Matthew 2

Matthew 2:1-23

CHRIST—THE CHILD OF Matthew, Chapter 2. AS one reads the second chapter of Matthew he is profoundly impressed with two oft-recurring phrases to be found in it, and those phrases are: “For thus it is written (or spoken) by the prophet”, and “that it might be fulfilled”. Dr. W. J. Dawson, speaking of the latter of these sentences, said, “It chimes upon the ear like the sound of a persistent bell”. The eight verses (Matthew 2:16-23) narrate things which in themselves seem tragic and disastrous, and to which men give the word “accident”, but the Divine explanation is “That it might be fulfilled”. Whether there be an accident, is a debatable question.

If one read the Bible believingly, he is impressed with the thought that God’s hand is upon everything; and that even the incidents of life are appointed of Him; or else on their occurrence, are immediately taken possession of and employed in the execution of His purposes. Many of these must be over-ruled, and turned from evil to good before God can use them; but this also is easily within His power, as the whole of the second chapter of Matthew and many another passage of Sacred Writ suggest. Last Sunday I spoke to you on “The Genealogy of Jesus”. This morning I invite your attention to “Christ—The Child of Prophecy”. Prophecy, as it appears in this Scripture, is fourfold:

1. It relates itself to THE PLACE OF HIS BIRTH. “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet: And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel” (Matthew 2:1-6). The place of His birth was definitely named. It appeared in prophecy before it appeared in history. In Micah 5:2, we read: “But thou, Bethlehem. Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting”. Matthew is but recording the fulfilling of that word. John, who is supposed to be a philosophical writer, and not to deal in questions literal and historical, declines to pass over this important event, and records that some who had looked upon Jesus, said: “Hath not the Scriptures said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Beth-lehem, where David was?” Gordon spake truly when he said: “Prophecy is the mould of history”. The latter answers to the former point by point. In other words, God’s revelation does reveal. From the first He has marked for men a plain path. When He spake to Adam in Eden it was in no uncertain words, and he was not misunderstood. When He addressed Himself to Noah concerning the flood, His language was clear, and not a word of all He uttered failed.

When He called Abraham to quit Ur of the Chaldees and go away to Canaan, Abraham had no difficulty in understanding. If one is as childish as was Samuel in the Temple, and as slow to interpret the meaning of the Divine voice, God simply repeats Himself until His purpose is understood. Let no man speak of the Bible as “enigmatical”; let no man call the Book of the Revelation a “cryptogram”. Clouds sometimes obscure the face of the heavens, but beyond them the sun shines undimmed. Though men may be clouded in intellect, and Satan may seek to befog the path, “the light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world” never goes out; in spiritual things there is an everlasting day for the children of light. This place of His birth was fully described. It has always been a custom to repeat the names of towns. There is an Albany, N. Y., there is an Albany, Ore.; there is a Rochester in New York, there is a Rochester in Minnesota. When men write letters, or send Christmas gifts, they are careful to set down, not the city alone, but to so locate the city that mail clerks can do their work without mistake. God was not less careful concerning His love gift. He said, “Bethlehem of Judea is the one I mean”. Even in matters of lesser moment God’s revelation is equally clear. When He commissioned Jonah it was not to foreign missions, but to Nineveh; when he converted Saul, He described the very street and house, and master of the House whither He would have him led that he might be instructed. The reason men miss the way so easily is that they do not study the Word; they leave the Guide Book in neglect; and then complain when they find themselves on strange, rough and robber roads. James likens the man who is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, to one “who beholdeth his natural face in a glass and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was” (James 1:22-23). And James also tells us, “Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:23). There are two things to be seen in Sacred Scripture, the first of them is a reflection of our own face; the likeness of our own character. It is said that Sir Peter Eely demanded of the artist that he paint him as he was, not leaving out a pimple or a mole, but making the likeness accurate to life. The Bible does that! To look into it, therefore, is to meet rebuke; to look into it is to see the open sore of life; to look into it is to understand all spiritual defects. But the Bible also does another thing. It presents our possible likeness, Christ, and sets up for you and for me lofty ideals; and marks a plain path to their attainment. If we fall short, the fault will not be in God’s revelation. So absolutely do I believe with the great Lorimer that whether considered from the standpoint of the individual life, as husband, father, child, citizen, neighbor, friend, Christian, the Bible marks the path to the ideal, that when I fall short I will blame myself; when I mar life I will accept the moral responsibility of my own conduct; never charge it to an incomplete revelation! It speaks, rather, of a neglected one! Oh, ye “wise men from the East”; “ye wise men” of the West; ye “wise men” from so many quarters of the globe, hear God while He marks the way to Jesus. He makes it plain: “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written in the prophets”. Thus, was the place of His birth divinely honored. “Thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel” (Matthew 2:6). It is a far cry from Genesis to Matthew; and one has not only to travel through many books in coming; but he is compelled to pass through many centuries also if he travel from one to the other; and yet in this passage God has not lost His way, nor have His plans failed, for in Genesis 49:10 we read: “The scepter shall not depart from Juda; nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come. And unto Him shall the gathering of the people be”. Juda would not have been greatly honored had Jesus been merely a mortal child, begotten by a mortal man, though that mortal one had been destined to rule Israel as David did. Who thinks much about the place of David’s birth? It was not so important as the birth of Moses; it was not so important as the birth of Saul of Tarsus; the towns in which these first saw the light were not immortalized in that circumstance, for the simple reason that many towns have had the honor of giving birth to babes destined to mortal greatness. But only one town in all the world marked the birth of God in mortal flesh. That lifted Bethlehem from littleness to largeness; from obscurity to never-dying fame, for there the Son of God first saw the light. “Son of God”! did I say? Yes, and I say it without hesitation; I say it without apology!

Oh, I know how the modern man who assumes to represent all scholarship, smiles at my obsolete notion. I can hear him now summoning to his aid his latest scientific phrase; I can see him, with knit brow, attempting to so state his position as to patronize Jesus; and yet at the same time tell the public that He is something short of the Son of God. Unitarianism is ex-pert in compliments to the “man of Nazareth”; and equally accomplished in denying essential deity! Such a procedure is vain praise! To call Christ “a great man”; to call Him “the most moral of men”; to speak of Him as if He had “unusual pre-vision”; to line Him up with the world’s moralists and say He “out-matched” them; to insist that He was the “Sociologist and Psychologist of all ages”; of all sons the “pattern one”; to say that His example was “never equalled”; that one might with better face be privileged to follow these remarks with the denial of His virgin Birth, the discrediting of the shed Blood, an ethereal explanation of His physical resurrection, the lowering of His Deity to the level of the so called divinity of other men—all this is a gospel unknown to the four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and is a fresh crucifixion of the Nazarene. No, “Bethlehem, of Judea”, thou art lifted from littleness; thou art exalted beyond thy sisters; thou art made as immortal as human history, for in thee was born that holy begotten of the Holy Ghost, the very “Son of God!” Again, in the second prophecy of this Scripture, we find THE PERIL OF HIS INFANCY. “Then, Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared? And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search diligently for the young Child; and when ye have found Him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship Him: also. When they had heard the king, they departed: and, lo the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell dozen and worshipped Him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented to Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him. When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night, and departed into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My Son” (Matthew 2:7-15). That peril was precipitated by a plain prophecy. The chief priests and scribes of the city had one important accomplishment—they knew the Scriptures—hence, when they wanted to find out about the first coming of Christ, they looked into them, and lo, it was written, that He should come from “Bethlehem in the land of Juda”, and those Scribes and Pharisees were literalists. They supposed God had said what He meant; and that God had meant what He said. They had had no wise men to say to them: “The letter killeth”. They knew no better than to believe the Book! Literalists they were; but it is commonly conceded that they were right! That raises the question as to whether literalists concerning the second coming may not also be correct? Dr. B. H. Carroll, the great southern preacher, counted himself a post-millennialist; and yet, as a great and honest student of the Bible, he said, “No other event of history is so well accredited and so universally believed and so widely honored as the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact of His coming, and all the circumstances attending His life here upon the earth were so clearly and vividly foreshown in prophecy that a profound expectation of that coming took possession of the whole earth.

When He came, His birth; His life; His doctrine; His death; His burial; His resurrection, and His ascension into heaven are facts more accredited by evidence than any other historical event. And as he came the first time personally, literally, visibly, audibly, tangibly, so He will come the next time personally, literally, visibly, audibly, tangibly.” Thank God for the fact that Simeon and Anna have successors in the twentieth century. They believed that “a virgin should conceive and bear a Son”, and when they saw Jesus they rejoiced in God’s perfect fulfillment of His promise, and the Church of Jesus Christ has in it a large company to-day who believe that Christ shall cleave the sky; “that every eye shall look upon Him”; that “His feet shall stand upon Mount Zion”! Think you that they are destined to disappointment? No! God’s prophecies are plain. So plain was this one that it put the child in peril; they knew right where to find him. Dr. A.

W. Archibald is justified in likening the stream of Messianic prophecy running-through the ages preceding the birth of Jesus to the great Gulf stream, which seems to rise yonder at the southern point of Florida, but takes its way in definite and ever-increasing flow to all parts of the Old World, and laves almost every continent; and he reminds us of the fact that the prophecies of the Messiah had been so clear that even people outside of Israel, like Seutonius, who wrote “The Fives of the Caesars” and Tacitus, joined their voices in declaring that a Ruler should come and that He should rise out of Juda; and Virgil, also, caught the vision. In his Fourth Eclogue he wrote: “Come, claim thine honors, for the time draws nigh, Babe of immortal race, the wondrous seed of Jove! Lo, at thy coming how the starry spheres Are moved to trembling, and the earth below, And widespread seas, and the blue vault of heaven! How all things joy to greet the rising Age!” When men, therefore, talk about the “Judaizing influence” that led Peter and James, and John to deify Jesus, they forget that God had so moved upon the world, Gentile as well as Jewish, as to create an expectation answering to His plain prophecy; and that that very expectation imperilled the infancy of Christ. Mark, however, that that peril was thwarted by a clear providence. “When they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts: gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way”. We have those among us who laugh at dreams, and no wonder. The dreams of the great majority of us are simply disturbances produced by physical gormandizing; God is not in them! That is no proof that God is not in any dream. Many of the gifts of the Spirit are already gone. Open the first Epistle to the Corinthians, and in the twelfth chapter I find a catalogue of those gifts, “Wisdom”, “knowledge”, “faith”, “healing”, “working of miracles”, “prophecy”, “discerning of spirits”, “divers kinds of tongues”—where are they? Oh, poverty-stricken Church! God’s angels seldom visit thee! Thine ear has been so full of the sound of frivolous revelry, the rumbling machinery of merchandise, that an angel’s whisper is heard no more. No wonder we miss the way; no wonder men deny the supernatural; no wonder men smile at the suggestion of an over-ruling providence; no wonder men reduce the whole world to a mechanism completed, wound up, and set going, with the machinery of which God never interferes. To me the great lesson here is that a God, who is the General Manager of the Universe, can set aside what He will, and though all the thunders of Herod bear down upon a defensless babe, God knows how, by the whisper of an angel, to thwart the inhuman purpose and preserve His own. Mark you further: This peril was averted by human obedience. God could work apart from man. As a rule He does not. God joins Joseph to himself and these two outwit the enemy of Christ, “for when he (Joseph) rose he took the young child and the mother by night, and departed unto Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken ‘by the prophet, Out of Egypt have I called my son.” How easy it is for God to raise up His man, and make Him the medium of the Divine preservation. I was reading a few days since of the time when the leader of the Mohammedan forces, having crushed Christianity again and again, came at last to the Atlantic and spurring his chafing steed into the sea, exclaimed, “Great God, if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would go on to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of Thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other god but Thee”. And how, later, they turned northward conquering Spain and poured over the Pyrenees into France, and moving on for the conquest of Europe, and the obliteration of Christianity; and, suddenly, in 732 A. D. God raised up Charles Martel who not only overthrew the on-coming hordes but hammered away until three hundred thousand of his enemies lay dead on the field, and turned the tide of paganism and kept Christianity from perishing out of Europe. What cannot God work; and yet let us never forget that His will is to be done by men and through men; and that the obedient one brings not only preservation to the infant “Christ”, but to His body, “the Church”. THE PATHOS OF HIS ESCAPE “Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they are not”. The horror of life is in man’s inhumanity to man. Selfishness has always been the chief sin. Satan made his first appeal to Eve and Adam at that point, “Thou shalt be as gods” and he succeeded. Herod would have none greater than himself; and in order to end a possible rival he put scores of innocent infants to the sword. We look back at that bloody past and remember that his conduct was not so uncommon. The wholesale destruction of infants was advocated by the philosophers who preceded Jesus.

Plato and Aristotle indorsed the inhuman custom. Cato insisted that the duty of the state was to keep great wealth together, and, therefore, not to get too many children. It was declared of the Roman Senate that nearly every member of that body had exposed to death one or more of his own children. Under Augustus, in whose reign Christ was born, ten thousand men were put into the arena to die for the entertainment of their fellows. In Trajan’s games eleven thousand animals and ten thousand gladiators fought; while Claudius had nineteen thousand mariners engaged in a sea fight for his amusement, and the empress sat at his side to enjoy with him and others the bloody and ghastly scene. We think sometimes that our own age is not so brutal a one; but man’s inhumanity to man has not come to an end. There are those who plot and plan to rob their fellows. Even in ordinary business, honesty is not too common; in social relations lust lives and thrives, men wreck their own sisters and, like some friends of the pit, make their work a joke. If the time has passed when every village and district, and province and empire have wailed for their dead, and every house has been a house of mourning, the time is still on when battles rage; rapine and brutality blaze; and when moral death, and mourning in consequence of brutality in business, debauch by drink, lust in the name of love, still beggar the land. But when one reads such an instance as that recorded in this text it is good to think on the line of the next suggestion, namely: Human rage is impotent against God. Herod could slay some children and set Rachel weeping, comfortless in spirit, but Herod himself can be called to judgment, and is, for the next verse reads: “But when Herod was dead”. Oh, with what ease God lays a man aside; with how slight a touch He lays low the man who brutally struck others. Two of our missionaries in Turkey found a decree sent forth from the Sultan, that the Gospel should not be preached any more in that land, and Christians should be driven from it. When one of them reported this to his brother the great missionary answered: “The Sultan of the universe can change the order.” Next morning the Turkish ruler lay dead. God will display His hand in China! Watch! One of the best known pages of history recites the story of how the Spanish Armada, when it was just ready to crush the cause of Christ, was struck by a rushing wind that not only drove it back, but wrecked its every vessel, and left its fleet strewing the shores with its dead. Macaulay tells about the landing of William of Orange in England in 1688. that man who really brought religious liberty to the land; and the great historian even dares to say: “The wind blew straight from the East, while the Prince wished to sail down the channel, and turned to the south, when he wished to enter Forboy; sank to a calm during disembarcation, and as soon as disembarcation was completed, rose into a furious storm, and struck the pursuers in the face.” It may be true that Satan is the “prince of the power of the air” but it is also true that the “four winds of heaven” are at the command of God, and that Satanic powers are also impotent against Him. Some of us have seen in the city of Chester what they call “God’s Providence House”. It was built over 280 years ago. In the seventeenth century the plague visited the city, and in all Water Street this was the only home that did not suffer. Then the owner had this inscription carved on the main beam under the gable: “God’s providence is mine inheritance”. We have a goodly heritage if we dwell in “God’s Providence House”. In truth, we may take a step further in this chapter. Inhumanity may be compelled to aid the Divine plan. Herod’s opposition enters into the fulfillment of prophecy. It had been written, “Out of Egypt have I called my son”. That it might be literally fulfilled Herod drove Joseph forth with the holy child. There is no conflict between the utmost freedom of human agencies and a perfect conformity to the Divine plan. Herod was wrong and he knew he was wrong; his ways were wicked and he knew they were wicked. But God through him illustrated a truth: “All things work together for good to them that love God”. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound. God forbid!” There is usually a larger meaning in every event than at first appears, and we have to get to that larger meaning if we are to find God. Dr. Joseph Parker once engaged in a debate with Mr. Holyoake, an excellent speaker and a skeptic. In the course of it, when arguing against a Divine providence he put to Dr. Parker the question, “What did providence do for the martyr Stephen when he was being stoned to death”, and the audience felt its force.

For a brief moment it was supposed that Parker could make no reply. But he, after a second of prayer for help, answered, “What did providence do for Stephen when he was stoned to death? God does not always reveal what He does. He did not visibly appear to the martyr; he did not save him from death. But I tell you in that moment he did more for Stephen than save his life. God enabled Stephen to say, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”.

To have worked this miracle in the spirit of Stephen God did more for Stephen than to have saved his life.” It is said that the answer had an overwhelming effect. But to me it was not as full as it might have been. God did more for Stephen; he made a revelation of Himself to him that made death easy. And in the shedding of Stephen’s blood, He laid another stone in the foundation of the Blood-bought Church. He so far overruled that wickedness that Stephen’s death was worth more to the world than his life could have been. Our God knows how to take care of His own. Truly, as Cowper wrote: “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform”, But God arrives! He may let His children turn back from Kadesh Barnea and the last one of a generation perish in the wilderness, but in the process, He will cure Israel of idolatry and bring their children into Canaan—a conquering host. He may let Joseph go to prison and languish there for two years in utter forgetfulness; but in the prison He will equip him to be Premier, and in His own time bring him forth and put him in the place of power. He may let a slattern nurse drop Walter Scott and lame him for life, but He will take the child, intended for military service and make of him the greatest literary genius of the age. He may let disease and poverty and deputies’ warrants sorrow the youth of William Shakespeare, and yet by his sadness so instruct him that he will write like a seraph. He may let a Paul be put into prison in Rome and be led forth at the behest of evil men and beheaded; but in Paul’s martyrdom, He will present to the world the conception of a Christian character, and for full twenty centuries stir the souls of men to increasing courage, and to sacrificial service. Our text truly is an illustration of James Russell Lowell’s words: “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future And behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above His own”.