Oh Little Town of Bethlehem - Part B

When Jesus comes on the scene, He says, I am the Good Shepherd.

But He said this, the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. That's why He came the first time. Jesus came the first time to be a Savior. Jesus will come the second time to be our sovereign King. He'll be a ruler over the world. But He's the gentle ruler.

He's the greatest King of the world. But first, here's a resource that'll help you confidently answer tough questions about Jesus' life, ministry, and divinity. Josh McDowell has written books that rank among the best-selling Christian works of all time. Now, with his son, Sean, Josh has released Evidence for Jesus. God gave us our mind and our heart to work in unity.

To what? To glorify Him. The Bible, I call it fact, fiction, or fallacy. I want to answer two questions about the Bible.

This is what I struggle with as a non-believer. One, is what we have written as a resource for those seeking answers about Jesus. This powerful new resource is available on our website, skip.gov. Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer.

Or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Matthew 2 as we join Skip for today's message. You see, there is a 400-year gap between the final prophecies of the Old Testament and the birth of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. A 400-year gap.

During that 400 years, something very significant happened. The canon of the Old Testament was codified, meaning the list of what our biblical books of Old Testament Jewish Scriptures were codified, were systematized, and were regarded as this is the Bible. These are the books of the Bible. So by the time Jesus was born, the books, including the books that contain all the predictions about the Messiah, were already part of Jewish Scripture.

Something else to add to that. We have the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls. You've all heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are documents written 200 years before Jesus was born. And amazingly preserved in caves in Israel until 1947.

That's when they were discovered. So now we're able to dig those scrolls out of the ground and look at a freeze-frame picture of Judaism 200 years before Christ. And we have all of those books of the Old Testament. Including the ones that had all the prophecies written about the Messiah.

So that's why I say yes and yes. Something else. When we get to Matthew chapter 2, it's pretty obvious that the Jewish leaders expected the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem. Because when Herod says, hey, where's the Christ going to be born? They said, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus says the prophet. So they had already interpreted it to mean our Messiah when he comes is going to be born in Bethlehem. All of that to say the Jewish expectation was that the Messiah would be born in this place. That's the place of Messiah. The town from King David. Bethlehem. Let's look at another detail. The person of Messiah.

Notice the question. Where the Christ was to be born. We refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ. I hate to break it to some of you. Christ is not his last name.

I've heard people actually think that. They think that H was his middle initial. And Christ was his last name.

And that's not the case. Christ is an English word from the Greek word Christos. Which is a word from the Hebrew word Christos. It's called Messiah, which simply means Messiah or the anointed one. The anointed one. Now what does that mean to be an anointed one? Christ, Messiah.

Who is that person? The original meaning of Messiah or anointed one is to smear with oil. To anoint was to smear with oil. That is because if you had a priest, a prophet, or a king, and you would designate them as chosen for their respective office, there was a little ritual where they would be taken, oil would be poured on them, and they'd smear it on their face.

That was called the anointing. And so you had these people in the Old Testament anointed to be a prophet, anointed to be a priest, anointed to be a king. But the Old Testament kept pointing to one who would come. A deliverer who would come. A Messiah who would come. An anointed one who would come. And Psalm 45 says he will be anointed above his fellows. He is the anointed one. No wonder then when Jesus goes to the synagogue in Nazareth and opens up the scroll, remember the story from Luke 4, opens it up, stands up there, and he reads from Isaiah 41, the familiar text, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He closed the scroll. He put it down and he said to the audience, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. The Bible says they reacted violently, took up stones to kill him because they knew what he was doing. He was claiming to be. He is claiming to be the Messiah.

Sometime later he is with his disciples. And he says, who do men say that I am? Second question, who do you say that I am? And Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

You are that one. You are that anointed deliverer that the Old Testament repeatedly talked about would come. And woven throughout Hebrew scripture you have predictions about the birth, about the lineage, about the mission of the Messiah. And since those things were written so long before, for nearly 2,000 years rabbis have commented extensively on these scriptures, including Micah chapter 5 verse 2. And it was, as I said, the common Jewish belief that the Jewish Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Not just from Matthew chapter 2, but other places.

You've read them, but you probably passed over them. For example, John chapter 7, the crowd is discussing, who is this Jesus? Is he really the Messiah? Could he be the Messiah? And the crowd says this, and I'm quoting John 7. Will the Christ come out of Galilee? Has not the scripture said that Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem where David was?

So their traditions, their interpretations, along with their scripture told them, our Messiah is coming from there and he will be the deliverer. Now, there's been some words I've used in the past several years, and you've heard them, you're familiar with them, but you may not know what they are. You've heard me talk about the Talmud, right? I quote the Jewish Talmud, or the Mishnah, or the Midrash, or the Gemara, or the Targums. And without trying to give you all the different definitions of all of them, what these essentially are, are translations, paraphrases, commentaries, and interpretations of rabbis on Old Testament scripture. And why are they important at all? Because they help us understand what Jewish people thought of Old Testament texts, right?

So let me give you an example. This is from the Targums. This is written by Rabbi Eliezer. He is paraphrasing, or he is interpreting Micah chapter 5 verse 2, and look at how he writes it. And you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you who were too small to be numbered among the thousands of Judah, from you shall come forth before me the Messiah, to exercise dominion over Israel, He whose name was mentioned before from the days of creation.

So two things. Jews expected a Messiah, a Deliverer. They expected He would come from the line of David. They expected He would be born in Bethlehem.

Well that raises a question, and I get asked it all the time. Well if that's true, why didn't more Jewish people at the time of Jesus accept Him as their Messiah? Why did they crucify Him?

Why did they reject Him? It's a very good question, and here's the answer. It's because those prophecies also predicted that when the Messiah comes, He's going to set up a kingdom. He's going to rule over the earth. The problem was, when the predictions were given, there wasn't a delineation of sequence given.

There wasn't a timing given. It just, you'll have a prophecy saying He's going to be born in Bethlehem. You have another prophecy saying He's going to rule the world. Another one saying He's going to do miracles. Another one saying He's going to suffer and die. Another one saying He's going to rise from the dead. So it's like all of these strange predictions, and we have this phenomena called prophetic foreshortening.

Prophetic foreshortening. What that is, is from a distance it looks like it's all one thing that's going to happen at one time. There's not the interval of time that is seen clearly.

Here's what it's like. If you're traveling and you see in the distance as you're driving down the road, in the distance you see a mountain range. From your perspective, far away, the mountain range looks flat.

Looks monolithic, like you're just seeing one straight ribbon of rock. But the closer you get, you notice some things. And the closer you still get, you notice shading and shadowing, and there's not one monolithic mountain. There's several mountain peaks, and if you get right up on it, or even fly over it, or drive through it, you see there's valleys in between the mountain peaks.

You didn't see them from a distance, but now you do. And the closer you get to the event of Messiah, the mountain range opens up. And you see, oh well, His first coming, He's going to do this, but His second coming, He's going to do that.

And that is why there wasn't a ready reception for many of them. So that's the place, and that is the person of Messiah that is mentioned in this prophecy. The third little detail is the purpose of Messiah. Now you will notice that the Magi in Matthew chapter 2, they come and they say, where is He?

Look at the question, verse 2. Where is He who has been born the what? King of the Jews. They didn't say the word Christ or Messiah. Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? Can I just say, if I were there with the Magi, I'd say, wrong question, dudes. I mean, it's the right question, but not to Herod, because as soon as he used that phrase to Herod, it got Herod's attention.

It's like his neck reeled around. He said, who are you looking for? The King of the Jews. The King of the Jews.

That was a politically charged term 2,000 years ago in Judea, and here's why. First of all, who is the head of the Roman Empire? Caesar. Caesar's the ultimate king.

He's the big dog. To say there's another king of any kind anywhere could be seen as a direct competition of Caesar. Virgil, the Roman poet, said that Caesar Augustus was the savior king of the world. But even more than that, since Caesar was far away in Rome, Herod, Herod the king, was given a title by the Roman Senate and by Caesar Augustus himself.

And guess what Herod's title was? King of the Jews. He was the King of the Jews.

He was called that by the Roman Senate and Caesar Augustus. You are the King of Judea. I'm letting you rule in my place in that part of the world. You, Herod, will be the King of the Jews. So now Herod hears these wise men coming, asking him this question.

These Parthian astronomers, these king makers from the ancient Babylonian courts. And they're coming saying, we're here to find the King of the Jews who has been born. We want to worship him. You need to know something about Herod. Herod was paranoid. History tells us he was a paranoid ruler. He married 10 wives. He had several children. He killed one of his wives and two of his sons because he was so paranoid they were trying to take the throne away from him.

In fact, even Caesar Augustus said it is safer to be Herod's pig than it is his son. So you have all of this working together. He panics. He doesn't want to lose control. And so he sends them back to Bethlehem. And you know the rest of the story how he kills the children of that town. Now, he is the Christ. He will be the king over the world. He will be the king of the Jews as well as the king of the Gentiles. But you will notice also, it says, as they quote the prophecy, their rendering of it, verse 6. For out of you will come a ruler, and I love this, who will shepherd my people Israel.

Yes, Jesus will come back. Yes, he will rule and reign because the prophecy said he will over the world as predicted by the prophets. But his rule is a gentle rule. He rules as a shepherd over his people. David was a shepherd. The town of David was a place where David kept flocks. He said, the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want. When Jesus comes on the scene, he says, I am the good shepherd. But he said this, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. That's why he came the first time. Jesus came the first time to be a savior. Jesus will come the second time to be our sovereign king. He'll be a ruler over the world, but he's the gentle ruler.

Now, I want to close on a final note. There's a fourth detail given in the prophecy, though not mentioned by the scribes when they quote it. And that is the pre-existence of Messiah, that he would pre-exist. So, notice back in verse six, the rulers quote, 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, period.

They didn't finish the rest of the text. They left something out of the prophecy given by Micah. And I hope you have a mark, a marker in Micah 5-2. If not, let me read it to you. But you Bethlehem Ephrathah, 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, now watch this, whose goings forth are from of old, or literally from the beginning, from everlasting, from everlasting.

Your goings forth come from everlasting. If you were to speak to a Jewish person today, and I hope you have Jewish friends and that you keep the door of conversation and evangelism open to them and have good, hearty discussion, but a Jewish person today will tell you if they believe in the Messiah, if they believe he's coming, they will say the Messiah is simply a man, just a human being. He's not God. He's not the son of God.

Like you Christians say, we get berated because we believe in the deity of Christ. But they say, when the Jewish Messiah comes, we expect he'll be a mere human being with a charismatic personality, great intellect, a love for the Torah, he'll love the Scriptures, but that's all. But here's what you need to know, and most of them probably don't know, that's not what Judaism always believed. Judaism originally believed that the Messiah, and there's abundant evidence in Jewish scholarship to show that they believed the Messiah would be an eternally existent being with a miraculous birth, mission, and destiny.

I'm going to give you a quote, and I'm going to show it on the screen. One of the books I've had in my study for a long time, and every Bible, every pastor that I know would probably have this book, it's called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim. Alfred Edersheim was a Jewish scholar who converted to Christ. And this is the kind of dude who researches the Targums, the Talmud, the Gomorrah, the Mishnah, the Midrash, all that stuff, and looks to find what was going on.

And this is what he said, just one little paragraph. Quote, even in strictly rabbinic documents, the pre-mundane that is at or before the beginning, if not the eternal existence of the Messiah, appears as a matter of common belief. Such is the view expressed in the Targum on Isaiah 9-6 and that on Micah 5-2. But the Midrash on Proverbs 8-9 especially mentioned the Messiah among the seven things created before the world. The name of Messiah is said to have been created before the world.

Close quote. Now why on earth is your pastor making you suffer through all this? Why would I do this as a weekend message? Simply to show you this. The Jews expected the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. The Jews expected that he would pre-exist and that he would rule over the world.

That was their belief system historically. So that when Jesus comes on the scene, that's exactly how he is presented. The opening statement of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him.

And without him, not anything was made that has been made. That's what John the Baptist meant when he spoke of his younger cousin Jesus. John the Baptist was the older cousin of Jesus. And when Jesus came on the scene, John the Baptist said, John 1.15, This is the one I was talking about when I said, Someone is coming who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before I did.

What a statement. This is what Paul meant in Colossians 1 when he said, Jesus is before all things, and in him all things consist. What this means is Jesus is the only person who lived before he was born. Get your head around that.

Get your mind around that statement. Jesus is the only person who existed, who lived before he was born. He pre-existed. The Jews believed that he would be that one until more recent times. And that's who Jesus proclaimed to be.

Now here's the most amazing thing to me of the story. When Herod asked for an answer, Hey, where's the Messiah going to be born? The scribes, the religious dudes gave a quick answer. They knew it. They didn't have to go look it up on a computer or find a Bible. Let me look it up in the back. Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Where is that? They knew it. They just could cite chapter and verse. Well, the prophet says, But you Bethlehem in the land of Judah, and he just spit it right out. But they didn't walk five miles to see if it was true.

Now imagine that. You know the Bible so well. You study it. You have scripture memory classes.

But you don't do what it says to check it out to see if it's true. Here's these travelers from the East who have sacrificed their wealth, life and limb to travel hundreds of miles to come from their country to show up in your country to find the King of the Jews. And you can't even get off your or get on your feet and go to the next town to see if it happened. You know, Bethlehem is in the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem. It's just a few miles away. I once took a bicycle ride from the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

I didn't know how long it would be. I was over the hill and in Bethlehem. And I remember thinking, Why didn't those religious leaders just take a short walk to go, Hey, I'm going to find out what's happening over there in Bethlehem with all these rumors. Some people are inoculated with just enough religion to keep them immune from truth. This is what religion will do to a person. Religion makes people feel self-satisfied. I go to church, I sing hymns, I read the Bible, I do this stuff. And they feel really smug about that little routine they have. They have just enough religion to keep them immune from the truth. I can't speak for anybody else.

A lot of people would think a city like this could be boring. This is what fires me up. Because this satisfied my mind early on when I looked at the odds of these things happening, as I told you last week. So the wise men showed up and they worshiped Jesus.

You know why? Because they were wise men. They were wise.

And foolish men and foolish women will only hear the rumors but not dig deep enough to find out if it's really true. Wise people will take the journey and end up in front of Christ and bow down and worship Him. That's wisdom. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Against All Odds. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Right now, listen as Skip shares how you can share life-changing teaching from God's unchanging Word with more people around the world. Believers need to study God's Word in order to understand what He desires of us and for us. And this broadcast ministry exists to connect you and others around the world to God's Word so you can enjoy His presence and do His will. I want to invite you to join in that important work today. Through your support, you can expand this ministry into more major U.S. cities and help more people respond to the life-changing truth of the Bible. Plus, you'll keep these teachings that you love available to you wherever you listen.

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