Matthew 2:13-23 - "Now when they had departed . . . "

Matthew 2:13-23

You don't hear Joseph mentioned very much throughout the Gospel accounts, and I've always assumed it was because he must have died before Jesus reached adulthood. But here in the earliest and most vulnerable years of Jesus' life, we see Joseph playing his most heroic role. After the wise men leave, he is warned in a dream that Herod is about to go on a search and destroy mission for the infant Jesus' life. Joseph wastes no time getting his family together and fleeing to Egypt--which, we are told, fulfills the prophecy made by Hosea, "Out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 1:11).

Now what is the deal with this prophecy? God sent his infant son to Egypt, he didn't call him out of Egypt. Kinda twisting Hosea's words, isn't it? Actually, no. The best explanation I've heard of this passage is this. At one time God had to call his people (whom he often refers to as his "son") out of Egypt to save them from Pharaoh's wrath. So here, King Herod is like a new Pharaoh and the land of Israel has become a new "Egypt," an unsafe place for God's true Son. God had to call his Son out of this spiritually hostile "Egypt" to flee the wrath of another Pharaoh. It is an apt prelude to Jesus' entire life of being rejected and outcast from his homeland.

King Herod realizes he has been tricked by the wise men and slaughters all the male children aged two and under in the region of Bethlehem. It is an awful part of the Christmas story you rarely hear mentioned. We know that Jesus came to sacrifice his own life that countless others might have eternal life, yet he was born into this world at the cost of an entire population of his male peers. For those mothers who lost their sons to Herod's sword that terrible day, did their sorrow turn to rejoicing once they saw, years down the road at the foot of Calvary, that their loss was not in vain?

Meanwhile, Joseph keeps his family hidden in exile. News of the Jerusalem massacre must have reached his ears. The charge of protecting God's anointed Son, a mere helpless infant, rests with him alone. Even after the angel of the Lord gives him the thumbs up to return to Israel, fear of Herod's son drives Joseph to settle his family far northward in the obscure town of Nazareth. Has any earthly father in the history of the world borne so much responsibility on his shoulders?

I suppose that puts things into perspective when Jesus later asks his followers to trust him, follow him, believe in him. When he, the Son of God, was small and helpless, he entrusted his own life into Joseph's hands, a frail and fallible human being. Asking us to entrust our lives into God's hands certainly isn't asking too much.

Matthew 2:1-12 - "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea . . ."

Matthew 2:1-12

Traditional Christmas lore celebrates the three wise men (you know, "We Three Kings of Orient Are" and all that), yet this passage never specifies how many wise men came seeking the Christ child. Maybe there were three, maybe there were more. What interests me about these guys is that they were Gentiles. They came "from the east" to Jerusalem, and after they had paid homage to the child they "departed to their own country." They are portrayed as being far more in touch with the Messiah's birth than the Jewish people or their leaders. They show up in Jerusalem assuming the news must already be widespread. They go around asking, "So . . . where do we go to sign up for the next tour group to the Messiah's birth site?" And everyone goes, "Huh? What birth?"

So the wise men, in making their innocent inquiries, end up being heralds of the newborn Jewish king. I'm not sure why all Jerusalem would be "troubled" by their news (v. 3). Perhaps they feared King Herod's wrath when he learned that a rival king had been born among their people. Maybe that fear is what hindered most of the Jewish people from embracing this news as wholeheartedly as these Gentile strangers did.

King Herod gets to work. He learns from the chief priests and scribes how the prophets foretold of the Christ child being born in Bethlehem. Then he summons the wise men to find out when they think this birth might have occurred. Except Herod makes the mistake of trusting the wise men, probably because they were Gentiles. He sends them on a mission to report back to him about the location of the child, making some baloney excuse about also wanting to "come and worship him."

But I have a feeling the wise men didn't buy it. They were wise men after all. They take off from Herod's place to go look for the star--which, oddly enough, runs on ahead of them and stops over the house where Mary and the child were staying (very un-star-like behavior). They enter, worship the child, present him with gifts, then take off in the other direction. A dream had warned them against returning to Herod back the way they came. The consequences of that betrayal would be dreadful, as our next passage will tell.