Incarnation Narrative in Matthew's Gospel

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In this series, we examine the various passages in the Gospels related to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

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All right, everyone, if you would take out your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew.
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Over the next three weeks, we are going to be looking at the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ from three of the four Gospel narratives.
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Tonight, we are going to look at the incarnation of Christ as it is presented in the Book of Matthew.
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Next week, we will look at the incarnation of Christ as it is presented in the Book of Luke.
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And then in our last week, the Wednesday prior to our Christmas break, we do take two weeks off at Christmas of our Wednesday night services.
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Prior to that break, we will have one final lesson looking at the incarnation as it is presented in the Gospel of John.
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John does not give us a birth narrative, but he does provide for us key insights into the incarnation of Christ.
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And so we are going to look at these three books and what they tell us about Jesus.
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And we are going to do that over the next three weeks.
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And because this is Christmas time, we are going to be talking somewhat about the subject of Christmas.
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Everything okay? Oh, thank you, dear.
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It's a loving daughter.
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No, we don't have handouts tonight.
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And I do apologize.
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I didn't provide any handouts because basically, we're just going to be reading the text and talking about the text.
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So I do have, I have a handout, sort of a cheat sheet for me to make sure that when I'm cross-referencing passages, I'll be able to jump a little bit more quickly.
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And I'd be happy to make a copy of this for you.
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But other than that, I don't have any specific handouts to give you.
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But basically, what I wanted to start with tonight, the question I wanted to start with tonight was the question of what are the, what are the elements and stories that we are accustomed to hearing regarding the subject of Christmas? What are the things that we all know and are reminded of during the season of Christmas? And this is open for discussion.
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I'm going to write some things down.
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Maybe I'm asking it in a weird way.
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Let me ask you, what are some things that every Christmas you see out on people's lawns or maybe on billboards or something like that? Three wise men.
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Okay, so we have three wise men is a fairly universal staple.
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We see that around Christmas time.
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What else do we see around? A nativity scene.
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It's on, isn't it? Okay, well, I'm recording on another.
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If it doesn't, I'll just upload it later.
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It's fine.
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Okay, so a nativity scene.
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But when we say a nativity scene, what does the nativity scene normally include? Okay, okay, you gotta let other people answer.
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Actually, this is a group project.
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She's like that one kid in the group project that doesn't work for everybody.
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Okay, so we have a baby who is Jesus.
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We have, of course, Mary and Joseph.
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Who else do we also do we normally see? We normally see the shepherds.
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We see animals, of course, because it is a, because he's laid in a manger, right? So that is also seen as the manger.
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What else? Angels.
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Star, right? I'm starting to decide over here.
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Okay, so normally we see the star.
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What else? Angels.
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Absolutely.
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All right, anything else that we can think of that they're associated? Now, Pat said Santa Claus.
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Now, okay, Papa Gary said Santa Claus.
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Okay, now let me say this about that.
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One of the stories I love to talk about during the Christmas season is the story of Saint Nicholas of Myra.
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Saint Nicholas of Myra was a historical figure.
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He lived in the fourth century, and legend says he was actually at the Council of Nicaea, which was the first ecumenical council of the church.
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And there's even a greater legend that says he slapped Arius, who was a heretic, in the face.
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That he struck him because of his heresy regarding the deity of Jesus.
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So I love Santa Claus in that regard, if that in fact is the case.
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I'm not sure if that story is historically accurate.
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I know it's definitely what we would call a legend, if anything.
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But anyway, so yes, there was a man named Saint Nicholas of Myra.
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The modern expression of Santa Claus.
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Anybody know where the modern expression of Santa Claus comes from? Coca-Cola.
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The red suit, white, all that stuff was from a Coca-Cola ad.
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And that's where the traditional, the modern looking Santa Claus is based on a Coca-Cola expression of the character.
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So anyway, so getting back to this, we have the three wise men, the nativity scene, the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, angels, or I'm sorry, animals in manger, star, angels, anything else? I don't have anything.
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I'm just, I'm asking if I will make sure I'm not forgetting anything.
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Okay, well, under animals, right? Yeah.
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Okay, so what I want to do tonight is I want to talk about how all of these elements are not found in any one book of the Bible.
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But what we have is we have two narratives that we have to harmonize to bring us to this picture.
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And there's some parts of this picture that are not necessarily biblically accurate.
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But what we're going to do is we're going to look at the passages in Matthew, we're going to sort of pick out what parts does Matthew tell us? What parts do we, okay, these are the parts that are in Matthew.
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And I'm going to make some, I'm going to make some expositional comments on some of the things from Matthew, because Matthew actually begins with a genealogy of Jesus, which kind of reminds us going back to the Old Testament, there's a lot of genealogies.
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Genealogies were very important among the Hebrew people for proving lineage, for proving people's heritage, and specifically for proving connection to certain historical figures.
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And what Matthew's gospel does for us is Matthew's gospel connects us with David and with Abraham.
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In fact, one of the things that's very important about Matthew's genealogy is that it actually ends with Abraham.
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It doesn't take us back any further than Abraham.
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In fact, if you look at verse one, it says this, it says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
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And then it begins.
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Abraham was the father of Isaac.
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Isaac was the father of Jacob.
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Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.
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And Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah, by Tamar and Perez, the father of Hezron.
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Hezron, the father of Ram.
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Ram, the father of Minadab.
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And it goes on.
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We're not going to read all 14 verses of it, as it goes down, actually through verse 15 and 16.
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And then, well, let's look at verse 16, because this is important.
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It says, and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
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So that takes us through the generations that lead up to Jesus.
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But again, why do you think Matthew starts with Abraham rather than not going any further back? That's right.
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And so the point is to directly connect Jesus with two historical figures.
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Abraham, to prove that he is Abrahamic, that he is a Hebrew, but also to connect him to David, to prove that he is in the line of David, because he is the one who fulfills the prophecy given to David that his throne would be forever.
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Jesus sits upon the Davidic throne.
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So to do that, he has to be the son of David.
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And so we have this genealogy, which has a tremendous importance in the life of Jesus, because it tells us that Jesus is both a Hebrew and a son of David.
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And that takes us to verse 17, which says, so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations.
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An interesting connection there.
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Some would argue that it wasn't that clean, that there are some parts of the genealogy where it skips a generation, and that's not uncommon in Hebrew genealogies, where someone would be the grandfather of someone else, where if it says something about a son of this person, it's actually a grandson of this person.
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And so there's some argument that the 14 and 14 and 14 was actually something that was by the writer himself is showing this connection, but that it's not exactly specifically 14, 14, 14.
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I think that that's something that's debatable.
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I don't think it's a big issue.
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Ultimately, though, there is something very important that is debatable about the genealogy.
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And does anybody know what the major debate about the genealogy is? Lee, I thought you, yeah, you look like you might know.
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That's okay.
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That's okay.
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The big issue of the genealogy in Matthew is that Luke gives us a genealogy too, and it's not the same.
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In fact, it's very different.
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Luke's genealogy, if you want to very quickly just turn there, go to Luke chapter three.
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Some who tried to disprove the Bible will use this as a place where they say, here is a contradiction.
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You can't have two genealogies for one person.
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And so they try to make the argument that Jesus is the, that one of these guys or both of these guys being Matthew and Luke are, are fudging the numbers as it were, they were, they were changing things around.
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So let's look and see what we see here.
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If you go to Luke chapter three and you look at verse 23, it says this, Jesus, when he began his ministry was about 30 years of age, being the son, as was supposed.
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I love that.
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I love that Luke includes that little, as was supposed, because Jesus is not the son of Joseph, but it was supposed that he was the son of Heli, the son of Mathat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jani, the son of Joseph.
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And it goes on down, but you'll notice immediately.
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It says that Joseph was the son of Heli and the son of Mathat.
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Now go back to the, the Matthew passage back to Matthew one 16.
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It says Jacob was the father of Joseph.
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Isn't that interesting? Now you go back to Luke and it says that Heli was the father of Joseph.
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So right here, they say, well, there we have it.
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We have a direct contradiction in the Bible.
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No need to go any further.
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We know we're now dealing with a false book, a fake story, not true.
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We can just take the whole thing, fold it up, put it back on the shelf.
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It doesn't have any value.
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Now, obviously, you know, I don't believe that, but it is important that we address issues like this.
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Does anyone know how most conservative scholars have come to harmonize these two accounts? Jackie, you look like you want to say something.
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I don't want to call on you.
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Go ahead.
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You can give it, give it a shot.
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That is what is believed by many.
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And I think that that is a very likely answer that Luke is actually giving us Joseph's father-in-law and therefore tracing the genealogy through Mary.
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Now it doesn't say father-in-law, but it doesn't have to, to still be a proper genealogy.
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And there are some who would argue that to be a, within the Hebrew community, even today, the often it is traced back through the mother's line, not so much through the father's line to prove someone's fidelity to being a true Hebrew.
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So yes, I think that that is a very reasonable answer that what we have here is we have the, we have the genealogy through Mary.
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There's also another somewhat of a kind of an odd way of justifying these two.
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And that is that the, the father of Joseph was possibly a, a, had died and, and his brothers had taken his, his, his mother as his wife.
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You know, you leverage marriage.
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Remember that from the Old Testament? And that so, so it's possible that Joseph had two fathers, one that was his earthly father and one that was his adopted father.
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And therefore that would give also two expressions of genealogy.
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I don't, I think that has less, less historical backing, but, but it is another example of a way that this could happen.
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But what is interesting about Luke's genealogy in regard to what Luke is trying to do is Luke is showing us Jesus all the way back to Adam.
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If you notice that Luke takes it down to verse 37, Luke 3.37, it says the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahaliel, the son of Canaan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
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So what is, what is Luke's point? Jesus is, is truly a son of Adam, right? And, and I think the argument again, from a theological point, genealogies are very theological in nature.
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They're not just meant to give history.
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They're meant to make a theological point.
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Matthew's theological point, he's a son of Abraham and he's a son of David.
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I would have to go back through Luke's gospel to see, but in Matthew, there are several women mentioned.
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In fact, I, if I remember correctly, they're all Gentile women.
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Tamar, Ruth, and Bathsheba.
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Well, Bathsheba wouldn't be a, what? Rahab.
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So there's three, three of the four that are mentioned are Gentiles and Bathsheba is not even named.
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It's the wife of Uriah.
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Bathsheba is never called by her name.
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She's always called by the fact that she was the wife of Uriah.
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Even in that, go back to Matthew 1, I think that's correct.
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If you look at it, it mentions David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.
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Isn't that rough? That's, that's how her name is always, is brought up.
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That because of the situation between David and Solomon or David and Uriah and Bathsheba who in through that gave birth to Solomon.
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Okay.
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So I didn't mean to spend so much time on the genealogies, but my point of all of this is to simply say there's a theological purpose behind both genealogies.
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Matthew's point is to show Jesus is son of Abraham, son of David.
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Luke's point is to show that Jesus is truly human.
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One of the things we're going to see in John's gospel is John focuses on the divinity of Christ, but Luke focuses on the humanity of Christ, reminding us Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.
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All right.
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So back to Matthew, we are now at verse 18 of Matthew chapter one.
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And this is when the birth narrative begins.
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And it says in Matthew's gospel, now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.
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When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy spirit.
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All right.
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Stop there.
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What is betrothal? It's like engagement, but it's not exactly like engagement in the, in the old Hebrew tradition, a betrothal was a contract of marriage, but it did not.
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It was not a, it was not marriage because what they did was they gave a period of time to, to demonstrate fidelity.
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Usually it was from six to 12 months where the two were contracted to be together, but they were not yet married.
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And what it demonstrated was one, if she got pregnant in that time that they had, they had been together prior to being married.
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So it was a way of demonstrating that someone was unfaithful to the covenant, which was to not be sexually immoral.
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Right.
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But also it gave an opportunity for the man to produce what was needed to be produced to take a wife.
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You know, he signed this contract and now he's got to, he's got to have a home and he's got to sit.
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He has to be prepared to bring this woman into his home.
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You know, nowadays people meet each other three days later, they're falling in love a week later, they go to the justice of the peace.
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And then they're married.
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Ain't got no place to live.
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Ain't got nowhere to go, but they're lovers and they're married.
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And you know, and that, well, the expectation at this time was very high one, that the woman would be pure.
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The man and woman would not have been together in a, in a, in a sexual relationship and that the man had provided for her.
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And at the end of the betrothal period, whether it was six months, a year or whatever, the period then would come the wedding.
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But if at any time in the betrothal period, there was a, there was a desire on, on the, on behalf of the man to stop, he had to divorce her.
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It wasn't just, he couldn't just call it off.
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Like, like right now you you've seen people that give a ring, we call that engagement, right? What do you got to do to get out of engagement? Just give the ring back.
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And sometimes they don't even do that.
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Right.
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So sometimes they're rented.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So an engagement is, is far less of an obligation than a betrothal.
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A betrothal was a legal, legal obligation that you have, you're going to marry this person and you've, you've got a time period set up and it's going to happen.
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All right.
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And when it does happen, it's a big event.
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Remember the marriage supper Canaan, you know, or the marriage at Canaan, it was all this, this, this long event that took place.
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It was, it was a big deal for the marriage to take place.
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So at this point, Mary and Joseph have a, have a legal relationship.
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They are betrothed, but they have not yet consummated the marriage.
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Therefore there is, should be no children.
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Thus we come to verse 19 and her husband, Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly.
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See, that's why it says divorce there because of betrothal.
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You, even though you're not yet consummated was still considered a legal contract.
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And therefore the only way to get out of it would be to divorce what we would call divorce.
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So even though they hadn't consummated the marriage, he would have to divorce her.
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I think a modern way of explaining that may be like an annulment, somebody who gets married.
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And then if they haven't consummated the marriage, they can annul the marriage.
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I know that's one of the few ways that the Roman Catholic church will recognize a divorce is through an annulment.
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And they have to argue that they have not had a sexual relationship yet, which, you know, how do you prove it? You know, but whatever.
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The point is Joseph here is seen in a positive light.
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And what's interesting about this is Matthew's gospel.
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And that's why I said, we're doing Matthew this week, Luke next week.
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Matthew's gospel looks at this from Joseph's point of view, because Joseph's perspective is he hadn't, he didn't know it.
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He, he didn't know about the angel and notice it didn't mention anything about the angel visiting Mary yet.
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We haven't read that part yet.
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All it says is that Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy spirit.
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And I know what if she told Joseph that I know his initial thought had to be, that's, that's, that can't be true.
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You know, it sounds like a, it sounds like it sounds like someone's trying to get out of having done wrong, right? Well, this God did this, you know? So Joseph being a judge, we don't know much about Joseph, but we know this.
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He was a just man.
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How do we know that? The Bible calls him a just man.
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And what is a just man from scripture? Man of faith.
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The Bible says Habakkuk 2, 4, the just shall live by faith.
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So we know Joseph is a man who believes in God.
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He's a, a, a true Hebrew, a true Israelite.
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He is a true man of God.
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And he does not want to see Mary be put to shame, but he doesn't want to marry her because he thinks she's been unfaithful to their betrothal.
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So he says, I'm going to divorce her quietly, not make a spectacle of her and certainly not, you know, what could happen to her under the law was she could be stoned to death.
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So I think there's a sense of protection here.
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I do think that there's some nobility on Joseph's part, even though he's disappointed.
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I think he's, he cares for her and he knows he didn't do it.
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That's the other thing too.
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She's pregnant.
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He knows he didn't do it right.
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He knows he, he was not the participating party here.
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Verse 20, it says, but as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, again, Matthew focusing on the lineage, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy spirit.
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She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.
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And it goes on to say, all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
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Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name, Emmanuel.
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Now, very quickly, if you, uh, turn, I have to turn page.
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I don't know if you do.
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It says, which means God with us.
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So, uh, that doesn't end with the word Emmanuel.
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So let's for a moment, let's talk about that prophetic passage.
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That is a reference to Isaiah seven and verse 14.
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Isaiah was written about 700 years before Jesus birth.
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So this is a very old prophetic passage, which Matthew is now looking at in the light of Jesus.
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And he's saying, this is a fulfillment of what was given to the prophet.
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When the prophet was told, behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name, Emmanuel.
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Now I want to make a point about that passage.
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There are some who argue that Isaiah does not use the word Virgin.
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If you look at the, you don't have to turn there because it's basically the same thing that's in the Matthew passage here.
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If you look at it in your English Bible, it clearly says, behold, the Virgin will conceive and bear a child and they shall call his name, Emmanuel.
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But if you have a, if you have the old RSV, which is the revised standard version, I think it was written in the early 1900s.
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That translation is different in Isaiah.
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It says, behold, the maiden will bear a son, doesn't say Virgin.
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And the argument of the translators of the RSV was that the word for Virgin is the Hebrew word Alma, not the Hebrew word Bethula.
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And those two Hebrew words are important because the word Alma means a woman of marriageable age or marriageable quality, a maiden.
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Bethula is the Hebrew word, the specific word for Virgin.
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And Isaiah doesn't use the specific word for Virgin.
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He uses the more general word for maiden.
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And some people make the argument, well, here is proof.
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Isaiah never said that a virgin would be born.
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That was simply Matthew later on translating his word differently.
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And this is, this is anachronism, reading something back that wasn't truly there.
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However, that's all baloney.
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That's all.
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It's not, well, let me say, you know, I always say there's a Greek word for that.
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It's baloney.
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In this sense, there is a Greek word that does make all the difference.
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There was a translation of the Old Testament that was written prior to the birth of Jesus.
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About 200 years before the birth of Jesus, there was a translation called the Septuagint.
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You ever heard of that translation? The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.
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When the Septuagint translates Isaiah 714, it translates Isaiah 714, and it says the Virgin will conceive, which means the translators prior to Jesus, so they were not influenced by Christianity, prior to Jesus, translators translating Isaiah's meaning translated it, the Greek word is parthenos, which is the word where we get the word virgin.
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So Matthew is quoting specifically the Greek translation, which is virgin, of the Hebrew of what Isaiah wrote.
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So the question is, well, why didn't Isaiah be more specific? Why didn't he write Bethula? Well, here's the thing that you have to remember.
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Alma still means virgin because the word Alma means a woman of marriageable age and of marriageable quality, and a woman of marriageable quality was a virgin.
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And if you consider it in this regard, he says, behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a child.
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If all he was saying was behold, a young lady will conceive, that happens all the time.
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Maidens, young women conceive all the time.
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What was it that made this a prophetic announcement? Because it was something that was unique.
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It was something that was different.
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It was something that you had to behold.
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And what was being beheld, the virgin was going to conceive and bear a son.
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And so I don't think there's any reason to question that Isaiah meant to write, meant us to understand the virgin would conceive.
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But also I would go on to say this, because we are New Covenant, New Testament believers, even if we had a question about what Isaiah said, Matthew gives us the inspired translation here, and this is the Greek word Parthenos.
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This is virgin, there's no doubt.
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There's no reason to doubt that Isaiah was talking about a virgin conceiving and bearing a son.
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And so that was a long story to simply say it was a virgin.
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She was a virgin.
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And it was prophesied that she would be a virgin.
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Now, I want to also make another mention.
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It says they will call his name Emmanuel.
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Emmanuel means God with us.
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It's not a name as much as it is a title.
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Jesus was God with us.
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And that's what we're going to look at when we go to John 1.
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That's what we're going to spend some time with.
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Jesus is God the Son.
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He is God in the flesh.
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So some people say, well, why wasn't Jesus called Emmanuel? Well, he was.
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He was called God in the flesh.
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He was called by that title.
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But Emmanuel was not his name.
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As it says earlier, his name would be Jesus, which means Yahweh saves or Jehovah saves.
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All right.
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So moving on to verse 24.
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Any questions so far? You guys enjoying this? I'm basically just walking through the text.
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This is, you know, I'm just just as I as I would study on my own, just sort of studying with you guys.
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All right.
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Verse 24.
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When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded.
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He took his wife.
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Notice it calls her his wife, even though they're not they haven't consummated anything yet, because in a betrothal, she is still she would be considered his legal wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name Jesus.
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All right.
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So right there, verse 25, very important.
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He knew her not until she had given birth.
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This is a this is a quite a debated subject in Roman Catholicism, because there is a doctrine in Roman Catholic teaching that argues that Mary was a perpetual virgin.
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It's called the perpetual virginity of Mary that basically even after Jesus was born, Mary still was a virgin.
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In fact, there are some who teach.
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And actually, I think this is Roman Catholic dogma is that Jesus's birth was not even a truly natural birth because her virginity stayed intact even after the the birth of Jesus.
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And therefore, there's a there's sort of a almost like a transference from the womb to the to the manger, not a true physical birth, as we would think of, because, of course, that would, you know, as far as maintaining the integrity of any virginity, the birth would would would would stop that.
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Go ahead.
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Well, the argument from Roman Catholics that I've heard is that his brothers and sisters were from Joseph's second wife, that Joseph had it.
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But again, that's not biblical.
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There's nothing about Joseph having an additional wife in the Bible.
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But that's where to justify because we know Jesus had brothers and sisters.
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In fact, we believe two of them wrote books of the Bible.
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Right.
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James and Jude were both, we believe to be half brothers of Jesus.
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And I call them half brothers because I do believe they were sons of Mary, but not the son or the sons of Joseph and Mary, but not.
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But Jesus is only the son of Mary.
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So.
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So absolutely, I don't I don't believe in the perfect.
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Well, the immaculate conception is the belief that Mary was born without sin because they believe that she was the sinless bearer of the son of God, that she had to be sinless herself to be able to bear God's son.
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It's there's a lot of false teaching in Roman Catholicism.
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But in regard to Mary, it really does expand quite a bit.
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But ultimately, I just like the fact that it says until it says here, he knew her not until because I think that after Jesus was born, they had a natural, intimate relationship whereby they had other children.
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And Jesus was the oldest.
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And Jesus was the perfect brother.
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Can you imagine growing up with Jesus Christ as your older brother? I mean, I don't know if you guys have siblings, but, you know, there's always that sort of sibling rivalry.
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Imagine if he was absolutely perfect son of God.
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That'd be tough.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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At least we know he wasn't mean.
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That's right.
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We know he was a good older brother.
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All right.
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So all of that, what have we learned so far? We've learned about the fact that Mary was a virgin, but very little was said.
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Notice very little was said about her.
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It focused mainly on Joseph.
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When we get to Luke's gospel next week, we're going to see it's almost all the other way around.
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It's almost all about Mary.
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In fact, we also see in Luke's narrative, it's about his father and mother as well.
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Zachariah and Elizabeth are there as well.
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So, in fact, chapter one of Luke goes back and forth between the story of Mary and the story of Elizabeth, showing their timeline and how John is conceived first and then Jesus, and then John is born, then Jesus, and it sort of walks through the narrative.
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Very interesting the way Luke, the historian, and you'll notice Luke actually has a lot more historical information because he is the consummate biblical historian.
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We talked about that in our New Testament class.
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Remember, Luke is the historian.
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He wrote the book of Acts.
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He is the historian.
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So when we get there, we probably won't be able to read the whole chapter because to read Luke chapter one and chapter two would take all of our time.
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It's just so long.
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But let's look at chapter two of Matthew as we have about 10 minutes left tonight, and we'll see what we can draw from this.
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It says, Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
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All right, stop right there.
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Okay, so we have a few of our things that we can sort of check off right away.
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It mentions that he was born in Bethlehem, but it doesn't say how he got to Bethlehem.
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Did you notice that? Luke's narrative tells us why he was born in Bethlehem.
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Matthew just references that he was.
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Why does it matter that he was born in Bethlehem? Because verse six, you're going to see in a moment that that's a fulfillment of prophecy.
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Matthew is very concerned that we understand Jesus is fulfilling all these Old Testament prophecies, not only from Isaiah, but also from the other prophets.
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And one of the prophecies is that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
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And so he doesn't say how he got there.
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He doesn't talk about the census or any of that stuff.
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He just says he was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the king.
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Now, behold, wise men.
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Okay, now wise men are mentioned, but what's not mentioned? The number there.
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There's there's there's no three wise men mentioned.
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It only says that there were wise men from the east.
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It could have been a whole horde of them, or it could have been just two.
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We don't know how many.
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It just says there were wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
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Now, the term wise men.
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Some translations use the term magi.
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And there's some debate over what these guys were.
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And ultimately, you know, some see them as pagan astrologers, you know, people who look at the stars and follow the stars.
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But God is using these men, no matter what they were, where they came from, or what what their what their particular belief was, God was using these men for a specific purpose.
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He's using them to confirm what he has done.
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He's confirming through these men, the miracle of the coming of Jesus.
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And it says in it says that they came to the king, saying where where's been born the king of the Jews, we saw his star rose, and we've come to worship him.
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And verse three says when Herod, the king, now Herod, the earthly king, heard this, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him.
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And assembling all chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was people to be born.
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And they told him this is important in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written by the prophet and you Bethlehem and the land of Judah are by no means least among the rules rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.
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So all they're doing is quoting a scriptural passage.
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And and it's from Micah five, two, by the way, if you want to make make a note of that, they're simply quoting from the prophet Micah that this is what is to happen.
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Now, it says in verse seven, Herod summon the wise men secretly and ascertain from them what time the star had appeared.
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And he sent them to Bethlehem saying go and search diligently for the child.
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When you found him bring me word that I may to go and worship him.
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After listening to the king, they went on their way and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.
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When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
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And going into the house, they saw the child would marry his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, and frankincense and myrrh and being warned in dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
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All right, before we get to the next part of the narrative, I want to just make a few exegetical comments here.
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Number one, Herod is attempting to use the wise men to kill Jesus, because Herod sees Jesus as a threat to the throne, his throne.
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And so we see this beginning at verse 13, God saves Jesus, and Herod does bring death to the children of Bethlehem, which is absolutely horrible, but it's also a fulfillment of prophecy as we will see.
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The point of all of this, though, is the Magi, it doesn't mention how many of they are, it mentions that there's three of them, but it also doesn't tell us that they arrived the day Jesus was born.
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Oftentimes we think of Jesus as born in the manger, and here come the wise men walking up to the manger.
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But notice it doesn't say they came to a stable, it says they came to a house.
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So we don't know how long after Jesus was born the wise men actually arrived.
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Some people say it could have been up to two years, because of the distance it would have taken and the star and all these different things, we do not know.
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And people say also, well, where you get two years from, what does Herod do? He has every child killed two years old and younger, based upon what? The time that the Magi said they've been following the star, right? So there is a chance that the Magi or the wise men were not there on the night Jesus was born.
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And I think based on the text, probably not there.
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It was probably that Jesus was born in the, and it was more likely a cave than it was a wooden stable, based on the way shepherds and sheep and everything were used.
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It was probably something honed out of rock.
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Jesus was in, laid in a feeding trough.
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We're going to see that in the Gospel of Luke, talk about that then.
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But it wasn't too long after they had a place to stay.
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You know, there wasn't any room in the inn that night, but there's going to be a place for them to stay.
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They have a house.
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So here come the Magi into the house.
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Jesus is with his mother and they fall down and worship him.
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So somewhere within that two year period.
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Also notice it doesn't give us a time of year.
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Doesn't give us a time frame.
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So there's great debate about when was Jesus born.
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And I tell people this, some people say, oh, it was absolutely not December 25th.
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And my answer to that is December 25th is as good a guess as anything else.
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Because some people want to argue, well, it had to have been the spring, because that the spring is when the shepherds are out by night with their flock.
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And they make the argument that from Luke's Gospel that Jesus was probably born in the springtime.
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I don't buy that as an answer, because shepherds watch their flock all year long.
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So it's not exactly a legitimate argument.
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Now, could it have been the springtime? Sure.
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But could it have been December 25th? There are some very good arguments for Jesus's birth actually being on that day.
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So I don't have any I don't have any problem celebrating December 25th any more than I would have a problem celebrating, you know, the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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I think it's January the 6th is when they celebrate Christmas.
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They celebrate it.
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Their dates are often different than ours, the way they date things.
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So I mean, I wouldn't have any problem celebrating January 6th.
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But I do believe that celebrating the birth of Christ is a blessing.
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Some people think that we shouldn't celebrate Jesus's birth.
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Even Christians, some Christians would say we shouldn't celebrate Christmas because it's not a biblical holiday.
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Some even argue that we shouldn't celebrate Easter because it's not a biblical holiday.
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But I think the two most important events in history were the birth, the incarnation of the Messiah and the death, burial and resurrection of that Messiah.
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The moment that literally split time in half because everything before Jesus we call B.C.
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and everything after Jesus is A.D.
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in the year of our Lord, Anno Domini.
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So we everything in history revolves around the life and death and burial and resurrection of this man, Jesus Christ.
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So I love to celebrate Christmas and I look forward to it every year.
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And and I hope you guys have gotten something out of this.
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Let's let's do this.
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Let's let's just read as we close because we're out of time.
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Let's just read to the end of the chapter.
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I'll make a few final comments and pray.
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It says.
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Verse 13, Now, when they had departed, behold, an angel, 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.
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And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remain there until the death of Herod.
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This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet out of Egypt.
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I will call my son.
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Now, that's an interesting we don't have time, but that's an interesting use of an Old Testament text, because that particular text, the reference there is referencing Egypt when Israel came out of Egypt in the Exodus.
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But what this tells us is that the gospel writer Matthew here is seeing what happened to Israel coming out of Egypt as a prefiguring of Jesus coming out of Egypt when he when he fled there for safety.
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So this is this is this is the Holy Spirit inspiring this text to be written.
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So we know it's not being misused.
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We know it's being used properly.
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But this is one of those times where we would where we would say this is an interesting way that the spirit would show us a picture from the Old Testament which reference Christ in the New Testament.
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The picture is Israel coming out of Egypt and Christ coming out of Egypt.
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Verse 16.
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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 had been ascertained from the wise men.
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Again, probably the time of travel following the star.
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Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.
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A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children.
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She refused to be comforted, but they were because they were no more.
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Verse 19.
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But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel.
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For those who have sought the child's life are dead.
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And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.
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When he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee.
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And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth that was spoken by the prophets that that which was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled.
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He shall be called a Nazarene.
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Now that that is another again, time doesn't allow it.
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There's actually no specific prophecy in the Old Testament that says Jesus would be called a Nazarene.
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And so that so that's there's some debate as to what's he what's he referring to.
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And there was the the Nazarite or the one who was set aside, the one who was dedicated to the Lord.
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And perhaps that's the the reference that's being made here.
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But that's one of those that's one of those passages a little bit more difficult to takes a little bit more time to dig into.
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But anyway, the point the point of all of this is to say, we have read tonight Matthew's Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus.
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And who is the major player? Joseph, even in this last part, Joseph is the one who led them.
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Joseph is the one who is visited by the angel.
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He's the one that makes the decision not to go back the way, but to go a different way because of the person who's in charge.
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Joseph gets very little biblical information about him.
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But what we're told in this text, he was a just man.
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And he was he was used by God to protect Jesus at a very important time in history.
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So tonight, we've looked at the account from Joseph's perspective.
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Next week, we'll see Luke gives us the account from Mary's perspective.
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And I think that lines up with our first question tonight about the two genealogies.
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And that's why I go back.
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And I do think that Luke's genealogy is, in fact, more than likely, the line of Mary, because Luke gives us more of Mary's perspective.
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Alright, so let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time of study.
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I pray that it has been fruitful for your people.
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And ultimately, you will use it to grow us all in our faith.
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In Christ's name, Amen.