THE PROPHECIES OF CHRISTMAS

#014                                                      THE PROPHECIES OF CHRISTMAS                                                                             

Scripture  Matthew 2:1-23                                                                                                                Orig. 8-25-63 (12-77)

                                                                                                                                                                               Rewr. 12-18=86 

Passage:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi^[a] from the east came to Jerusalem ² and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”  ³ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

⁶ “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel.’^[b]”

⁷ Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸ He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”  ⁹ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”  ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”^[c]

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”^[d]

¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

²¹ So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. ²² But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, ²³ and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Purpose: To share a Christmas message drawing from the great prophecies about Christ and His birth.

Keywords:          Biographical, Joseph                       Messiah               Prophecy                             Christ, Birth

Timeline/Series:               Christmas

Introduction

                It  has been more than thirty  years since I first drove north out of Alexandria on the highway that fronts church property.  That first trip through the pine forests of central Louisiana was with the young woman who would become my wife, to meet her parents.  Because four pastorates and twenty years would be spent in the central and southern parts of our state, that highway would  be one “much traveled by.”

                We watched many changes.  Since much of it was in the National Forest, only as we approached the towns were there indications of people’s changing ways.  But even the forest changed.  An occasional tree hugging the right of way would be gone.  Places where the tree harvester plied his trade were in evidence.  We would see the void, where trees had been.  Next, the denuded landscape.  But by the next trip north, preseedlings would be in the ground beginning their inexorable growth.

                There were human changes as well.  At a central stopping place there was a break we regularly took.  It was a restaurant operated by a happy, God-fearing family man.  His daughters were grown and occasionally worked in the business.  His pride in them showed, not only in the pictures that adorned the walls.

                A much younger son was seen occasionally, and then over years, less and less.  He grew up during those years.  Graduated from Winnfield High School, went on to LSU, graduated there I believe, and became a pilot.  Then, on a later trip, Mr. Mercer told us that he was in Viet Nam.  An article in the Alexandria paper while we were still in Oakdale revealed that the young man was dead, shot down serving his country.

                The restaurant was still open on our next journey or two north, but things were not the same.  He, of happy countenance and friendly greeting, was not to be seen.  Then came the inevitable day, and a black, gloomy sign which read “Closed.”  It was understood that it also meant, “Not to be reopened.”  I do not recall whether other interests tried to make the Goat Castle thrive again.  I only know that it could not have been.  Now, the corner is marred by the memory of what was, and what is, and by what now occupies the corner on the south edge of Winnfield.

                It is a high price to pay to give one’s son, even if the cause is that in which one believes.  God gave His Son, knowing full well that for Him to be born would also be to die.  That’s an even higher price.

I.             There Is the Foretelling of His Birth to Wise Men.  It is not a prophecy in the Biblical sense.  There is scriptural intonation.  Numbers 24:16f “The utterance of him . . . who sees the vision of the Almighty, . . . I see Him but not now; I behold  Him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob; a scepter shall rise out of Israel.”

                Zechariah offers an apocalyptic image.

                Other verses allude to wisdom of men out of the east.  I Kings 4:30 “Solomon’s wisdom excelled . . . the men of the east.”

                We know something, of course, of those people and their distant land:

• In the east was Babylon, today’s Iraq, in the Tigris/Euphrates valley.
• Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, came from Abraham’s homeland, Mesopotamia.
• Egypt was the land of captivity, where some Jews remained.
  • The gospel song reminds us of this time:  “Wade in the water; wade in the water, children; wade in the water: God’s gonna trouble the water.”
• Ur, home of Abraham, is near modern-day Kuwait, which rests precipitously at the Northwest extremity of the Persian Gulf. 
• Jerusalem was the land of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-25), who prophesied 70 weeks (or years) until the coming of the Messiah.

The presence of these wise men demands two significant considerations: That the Messiah was known outside of Israel, disarming this as a political P.R. event, and that God intended faith in His Son to be the great, universal, foundation stone upon which hope and peace would be built.  Micah 4:2 “And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”  Zechariah 2:11 “And many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people: and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto thee.”  Zechariah 8:23 “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”

II.            There Is Prophecy Relative to Messiah’s Birth, Appearing Here As Questions of Those Men.  V2 “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?”  With all of their learning, there are yet surprises: Surprise that Herod knows not of this, that a king would be born away from Jerusalem, that the star will show them the very place of His birth, and that they would be “divinely warned” in a dream.

                But be very sure that the prophetic word of God knows no surprises. Micah 5:2 “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth that is to be ruler in Israel.”  The wise men asked about a king, but when Herod called on his own scholars, he inquired of “Messiah,” and of Bethlehem.

                At Bethlehem, the picture begins to form of God’s love.   Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the sky of parchment made; were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade: To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky  (Frederick Lehman). 

                At Bethlehem also, we begin to discover the degree to which God will go for those He loves.  It took someone like Jesus to save us.  We dare not treat it lightly.

III.           The Forecast of Direction to Joseph for His Family.  V13 “. . . an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Arise, take . . . go . . . stay.”  It is not Father’s Day, but perhaps it is:  A time to assume  joys and responsibilities; a time to learn of Joseph’s example; a time to bring joy to the hearts of 20^th Century Marys; a time for deepening relationships, of the spiritual sort, and of family.  God spoke  to Joseph.  He can speak to us: Through a dream then, perhaps now.  He speaks indisputably through His Word.

                The climax is that of obedience.  V14 “. . . He arose, . . . took the young Child and his  mother by night and departed for Egypt.” Knowing in obedience is doing.  The message is that of God’s providence. 

This is the Joseph of momentous decisions.  When he learned of the baby there were three choices:  Accuse Mary before the elders; simply put her away (Deuteronomy 22:26—sometimes the woman is helpless); accept Mary, and her baby, shelter them both, love them, and see the wonders of God.

When God persists in a plan, He provides the resource.  Three wise men from the east traveled for perhaps five months to provide resources for Joseph and his family in Egypt.

                Wise men still seek Jesus.

IV.          There Is Foreboding of the Murder of Children.  V16 “Herod . . . 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.”

                Is it conceivable for one man to harbour such malice, suspicion, and fear?  But clearly, to the warped mind human life is just another expendable commodity, political not spiritual.  Besides that, it was not just another human life sought by Herod, not just another number recorded on the parchment of over-populated land mass.  This was the king/messiah they were asking about:  What is done with the old king when a new one asserts himself?

                There are still Herods about.  These people didn’t find Jeremiah’s prophecy all that shocking.  Nor did the people to whom Jeremiah spoke.  “A voice was heard in Ramah, . . . Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they were no more” (Jeremiah 31:15).

                Such are not born that way, they become that way.  “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.”

                Christian social enterprise without Christ’s redemptive love is hate.  I read of the Mayas of Mesoamerica, and their trials chiefly through Spain’s lust for gold.  There were places in their own native land where they could not walk on the sidewalks until 1965.

Conclusion

                In these areas, the prophecies of Christmas chiefly speak.  They testify that God is at work, and that He is at work in the human world.  The prophetic scriptures were fulfilled.  The Messiah was born of the Virgin Mary.  He was called the “Son of God,” because He was.  He was named “Immanuel” meaning God with us. 

                Harold Lindsell, contemporary scholar, wrote in Christianity Today (12/77), “By the light of nature we see God above us.  By the light of the law we see God against us.  By the light of the gospel we see Jesus as Immanuel who is God with us.”

                Skeptics and apostates may question and deny, but they deny only their own reason, and assert their own faithlessness.  They do no injustice to the truth of God.

                We believe the prophecies of Christmas because they are true.  They are true because God intervened in history and brought them to pass.  The Babe of Bethlehem became Calvary’s Captive: The Lord of glory, at whose feet we fall, and to whom we pay homage.  Blessed Christmas season when once again we remind, and are reminded, that God has tabernacled among us and we have beheld His glory.