, that it was recorded in a book that was never preserved or included in the books of the Bible. And another possibility is that this reference to Jesus being a Nazarene is simply meant as a generic reference that he would be despised and rejected. As we see in Isaiah 53 and verse 3, on a famous prophecy, he is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.
He was despised and we did not esteem him. And we see this reflected even by one of Jesus Christ's own disciples before he called him here. The disciple, Nathaniel, as John records in John 1 and verse 45 and 46, Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus the Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
And Nathaniel's comeback was, could anything good come out of Nazareth? So perhaps that's what it's referring to, just that Jesus would be looked down on because of, again, despised and rejected, as Isaiah puts it here, because he comes from this little podunk town here as Nazareth was to be viewed. Maybe that's what this is referring to as well.
So I would say it could be any one or combination of these three different explanations. I personally tend to lean more toward the second one, that it's part of an actual book that was written but wasn't recorded in Scripture. And the reason I say that is there is at least one writer in the third century who writes about a, I think it was a Jew, who showed him a book in which that exact phrase is used.
And this writer saw the book at that time, this is in the third century, and it has that exact quote in it. But nobody knows what happened to that book or where it is now. It's just simply been lost to history since it was not part of the canon of the Bible. So Matthew may have known about this. Well, he obviously knew about it because he writes about it there around 70 AD, approximately, 60 AD, excuse me there.
So Matthew must have known about it in the first century, and this other writer saw a copy of the book in the third century AD, but the book was simply not preserved and is lost to history since that time. So there we made it through our 23 verses there. Matthew set a record here. So questions, comments, thoughts generated by this. Yes, Tim?
Right, right. And again, notice the word spoken by Jeremiah, but written by Zechariah there. Yeah, yeah. So the writers are very precise in the language that they use there. So again, maybe it was just spoken and was lost as a result of that. Maybe it was written down later by somebody else, and that book was not preserved. That's probably what happened. It was spoken by one of the prophets and was written down later by someone else. But we no longer have that copy of the written book. Yes, David? I just wonder if there's some confusion about him being from Nazarene or Nazarene. Do you think there's some transliteration or something?
Well, actually that prompts another thought, because what does Nazarene mean? As we talked about the meaning of the name Netserit. Netser is Hebrew for branch. He came from branch town. He was the prophesied branch. There were prophecies that a branch would grab of the stump of Jesse, which is a messianic prophecy. It's possible that is what is being referred to as well, because Matthew, in writing this, is probably writing, using the Hebrew word there, that he would be a Nazarene. He would be an inhabitant of a branch town of Nazareth there. That might be a good explanation of it. There is the common idea that, yes, he was a Nazarite.
Some people use that to justify the view of Jesus having long hair and so on, kind of like this crazy wild man out there running around. Some of the restrictions on a Nazarite were that they could take no alcohol. Yet it's obvious Jesus drank alcohol because he's called a glutton in a wine bipper. A lot of people believe that to try to make that work, but if you look at all the evidence there, it just doesn't quite fit there. A lot of people think John the Baptist took a Nazarite vow as well. Don't think that's the case, as we'll see when we talk about John the Baptist in coming classes as well.
Any other thoughts, questions engendered by this? Yes, Vicki? I was just wondering, you know, the beast and the false thought that all these vaccines were written by him, and so they would have had a chance to have been considered a true objective. What do you do with a man who determined to kill the Messiah?
In my view, he's probably a lost cause. A man who murdered so many members of his own family, who was just so bloodthirsty, he'd just kill people for spite, who was wanting to kill several hundred respected men of the nation just so the people would mourn at his passing.
Totally corrupted individual in his thinking. Unbelievable. Yes, he is influenced by Satan, I'm sure.
Satan's the unseen player in all of this, as we saw from the prophecy there in Revelation. Satan's the one manipulating to try to bring about his plan as God is bringing about his plan. Both of them are very much at work behind the scenes there.
Yes, Tim?
Yeah, the theater in Caesarea. Yeah, one of the sons, yeah, we'll actually find, let's see, there's Herod Antipas, who's mentioned. Yeah, they actually, yeah, and I talk quite a bit about Herod because you understand what he is like, you understand what his offspring are like, and they're pretty nasty characters. One of them has John the Baptist beheaded there. Yeah, one of them is struck down as a recorded in Acts because, yeah, he's giving this powerful, flowery oration there in the theater at Caesarea. And they say these are the words of a God and not a man. And at that moment, God strikes him down there. That'll learn, yeah. So, yeah, it just shows the kind of people they were. As we'll talk about it, at one point, one of Herod's sons, who's reigning over Galilee, has his capital in Tiberius, where is the center of Jesus' ministry? It's at Capernaum. Capernaum is six, seven, eight miles from Tiberius, but we never see Jesus setting foot in Tiberius. Why? Because Jesus knows what kind of guy this ruler is in Tiberius, and he knows he's the same one who beheaded John the Baptist. So if Jesus sets foot in Tiberius, same thing may happen to him, this happened to John the Baptist. And Jesus doesn't want to be killed before the time is right for prophecy to be fulfilled. So, yeah, there are these threads. I actually did a lot of research on Herod, and it was plenty to present that today, but it would have taken a good half hour or 45 minutes to go through all the ins and outs of how he got into power and his attempts to maintain his power and the political and background and all that. But again, just didn't have time to cover it all today. It would have been a whole lecture just in itself about Herod and the kind of person he was. So actually, you covered that pretty well in your sermon there. And the generational problems passed on from generation to generation because his offspring weren't any better than he was. They didn't have as much power because, again, his kingdom was divided up among them, his surviving sons, and even they were at each other's throats at different times trying to gain more power. But yeah, that's the kind of people they are, and that is a thread, a constant thread in the background of the Gospels there. If you don't understand that, you don't know why certain things happen. Like, why did Jesus never set foot in Tiberius? If you don't understand, that was the capital of one of Herod's sons. You just wonder why not?
Yes. Yep. Yep. So a lot of interesting stuff there when you get in and begin and understand the background. So any other thoughts, questions, comments? Appreciate the questions and comments, by the way. Yes, Steve? Most scholars say 4 BC, specifically spring of March, April of 4 BC, and they time that. There was, oh boy, I was looking at it last night, but I didn't include it in here. Josephus records a lunar eclipse in the last year or so before Herod died, and because of that, I don't remember the details. I didn't look into it because that wasn't my focus. But because of that, you can date it pretty close to 4 BC, give or take a year there, which means Jesus is probably born in 5 BC there. So sometime we'll talk about, well, yeah, when we get into 70 weeks prophecy and so on, we'll talk about the beginning of Christ's ministry and talk about some of these chronological issues as we go through it.
But yeah, there's people who place Jesus at birth anywhere from 7-8 BC up to about 2-3 BC, somewhere along in there, because it is pretty hard to pin down. They just don't say. Yeah, it tags the beginning of Christ's ministry. It doesn't tag when he was born, but the beginning of Christ's ministry, specifically to 27 AD. So yeah, I have all that information I was going to include today, but just cut it out for lack of time. So we'll talk about that another few classes from now. So, okay, well, I need to run down to spring. So I appreciate all your participation and attention there. So we'll pick it up again in a couple of weeks. So with that, the class is dismissed.
