Sermon-1/7/07-Out of Egypt-Matt. 2:13-23
Read Matt. 2:13-23
OT over 330 prophecies concerning the coming Messiah.
Chapter 2 matt. Focuses on 4, each is very specific and unique, so much so that the chances of one person fulfilling all 4 simply by chance are astronomical.
They could have only been fulfilled by the one who is the Messiah, each focuses on the early life of the Messiah and attaches it in some way to a specific location-Bethlehem, Egypt, Ramah, and Nazareth.
The first prophecy of ch. 2 is found in vs. 5-6-birth in Bethlehem-already seen how that was fulfilled.
This morn. Look at God’s hand at work in the fulfillment of the other prophecies of ch. 2 today-look at 2 today and last one next week.
Pray.
I. Three prophecies fulfilled.
The first of these is found in vs. 13-15, w/ the fulfillment of the prophecy a. The Messiah would be called out of Egypt.
-Egypt was a natural place of refuge for a number of Jews.
-Sanctuary for Jews established by Alexander the Great in Alexandria during the time of Greek rule, between the end of the OT & the beginning of the NT.
-Jewish philosopher and historian Philo, a resident of Alexdandria, reported that by AD 40, the city’s population included at least one million jews.
-It was a group of Jewish scholars in Alexandria that translated the Hebrew OT into Greek, in the third century BC. This translation called The Septuagint was used by much of the early church, and it was from that version of the OT that many NT writers quote.
So Mary, Joseph, & Jesus had quite a trip ahead of them because It was a 75-80 mile trip to the Egyptian border and then another 100 miles to their likely destination the city of Alexandria.
See God’s hand at work here.
-Jewish sanctuary established in Egypt-translates Hebrew to Greek-trade language of the day @ the time of Christ/early church
-this community provided a natural sanctuary for the young Christ to protect Him from Herod.
-The gifts from the wisemen were more than likely used to finance this trip and support the family until their eventual return to Israel.
God is always at work, even when we can’t see it.
In vs. 15 Mt. says that “this fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet “I called my son out of Egypt.” The prophet he is speaking of there is Hosea, from Hosea 11:1 but if we go back and read Hosea’s actual prophecy, we seem to run into a problem.
Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son, and I called my son out of Egypt.” If I heard someone quote a part of a verse like that today, and apply it to something that it didn’t seem to apply to I would say that they were taking the verse out of context. So did Matthew take this verse out of context when he said that this prophecy was fulfilled through Jesus?
Info from JNTC by David H. Stern, Messianic Jew
To answer that we have to understand how the typical first century Jewish rabbi interpreted the Scriptures. They had 4 basic modes of Scripture interpretation. They are:
1-P’shat (simple)-the plain, literal sense of the text, more or less what we would refer to today as “grammatical-historical exegesis”, which looks at the grammar of the language and the historical setting as background for deciding what a passage means.
2- Remez (hint)-where a word, phrase or other element in the text hints at a truth not conveyed by the p’shat. The idea behind this is that God can hint at things that the biblical writers were unaware of themselves.
3-Drash or midrash (search)-an allegorical or homiletical application of a text. This is a type of eisegesis-reading your own thoughts & ideas into the text-as opposed to exegesis, which is extracting from the text what it actually says. The thought here is that the rabbis believed God could use the words of Scripture to guide their minds to truths that were not directly related to the text at all.
4-Sod (secret)-a mystical or hidden meaning arrived at by operating on the numerical values of the Hebrew letters, noting unusual spellings, transposing letters, and the like. The idea here being that God invests meaning in the minutest details of Scripture, even the individual letters.
Here in vs. 15 Matthew is most likely using remez. Israel is called God’s son throughout the OT, as far back as Ex. 4:22. the messiah is presented as God’s son a few verse earlier (1:18-25), so the Son equals the son: the messiah is equated with, is one with, the nation of Israel. This is the deep truth matthew is hinting at by calling Jesus flight to Egypt “a fulfillment” of Hosea.
Even the phrase matthew uses “what the Lord had said through the prophet” takes our attention off the prophet and puts it on God who spoke through him. It lets the reader understand that God might have been saying more than what the prophet himself understood when he wrote. It prepares him for the possibility that Hosea’s p’shat was God’s remez to be revealed in its time. –Stern
2 things to understand about this. Words of caution as to why we can’t apply the same methods of interpretation today.
Jewish book, written by Jews in a Jewish culture, we could never understand it as deeply and intimately as they did.
More importantly, when matthew wrote this he was being inspired by the HS, it wasn’t his own idea of what God was saying through Hosea, God was saying through Matthew, this is what I was saying through Hosea.
The next prophecy we see fulfilled is in vs. 16-18. the prophecy of
B. Rachel weeping for her children.
-Herod’s reaction when the wisemen did not return was not out of character for Him. Known for his brutality, routinely killed any who he perceived as a threat to his throne including the family of one of his wives, and at least two of his own sons. He was so hated that when he knew he was going to die-hippodrome to be killed so there would be mourning at when his funeral happened.
So this slaughter of innocent children would have been of no major concern. Probably total of between 10-10 boys that age in the town at the time, because Bethlehem was a relatively small town at the time, of maybe 1000 @ the time.
Still caused a great deal of grief and anguish for the families of those children, fulfilled another prophecy this time from Jeremiah 31:15. Once again the p’shat of the verse from Jeremiah does not refer to the Messiah, but Jeremiah was prophesying about the sorrow that was about to come to Israel when most of her people would be carried of into captivity by Assyria and then Babylon.
-Ramah, town 5 miles north of Jerusalem, on the border of the northern kingdom (Israel) and the southern kingdom (Judah).
this was the place where Jewish captives were assembled for deportation to Babylon.
-Jeremiah says “Rachel weeps for her children”
OT history-Rachel-wife of Jacob/Israel-2 sons Joseph & Benjamin
-Joseph had 2 sons Manassah & Ephriam, from them came the 2 half tribes that bore their names. Ephriam was often used in the OT as a synonym for the northern kingdom.
-Rachel’s other son, Benjamin, his tribe became part of the southern kingdom.
So now the picture in Jeremiah is of Rachel weeping because of the loss of her children, her descendants through Ephriam & Benjamin.
-Rachel weeping represented the mourning of all Jewish mothers who were going to weep over the great tragedy of the Babylonian captivity and it hinted at-the remez-the mothers of Bethlehem weeping over the killing of their children by Herod.
Look at the final prophecy of this chapter next week.
If you would like a challenge, this week try and find the prophecy Matthew was referring to in the prophecy in vs. 23.
Wrap up w/ the last 2 points quickly this morning.
These prophecies are
II. Three demonstrations of God’s sovereign control.
Even when we don’t see God’s hand or understand what is happening and why we can know that god is at work. He divinely orchestrated that X would be born in Bethlehem, that he would go to Egypt, and be raised in Nazareth. If you remember nothing else from this morning, remember this
III. God daily demonstrates His sovereign control in our lives as well.
In my life I can look back and see God’s hand at work in so many ways.
-Schubert sermon, sitting in that service and saying to Melea, someday we will be able to look back and see how God has been at work.
-next week I’ll try to relate a bit of that as well,
