Keep your copy of scriptures there in hand, and turn to the Gospel of Matthew. I’m gonna take a short detour from James, this wonderful wisdom book in the New Testament. We’ll pick up in chapter four after a couple of weeks. We’re gonna spend a couple times in Matthew chapter two, a couple of weeks in Matthew chapter two. We’re in the first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 2. Let’s give your full attention to God’s word, and indeed, before we hear from him, let’s ask his blessing upon the reading and hearing of that word. Let’s pray once more. Our heavenly Father, mighty God, we remember that the shepherds of old were full of your praises. They declared and they said that all that they had heard and seen was echoed by what they had been told. And so, Lord, we pray now, Holy Spirit, move among us, be with us, powerful Lord, that we too might hear and experience the wonder and joy of the living word, Jesus Christ, as we seek to be transformed by the written word, even now at this time. I pray, Lord, that you would bless, indeed, the preaching and the hearing and the reading of your word. May you receive glory through all things. We ask this in Christ’s name and all God’s people said, amen, amen. Matthew chapter two, starting at verse one. Of course, chapter one tells us about the genealogy of Jesus and his birth, and then in chapter two, Matthew picks up and he says this. Now after Jesus was born in 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 saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. And they told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. And then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring him Bring me word that I too may come and worship him. And after listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. And then opening their treasures, they offered gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. So for the reading of God’s word, may he indeed add his blessing upon it at this time. I remember visiting recently, actually, with some family, and this happens every year, usually when many of us lament the reality of this onslaught of the commercial shopping season, right? Every year it seems to get, this cultural season seems to get pushed more and more further forward. In some, in the family, someone particularly made the point that they wish that they could impose a moratorium on Christmas songs until Christmas Eve because it’s all that he was hearing. But we see this, right? It seems like culturally, the culture in marketing wants to start the Christmas season earlier and earlier. And as I thought about these things, I searched and I found one site said that there were 331 holidays or national observances throughout the year in America. And that’s insane, right? We are to be a remembering people. We are to remember the truth. We are to remember these things. And I’m sure there’s more than 331 people we’ve come up with. The list was actually ridiculous. And there’s a logical problem, right? There’s other problems too, but there’s a logical problem with all of this. When every day is a holiday, no day is a holiday. When every day is a holiday, there is no holidays. When everything is observed, we’re observing nothing. We are certainly called to be a remembering people, as the people of God. We see this throughout the Testaments, old and new. Paul says in Ephesians chapter two, we are to remember. We’re to remember. We’re not to be enslaved to what the culture wants us to remember, though. We’re not to thoughtlessly follow the dictates of society and society’s superstitions. But we are to remember the truth. which remember God’s ways and works in redemption, right? For they are glorious, and they are refreshing, and they are powerful, and they are empowering. These are good things. But the culture’s preparation for Christmas seems to begin when all the silly Halloween stuff is still out. I took a survey of some people in my family, and they tell me this. It’s further and further forward. And I remember months, years ago, hearing a man preach about God’s divine preparation for Christmas. And it’s encapsulated, this idea of the Lord preparing for the advent, the incarnation and birth of the Lord. It’s encapsulated in a line from that hymn that we sang, Old Little Town of Bethlehem. In the first stanza it says, yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light. That’s Jesus. And it says the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in him. in His coming, and that’s it, right? That’s the divine preparation that the Lord has been making for the incarnation, for the advent, the coming of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. The hopes and fears of all the years are indeed met in Him that night. And so Christ’s coming, His advent, His fulfilling of the scriptures is what this is all about. That’s what we learned from this chapter today in a very strong way. As we’ll begin to look at this chapter, we’ll finish it next week. But we see this, this fulfillment, the Lord fulfilling scriptures. But let’s first set the context and the text and correct some misconceptions that undoubtedly fog our minds and our memories and our understanding about just what went on. I don’t think I’m the only one that has to struggle with this. There is indeed an embarrassment of riches regarding the faulty data that’s been packed onto the biblical text from years of traditions and stories and movies and poems, et cetera, plays. You think of those plays that you see every year, from year to year, from preschool on up, where you have, they’re supposedly based on this passage, these birth narratives. But they’re based more on songs and plays that have come up culturally. These popular Christmas carols, something like We Three Kings. Maybe when you were a child, you were in one of these plays. But we see them, and the children are all there, and they’re cute, and they’re dressed up in their little cardboard beards, in their crowns, in their robes, and they’re playing these three kings, bringing gifts to the newborn baby in the manger, if you remember the play. And that’s cute, for sure, but that’s not what happened. There weren’t kings that came, and there weren’t three of them, and they didn’t visit baby Jesus in the manger where he was born. And so that’s part of the problem of this non-biblical data creeping into our thinking. So we wanna think and sing rightly about these things, about what scripture tells us, these significant, these ultimately, utterly, ultimate significant events in history, this particular, the birth of Jesus Christ. And so let’s look here, and maybe with fresh eyes, and maybe unpack some of the unbiblical bags that we picked up along the way, and think anew about what actually happened with the coming birth of Christ. This is not a boring, ho-hum story. It’s not an event that should be muddied by the sentiment and traditions of our culture. So let’s first get a sense of where we are in redemptive history as we look at this text. I had a professor, he used to say, I think I’ve commented to you, what time is it? You always have to ask the question, what time is it when you’re reading Scripture? In a minute, what time in redemptive history, right? What time is it in God’s timeline, what he’s doing in redemption? And we can similarly, I think equally as valid, ask the question, where are we? What time is it? Where are we? Where are we in the storyline of the unfolding of the Lord’s work of deliverance and salvation for his people? Some of you know that if you look at the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible originally, that the last book of the Old Testament is actually Chronicles. It’s broken up in two in our English version, and it’s put forward, but it’s actually the end It closes the canon in the Old Testament Hebrew Bible, Chronicles. We don’t have time to go into all the relevant data and points and connections about this. There are many. But I want to point you to the significance of these seams between the Testaments, right? So as we look at the divine design of Scripture, Chronicles and then Matthew, right? Matthew, the New Testament begins. And we want to look at these seams, these connections between the last book of the Hebrew Old Testament and the first book of the New Testament. One book, the book of God’s people, and it has a divine design. Another professor of mine used to say that we have a purpose-driven Bible, and we do. It’s built that way for a reason. And we look at some of the data, some of the interesting things about this, and we see that there are only two books in your Bibles that begin with genealogies. I don’t know if you know that. There are only two, really, and those books are what? Chronicles and Matthew, right? Some would say that Genesis actually is a series of genealogies, but not in the traditional way that we see in Chronicles and Matthew. It’s very interesting. This is significant because genealogies are placed at points in scripture where redemptive history is advancing, where God is doing something, Lord is doing something new. They’re not inserted simply for nostalgic reasons, or because we want to look at our ancestors and ponder about where we come from. We may do that, but they’re inserted to identify key themes and to advance redemptive history. Redemptive history, this is a big macro theme going on. And in Chronicles, you’ll know, as you’ve encountered it in your daily Bible reading, is made up of nine chapters of genealogies to begin with, nine chapters. And this starts us on a track of looking for something. There’s a great event coming, a great redemptive historical thing that’s on the horizon. It introduces a new phase in redemptive history. And then everything that comes after Chronicles rehearses these major points in history, preparing us for something new. There are a handful of things going on in Chronicles that trace, that highlight these themes. One of them is the kingship of David. One is the establishment of the temple. And then there’s this focus on the Passover. This is all going on. When you think about the Passover, it’s only really focused on an exodus and then here in Chronicles. And so there’s some connections there that we can unfold maybe in the future. But here’s the importance of this. The book of Chronicles, 1 and 2 Chronicles for us, is charged with looking for something. It’s charged with looking for the right king, looking for the right priest, looking for the one who will go up for them as a warrior and lead them on a new exodus. This is what’s going on. There’s this swelling sense going on. The Exodus event is an event where the Lord fights as a warrior to bring his people deliverance. Chronicles is setting this all up. So there’s this push and this unfolding, even in the way that Chronicles is constructed. And that climax is found in the one who indeed will deliver his people in a new Exodus. And in fact, if you look at Luke’s gospel, Jesus says, I have a new exodus, I have an exodus to undertake, right? But God’s word tells us exactly who that deliverer will be. And we know this because the Book of Chronicles ends how? It ends with a verb. You might think that sounds odd. There’ll be no grammar lesson. But in Hebrew, it’s very interesting. Because in Hebrew, Hebrew loves its verbs up front. Different languages structure their normal pattern of writing and speaking in certain ways. And so that’s the normal pattern for Hebrew. In Hebrew, when you’re reading it, it’s a verb, and then it gives you the rest of it. But here, very interestingly, as a way of highlighting, emphasizing, saying something new, the verb is put at the very end of the sentence. It’s the last word in the Hebrew canon, the Old Testament. And the verb at the end of Chronicles says this. It says, let him go up. It’s one word in Hebrew. In English, we have to have four words. But it says, let him go up. And in Hebrew, this is a war verb. It’s a verb of war, to go up. Let him go up is a war-related verb. We can’t go into all the details of this, but I would encourage you to look at places like Joshua 1, verses one and two, we see this very thing. Judges 20, verse 18, we see examples of this. The book of Chronicles, again, is a way of emphasizing, highlighting, it ends with this verb, let him go up. And a Jewish man at that time, living in that time, and if he was of wartime age, he would have recognized this warfare verb, this plea and this call. And his reflex would have been what? He would have said, well then, who will go up for us? To be our true king and priest and to lead us on a new exodus, to deliver us and establish the temple. Chronicles begins with the genealogy. and there’s this swelling anticipation and expectation and the Lord lays all these things down and it builds and it swells. Who will be the one? Who will go up for Israel? And then we have the answer to that question. Who will go up? Are these issues of advent, of coming? You better believe they are, right? You better believe it is. Who will go up for us? And what do we have next after silence? The New Testament answers this question with what? Genealogy. Answers with the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter one. He is the one who will go up. What tribe is he from? He’s from Judah. This one who is the seventh seven, right, I don’t know if you ever noticed this as well, the genealogy there in Matthew one, there are 14 generations, it says from Adam to David, and then 14 from David to the deportation, and then 14 from then until Christ, right, these six sevens, six sevens, right? 14, 14, 14, and then what comes? The perfect, the seventh, that’s Jesus. Is there divine design in this? Absolutely, right? There’s this structural signaling in the text. It’s wonderful when we see it. And Matthew 1 tells us that Joseph takes Jesus and he adopts him as his son. And being in the line of Joseph, Jesus is in the line of the heir of the kings. And then we come to Matthew 2. And the story unfolds a bit further. And it says in verse 1 of Matthew 2, Jesus is born, It says, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of who? Herod the king, Herod the king. And so let’s look for a moment about what’s going on here with the geography as well. We have these different name places that Jesus is from. Maybe you’ve been confused by this in the past, maybe you’ve not thought a lot about it, maybe you’ve been challenged by others about this. Well, who is Jesus? Is he from Nazareth or is he from Bethlehem? Mark chapter one says, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee. In fact, the title Jesus of Nazareth is all over the Gospels. It’s what the demons call him when they encounter them. In his triumphal entry, this is what they call him, Jesus of Nazareth. The arrest warrant in the garden is given to Jesus of Nazareth. The sign that Pilate hangs on the cross says Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. The angel at the graveside. says that it was Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified but is now risen. And Peter at Pentecost, he preaches in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Even in chapter 10 of our Old Testament reading, our New Testament reading, we heard this. It was Jesus that he preached in his name. And so was Jesus, is he from Nazareth? If that’s so, why is he, say, born in Bethlehem? Right, you ever thought about that? And of course, this makes perfect sense if you think about it just for a minute. Or if you know somebody that this status is about. Take your pastor, for instance. I’m from the West Coast, but I was born in the mountain state of Idaho. Idaho is a Rocky Mountain state, but it’s also in the Pacific Northwest. So am I from Idaho or the West Coast or the Rocky Mountains or Pacific Northwest? Where am I from? I’m from the West Coast, but I wasn’t born there. Am I from the West Coast? Yes. Am I from Idaho? Yeah. Both are true. And so for Jesus, it’s important for us to understand that Matthew 2 begins, right, and there’s this bracketing there, it begins with Jesus being born in Bethlehem. And it ends, we’ll see next week, Matthew 2.23, with the prophecy being fulfilled that said he would come from Nazareth, which are both accurate and true, the beginning and the end. He must be born in Bethlehem, right, to fulfill the prophecy of Micah chapter five. And all this has to do with him being born A king, that’s the emphasis, the king, the one that will come and go up and deliver. It has to do with the setting up of our text in this crucial issue of king Jesus. Jesus, the king, and we see this. discrepancy here going on, this juxtaposition of the kings as part of this fulfillment of scripture that we’re seeing in this passage. And all of Matthew chapter 2 we’ll see is about this fulfillment, the fulfilling of the scriptures. And again, our passage really is a tale of two kings. We see this again and again. We see a pretender king and we see the perfect king. Pretender king and the perfect king. And so listen again, Matthew 2 verses 1 and 2. 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 the king of the Jews? Through Joseph’s line, Jesus is established, right? We see he’s established by birth, by blood, and by where he’s born, right? And that is where, in Bethlehem of Judea. And the wise men ask this pivotal question, this very significant question, that we pass by and miss some of the punch of it. And it gives us much to think about. Again, they say, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and we came to worship him. And then it says, two times in the text, it refers to Herod the King, Herod the King. And they come and ask, the King of the Jews, where has he been born, where is he? And you see the tension that’s there. You see the problem. There’s this contrast, this tension there in this text. And so let’s look a minute about why this is the case. Let’s look at King Herod. Who is Herod? What do we know about him? Historically, outside of scripture, but also scripture tells us. He wasn’t, Herod wasn’t even born a Jew. He wasn’t born a king. He wasn’t born in the line of kings. He wasn’t born in Bethlehem of Judea. These things we know. Herod was from the line of Esau. Remember that line that they were of those half-Jews who lived on the other side of town. He’s an Edomite. At the time, they were called Edonian. Herod was Edonian. He wasn’t a Jew. He converted to Judaism so that he could become king. He wasn’t born in the line of kings, as I said. But he made his case to the Romans after his conversion, and they made him king. He was an older man at the time of our passage, not newly born, anywhere near being born. And so these wise men come and they ask that question, where is the one born King of the Jews? You can see how this would have troubled Herod, right? Because what’s going on, this question is implicitly and explicitly an attack on the throne. It’s an attack on his identity, right? It was calling him out for the fraud that he was. Where’s the one born king of the Jews? The question comes. It’s a declaration that he is indeed a pretender king. He’s a pretender king. Verse three, when Herod the king heard this, right, Herod the king heard this, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him. All the people are troubled when this madman, tyrant king is asked this question and he’s troubled. Can you imagine? you imagine, calling out his non-kingly line, and his non-Jewishness, and his not from the right place. We also know from history that Herod certainly was a crazy kind of king. The things that he did, we’ll maybe look at more of this next week, but we know in the passage that follows the second half of Matthew chapter two, right, when Herod seeks, he orders the slaughter of all the boys around Jesus’ age who’ve been born around that time to do what? To try to get rid of the perfect king. No, no, no, I’m the king. He’s a pretender king. And we can understand in Matthew what he says when he tells us that all Jerusalem was troubled by this question. We see also in the actions of the wise men. And who are the wise men? The magi, some of our translations say. This is a group of men who ask this question. of Herod, and it freaks them out, and it troubles, has ripple effects, right? What are they? They’re kind of sorcerers, or priests, or astrologers, or a mixture of some of these identities, right? They were from the east, we know. We don’t know from exactly where. Possibly from Persia, or someplace near Persia. And we know that the study and religious-like obsession with the stars was very common at the time. They would use the sky to divine the future and engage in other occult practices. And the Bible, of course, condemns this kind of thing in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But amazingly, amazingly, and this should jump off the page at us as well, it’s these pagan astrologers, these pagan priests, who come looking for the king. They’ve seen his star and they go to find him. And it’s amazing, the Holy Spirit in his wisdom makes these pagan sorcerers Again, Judaism condemns it, Christianity condemns it, but the Spirit makes them the first worshipers of Jesus Christ. We’ve come, we wanna worship, and then he says, they worshiped him. Isn’t that remarkable? And they come and declare, a great king has been born. And it’s not the birth of just another king. It’s not the birth of just another king. It’s the birth of the king. It’s the birth of the Messiah. It’s the birth of the one that from Genesis had been unfolding and promising and swelling to come, the result of all these things. The culmination and climax of all that the Lord was doing had been inaugurated in the birth of Christ in this terrified Herod and the people after him. And that’s the question of the text before us today. Also brothers and sisters, right? The question for us is who is our king? Who is our king? Because these are big macro issues. These are big grand themes that God is doing. but it’s also very micro in your own life, and we must ask these questions. In the reality of our hearts and the quietness of our own mind, when our heads are on the pillow, when we’re in prayer, who is our king? Who is the one that I worship and adore? Who’s the one that rules my life? Who do we give honor to? Who rules us? Does the word of the coming of the king disturb you here this morning? Are you troubled by this declaration? It can be a troubling proposition, you know, because the Bible tells us that this king calls us to an absolute commitment. It’s not something on the periphery that we tack on to the rest of who we are in our lives, right? When the Lord is our king, we’re united to him, it permeates all of who we are. It changes our DNA. It’s not like putting on a coat. We’re changed all from our soul on way out. It’s an absolute call that he gives to us and he calls us to come and to have life, right, to have life. And he calls us and he demands of us to come and to worship and bow before him. And this can be the most difficult exercise that we ever do, right, to bow the knee to Jesus, right. Do we do that or do we just remain content with the pretender kings in our lives, right, the pretender kings in our lives? And the pretender king is usually and mostly ourselves, right? Our own desired autonomy. Framing everything by the self, right? Are we content with the pathetic rule of our own kingship in the bondage of our own sin and guilt and the death that follows? Or will we flee to Christ and have freedom and forgiveness and life? Even here in the opening chapters, as we just broached the topics, which just breached this whole issue We see the story being forecast of this battle that will happen as Christ takes the full cup of God’s wrath for his people on the cross, right? And it’s pressed into his hand. And he says, why, Lord, why? And the answer comes, because, my son. But you becoming sin, you make those who believe and trust themselves upon you my very righteousness. They’re mine. your new creation. If you’ve bowed the knee and surrendered your life to this king, as God has granted you faith to do so, delight in him, brothers and sisters. Delight in your king. Give him praise. Give him praise. Give him thanks for the faith and life and forgiveness and the home of glory that he promised to you and give you a down payment that is certainly yours forever. And if you have not, This declaration is before you even now. Even now. And I plead with you all to answer that question. We all must answer it. Our parents can answer it for us. Our tradition can answer it for us. What will you do with Jesus, this king? What will you do? Respond with faith and go to him for life. That’s the response. Respond with faith and go to him for life. Not just the beginning of life, not after the end of life, but all the way through the gospel for you. We’re not turning those away who come to him in faith. You’re not too dirty or broken or sinful or damaged or blackened for him. Go to him in faith and taste of the refreshing, life-giving waters of the gospel of life and live. Even right now, if you’ve not. If you have, go to him again and again and drink of those waters. Next week we’ll finish up this passage. We’ll look further at this perfect King, the Lord Jesus Christ. But for today, trust the sovereign power and love and glory of our great God and Savior. In His love, He prepared for millennia, in detail, the big picture, and on a micro level, God has been making divine preparation for the birth of the Prince of Peace, the King of King and the Lord of Lords. Jesus, the Lord, come and take on flesh and accomplish salvation for those who call on his name and entrust themselves upon him for life. And in the midst of this cultural season that we’re in right now, let us never forget, let us remember now in every Lord’s day, indeed every hour and every minute of our lives, That celebration is warranted and is the natural response of the reality of our God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us, God with his people. And at this time of year, in all year round, brothers and sisters, let us remind people of this wonderful preparation and history and fulfillment. Why? So that they too would hear about Jesus, about King Jesus. And then what do we do? We trust the Holy Spirit to do as he wills in his sovereignty in their lives. All of this that he’s done, took on flesh, lived a perfect life, suffered death after living in perfect obedience, and he died and he rose again, all he did for you who trust in him, his people. All to do what? To give you life and forgiveness and that you would be clean. You would be clean. And so let’s go back into the world as a response and live for this great King. Amen.