“But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said, 20 “Get up, take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” 21 So Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Then after being warned by God in a dream, he left for the regions of Galilee, 23 and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
The world Jesus was born into was a world filled with dangers and insecurity. In saying that I am not referring to the common problems of animals in the wilderness or the robbers that were ever present to waylay weary travellers, relieving them of their material possessions and often even their lives.
I am talking about the citizenry of an entire nation living under the oppressive hand of Rome on one side, and on the other the treacherous rule of a family of Herods ready and willing to shed blood on the slightest whim, and having to live on a daily basis under a corrupt and legalistic religious system imposed by rich and powerful men who had turned the Law of God into something with which to burden and impoverish the people.
It was especially dangerous for Jesus in that His coming and presence would alternately be a threat, first to the ruling class in Israel, then to the religious elite, deeply ensconced in the comfort and security of their power and position, and then Rome who would perceive Him as just enough of a threat to get rid of as an annoyance if not a potential insurrectionist.
It was especially dangerous for Jesus because behind all of these forces was all the power and wile of the evil one; the prince of the power of the air and the one who throughout history had used every means at his disposal to thwart the coming of God’s Messiah.
We see one of Satan’s most heinous attempts at this through the man called Herod the Great, in the verses immediately preceeding our text verses. In chapter 2 verses 16-18 of Matthew we’re given the account of the evil puppet king’s order that all the male children in Bethlehem be slaughtered because he had heard that a king had been born there and he felt threatened.
This event was a fulfillment of prophecy, and Jeremiah 31:15 is quoted by the Apostle in verse 18.
“Thus says the LORD, “A voice is heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; She refuses to be comforted for her children, Because they are no more.”
The satanic involvement in this murderous act is confirmed to us in the symbolism of Revelation 12:4 which refers to the dragon and says;
“And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.”
And we know this is a reference to Christ by the wording of verse 5 which follows.
Let me give you just a sampling of some of the information we have about Herod the Great; and I want to tell you something of his son Archelaus also, since it was he who ruled in Judea at the time Joseph brought Mary and the Child back up from Egypt. Our text says Joseph was warned by God to avoid Judea and go to Galilee because of this man, and I think it would be helpful to us to know why.
HEROD AND SON
I saw an article in a secular publication not too long ago, extolling the engineering genius of Herod the Great and all his achievements to improve the nation during his reign. The article made brief mention of the ‘rumor’ of his order of the Bethlehem massacre, but since the only place that event is recorded is in the Bible, the authors of this article dismissed it as anti-Herod sentiment and political bashing.
In truth, Herod was an evil, cruel, wretched man who had two of his sons and one of his wives executed just because he suspected them of plotting against him.
Now as I indicated earlier, I don’t really want to get into a long history of these people, but I do want to read to you a portion of what historian Josephus wrote concerning the death of Herod the Great (Antiquities, 17.6.5)
“But the disease of Herod grew more severe, God inflicting punishment for his crimes. For a slow fire burned in him which was not so apparent to those who touched him, but augmented his internal distress; for he had a terrible desire for food which it was not possible to resist. He was affected also with ulceration of the intestines, and with especially severe pains in the colon, while a watery and transparent humor settled about his feet. He suffered also from a similar trouble in his abdomen. Nay more, his privy member was putrefied and produced worms. He found also excessive difficulty in breathing, and it was particularly disagreeable because of the offensiveness of the odor and the rapidity of respiration. He had convulsions in every limb, which gave him uncontrollable strength.” That last part sounds like a description of Grand Mal seizures to me.
Well, to Matthew’s credit, and of course by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the gospel writer didn’t go into all those nasty details, but simply said, “But when Herod was dead”
This was the first bitter enemy of the Messiah and I’m sure first century Christians agreed that he had suffered a just end for his crimes. But God deigns not to give him further notice but to say that his role is ended and he has been dispatched according to plan.
Herod is dead. Now on his deathbed he had attempted to split his kingdom between his three sons, Antipas, [that would be Herod Antipas, who was the Herod that Jesus was eventually brought before during his mock trials on the day of His crucifixion], Philip and Archelaus, but Rome would not concur with them being called kings, so Philip and Antipas held the title of Tetrarch, which means ruler over the fourth part of an area, and Archelaus, who was called ‘Ethnarch’, which means governor, had authority over Judea.
Let me toss in here, just to continue to illuminate the moral corruption of this entire family; again, the names – Antipas, Philip and Archelaus – Antipas was the one who stole his brother Philip’s wife and was living with her in open adultery, which drew the rebuke of John the Baptist, which is why Herodias, Philip’s wife, called for his head during Antipas’ birthday party.
To give you an idea of how badly Archelaus ruled, the Jews of Judea and the people of Samaria, who despised each other, united in appealing to Rome to depose him.
His short reign was plagued by outbreaks and demonstrations by an outraged populace. On the day before Passover in 4BC there was such an uproar of people in the Temple area demanding action against him, Archelaus dispatched an entire garrison of the Herodian guard who massacred three thousand people right there on the pavements of the Temple courts.
Well, somehow he managed to hold on until AD 6 in a rule marked by cruel tyranny, gross sexual perversions, and political intrigues, but was finally summoned to Rome where he was stripped of his crown and banished to Gaul where he lived out his days. I couldn’t locate a date of death and I don’t think it’s recorded, but several historians said they believed he must have died at a young age.
So this is the kind of Judea that existed at the time Joseph and Mary brought a very young Jesus back up from exile in Egypt, and He spent his first 30 years in Nazareth of Galilee.
NAZARETH
Let’s talk a little about this town of Nazareth.
First, just to be sure we don’t leave anyone behind by assuming everyone knows the location of these various towns let me direct you to your maps in the back of your Bible. Most of them have a map titled “Palestine in the Time of Christ”. Go to that one. Find the Dead Sea, then at the Northern tip of that sea let your eyes drift west and you’ll see Jerusalem. Just six miles south of Jerusalem is Bethlehem where Jesus was born. So you can see why the close proximity of His birthplace to Jerusalem from which Archelaus ruled would make Joseph nervous.
Now look up north to Galilee west of the Sea of Galilee, and about half way between the Sea of Galilee and the coast of the Mediterranean you’ll find Nazareth, which is about 65 miles from Jerusalem.
Nazareth, which today has more than 60,000 Israeli Arab residents and thousands more Jewish residents, was an obscure little village at the time of Christ, estimated to have a population of less than 200.
Very little else is known about the ancient town except what is said in the Gospels. Some commentators say that to be called a Nazarene was to be accused of having an evil reputation; some say that the town itself had a reputation for ill behavior and a sort of backward air.
In John 1:46 when Philip has come to Nathaniel to tell him he has found Messiah and it is a certain Jesus from Nazareth, Nathaniel responds with the question, ‘can any good thing come from Nazareth?’
Now there are different approaches to this question of Nathaniel’s also. Some say it is a commentary on the base nature of the community, while others say it was an expression of doubt that Jesus could be the promised Messiah, since no prophecy ever indicated anyone special, including God’s Anointed, coming from Nazareth.
In any case, the region of Galilee in general was looked upon by the more sophisticated Judeans as a place of ignorant and uneducated men, and anyone from there would be looked down upon.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN THE LIFE OF JESUS
Having established all of this history and geography for you, I now want to get to my main point and talk about the evidence of the providential working of God in the life of Jesus in three specific areas.
First,
IN HIS PROTECTION
Jesus was supernaturally protected throughout His life, of course. He came into the world to do the Father’s will, and there are many evidences given throughout the Gospels of the protective hand of providence over Him. The first we see is the warning to Joseph to go down to Egypt with the infant and His mother. Then as an adult we are told that when the Nazarenes tried to throw Jesus off a cliff He simply walked out of their midst and went away from there. We know that Herod was looking for Him and there is nothing specific said about divine intervention there, but I feel safe in surmising that when the ruler of a small province wants to find a certain person he certainly has all the resources at his disposal to do so; yet Jesus remained free and unmolested until in God’s timing He was arrested and brought to trial.
But let’s go back and consider these events of His infancy. God warns Joseph in a dream to avoid Judea and go to Galilee, and the family settles in Nazareth.
There is a television program called “In Plain Sight”. I do not recommend the program and after the first couple of episodes I stopped watching it. The humor is almost always vulgar, and the main character is far from being the kind of role model you would want to expose your young people to.
But the premise of the program is that this main character and the division she works for is responsible for setting people up in the witness protection program. It is called “In Plain Sight”, because that is where she hides people.
She changes their identity and every detail about their life, sets them up in a new home in a new town and watches over them while they go about their new life, hopefully never to be found by the people that want to harm them.
This is what God did to protect His Messiah in His infancy and youth. He hid Him in plain sight. No prophecy ever mentioned the Messiah coming from Nazareth; in fact, Nazareth is never mentioned in all the Old Testament Scriptures.
Therefore, as far as Archelaus was concerned, assuming he had heard the same stories his father had heard about a new Jewish king being born, he would have assumed that the baby was dispatched when his father Herod the Great had the Bethlehem babies slaughtered.
In addition, as I said, Nazareth is about 65 miles from Jerusalem. Now if you think about some town that is approximately that far from the town you live in – especially if you can think of a very small community about that distance away – you will realize that you probably know very little or nothing about who lives there or what goes on there on a day to day basis.
Now just let me toss out a thought for you to dwell on more deeply in your quiet time and then we’ll move on.
If you are a born again follower of Jesus Christ you belong to God and you are in His family. Do you think for even a moment that you are not under the umbrella of His providential care?
Jesus, humanly speaking, is the most important and the most influential man who ever lived, and 10/11ths of His life were spent in obscurity in a small village that no one thought much about, doing the work of a commoner, completely out of the sight and minds of anyone who would do Him harm, and He was 100 percent in the perfect will of His Father, every minute of every day.
Believer, no matter what your life’s circumstances are, no matter what each day calls you to do or where any given day requires you to be, unless you are deliberately sinning – deliberately walking against the known will of God and His Word, then you are in His protective care, you are in His will, and you are pleasing to Him.
No task is insignificant, no deed is too low, and even when you are least aware, you are a part of the divinely intricately woven tapestry of His eternal plan and working and only in eternity will you see the front side of the fabric.
Next, we see God’s providential hand in
HIS PREPARATION
Think about this once more. It is estimated that Jesus was born in about 5 BC. Joseph immediately took the Child and His mother down into Egypt, then Herod died in 4 BC and an angel was sent to Joseph to say it was safe to go home now. So they were only in Egypt for about a year.
Here’s another little rabbit trail just to stimulate your thinking. Pay attention to the timeline. Herod orders the Bethlehem babies killed at the time of Jesus’ birth. Approximately a year later he is dead, and if you think about the description Josephus gave of Herod’s physical condition you have to realize that he did not die quickly. So the onset of much of his physical degeneration must have occurred very shortly after his ordering of the massacre. Just food for thought.
Ok so Jesus is still an infant, between one and two years old, when Joseph takes Him and Mary to Nazareth which they make their home, and Jesus is there for thirty years.
Thirty years of obscurity, yes, but also of preparation.
The writer to the Hebrews was not throwing out empty words for poetry’s sake when he wrote:
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” Heb 4:15
In the past when I’ve heard that verse or read it, I’ve thought that it is a very all-encompassing statement to say that Jesus was tempted in all things as we are, when so relatively little is written about Him. But when it is brought to my attention that He lived 30 years of which we know nothing, then it becomes much easier for me to understand that He lived the full life of a boy, a teen, and a young man, experiencing all that goes with those passages of life – except without sin.
I want to give you a couple of short excerpts from William Barclay’s commentary on this portion of Matthew’s Gospel.
“A world was calling him, and yet he first fulfilled his duty to his mother and to his own folks and to his own home. When his mother died, Sir James Barrie could write, “I can look back, and I cannot see the smallest thing undone.” There lies happiness. It is on those who faithfully and ungrudgingly accept the simple duties that the world is built. … Jesus is the great example of one who accepted the simple duties of the home. … Jesus was learning what it was like to be a working man. He was learning what it was like to have to earn a living, to save to buy food and clothes…to meet the dissatisfied and the critical customer, and the customer who would not pay his debts. If Jesus was to help men, he must first know what men’s lives were like. He did not come into a protected cushioned life; he came into the life that any man must live.”
Barclay ended his chapter with this paragraph:
“Jesus was faithfully performing the lesser task before the greater task was given Him to do. The great fact is that, if Jesus had failed in the smaller duties, the mighty task of being the Savior of the world could never have been given to him to do. He was faithful in little that he might become master of much.”
And here is the line that I would wish for every young person to fully understand and incorporate into their life…
“It is a thing never to be forgotten that in the everyday duties of life we make or mar a destiny, and we win or lose a crown.”
William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, The Westminster Press, 1956 (Revised Edition 1975)
What did Jesus do for thirty years? He lived a life that could not be faulted. He prepared Himself as He was being prepared for the work the Father had sent Him to do. What do we really know of those thirty years? It is enough to know that when He finally made His public appearance God our Father and His joyfully proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Matt 3:17
Finally, the providence of God is witnessed in
HIS PASSION
Now in case you’re thinking that I’ve cheated a little here; after all, isn’t this sermon called ‘Nazarene’ and isn’t it about Jesus’ life in Nazareth? So why are we jumping to His passion – His arrest, torture and crucifixion?
I will answer that it is in part because He was known as a Nazarene that the Scriptures were fulfilled in His humiliation and death.
“For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. 3 He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Isa 53:2-3
God could have come to the earth and assumed immediately the role of King of the World, and who could have resisted Him?
He could have come with great pomp and ceremony. He could have entered the world a Man full-grown with rings on every finger, wrapped in robes spun in the halls of Heaven, wearing on His head a crown so brilliant in its golden purity and its many-encrusted jewels that it would have blinded any who dared look upon it.
With a breath He could have deposed the ruler of this world like the slithering Archelaus, exiling him to an early end. With a word He could have spoken sinful mankind to the pit and begun a new race of men, pure and noble and good and without spot to reign over as new Monarch of His new world.
Yet He could not. Why, you may ask? Because He cannot deny Himself. He cannot be other than who and what He is. He cannot violate either His justice or His mercy, and as the Sovereign of eternity He faithfully exercises both perfectly and without prejudice.
Therefore sin must be atoned and for His elect Heaven gained. And to this great end He ‘emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ Phil 2:7-8
And every detail about His coming and His life was tailored to fit that purpose. Instead of a palace in Jerusalem He chose a humble family dwelling in a poor town in the north.
Instead of being known as a man of noble and royal birth He let Himself be called a Galilean and even a Nazarene.
Instead of being identified with the rich and powerful He identified Himself with the poor and lowly because that was the position that matched the spiritual state of every man on every social level. He stooped down to bring us up. He stooped lower than any man in order that He might get under us and bear us up to the highest Heaven.
Foreseeing His humiliation and suffering He spoke through the psalmist:
“But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people. All who see me sneer at me; they separate with the lip, they wag the head,” Ps 22:6-7
And while this was happening in history the mocking people were looking up at Pilate’s mocking sign that read “JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS” Jn 19:19
And do you remember that it was written three times there; in Hebrew (Aramaic), Latin and Greek? Do you know why? It was for the same reason that today all of our packaging of food and manufactured goods is labeled in multiple languages. It was because people from all over the known world were there and Pilate wanted them all to know and understand clearly that this Man was dying because He was a king.
And the Jews were angry. Do you know why? Because the sign set forth a lowly Galilean and even a Nazarene as their king, and it embarrassed them – it enraged them – it flaunted in their faces the very reason they had wanted Him killed in the first place. It made them look up and read who it was they were really putting to death there and it was the greatest offense of all.
My friends and family, here at this place is where we should each look deeply inward and wonder why it is that we so often think so very highly of ourselves; so highly that we are offended at the smallest slight, insistent on what we refer to as ‘our rights’, too often unwilling to bear the reproach of Christ in a Christ-hating world, seeking a religion of cushion and comfort and thereby marring a destiny and losing a crown.
“For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, 29 so that no man may boast before God. 30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, 31 so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.” 1 Cor 1:26-31
And this is truly your only boast today, Christian – yours and mine – that by His doing we are in Christ Jesus.
That is why our boasting is in Him and Him alone, because alone He became the lowest of men and the embodiment of sin – because alone He became accursed of God and men so that He might become to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.
Never fear to be identified with Him, Christ-follower. Count it an honor if it be required of you, to be looked down upon, ridiculed, trampled under foot for the reproach of Christ; for that is precisely what He has done for you in order to bring you up to the highest Heaven, the brightest glory, the blissful eternity that with His blood He has purchased and readied for your arrival when the former Jesus the Nazarene, now Jesus crowned with glory and honor at the Father’s right hand, calls you up.
He went from Nazareth to the Throne of Heaven, and along the way He has snatched us up in redemption, sanctification, glorification – let us now live to the praise of His excellent glory, today and forever.
AMEN.
