Episode 18 - Matthew 2:13-18

Introduction

What’s up, guys!

This is Josh with Shepherd’s Cast and I want to welcome you to the podcast where I talk to you about the things that I find important. My content is meant to inform, educate, puzzle, or be funny. If it does something other than what I’ve just said, then Soli Deo Gloria, we will just call it providence. All of what I say is read from blog posts that I have written and can be found on my website with the link in the show notes.

So, anyway, yeah, here we go…

Episode

As a short review of what we discussed in our last episode in the Matthew series, Matthew covered the visit of the wise-men and a bit of the mindset of that old fox, Herod. In this explanation we touched on some of the supernatural events that took place in regard to the star, the identity of the wise-men, and even some of the darkness that seemed to protrude from the heart of Herod. If you did not listen to the previous episodes before we come to this one I highly encourage you to do so. We are tackling the book of Matthew in order starting with an introduction before we dove into chapter one. And, as a simple subject explanation, we are doing this in order to better know the subject of our worship.

So, without further pause, the text!

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Matthew 2:13-18

As is tradition, thus ends the reading.

Starting at the beginning we come to another instance in which an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. This is the second of four instances in which Joseph would commune with angels in his dreams. From the first instance, Joseph probably has a sense of familiarity, to an extent, and knowledge of the truth and faithfulness of the message. The message, this time, being that Joseph must flee specifically to Egypt because Herod is about to seek after the child to destroy Him.

Now, we have been following this fall of Herod for a while. He already had the thoughts of securing his throne before this moment in time, and he had even set the plan into motion by having the secret meeting with the magi before sending them on their way. The magi, as we learned in the last podcast, had been warned, themselves, in a dream, not to go back the way they came in order to avoid any trouble from Herod. Thus, it was only natural that Herod would continue on this war path, as the angel is warning, and Joseph needed to get himself and his family out of there, at least until they are called from God to come forth from Egypt.

Joseph took this warning so seriously that he went under cover of night - it doesn’t explicitly say that it is the same night as the dream, however, it was probably in haste and in secret in order to protect his family as the leader of their household. So, gathering their things, they arose and fled to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod.

Now, with the debate of the time period of the birth of Jesus alongside early scholarship debates of how old He was on the cross we come to an estimation of when and how long this could have been for. To explain, most scholars and researchers agree that Jesus was not actually born at year 0. Recent scholarship does believe, however, that the death of Herod was 4 BC. Coupled with the next couple of verses, they suggest that Jesus was close to two years of age when the decree came out. Putting their stay in Egypt extremely brief, some would suggest that it could even have been only a couple of weeks.

But, why Egypt? Might I say, who are you, Oh, man, to question God? No, but really. The verse quoted from Hosea really seems to be more of a statement rather than a prophecy. Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is who allocates that passage as a prophetic fulfillment in what took place with the Christ in this moment. This we can reference to as a type, or something foreshadowed in the Old Testament that is fulfilled in the New. For instance, it would be accurate to say that Israel being called from Egypt by the hand of God in Exodus is a prophetic type of Christ being called out of Egypt in the New Testament. It is simply summed up in Hosea and then allocated by Matthew. While there were a few authors in this instance, we must remember that those authors were merely pens at the hand of the Holy Spirit, which is how it all ties together so perfectly.

By this time, Herod realized that the magi were not returning. He became furious that his plan had been foiled and he, determined to protect the throne from the rightful king of the Jews, sent out a decree that all the male children in Bethlehem who were two years old or under, “according to the time ascertained from the wise men,” should be killed. This is where the estimations of his age at the time of the wise-men come into play as we just mentioned above.

A lot of things that happened in the Bible, even in Old Testament times, can often be verified by extra-biblical content. While these extra-biblical resources are not inspired and should never be seen as such, they simply give more authenticity to events that are located in the inspired word. Josephus is one of those biblical sources. He was a secular, or, Jewish historian that recorded much of what we find politically in the Bible. However, Josephus does not record the events and actions of Herod on this small town. Most scholars believe the reasoning for this is because Bethlehem was somewhat of an insignificant town at the time. And, alongside the fact that Herod had a ton of other reasons to be recorded by Josephus, this event wasn’t big enough to have made it into the history books. For instance, Herod was known for being a jealous fellow - jealous even to the point that he had some of his own kids and wives killed because he thought they were plotting against him. There is a famous line given by Emperor Augustus that relates to this saying that “It is better to be Herod’s sow than his son,” for his sow had a better chance of surviving in a Jewish community. This line was made humerus by the fact that son and sow really only had a single letter difference in the Greek. (huios vs huos).

Continuing on, Matthew, being true to His Jewish audience, continued to tie in prophecies that would make the Christ relevant to the person and work of Jesus. Located in the prophet Jeremiah we see a recording of the weeping of mothers due to the death of children in the Babylonian captivity. This is another typological fulfillment found in the New Testament that paints a picture of something in the Old Testament. In other words, the wailing that took place at the Babylonian captivity over the death of the children prefigured the wailing that would take place at the death of the children in Bethlehem.

As we wrap up this section I want to impress on you a theological concept that I see plainly visible within the text. Something I want to explain that I believe is visible in this text is a doctrine called “Compatibilism.” What you can probably determine from the name, it has something to do with compatibility. Basically, the sovereign hand of God in determining what will happen and when is compatible and does not do damage to the will of man.

I want to include a paragraph from the 1689 London Baptist Confession in this regard. It is absolutely still in the old language but I will do my best to clean it up after the fact: “God hath decreed in Himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein; nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established; in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing His decree.” This can be found in chapter 3, paragraph 1 of God’s Decree.

I’m going to illustrate this with the passage we used, but first I want to paint a picture of the layers we are talking about and sort of unpack this. We have God’s eternal decree, or, ordination. Now, we must differentiate between the terms “ordinance” and “authorship.” For instance, if we say that someone authors something, for instance, a book, we mean that this person has written, created, or otherwise procured this book. They are the creators of said book. That is why the confession goes through great pains to say that God is not the author of sin - that would be completely contrary to scripture and we certainly do not believe that He is the author of such things. But we would say that God ordains sin. That is because when we use the term ordain we do not mean, in any way, shape, or form, created. We mean, simply, an allowance for. As in, God has full authority in His power and sovereignty to stop every, single sin, though He does not. He has complete authority to destroy the sinner, and, yet, He remains merciful.

Thus, in painting this picture, we will put God at the top. God is the designer, the Ordainor of all things, good or bad. In His ultimate plan, there is not one thing out of His control, or, as the late and great R.C. Sproul says, there are no maverick molecules in the entire universe. The second level would be angelic powers, if any were present in the ordeal. For instance, in 1 Kings 22:22 we are introduced to a spirit who will go out and “be a lying spirit to the prophets.” They are acting according to their nature as creatures of God, or, likewise, as creatures of darkness. As we see in the story of Job, the devil wants to do things to Job, God doesn’t direct him to do those things; God simply gives the devil permission to act in accordance with his nature. So while, for instance, the devil may be going to cause havoc, God may be refining silver into something more beautiful. And, for the final level, we see man, who is also responsible. The best explanation of this would be in Genesis 50:20 and the entire story of Joseph being sold into slavery. His brothers meant evil, their hearts were given over to evil, and, yet, God had the perfect plan in mind for the prosperity of Jacob’s family.

As we see, all of those things have their own nature, but the final authority in all of those instances is found in God. The others can only act in accordance with their nature while God is the only authority who is the most free. And God used those actions, those evils, to further His own plan. Very similar, in respect to the size of the illustration, a parent who grounds a child and forces them, in their punishment, to go out and paint a wooden fence. The fence protects the child while playing from predatory animals, and, while the child at his or her level may find the action evil, the parent had full knowledge, plan, and authority in providing preventative maintenance to the fence which would be used for the good of the child.

So how can we see this from the text at hand, then? Herod, at first hearing of the newborn King, already had the darkness and intent in his fallen heart to bring evil to the child in order to protect his ownership of the throne. However, one of the prophets, specifically Hosea in chapter 11, records a prophetic typological notion in which God had already planned to call His Son into Egypt in order that He call Him from Egypt. Determined in ages past at the ordinance of the Almighty God, this plan was set in place. He did not have to author in Herod evil intent to go forth and hunt the child in order to fulfill this prophecy, Herod simply acted according to His nature, not damaging his will in any way, to pursue the child. His evil literally fulfilled a predetermined plan that God already had.

Final Word of the Day

I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. It is always a pleasure to bring the word of God to those who are seeking to know more about Him.

The final word of the day comes to us from my good friend Lee with Reformed Meditations. Lee gives us a piece of advice on something that we could honestly all do better at.

*Listen to my podcast for this!*

A special thanks to Jesus Wannabeez for allowing me to use their track, Ephesians 6, in my intro and outro music. You can find a link to their Spotify in the show notes.

And, as always, may the light of the holy God shine upon you.

Amen.