Matthew 2

Chapter 2. The Childhood of the King"Thy holy child Jesus" (Acts 4:27)“The child is the father of the man” is an adage which was as true of the childhood of Christ as it has often been of earth’s distinguished men. In the story of Jesus recorded in Matthew 2, we see foreshadowed the larger story of His later life as unfolded in the Gospel of Matthew. A careful study of this gospel will show that it may be divided into two sections, the first, up through the 10th chapter, setting forth the manifestation of Christ as Israel’s King and the second recording the gradual and final rejection of the Messiah by His people, until at last it culminated in the betrayal, trial and crucifixion. All this we see in type in the story of His childhood, as given in the second chapter of Matthew.

Section I: Visit of the Magi

Section I—Visit of the MagiThe revelation of the King is presented in the story of the visitation of the Magi to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These men represented the wisdom and glory of the Gentile nations. It was true of the later history of Christianity that the Gentiles should be the first who recognized Him. These wise men stood for the merits of every tribe and tongue who have been flocking to His standard for 19 centuries, even as He said they would. “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself (John 12:32). When the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, then Israel will seek and recognize her long rejected King. These Magi brought the most distinguished recognition to the infant Messiah. They represented the priests and the prophets of the ancient world, and by their visit to Jerusalem and the answer given to them by the rulers of the Jewish nation identifying Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah, they added to their testimony for Christ the testimony of the whole Jewish nation, too. The offering they brought to Him were significant of the high character they ascribed to Him. Gold They recognized Him as King and Lord by their offerings of gold. They counted Him the proprietor of all their wealth, and they brought to Him their gold in acknowledgment of this. This is what our gifts to God really signify. We do not give because He is poor, but because He is rich. The common idea of Christian giving is that the cause of Christ is in distress and we must help it out. This is an insult to God. He does not need our help. With sublime scorn of men’s assumptions He says: “For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills…. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it” (Psalms 50:10, Psalms 50:12). He accepts our gifts as a token of our allegiance and as a recognition of His sovereignty. He does not want them unless they mean this. The question for each of us is that which Christ put to the men that brought Him a coin of Caesar’s: “‘Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?’ ‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. Then he said to them, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’” (Matthew 22:20-21). If God owns our gold, let us give it to Him in recognition of His claim; if we own it ourselves, and are our own proprietors, let us keep it and perish with it. Incense (Frankincense) They recognized Him as divine by the worship they paid and by the frankincense they offered Him. Frankincense was a precious perfume consecrated to religious worship. It was made by burning costly spices, and under the Jewish ceremonial it was protected by a prohibition so solemn that anyone who counterfeited it was guilty of sacrilege and sentenced to be cut off from among the people. In bringing this sacred offering to the Holy Babe, the Magi acknowledged Him as a divine being. This was what He always claimed to be, and this was one of the reasons why His enemies at last condemned Him to death, because He said that He was the Son of God. What He asks from us is worship. He does not want our service any more than our gold unless we first give Him ourselves. The homage He claims is the devotion of our hearts, and there is no finer figure of true worship than the burning frankincense—all the strength and sweetness of our being on fire with love to God and poured out as an offering of devotion. In the highest sense, every consecrated spirit is a sanctuary with its altar of incense and its Holy of Holies, where evermore ascends the breath of adoration, love and praise, and all our nature is ever voicing the divine doxology “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Romans 11:36). Myrrh The last offering they brought Him was myrrh. This also had significance. It was for the anointing of the dead, and most distinctly it bore witness to His cross and precious blood. They recognized Him, not only as their King and Lord, but also as their Savior, whose life was to close with tragedy, and whose glory was to be humbled in the dust and buried in the tomb. The cross mark of Israel’s Messiah was overlooked by them. There was so much of glory in the ancient picture of the Christ that they could not see the signs of suffering. We can see them clearly enough now that this is all past, but their eyes were blinded to the crown of thorns and the cross of Calvary. Alas there is a tendency today, in the liberal theology of our time, to pass by the cross once more, or at least, to explain it away in some lofty manner which will take out all its sacrificial significance. The latest theory is that the death of Christ was a sublime climax of heroism and self-sacrifice, intended to exalt human nature to such a height that it could claim acceptance with God, and also intended to inspire by the force of example our selfish lives to the nobility of self-sacrifice. This is not the cross in which Paul gloried, and of which the ransomed sing. Men are still ashamed of the myrrh. One is reminded of the beautiful girl who had become ashamed of her mother’s presence because that mother’s face was scarred and her form disfigured in a most repulsive way. Patiently the mother suffered in silence until one day an old family friend took the daughter aside and asked her if she knew what caused that mother’s disfigurement. And then she told the wondering and humbled girl how when she was a helpless babe, that mother snatched her from the flames, covered her with her own body, smothered the fire before it harmed her, but herself got the devouring blaze and was only saved from death with the marks of the fire upon her face and form for life. Do you suppose that daughter would have dared again to be ashamed of her mother’s scars? Shame on the person that would blush because of our Savior’s precious blood. Ashamed of Jesus, yes we may, When we’ve no guilt to wash away, No fears to hush, no good to crave, No tears to wipe, no soul to save.

Section II: His Rejection

Section II—His RejectionHere also we have the foreshadowing of His future rejection in His public ministry. By Herod Instead of welcoming Him, we are told that Herod “was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:3). This represents the attitude of the political world to the Lord Jesus and His second coming. We read of it in the second Psalm: “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One” (Matthew 2:2). Herod could only see in the birth of Christ a menace to his throne, and his natural resort was to violence and murder. In his cruel and relentless determination to put Jesus out of the way, he assassinated all the boys of Bethlehem under two years of age. Herod was of the race of Esau, and so he naturally represented the flesh in its enmity against the Lord; but he represented also the normal attitude of the world’s political governments. We talk loudly of our Christian nations and our socialistic dreams, ideal communities and states that will be essentially theocratic. This will never be until Jesus Christ Himself shall come and establish His kingdom by divine authority and power. And when He comes He will find the world and its rulers not waiting to welcome and worship, but arrayed against Him in the last, dread battle of Armageddon. By the Rulers The ecclesiastical rulers, too, had the best of opportunities to examine His claims and accept His message. Their very Scripture pointed them to the place where He lay. But they, too, were disturbed as much as Herod. They made no effort to visit Him at Bethlehem, but treated Him with neglect and indifference, and afterwards rejected and crucified Him. And so the religious world, as well as the political, will be found arrayed against Christ when He comes again. There will be a little flock of true followers and friends, but the ecclesiastical rulers of Christendom are today not much in sympathy with the true spirit of Christ, and the Church is rapidly drifting toward the sad and solemn picture of the Laodicean Church, the last stage of nominal Christianity on earth, with Christ standing outside the door, and rejecting the lukewarm formalism which still wears His name, but which He is ready to spew out of His mouth (Revelation 3:14-16). Exile in Egypt His flight into Egypt marked the next stage of His rejection. The Holy Babe and His mother, with Joseph, were forewarned of the threatened assassination, and immediately departed to the land which had always been associated with the sufferings of their people. Egypt was the land of exile and the house of bondage. It was necessary, therefore, that the Lord should pass through all that His people had suffered or should suffer. The journey was not made in royal state; no luxurious palace car conveyed this Leader and Master; no splendid hotel waited with open doors to entertain Him. Seated with His mother on a lowly ass, with Joseph leading it by the hand, along the rocky and desert road, with a leather bag of water and a few dates or figs and barley cakes, they traversed the long and desert way, and took refuge at last in some humble cabin in the land of their fathers’ bondage. Still He is a King in exile. He does not sit on splendid thrones, or control the men and armies of the world, but like David in the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22:1-2), He has His humble followers gathered from the outcasts of the land. Christ is still an exiled King, and is despised and rejected of men. And if He were to appear once more, the majority of those who bear His name would probably be ashamed of Him. The Nazarene Nazareth was the last stage in the story of His rejection. The very root of the name Nazareth literally means a sprout or root out of a dry ground. It is quoted in Isaiah 11:1, “A shoot (sprout) will come up from the stump of Jesse,” and in Isaiah 53:2, translated, “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.” It is the Hebrew word nazar. The town of Nazareth was worthy of its derogatory name. It held the lowest place, socially and morally in public estimation, and the question of Nathaniel was characteristic, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46). It was enough to destroy a prophet’s reputation to hail from the town of Nazareth, and the city of the Nazarenes was a term of reproach in apostolic times. But the pressure of His life at Nazareth amounted to a good deal more than merely the reputation of the town. It was a life of poverty, toil and deep abasement. Read any literal description of the life of laboring people in Nazareth today and you will have a fair conception of the conditions of His childhood in the old, unchanging East. A carpenter’s wages was an amount less than 25 cents a day. His home was a wretched hut cut out in the side of the hill, more like a cave than a dwelling, without windows or ventilation. The family huddled together, sleeping on rude pallets of straw and living on the crudest food. Their implements of toil were most antiquated and clumsy, and the hours of labor and the rates of pay were not regulated by labor unions, but were as long and hard as the light of day. There seems every reason to believe that Jesus, the eldest son of Mary’s home, was early left with the care of His mother, for Joseph must have died at an early period in the life of the boy. Speaking of the family while He was still but a young man, His enemies said, “Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3), but they made no mention of His father as if alive. If this be so, the little lad Jesus must have early taken upon Him the headship of the family at Nazareth and the burden of breadwinner for the rest. His Boyhood And so we can think of 20 years perhaps of His life, oppressed with the burden of care and toil, until He became familiar with every experience in our common lot of toil and sorrow. We read in olden legends of many a foolish romantic story connected with His childhood, but the gospel story gives no place for these idle, childish stories. It is a plain, unvarnished picture of a commonplace life, no relieving pictures except the light that shone from heaven in the secret chambers of His holy heart. Such then is the picture of our Savior’s childhood. Modern history tells us of the founder of the great Russian empire having spent his boyhood in the humblest toil and the most obscure disguise. So God was preparing His King for the grander destiny of the ages to come, and so God is preparing now the kings and princes that are to sit with Him on His throne and share His glory by and by. Lessons What are some of the practical lessons of this New Testament picture?

1. It bids us recognize the Lordship of our King and bring Him the offerings of our wealth and sacrifice and acknowledge Him as our proprietor and Lord. He does not need our gold; but He will let us trust it to Him as a glorious investment, and some day He will make up to us the magnificent return that will fill our eternity with praise.
2. It bids us bring to Him our worship and offer up our hearts as the frankincense they brought to Bethlehem of old. He does not want our gold without our love.
3. It bids us recognize and love His precious cross. The best gifts we can bring Him are our sorrows and our sins. He is asking us for the myrrh as well as for the frankincense.
4. It reminds us that there is One that has gone through every stage of our earthly experience and is with us in loving sympathy in our life of toil and sorrow. The Christ of Nazareth is our Christ still, and we can take Him with us to the drudgery of the nursery, to the grime of the factory, to the whirl of the workshop, to the burning heat of the harvest field, to the petty cares and annoyances of our business and family life. He has been just where we are now. We can take Him with us into the commonplace life of every day. This is where most people fail, and this was where our Master spent the largest part of His own life. Let us not wait for the opportunity of doing some extraordinary thing, but let us do the ordinary things for Him in the spirit of His own lowly life at Nazareth of old. The story is told of an artist that waited long to find a piece of sandalwood on which to carve the angel whose image had been painted on his brain. At last, finding no other material, he took a common piece of oak firewood and carved the image in the oak, and the work was so splendid that the image became a classic. And so many people are waiting for some great achievement. Let us take the materials of our everyday life, and God will help us to transform them into angels, too.
5. It teaches us that the true test of loyalty is humility. God’s princes are recognized not by their uplifted heads and boasting claims, but by their ability to stoop. It is the kneeling soldier that is made by his sovereign a knighted noble, and the lower we stoop for Christ, the loftier the place He is preparing for us.
6. The picture of Christ’s childhood has been stereotyped in the Acts of the Apostles and left with us forever as a lasting vision of God’s Holy Son. Christ in one sense is a child forever. It is true that the child’s face is typical of the highest beauty. How often some sweet old man becomes like a little child in the mellow beauty of glorified old age. Our Lord has Himself said, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me” (Mark 9:37). Does He mean that when we see our Savior we shall see the face of a child, and that when we see our Father in heaven, it will be a blending of the simplicity, gentleness and the transcendent beauty of some lovely babe?
7. The Christ of Nazareth is a pattern for the children of today. Dear young friends, He is your Christ; He belongs to you. He knows the temptations, experiences and feelings of a boy. He was once your very age. Come to Him and test Him. Make Him your ideal; choose Him as your Master; and may He translate into your childhood the glory of the life at Nazareth of old. Especially let parents remember that the Christ of Nazareth was the type for every other life. Too long we have had our children taught to look for their ideals in the proud successful leaders of human history, and to emulate the ambitions of an Alexander, a Napoleon, a Dewey. This is all wrong. The highest, truest pattern is not the splendor of earthly success, but the glory of self-denial, meekness and humility, self-restraint, and the moral heroism that can stoop to the humblest place and glorify the lowliest sphere. We hear of the strenuous life today, but there is a still higher and harder life—the life of meekness, the life of unselfish love. God give it to us and to our children!