July 22nd, 2018: The Ultimate Israelite, Matthew 2:13-23

We are going to continue our way through the book of Matthew this morning finishing up chapter 2. We will be spending most of our time this morning looking at the 4 quotations of the Old Testament in chapter 2. Matthew quotes the Old Testament more times than any of the other gospel writers and is primarily concerned with presenting Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. One of his focuses throughout the gospel account is demonstrating the person of Jesus as the ultimate Israelite, the corporate head of Israel who represents and brings to pass all God intended for Israel.

            I want to 1st go over a little bit about the story itself to understand the context of these quotations from the Old Testament, but we will spend the majority of our time this morning looking at how Matthew utilizes these quotations from the Old Testament to show the correspondence between the people of Israel and Jesus as the ultimate Israelite. Let us read the rest of chapter 2 starting in verse 13.

            Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord *bappeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.” So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi.Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:

                  “A voice was heard in Ramah,

Weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children;

And she refused to be comforted,

Because they were no more.”

            But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord *aappeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said, “Get up, take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” So Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Then after being warned by God in a dream, he left for the regions of Galilee, and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

            Chapter 2 is the narrative of the birth and early years of Jesus. None of the gospel accounts go into a lot of detail of the early years of Jesus. Mark and John mention nothing before the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist who was the forerunner of Jesus and who came to prepare the Jewish people for the arrival of the Messiah. We will take more time to look at this peculiar prophet next week as we move into chapter 3. The gospel of Luke does give us a little bit more detail than Matthew but only in a short look at an event when Jesus was around the age of 12. Through the centuries of the church, this is led to a lot of speculation and mythology which, in the end, only does damage to the truth.

            In more recent history, there has been a lot of growing support among many liberal scholars and theologians who reject the historical accuracy of chapter 2 as a whole. They argue that the Magi would never have bothered coming to a place like Jerusalem, that Joseph could not have afforded to move his family down to Egypt, and that there is no documentation of Herod slaughtering infants. It is not hard to accept the truth of this biblical account if you accept that Matthew was inspired by God but also by some simple logical conclusions drawn from the text.

As to the Magi coming, we talked a lot about that last week and the fact that they would have known a great deal about Old Testament prophecy concerning the Jewish Messiah because of Daniels time as the head of the Magi order. The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh that the Magi brought would have set Joseph and his little family up for a long time.

Understanding a little bit about the character and paranoia of Herod, it is not much of a stretch to imagine him murdering a handful of infants when he was willing to murder his own children. As to the argument that the killing of these children in Bethlehem is not found recorded anywhere, there are great many massacres that have happened through history that were hushed up and swept under the rug. I do not want to trivialize the death of infants, but Bethlehem was a very small town on the outskirts of Jerusalem and in all likelihood, this would not have been a massive operation but killing only a few children. Picture that same event happening in a place like Selby which would actually be similar in size to the Bethlehem of Jesus’s time. There would definitely be weeping and great morning in the town, but you are only looking at about 5 to 10 children, not thousands. Something like this would hardly have warranted even a mention in the news in Jerusalem let alone the rest of the world.

As to how and why Joseph would choose to move to Egypt, we read in the text here that he was directed by an angel. We know that the gifts would have sustained his family in both the journey and living in a foreign land, and we also know from the Jewish historian Josephus that there was a massive colony of Jewish people living in Egypt that was well-established. As a skilled labor, Joseph could easily have found work in a thriving Jewish community while they remained in Egypt.

            The looking at chapter 2 as a whole, this narrative of Jesus’s early life is split into 4 events. Each is punctuated by their own reference to the Old Testament. For the birth portion that covers 1 to 12, Matthew quotes from Micah 5:2. The flight to Egypt that we see in verses 13-15, Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1. In the murder of the infants in verses 16-18 we see a quotation from Jeremiah 31:15. And finally in the return to Nazareth, Matthew summarizes the writings of multiple prophets by claiming that Jesus would “be called a Nazarene.”

            As we look at these 4 quotations of the Old Testament, we can see 2 purposes in Matthews uses. 2 of them are what is called “direct fulfillment.” They showed Jesus as the promised Messiah. The other 2 are divine correspondences between the people of Israel and Jesus as the ultimate Israelite.

            The first 2 are the easier ones. Direct fulfillment is the simplest form of the New Testament’s quotation of the Old Testament in that there is a prophecy given by a prophet in the Old Testament, given specifically about the Messiah, and Matthew as the New Testament author recognizes its referent and quotes that prophecy in order to demonstrate the way in which Jesus fulfills that statement. If you have not picked up on it by now, Matthew’s primary purpose in writing this gospel is a presentation of Jesus as the promised Messiah and this is one of the ways in which he continues to make his case.

In verse 6, we see the first of these 2 with the Jewish leaders quoting Micah 5:2 where the prophet is speaking about the coming Messiah and sets the place of his birth.

            It is not hard to see how that was fulfilled, even with the way in which God moved the entire Mediterranean world to make sure that it happened exactly as he had planned. Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth as we read in the gospel of Luke. Nearly 1000 miles away, in the city of Rome an edict is distributed to the entirety of the Empire that all people are to return to their ancestral home in order to register for a census. This forces Joseph to take his very pregnant wife on a journey to Bethlehem in order for this prophecy to be fulfilled.

            The second direct fulfillment prophecy is an interesting one and we see it at the end of the chapter, in verse 23. We read, “after being warned by God in a dream, he ( Joseph) left for the regions of Galilee and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken to the prophets: “he shall be called a Nazarene.” Now the interesting thing about this direct fulfillment prophecy is that there is no specific Old Testament text which explicitly states that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. Then what does Matthew mean by this direct fulfillment we should say paraphrase of the Old Testament?

            There are several suggestions as to the meaning of this quote. The most supported of these opinions usually come down to some sort of wordplay or pun. Some have argued that the word “branch” in Hebrew is very similar to “Nazarene.” And Matthew is trying to connect the “branch” prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah with the term “Nazarene.” There are other similar arguments that use wordplay but I do not see any support for this sort of wordplay because it appears nowhere else in the New Testament and seems a sort of misdirection where Scripture is written in such a way that it can be easily understood.

Others have argued that Matthew is referencing some unrecorded prophecy that was common knowledge to the Jewish people but God did not see fit to canonize it in Scripture. There is a lot of oral tradition that was prominent in the Jewish faith at the time of Jesus and it is very possible that there existed prophets during the times of the Old Testament that did receive revelation from God and delivered to the people but it was not recorded for some reason. Though I find this option more plausible than the wordplay, it would seem to go contrary to the purpose of demonstrating how Jesus fulfilled prophecy if we did not know the original prophecy to begin with.

I believe that Matthew is not quoting any one prophet specifically but rather paraphrasing an idea that existed in the oracles of multiple different prophets throughout the Old Testament. He even makes the point that this is not an individual prophet as we see there in verse 23 that this was to fulfill what had been spoken through “the prophets.”

 We know from prophecies like that of Isaiah 52 and 53 in that the Messiah would come from humble origins and not be considered someone of prominence. The region of Galilee was largely inhabited by a people known throughout the area of Israel for being crude and somewhat backwards. We see in John 1:46 Nathaniel, who became one of the apostles, when told about Jesus first comments to Philip, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The term Nazarene had long been a term of derision that would have had the same sort of impression of our term “hillbilly.” They were someone from the backwoods and everybody knows that nothing meaningful comes from Nazareth.

            This again would fit with Matthews point in demonstrating that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah which is the reason for quoting Old Testament prophecies in support of the claim.

            The other 2 prophecies that we see in chapter 2 are written to show that Jesus is the ultimate Israelite. Matthew demonstrates a divinely orchestrated correspondence between the history of the people of Israel and the life of Jesus. There is a sense in which their experiences are linked with his experiences. Matthew uses multiple prophecies to make this point and highlights this link. The correspondences reveal that Jesus is the ultimate Israelite, the corporate head of Israel who represents and brings about all that God intended for Israel as a people. This is consistent with the biblical principle of corporate representation in which an ideal leader represents the people as a whole.

            We will discuss more of this principle in a moment but first, I want to show you how Matthew links these events in the life of Jesus with major events that defined the people of Israel as a whole.

            The first example of this divine correspondence is in verse 15 where we read, “he remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “out of Egypt I called my son.” This is a quotation of Hosea 11:1. According to Matthew, Mary and Joseph took the child Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s attempt to kill Him and then he relates Jesus’s return from Egypt with Israel’s journey in Exodus from Egypt nearly 1,500 years earlier.

            When we read the context of Hosea 11:1, the prophet is not making a statement about the coming Messiah but is instead expressing God’s yearning for his people who have rejected him. It is a picture of a loving father who was looking over his “son” referencing the entire people of Israel” who has betrayed that love by abandoning Him for the worship of idols. Hosea is referencing the Exodus as a historical event and the beginning of God’s relationship to His chosen people. The obvious question then is, “how can Jesus’s return from Egypt be a fulfillment of an historical event?”

            It is clear from the context of Hosea is referencing the historical event and it is not a stretch to draw the conclusion that Matthew knew the context of the verse he was quoting. So why does he say that Jesus fulfills this event? The Old Testament is full of predictions concerning the one who would come from the people of Israel who would save and restore Israel. For Matthew, the fact that both Israel and Jesus came out of Egypt was not an accident of history but divinely intended by God to show this correspondence.

The use of “son” by both Hosea and Matthew was intentional and not some accident. Many times throughout the Old Testament terms like “son” and “seed” carry both a collective as well as individual understanding. When these terms are used collectively of all of the descendents of a particular reference, there is always a hint that an individual “seed” or “son” would come. It is possible that Hosea was referring to Israel as God’s “son” who came out of Egypt while also having that same messianic hope in mind.

The same is true of the quotation of the prophet Jeremiah in verse 18. Jeremiah 31 is an oracle of great hope in the salvation and restoration of Israel. It also describes the glorious new covenant that would be given to Israel someday. Yet in the middle of this section is a very sad verse that refers to the deportation of slaves from Israel and Jerusalem to Babylon during the exile. Ramah was just north of Jerusalem and served as the staging area where the Babylonian soldiers would gather slaves to be sent off to the various parts of the Babylonian empire. The women of the area who were not being exiled would have wept bitterly over the deportation of their husbands and sons.

Like Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1, this seems odd or out of place at 1st glance. It is not a prophetic utterance referencing the Messiah but is a reference to a historical event. Again we can be sure that Matthew knows these events are separated by centuries and understands the context of Jeremiah’s original Oracle and that it is not even referencing the city of Bethlehem. Matthew is highlighting another correspondence between Israel’s history and establishing event in the life of Jesus. He does this to show the connection and solidarity between Israel and Jesus. Jeremiah 31:15 is a disastrous and tragic event for Israel in the context of hope and this tragic event in the life of Jesus the ultimate Israelite is also a tragedy in the midst of a passage promising hope for the future in presenting Jesus as the promised Messiah.

What does all of this divine correspondence mean? What does it mean for Jesus to be the ultimate Israelite? Essentially it is this; Jesus came to fulfill the Old covenant because the people of Israel had failed to do so and once the old covenant was fulfilled in the perfect obedience of Jesus he was able to institute the new covenant.

Throughout the Bible there are multiple instances of an individual representing an entire body of people. Many times throughout the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, the actions and religious attitude of the king brings God’s judgment against the nation as a whole because the king represents the people. On a larger scale, all of mankind is said to be represented by Adam and it is through his sin that the curse is transmitted throughout all of mankind. Throughout the book of Romans Paul references this corporate headship of Adam and Christ as the 2nd Adam or the 1st among the resurrected, representing all of the elect.

What Matthew is doing in this chapter and in the rest of his gospel by presenting Jesus as the ultimate Israelite is making Jesus that ultimate figurehead for the Jewish people. To understand why that is necessary, we need to understand why God has chosen to use a particular people. Deuteronomy 7 tells us that God did not choose the Israelite people because they were great or numerous but because of the promises that he had made to their ancestors starting with the Abrahamic covenant.

He chose to use them for the purpose of being his representatives on the earth. They were to be a nation of priests. Back in Exodus 19, after God has called the people out of Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai in order to establish them as His people He tells them in verses 5-6, “now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Their purpose was to represent God to the world. That is one of the primary reasons for the Mosaic law. When we look at the Mosaic law we see what we think of as strange commands having to do with dietary restrictions and even how they were to make their clothes. All of this was to set them apart from the other nations so that they would know there was something different about people of Israel on the God that they served.

Their purpose in being this kingdom of priests was to bring the nations to God. Part of the Abraham at and Davidic covenants, part of God’s promise to both Abraham and David was that a descendent of theirs would bless all of the nations of the world. In the Mosaic covenant with the people of Israel, they were to be that blessing as long as they upheld their end of the deal. Because they failed as a nation to uphold their side of the covenant, God used the person of Jesus to stand in order to represent the entire nation of Israel in fulfilling the covenant perfectly. In that way, Jesus stands as the ultimate Israelite, the one who fulfilled the covenant as it was worded.

Once the old covenant was fulfilled, the new covenant was able to be instituted. The new covenant that was promised in the same passage in Jeremiah 31 that Matthew quotes when referencing the weeping over the death of the infants and Bethlehem. It serves 2 purposes, first, it is the foundation for the promise of restoration for the people of Israel. Throughout the Old Testament, there are prophecies of judgment against the people of Israel because of their unbelief or the rejection of God in favor of the false religion of their Canaanite neighbors. Over and over again they are warned and condemned for their spiritual adultery and warned of their rejection from God. At the same time, there are numerous prophecies of restoration after their desolation that is to come and it is to come at the hands of the Messiah.

As the ultimate Israelite and the promised Messiah, Jesus is the center point for the hope of the restoration of the people of Israel when he returns to the earth to reign from Jerusalem for a millennium. These are the promises to the people of Israel in the Old Testament. A restoration of the people in the promised land enjoying the favor of God.

That is the first purpose of Jesus as the ultimate Israelite. To be the hope for the people of Israel and their restoration. But that will not happen until he comes again to rule over the earth. Right now, the people of Israel are experiencing the rejection of God. They are no longer his chosen people who are to bring in the kingdom of God, representing him to the world. Their purpose has been replaced by the church. In 1 Peter 2:9-10, the apostle quotes from Exodus 19 but the focus is not on Israel but the church. He calls the church “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.”

Having fulfilled the Mosaic covenant as the ultimate Israelite, as the second purpose of Jesus as the ultimate Israelite, he now stands as the head of the church and all those who are baptized into his death and resurrection stand alongside him as the priesthood of believers who are called to fulfill the mission that the Israelite people failed to do. It is not to say that the people of Israel have been fully replaced by the church. There will be a distinct Israel in the future who serve God, but they will serve alongside the church as part of the church, part of the people of God.

God has not abandoned the people of Israel altogether, but He has set them aside in order to use the church as the means of presenting the new covenant to the world.

So what does this mean for us? How does Jesus as the ultimate Israelite effect those of us who have no Jewish ancestry? Number 1, we recognize that He is the link between the Old Testament and the New. We need to understand the Old Testament, we need to understand God’s covenants and promises that were made to His chosen people in the Old Testament in order to understand the position as His chosen people now.

We see in Jesus of fulfillment of the Old Testament and its completion. We are no longer under the old covenant, we are no longer subjected to the laws and rituals that were required of the people of God in the Mosaic covenant because Jesus fulfilled all of them as the ultimate Israelite.

We also need to understand the church’s role as the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the people for God’s own possession. Our primary purpose is to proclaim the excellencies of him who has called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light as Peter wrote. Our primary purpose as with all of creation is to exalt God. That is between us and God, but our primary purpose in relation to the world is to passionately pursue the glory of God in evangelizing the lost both locally and around the world. The last command given to the elect in the book of Matthew is the instruction to go into the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Jesus has commanded us.

As we look to the successes and failures of the people of Israel in the Old Testament, we should be spurred on to proclaim the glory of God as is our responsibility as His people.