Messiah on the Run - Part A

These Magi, these Persian kingmakers, have traveled hundreds of miles to not only find the king of the Jews, but to worship him.

Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip begins his message, Messiah on the Run, and looks at the royal visitors from a strange land who came to honor baby Jesus. Now, we want to tell you about a powerful resource that will help you answer some of the toughest questions about the life, ministry, and divinity of Christ. Is there archaeological proof that Jesus existed? Did Jesus ever actually claim to be God? Is Jesus really the only way? There's a good chance you'll be asked tough questions like these at some point.

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Okay, we're going to Matthew 2 today as Skip begins his teaching. I distinctly remember being a little kid, and I got cut by grabbing some metal, rusty metal, and I was taken to the hospital. My mom told the doctor.

The doctor said he's going to need a tetanus shot. And so what I remember is how much I cried like a little baby saying no. And when I was saying no to it, I'd already been cut by metal, but I was just the thought of getting a needle stuck in me. You know, that's how kids think. It's like too much.

Their whole world's coming to an end. And I remember standing in the hospital saying, no, no, no, my mom's saying, too late. My mom was a nurse, and she was very handy with a needle.

And in the midst of my wailing, she had already injected the needle in my arm, given me the shot, it was done, and I didn't even know it. But how foolish is it to reject a cure when that cure can fix whatever condition you have? I was reading a blog this week about a couple who had traveled to the Philippines, and there's one little island in the Philippines that still treats leprosy, the disease of leprosy. And they do it by a multi-drug therapy. They give a pill, and they give medicine over a period of time that eradicates the disease. So there's a clinic, and this couple noticed patients were lined up inside this clinic to receive their drug therapy. But they said what is unusual is that at the end of the line, they're given the medicine, and before they walk out the door, there is a doctor there who makes the patient open his or her mouth to make sure they swallowed the pill.

Because they discovered a lot of patients would be given the medicine, put it in their mouth, and as soon as they get out the clinic door, they spit it out. And you would say why would they want to do that? Because they want to remain with their disease.

And the reason being is because they are professional solicitors. They have gotten money locally and internationally, pours into the post office money to help these families. And they know when the disease ends, the money ends. So they would rather have their disease and not be cured because of the financial benefits.

Reports have even come that they will expose their children so that their children will get the disease in order to make sure there is perpetuity in that financial benefit. Can you imagine wanting to hold on to a disease rather than be cured of that disease? But that is what happens all the time in a spiritual way when it comes to the salvation of souls. Jesus Christ is the cure for what ails you. But so many people will reject Him and rather stay in their disease and hold on to their sinful lifestyle rather than be cured. When Jesus came, the Bible tells us, He came to His own and His own received Him not.

They didn't want the cure. What's astonishing is how early on this is manifest. From Jesus' childhood, He begins to be rejected already. And that's what we're going to look at in Matthew chapter 12.

We're going to begin in verse 13 and read down. But we're getting here some insight into the early life of Jesus. Now if you have read the New Testament, you know that very little is written about Jesus' early life as a child. Luke has like one or two verses that tell us that He grew up and He grew in stature and wisdom. And then he tells us the story how when Jesus was 12 years old, He's in Jerusalem for His bar mitzvah, and Jesus' mother Mary finds Him sitting around the scholars who are astonished at His wisdom and His understanding. But other than that, nothing is written.

And there's a reason for that. That is not the focus of the New Testament writers because that is not really the focus of God's redemptive plan. Jesus' childhood, though it's part of the plan, the focus of the plan is the three years of His adult ministry as He goes to the cross, dies, is buried, and then raised. Because that is where salvation is.

That is where the power is. And so that is where the emphasis lies. However, Matthew does give us, not detail, but some general events. And these events are tied to places where Jesus as a child lived and moved and then settled. So He goes from Bethlehem and then from Bethlehem down to Egypt, and from Egypt He goes up to Nazareth. And so we're going to look at this because Matthew thinks that what he's establishing are the credentials of the Messiah, the credentials that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. So He begins by giving us His genealogical record, showing us that He is of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, of the royal lineage of King David. He then establishes the fact that Isaiah predicted He'd be born of a virgin, that Micah predicted He would be born in Bethlehem, all fulfilling prophecy, all laying out His credential. But He continues here in verse 13 of Matthew chapter 2 about other prophets and other predictions that were given that He fulfilled as a child.

There's an undercurrent going on. There's something going on that is the grand theme of the flow of all of these prophetic Scriptures. And that is the earthly response to the heavenly plan.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That's the heavenly plan. But we're already starting to see the response of people on earth to God's plan. And I've got to tell you, it's not good.

It's not a good response. You have people already spitting out the medicine before Jesus can even come of age to deliver it. So we begin with a fugitive Messiah. Verse 13, when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, take the 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. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was 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 have called my son.

So we're dealing with the Magi. The Magi came, asked Herod where the king of the Jews was going to be born. Herod didn't like that.

He was troubled because of it. The wise men leave Herod's presence, go to Bethlehem a few miles away, find Jesus, go inside the house, give him literally gifts fit for a king, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and they worship him. So right off the bat, as soon as Jesus is born, we see Gentiles worshipping him but his own nation rejecting him. Those very Jewish scribes who knew the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem, according to Micah's prophecy, they don't even go to Bethlehem to find out, let alone worship him.

These Magi, these Persian king makers have traveled hundreds of miles to not only find the king of the Jews, but to worship him. So, an angel brings word to them, says you guys get out of town, get out of Dodge, go back home, flee. And then also you'll notice the dream to Joseph in verse 13, arise, take the child or the young child and his mother and flee to Egypt. The word flee is the word fugo in Greek. Fugo is where we get our word fugitive. He's going to be a fugitive, y'all are going to be a fugitive in Egypt.

You're going to run, you're going to flee, you're going to escape. Now, why are they told to go to Egypt? I mean, Galilee is closer up north, why not go east to Edom? Why not go follow the Magi to where they're going to go because they could be protected by them? For that matter, why not go to Joppa? That's the beach, man.

You can surf in Joppa, it's good weather in Joppa. Why go to Egypt? Egypt is 75 miles away from Bethlehem, that's just the border of Egypt, it's another 100 miles to get to any meaningful population base. Why Egypt? It's because they're about to fulfill prophecy. Joseph doesn't know this, he just goes as the angel directs him, but it's all to fulfill prophecy spoken in the book of Hosea out of Egypt, I called my son.

Now, just a little bit of background. Joseph and Mary and Jesus would have found an enormous Jewish population in Egypt at the time, about a million Jews were already living there. And that is because there had been several wars that created refugees. And between the Old and the New Testament, that intertestamental period during the Maccabean Revolts, which now you know about because we've told you about the Maccabean Revolt against the Syrians, because of those wars, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people for year after year after year fled down to Egypt. So there's a refugee population of over a million at this time, Jewish people.

We also know that Alexander the Great, who once conquered the world, established a city in Egypt named after himself, because he was so modest and humble, called Alexandria, Egypt. And he apportioned a part of that city for a Jewish population. So there were already a group of people and infrastructure waiting for Joseph and Mary and Jesus. So we don't know how long, months, a couple years, Jesus started to grow up in Egypt. Now, we don't know anything about what happened during those years.

Those are silent years. Although, there are documents out there, they're spurious documents, they're unreliable documents, that give you all sorts of weird stories about Jesus growing up in Egypt. They're called Gnostic sources or Gnostic gospels.

The Gospel of Thomas is one of them. And in that fictitious document, there are stories of the boy Jesus raising fish from the dead, resurrecting fish, so they come back alive and putting them back in the water. Or Jesus making birds out of clay and then breathing on them and they flew away.

All sorts of weird stories, they're not true, they're made up. But people have recognized these are silent years, so they're trying to fill in the blanks. Now, you'll notice in verse 15 that he quotes the prophet, this is the prophet Hosea, out of Egypt I called my son. That's the original prophecy. If you were just reading through the book of Hosea and you came to chapter 11, verse 1, where this is found, you would stop having read what we just read and you would say, well, that doesn't sound like it has anything at all to do with Jesus. In fact, it sounds like it has to do everything with Israel as a people.

And you would be right. Listen to the prophecy. When Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son. So what son is God referring to in Hosea 11.1? Israel, not Jesus.

And he's looking back, Hosea is looking back to when they were under Pharaoh's bondage for 400 years before God delivered them in the exodus out of Egypt and gave them the promised land. So what does that have to do with Jesus? This is what we call typical prophecy or typological prophecy, typical predictive prophecy. When Matthew talks about Jesus being born in Bethlehem, which we have already covered, that's a direct verbal prophecy.

This is something different. It is called typical predictive prophecy. And that just means that there are types of Jesus in the Old Testament that are seen in the New. One of the most famous examples is the Passover lamb.

The Passover lamb, every time a Passover lamb was killed, it speaks of Jesus because we're told that in the New Testament. Another type is the serpent on the pole that Moses held up in the wilderness. And we know that's a type because Jesus said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man will also be lifted up, speaking of his cross.

So that is a type. That is typical predictive prophecy. Now the book of Hosea is one of the most amazing, well-loved stories in all of the Bible. Hosea was a prophet who married a girl named Gomer. Yeah, you know you're going to have trouble when the guy marries a girl and her name is Gomer, right?

That's strike one. Well, it goes downhill from there because Gomer turns out to be a prostitute. Not only a prostitute, but once they get married, she leaves him and goes back to prostitution. She even has illegitimate children.

In fact, Hosea names one of his kids Not My Child. She leaves the home, starts sleeping around town. Hosea follows her and provides for her food and money to keep her alive.

Chasing that because he loves her. Well, things go from bad to worse until finally she becomes a slave, sold on the open slave market, and Hosea, her husband, is there to buy her back, take her home, and honor her as his wife. And all of that is a picture of the love of God. Not only does Hosea preach the love of God in his book, he lived it in his life. So just as Hosea redeemed Gomer, God redeemed Israel. Just as Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, Israel was unfaithful to God. Just as Hosea bought her back and restored her, God restored Israel. So the prophet Hosea becomes a picture of God's heartbroken love for his people. Now Matthew looks at that and says, well, Jesus' return from Egypt was pictured by Israel's exodus out of Egypt.

And so he quotes it here, out of Egypt I have called my son. The reason this is not unusual for Matthew to do so, and Matthew is writing to Jewish people, that's his audience. By Matthew's time in the synagogue, the Jews already equated the exodus out of Egypt with the Messiah. They took the scripture, Exodus chapter 4 verse 22, which says, Israel is my son, my firstborn, and they saw that as a type of the Messiah who is to come.

So already they were sort of predisposed to that. So now we have a fugitive Messiah. We have a Messiah on the run by a jealous king named Herod the Great. It's as if hell is already stirring up people on the earth to reject Jesus Christ.

He's already priming them to spit out the seeds that would be the cure, the pills that would be the cure. So he's a fugitive Messiah. Look at the next few verses.

We go from a fugitive Messiah to a hunted Messiah. Then Herod, verse 16, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry. And he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more. Can we all agree in the very least that Herod was a paranoid ruler? I mean, he slaughters every child in an area just to keep one of them from growing up and possibly taking his throne. All in attempt to kill Christ.

He doesn't know who he is, doesn't know where he's gone, but just in case, we'll kill them all. Now, in all fairness to the ancient population, because Bethlehem at that time would have been so small, this probably represents, most scholars agree, no more than 20 children. I mean, one's too many, but about 20 children at the time. And this is important to know because this is probably the reason why Josephus the historian and other writers do not include this in their history books. Because Herod killed so many people on so many occasions, including some of his own wives and children, that you'd just be writing that headline every single day.

So some of that is included by ancient historians and some of it, including this one, is not. But there was unimaginable horror in that area as men would travel through the environs of Bethlehem and thrust their swords through the bodies of these little babies or cut off their heads. You can just imagine the weeping, the wailing, the scrambling of mothers to hide their little children, all fulfilling, according to Matthew, a prophecy. Jeremiah wrote about this in Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 15. Now, the last thing Herod wanted to do was fulfill prophecy.

If anything, he'd want to stop it from happening. You remember Herod said to the scribes and the Jewish leaders, where is the Messiah going to be born? They said in Bethlehem, and they quote Micah 5, 2. So he doesn't want to fulfill prophecy. He wants to keep prophecy from being fulfilled. And in the process, he fulfills even more prophecy. Jeremiah 31, from where this text is taken, is a messianic section of Scripture. You Bible students know that there is a portion of about four chapters around that area, Jeremiah 31, that are highly messianic. It speaks about a new covenant that is coming, a kingdom that is coming, and one who is going to bring that new covenant and bring that kingdom. At the same time, the prophet looks forward, from his vantage point, looks forward to a time when the nation of Israel, or Judea, the south, will be taken captive by the Babylonians.

They'll be brought back, they'll be restored, but they're going to go off to captivity, and when they do, the mothers are going to be weeping and wailing because their husbands are dead or being captive, their children have been killed. And so, there will be weeping. A voice heard in Rama, lamentation, verse 18, weeping, great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.

And what does this refer to exactly? Well, there is a village north of Jerusalem called Rama. I know it because I have a friend who lives in Rama. And Rama just means a higher place or an elevated place.

It's usually on a hill, and there are more than one, by the way. So, Rama was a place where twice in the history of the Jews, the Jews were taken, it was a staging area to deport them or cart them off to a foreign country. It happened once when the northern kingdom went into captivity, 722 BC. It happened a second time when Judea, the southern kingdom, taken into captivity, 586 BC. So, twice there was weeping and wailing and mourning because of death and destruction and deportation. So, Rama represents the weeping when the nation was taken captive for their sins. That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series, Against All Odds.

Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, let's go in the studio with Skip and Lenya with news about a trip to Israel you can take. Well, if you've ever dreamed about visiting Israel, let's make that happen. Lenya and I are leading a tour group to Israel next summer in 2024. We'll start up north visiting Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River. And several days in Jerusalem, see the Temple Mount, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Upper Room, and more. Now, visiting the places where the Scriptures unfolded, where Jesus lived out his earthly ministry, it never gets old.

That's why I keep going back. Join Skip and I and our friend Jeremy Camp next summer in Israel. See the itinerary and book this Israel tour with Skip Heitzig and Jeremy Camp today at inspirationcruises.com slash c-a-b-q.

That's inspirationcruises.com slash c-a-b-q. And the next extension of this ministry is coming right to your backpack, purse, or pocket. It's text messaging, and we're all set to give you more content and opportunities to connect to God and His Word on the go. To join, just text the word connect to 74759. It's that simple, and we'd love for you to join in. We hope you'll come back tomorrow for the conclusion of Pastor Skip's message, Messiah on the Run. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.