We are in week 3 of Advent, preparing our hearts for the celebration of the arrival of King Jesus – today, we are in the second half of Matthew chapter 2, and we will see Matthew laying more foundational groundwork for this book, proving that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy, that he was the Messiah whom the Jewish people had been looking for.

 

The last part of the text today is a term that has been coined “the Nazareth Principle” – One man defines it this way: “The Nazareth Principle is this: That in life, time after time, the best things come from unlikely places. And this extends to the fact that out of trouble and wounds, disappointments and closed doors, come often the actual breakthroughs of personal life.”

 

We have seen it since the beginning of this book, that Matthew is weaving together a story, building a case that the long awaited Messiah came in a non-conventional way, slipping into the world without pomp and circumstance, under the guise of scandal, through unlikely people – the liars, manipulators, sexually promiscuous, murderers and malcontents, the misunderstood – through a lineage of brokenness – Yet, against all odds, Jesus the Messiah would change human history by becoming the King nobody wanted, but today we see the King that everyone needs.

 

We say this a lot, but when you think about your Ephesians 2:10 calling, it often intersects with your deepest pain, your biggest failure – It is out of those ashes that God creates a beautiful platform for the good news of Jesus.

This recurring theme is all over the church – we hear it in stories through Regeneration and Reengage, where people share their story of brokenness, and how Jesus is healing, repairing, restoring and using their broken story to change the world around them – It is my story, Josh’s story, Sheila’s story, Jesse Shaw’s story, Sam O’s story, Serena’s story – God uses broken people in unconventional ways to accomplish his purposes - In the passage today, we will see God’s plan continue to unfold as prophecy is fulfilled, and one young man’s obedience to the voice of God to follow him in the midst of turmoil.  Matthew 2:13-23

 

V13 – “When they had gone…” – he is referring to the Magi – who followed a star to Bethlehem to find Jesus so they could worship him – Josh did a fantastic job last week showing that these men were magicians, astrologers, star-gazers from the east that traveled hundreds of miles to find the new King, led by a star – remember, they first went to the most likely place to find a future king, to the house of Herod, the current sitting King in Jerusalem – Herod, not knowing prophecy, went to his own “wise men” to ask where it was predicted for the Messiah was to be born, and upon learning prophecy, told these far eastern wise men to go to Bethlehem, find this baby and report back to him – And God warned them in a dream not to return to Herod, but take another route home.

 

Now Joseph hears the voice of the Lord a second time: “Get up and take your family to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Jesus’ life is on the line” – So, the first time Joseph is visited by God in a dream, he is told that Mary’s pregnancy is legit from the Holy Spirit, and that he is to marry her and raise Jesus as his own child – Now, Joseph is told to take his family and run for his life – Unconventional to say the least – again, this is a picture of the Nazareth principle: Out of trouble and closed doors will come breakthrough.

 

V14 – “So he got up…” – we are learning a lot about Joseph – in chapter 1, he was told to take Mary as his wife under scandalous circumstances, and 1:24 says “when he woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him” – and here, God speaks again in a dream, and Joseph OBEYS – Remember, Joseph is a teenage boy, yet we see a lot of Abraham in him – In Genesis 12, when God speaks to Abraham and tells him to go to a place that I will tell you, Hebrews 11:8, “Abraham went, not knowing where he was going” – We don’t know much about Joseph, but what we do know is that he was a young guy that was faithful to obey the voice of God.

 

God is looking for people who are willing to follow him into the unknown – Hebrews 11:6 – “Without faith, it is impossible to please God” – is there an obedient step of faith God is calling you to take? A step into the unknown that requires trust, even when you don’t see the big picture? This is what Joseph is doing, and he is doing it in order that God’s promises will be fulfilled.

 

V15 – This is the first of 3 different kinds of prophecies in the text today – this prophecy is known as Typological prophecy, meaning that Matthew is using an old prophecy that had already been fulfilled to connect the Jewish readers to a bigger narrative – Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1 here: “Out of Egypt I called my son” – When you read the context in Hosea, the prophet is speaking of the nation of Israel, and their rescue from captivity in Egypt – now, Matthew is using that prophecy to connect to a larger narrative – now Jesus is portrayed as a new and better deliverer, a new and better Moses, born to deliver Israel from their brokenness and oppression, and the entire world, once and for all – I’m sure Joseph had no idea at the time what he was accomplishing, he was just taking the next right step.

 

Imagine putting a 1000 piece puzzle together without the picture you are trying to produce – slow and pain-staking, you are creating the picture one piece at a time - As you uncover your E210 calling, you will often be asked by God to take an unlikely “next” step that may not make sense in the moment – If you’re like me, I want the complete picture first, but that is not faith: that is reverse engineering – show me the end goal, and I’ll reverse engineer a plan – that is not faith but good eyesight.

 

Illus – “sell your house” – God would not give us big picture, only the next right thing.

 

V16-18 – To say Herod was paranoid is an massive understatement – he felt so threatened that he ordered all the boys in Bethlehem two years old and under to be killed – Scholars believe that this impacted 20-30 babies, but imagine to impact in that little town – and the last thing Herod wanted to do was fulfill Messianic prophecy, yet Matthew uses his actions to show a fulfillment of prophecy from Jeremiah 31:15.

This would be a double fulfillment prophecy, or a near/far prophecy – Ramah is translated as a high or elevated place – there is a town north of Jerusalem called Ramah that was used as a staging area for the deportation of Jews when they went into exile centuries earlier – and Rachel is the personification of all mothers in Israel weeping for her children – even when the first prophecy is fulfilled, Rachel was long-since dead, but she was the mother of Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin, all tribes of the Kingdom that were taken into captivity.

But, fast-forward, even today, in Bethlehem, if you ask a cab driver to take you to Rachel’s tomb, they would take you to Ramah, or a high place in Bethlehem where it is believed that Rachel is buried – Matthew is using an ancient prophetic text to describe the mourning of Bethlehem over the slaughter of their young children – pretty cool, huh?

 

V19-21 – Again, God speaks, and Joseph obeys – God is accomplishing his plan through a teenager who says yes – 1 Timothy 4:12 – If you are a young person in the room today, don’t discount what God can do through you – you are not just the future, you are the NOW.

 

V22-23 - Yet ANOTHER DREAM – withdrew to Galilee to a town called Nazareth – Matthew says here that this fulfilled through PROPHETS (plural) that Jesus would be called a NAZARENE – Here is a major problem in this text – not only is there no prophecy using the town of Nazareth, Nazareth is not even mentioned in the OT AT ALL – so, what was Matthew saying here? There are a couple of options: Hebrew language has no vowels, so the consonants in Nazereth are NZR – in Hebrew, Nezer, or Netser, would mean “branch” – So, Matthew could be pointing to Isaiah 11:1, “a shoot (branch) will come up from the stump of Jesse (father of David); from his roots a branch will bear fruit” – Nazareth could mean branch, but pretty unclear.

 

He could also be pointing to the idea that Nazareth was despised by Jews – The region of Galilee was inhabited by many Gentiles, and Jews hated Gentiles – When Nathaniel in John 1:46 is told that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, his response was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Matthew may have been describing Messianic prophecy in Psalm 22:6-7 or Isaiah 53:2-3, that the Messiah would be despised and rejected – so, it is likely that Matthew was again showing us that Jesus was the unlikely King, coming from the unlikely place, to usher in an unlikely Kingdom.

 

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:26-30 that God uses the “foolish things of the world to shame the wise; the lowly and despised things to to nullify the things that are, so that NO ONE MAY BOAST before him."

 

Back to the Nazareth Principle: “The Nazareth Principle is this: That in life, time after time, the best things come from unlikely places. And this extends to the fact that out of trouble and wounds, disappointments and closed doors, come often the actual breakthroughs of personal life.” Is it safe to say that your broken story is the very place that Jesus wants to enter the world to heal you, restore you and use you to usher in his Kingdom through you right here and now? What can God do with your simple YES?Joseph is not just a necessary figurine in the Christmas nativity, but an faith-filled obedient follower, living out his E210 calling in extraordinary ways he didn’t even know, and a picture of who you are called to be.