And I too would like to welcome everyone. You know, you mentioned the 10-year anniversary and I look around the room. I'd like all of those who weren't here and I mean like not born yet in 2007 to stand up. How many of you? Junior, you need to stand up. Sophie Mae, I know you have to stand up. All right? Now, there's a whole bunch of you back there that aren't standing up that I know were at the first camp because I remember Psalm 2. But I bet some of you don't remember much about the first camp, do you? Okay, so it just amazed me to look around the room. We have probably this many people that were at the first camp who can't be here this year because they're in college or they got married with jobs. Joe Braun wanted to be here badly and he's got a test to take on Tuesday. So some people moved away. You should have brought them back, Susan. And also, as I introduce our speaker, Rich, you have now been pastor there at Trinity for? 12 years, so he had just begun his work in Birmingham. It is a very thriving, growing CREC work. How many of you were here or have listened to Rich's talks on the final chapters of Revelation? Okay, the rest of you, they're still online. And after this week, you'll want to listen to them, because you're a real blessing. And we were debating, your second topic was out of Acts, wasn't it? Church life, I believe? Yeah, yeah, it was more in the church. So those are still on Sermon Audio, and Lord willing, we'll have this week's there as well. And for those of you that have not gotten to know Rich, this will be a great time to do it. And I also want to introduce in the back of our auditorium, a good friend of ours, Gabe Wetmore and his wife, Erin. And Gabe, if you could stand up and introduce your children. Hi, Claire. And don't you have a son somewhere that you already lost? Oh, no, there he is. OK. I didn't see either behind. He was hiding. Now, the reason we are really blessed to have Gabe with us, and the reason I introduced him, for those of you that don't make the connection, Gabe came out last year, if you remember, Steve and I went down, along with Mike, to the installation service for our new CREC work in the East Bay. Trinity East Bay, it's Christ, or Christchurch East Bay. Trinity. Trinity Church, East Bay. And Church of the King is one of the early sponsors of this work. We've been helping them financially. I hope you all have been keeping them in your prayers. And now that you get to meet Gabe and Aaron and their children, it'll really help us to be close and in a good relationship there. So we're really glad to have you guys with us, and it's going to be a great week. So with that, Rich, teach us. All right. Thank you, John. I don't feel nearly as naked tonight as I did this morning. You can't see through this thing, can you? It is very narrow. I'm still feeling somewhat exposed. Yeah, it is great to be here, just being in this building and being with you all brings back a lot of great memories. Certainly I want to bring you greetings from the saints at Trinity Prez in Birmingham. and especially from my family. And certainly they all wish they could be here as well. But you know, as kids get older, they get busier. And that's just kind of the way it goes, as we all know. And so it's just me. You're just stuck with me. Probably the one member of the family you're least excited to see, right? Me. But we do have great memories, very fond memories from the two times previous we came. And I hope we'll have more great memories after this week. I really do look forward to being with you this week. And again, as I said this morning at worship, it's great to see the familiar faces and it's great to see the new faces as well. And we're very grateful for the work that God is doing in your church, in your community. Our topic for this week is the Gospel in the Gospels. And you might think, oh, well, that sounds, you know, so, you know, boring or just it sounds so plain. But let me tell you a little bit, let me kind of, you know, take you behind the curtain here, so to speak, for a few minutes and talk to you about why I think this topic is important. I think it's important for a number of reasons, but let me give you a couple of them here. First, I think in our circles, and by that I mean certainly the series C, but even more broadly, maybe especially more broadly, if you just think about the Reformed and even what we refer to as the Evangelical Church, the Reformed Church, the Evangelical Church, I think we often don't really know what to do with the Gospels, with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If we are asked to explain the gospel or to define the gospel, we sort of default to Paul. We run to Paul's epistles, and there's nothing wrong with that, of course. Paul's an inspired apostle and a great exponent of the gospel. But if you think about it, in our circles, we tend to be Pauline heavy. So we've got things like the Romans' road. to do evangelism, to take people through the book of Romans to explain the gospel to them. We've got volumes and volumes of books and articles and so forth written on Paul's definition of the gospel, and Paul's doctrine of justification, and Paul's view of imputation, and on and on you could go. It's, it were very Paul heavy, very Paul centric in a lot of ways. I have not done a formal statistical survey of this, but just my own sort of informal anecdotal survey, the evidence that I have found is that generally in reformed churches, you are twice as likely to hear one of the epistles of Paul preached as you are the Gospels, one of the Gospels. And again, that's just my own metric trying to investigate this a little bit. And I'm curious as to why that is. Why do we seem to neglect the Gospels? The question is what do we do with the Gospels? How do we read them? How do we use them in the church? You know, if you look at Paul, I would say that Paul, while certainly you could say that Paul is a kind of systematic theologian, I would say really more than anything Paul is a story theologian. And Paul tends to have four basic stories that he works with. He's got the Adam story, you can really think of it as the creation story. He's got the Israel story. And then he's got the Jesus story. And then he's got the church story. But really, of those four stories, those four stories really generate all of Paul's theology. You can think of Paul as a story theologian rather than a systematic theologian or a kind of narrative theologian. Of those four stories, obviously the Jesus story is the climactic story. That's the culmination. It's the fulfillment of everything. Everything flows into Jesus and what he does, and then everything in the life of the church and the mission of the church flows out of that. So I think even if you say, OK, there's a reason why we go to Paul, I think we will understand Paul much better if we're able to complement our teaching on Paul, if we're able to pair it with a deep familiarity with Jesus. the Gospels themselves with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul is a great preacher of the Gospel, but the material he's working with is found in the Gospels themselves. So, why go to the Gospels? What does it mean to examine the Gospel in the Gospels? What I want to say to you this week is this. The Gospels themselves are the Gospel. OK, now is that profound or what? The Gospels are the Gospel. Aren't you glad you traveled all this way to hear that? But it's actually more profound. I mean, it sounds very simple, very straightforward. In a lot of ways it is. But it's also, I think, incredibly profound. This is certainly true if you take each Gospel as a whole. Each Gospel, you know, we have four Gospels. We have four complementary. not contradictory, but complementary accounts of Jesus. Each gospel tells us the story of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God-man. That story, told four different ways, is the gospel. And so when we use that word gospel, this is what we should mean. We should mean the story told in the gospels. Again, the gospel The Gospels are the Gospel. The Incarnation plus the Cross plus the Resurrection equals the Gospel. You can throw the other stuff in there too, but that's the Gospel. And again, that's the narrative basis of Paul's theology. So again, deepening our familiarity with the Gospels helps us with Paul, just of course as Paul can help us better understand the Gospels. But that's not all. In fact, this is really where we're going this week because I really can't do an overview of each of the Gospels in full. But this is the other thing that I want us to understand. Each passage within the Gospels, or each pericope to use the more technical term, each little section within the Gospels is the Gospel in miniature. Each one of those little stories within the Gospels. gives us the gospel, or at least gives us some perspective on the gospel. So the miracle stories, they're the gospel. They show how Jesus, you know, the good news, the good news is that Jesus is going to deal with all that deforms and mars and disfigures his creation. He's come to redeem the creation. The miracle stories show you that. The exorcism stories, they show you the gospel. They show how Jesus, you know, the good news of Jesus coming to rescue us from Satan. and from the demonic. That's not the whole of the gospel, there's more to it than that, but each one of those exorcism stories is the gospel in miniature. The teaching Jesus gives, the parables he tells, the other great deeds that he does, all these things, rightly understood, are the gospel in miniature. They give us perspectives on the whole of the gospel. So not only is each gospel the gospel, but each gospel is composed of dozens of smaller gospel stories, each one giving us a window onto the person and work of Jesus as our Savior. When I say the gospels are the gospel, what I really mean is this. Jesus Christ is the gospel. Jesus Christ and His person and the work He has accomplished is the gospel. God's gospel, God's good news, is Jesus Christ. And the gospels show us Jesus, so the gospels are gospel, the gospels are good news. Now there's another reason, that's maybe the main thing, but there's another reason why I think this is important for us. I think sometimes we fall into the trap, and that's really what I'll call it, the trap in our churches, of thinking of the gospel as what we give to non-Christians. We use the gospel evangelistically. But once you become a Christian, you move on to other things. And so we start talking about principles for living, or God's wisdom for the family, or what God's word has to say about money, or work, or politics. Now certainly all those things are important, and we don't want to in any way minimize the implications of the gospel, but we should never think of the Christian life as starting with the gospel and then moving on from there to something else. What would that something else be? What could it possibly be, especially if the gospel is Jesus? If Jesus is the gospel, how can you ever get past that? So let me give you another incredibly profound truth for the week. The gospel is for Christians too. Again, you paid big money for this, right? The gospel is for non-Christians. We want to give the gospel to non-Christians. That's our evangelism. We want to spread the truth. That's the mission of the church. But the gospel is for Christians, too. Say that with me. The gospel is for Christians, too. Wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and say to that smiling face you see, at your reflection. The gospel is for Christians, too. Say that to one another. Remind yourselves of that frequently. The gospel is for Christians, too. We never outgrow the gospel. What happens is the gospel grows with us. Our understanding of the gospel grows as we grow. In fact, that's really what growth as a Christian is in its core. It's growing in Christ-likeness. It's growing in our faith in Christ. It's growing in our understanding of what Christ has done. Our understanding of the gospel expands as our faith expands, as we grow, as our understanding of the gospel grows with us. So we never outgrow the gospel. You can't outgrow the gospel. The gospel is for Christians, too. Jesus died for Christians. Did we say Jesus died for sinners? Great. Jesus died for Christians, too. That's the good news. We need to remember it. Now, we certainly need to always be working out the principles of the gospel in different facets of our lives. We want to work out the principles of the gospel in family life, in economic life, and in politics, and so forth. But we have to always understand This is fruit that grows from the root of the gospel. And if you sever that fruit from the root, all kinds of disastrous things happen. If you detach those principles, if you detach those truths from the gospel itself, you quickly find yourself getting weary, getting burned out, or you become a crotchety legalist. See, the gospel is the fuel that Christian life runs on. from the beginning, from its inception, from the moment you became a Christian all the way through eternity, runs on the fuel of the gospel. And you will never run on anything else. We have hybrid cars now all over. There's no such thing as a hybrid Christian who runs partly on the gospel and partly on something else. No, you run on the gospel. That's what keeps you moving and going. That's what energizes you. The good news about Jesus and his work in your life through his spirit. In our circles, and again, I mean in the CREC, but even just more broadly in the reformed world, I am more and more convinced that we need to hammer on the fundamentals of the gospel story more than we have. I think a lot of times we have gotten ourselves real worked up and real into all the various implications of the gospel, and sometimes have done so in a way that leaves the gospel behind, as if we had moved on to other things. And I think when that happens, we lose perspective. We lose our center. And so we find ourselves getting tangled up into messes and fights and arguments. Oh, you don't believe in the same kind of courtship I do? Or that happens. We laugh, but that happens. That'll tear a church apart. And because of that, I forgot my other examples. And there are good ones, too. And they're going to be very convicting. But you see, the implications, I'm not negating the implications, the implications are always there, we've got to be working those implications out in every facet of our lives. But we've always got to keep the central thing, the central thing, the main thing, the main thing, and that main thing is always Jesus himself, it's the gospel. So I want to give you an overview here real quickly of what's to come. In the time that we have this week, I'm going to give you five vignettes. There's a fancy word for you. Five snapshots, five pictures that show you, that show us the gospel in the gospels. Using smaller stories within the gospels to show us a big picture of what Jesus has come to do for us. So these are going to be the five. We're going to talk about the gospel according to Jesus' birth from Matthew 2. That'll be tonight. The gospel according to Jesus' meals, from Luke 5, that'll be tomorrow. The gospel according to Jesus' most famous parable, Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal son. The gospel according to Jesus' healing, we'll look at John 9, the man born blind. And the gospel according to Jesus' garden prayer. And that one, we're gonna have to be rushed on that one, but we'll do that as best we can our last evening. So let's look at the good news of Jesus' birth. And let me just read for us some here out of Matthew chapter 2. So this is actually going to be, I could start back with the actual birth account in chapter one. I'm really going to focus on the immediate aftermath of his birth in Matthew chapter two. And we will see how this passage shows us the good news. 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 have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people to gather, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him in Bethlehem of Judea for thus it is written by the prophet, but you Bethlehem in the land of Judah are not the least among the rulers of Judah for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had secretly, when he had secretly called the wise men, and determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the young child, and when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also. When they heard the king, they departed, and behold, the star which they had seen 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 exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying, arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt and stay there until I bring you word for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he rose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, out of Egypt, I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men was exceedingly angry. And he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its districts from two years old and under according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet saying, a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for your gospel. We thank you for Jesus Christ, the word incarnate. We thank you for Jesus Christ, the gospel incarnate. Father, may we look to him. May we trust him. May we put our hope in him. Father, you know how we long to be like him. how we long to love him more and serve him more faithfully than we do. We thank you that through him all our sins are forgiven. Through him we are accepted and accounted as righteous before you. Through him we are delivered from sin, we are delivered from death, we are delivered from Satan. Father, we rejoice in this and yet we long to rejoice in it all the more. Help us tonight to be filled with your joy. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, well, usually the preacher's worried about his audience falling asleep tonight. I can say I'm worried about falling asleep myself, because I missed a whole night of sleep trying to get here. So, all right, Matthew chapter 2, there are four things we're going to look at as we consider this story. The visit, the flight, the slaughter, and the return. Okay, those four things, easy to track with this. The visit, the flight, the slaughter, the return. Matthew chapter 2, verse 1. Shortly after Jesus' birth, In the days of Herod the king, wise men from the east come to visit." This is a familiar story. We talk about this story around Christmastime and during the season of Epiphany. We need to ask the question, who were these wise men? These Magi, as they're known, what is their story? They were probably from Persia or from Babylon. They were astrologers. Today, we sharply distinguish astronomy from astrology, but back then, they really didn't. These men were stargazers. They were men who looked at the sky and made determinations from the positioning and movements of the heavenly bodies. Now, normally, astrology is something the Bible condemns. In fact, the Bible often even mocks astrology. But as we will see, these magi were not typical pagan sorcerers or pagan wizards or pagan astrologers. They were looking in the sky for something God told them to look for. Certainly, we can say, too, they were members of the elite ruling class of their society, kind of like a president's cabinet. They were members of the royal court, advisors to the king. Now, this is what's really interesting. If you backtrack through Scripture, you find that we have met magi before in the Bible. These are not the first wise guys, the first men like this to show up. Go all the way back in history to the book of Exodus, to the book of And there we find Moses going to Pharaoh, and Moses tells Pharaoh, God says, let my people go. And Moses does these works of power to show that God means business. But guess what? Pharaoh has his Magi, and the Magi of Egypt also do signs and wonders to oppose Moses, to counter Moses. So Moses is a kind of Jewish Magi, and you've got the Egyptian Magi as well. A little later in Old Testament history, in the book of Daniel, we meet Magi. Daniel is one of those Jews who was carted off in exile. And, of course, you have to think about the exile as the exodus in reverse. Remember, God originally formed Israel as a nation by calling Abraham out of the region of Babylon and then calling the Israelites out of Egypt. In the exile, God sends his people back into Babylon, back into Egyptian-like slavery. They've been unfaithful, and so they must be punished. But in Babylon, some Jews like Daniel are faithful, and they bear witness to the truth and to the true God. Daniel ends up getting promoted, even though the pagan regimes change out rather rapidly in the Book of Daniel. Daniel always ends up rising to the top. He always seems to have a high position in the empire. But Daniel also has his opponents, pagans in the administration who want to bring Daniel down. And these opponents are the Magi, the Babylonian wise men. They try to undermine and attack Daniel and get him into trouble. If you read the book of Daniel, this is what you see again and again. This is who Daniel's fighting with all the time. Now, many years later, we find a group of Magi who want to come and pay homage to the newborn king of Israel. Matthew chapter 2. Somehow they knew God would send a king through the Jewish people, a king who would rule over all nations. It makes a lot of sense in terms of just the framework of history that Scripture gives us to view these Magi really as the legacy of Daniel's ministry in the Babylonian region. This is due to the lasting influence of Daniel's ministry. These men are what Scripture would call Gentile God-fears, Gentiles who didn't get circumcised and become Jews, but who submitted themselves to Israel's Scriptures and who put their hope in Israel's God. How did these men know to look for a Jewish king? How did they know this? There must have been Jews there during the exile who witnessed to them. And these men were part of a group of people who centuries before had bought into this messianic hope and had passed it along from one generation to the next within a Gentile empire, in a Gentile context. This star signaled to them that the king, the long-awaited king, has now been born. And so, verse 2, they say, where is this newborn king of the Jews? We have seen his rising star and have come to worship. Most likely, these wise men were familiar with the prophecy of Balaam, who was also from the east. The ancient prophecy is recorded in Numbers chapter 24 verse 17, there shall come a sign out of Jacob, a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel and shall smite the corners of Moab and destroy the children of Sheth. A Jewish king represented by a star will come and rule over even the Gentiles. Now the event of this star, the star itself, is obviously shrouded in mystery. What is it? Some have tried to tie the star to astronomical phenomena. Some have said, well, you know, there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter around 7 AD. Or perhaps they point to a supernova or an eclipse or a comet. But quite frankly, none of those explanations work. Not only is the timing off, at least with all the events like that that we know of, but if you look at verse 9, you see that this same star that signaled to them the birth of the child later leads them to the very house where that child is. This is obviously A miracle. But it's an odd one. A star, and that's, you know, what we know about stars. We don't know exactly what they would have known about stars in the heavens. But when we think of stars, we know that a star is not something that could come down and point out a specific house. Stars are too big for that. Stars are too hot for that. You know, imagine if I told you that a star led me from Sacramento over to the Berry Patch, number 12, to show me where I'd be staying tonight. You would say, how can a star do that kind of thing? It's too big. It's too hot. It just doesn't work. Well, let me tell you something interesting. In the medieval church, and you can trace this back further than that. There was good reason for this. But in the medieval church, Christians drew a lot of attention to the close connection you see in scripture between angels and stars. Stars are connected with angels in some way. So for example, Job chapter 38. Angels are called morning stars. Stars and angels are linked together. Stars and angels are both referred to as the host of heaven in various places in scripture. Lucifer, the rebellious angel called Satan, is described as a fallen star. And so medieval Christians often saw the star as an angel. They viewed the star of Matthew 2 as some kind of angel that appeared and led the wise men. to a particular place where they would meet Jesus. C.S. Lewis, of course, was a great medievalist, and actually, if you're familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia, in his book, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, you get a little hint of this. You've got Eustace, who has received a thoroughly modern education, and so is totally unprepared for what he has encountered in Narnia. But there's an interesting scenario, and I won't go into all the details here, but an interesting scene in the Dawn Treader where Eustace is having a discussion with Ramindu. And Eustace says, because he's been trained as a modernist and he didn't read all the right stories growing up, Eustace says, in our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas. And Ramanu replies, even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of. And actually as the story unfolds, we find that Ramanu was once a star, but now he has come into Narnia to give guidance to people. He is an angelic figure. He's the angelic figure in the story. I think that little episode in Voyage of the Dawn Treader tells you probably how C.S. Lewis viewed the star in Matthew chapter 2. He probably viewed it as some kind of angelic being, and that was a very common at least at one point in the history of the Church. It is interesting. You can't make a compelling case for this. Even in Matthew chapter 2, there are some links between stars and angels. The star appeared to the Magi. The angel appears to Joseph. The same verb is used for the star and the angel. They both appear, so there is a link. But I think there's an even better solution to the star. The way the star is described and the things the star does connect it with what we would call the Shekinah glory of God, the Shekinah of God, the visible glory of God that God manifested to his people from time to time, and it dwelt in the temple. We've become especially familiar with the Shekinah glory of God, with the pillar of cloud and fire that led Israel out of Egypt through the wilderness and then westward towards the land of promise. Matthew 2.9 says, the star went before them. Just as the Old Testament scriptures say, the pillar of cloud and fire went before Israel in the wilderness. Same kind of language used in Matthew 2. If you go back to Exodus 13, you see the same kind of language being used for the pillar of cloud and fire. Matthew 2.9 says, the star came and stood over the house where the child was. In the same way, the pillar of cloud and fire, the Shekinah glory, stood over the tabernacle. Later on, the Shekinah glory stood over the temple that Solomon built. So that same kind of language is used of the Shekinah glory, with the tabernacle and with the temple. Ezekiel has a vision of a new temple, and the glory leads Ezekiel from the east to the temple. The prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 60, speaks of God's glory rising over the nations to lead them to the promised king. Just as the pillar of cloud and fire led Israel to the promised land, this Shekinah glory, this rising glory, will lead the Gentiles to the king God has brought into the world. In Isaiah, the glory rises in the east, just like the match I saw, this star rise in the east. And it leads the nations just as the star led the Magi. Same kind of thing. Isaiah 60, the way it describes the glory. Matthew 2, the way it describes the star. So I think the star can best be understood as a manifestation of the Shekinah glory. It comes to Jesus because he is the new tabernacle. He is the new temple. He is the promised Messiah, the king of the nations that Isaiah prophesied. Now the Magi come bearing gifts. They bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh, just as the star ultimately shows us who Jesus is, these gifts show us who Jesus is as well. There were Old Testament passages that prophesied Gentiles bringing their gifts to God's King, bringing their gifts to God's Messiah. These gifts are royal gifts. They're gifts fit for a king. Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60 speak of kings bringing gold, and frankincense to the Davidic king that God has brought into the world. Isaiah 60 even says they will ride on camels bringing their gifts. These Gentiles will ride on camels in a kind of caravan bringing their gifts. That's why when we sing about the wise men during Christmas season and during Epiphany and when we have manger scenes and so forth, we see the Magi on camels. And people say, oh well, Matthew 2 doesn't say anything about camels, so that's wrong. Well, no, Matthew didn't, but Isaiah does. And the church has traditionally connected Matthew 2 with Isaiah 60, and I think rightly so. The church's reading of Matthew 2 has been shaped by the prophecies coming to fulfillment. Isaiah chapter 60 does describe these Gentiles caravanning together on camels, bringing their gifts to God's promised king. But there's more. In Song of Solomon, the king wears myrrh and frankincense when he goes to meet his bride. If Jesus is given frankincense and myrrh, it means he's the true king who has come for his bride. He's entered the world to claim his bride for himself. So this child gets a royal welcome. These gifts identify him as God's Messiah. as the Messiah promised in the ancient scriptures, the Davidic king that God said he would send, but there's more. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh are kingly gifts, but they're also priestly gifts. They were used in the tabernacle and temple. They were used in Israel's worship. Genesis 2, you know, go back to the very beginning, Genesis 2, you know, We have there the original sanctuary, the original holy place, the Garden Sanctuary of Eden. And right outside of that Garden Sanctuary, we're told in Genesis 2, there was gold. Well, why would we be told that? Because the gold is going to be brought into the sanctuary to glorify the place of worship because we worship a glorious God. The tabernacle and temple, of course, had gold all over the place. For example, the Ark of the Covenant was a wooden box covered in gold. The wood represents humanity. The gold represents glory. It's a picture of glorified humanity. Frankincense was burned in the tabernacle and temple to represent the prayers of the people. to represent the prayers of the priests ascending before the Lord. You can read about this in Exodus 30. Exodus 30 also talks about myrrh being used in the tabernacle. It was used in the anointing oil for priests. So Jesus, again here we see, Jesus is the new temple. He is the great high priest of his people. He's the promised Davidic king, the Messiah. Even the nations will come to worship him. He's also the new temple. He is Emmanuel, God with us. In him, the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. He's the great high priest of his people. He's the bride of his church. That which was given to the temple is now being given to Jesus. That which was used in the temple is now being used in the worship of Jesus. So you see how this story paints a picture for us of the identity of Jesus, the ways it connects him with all of these images and symbols of Israel's history. Now, when the Magi first made their journey, which probably took them at least a year, when they first made their journey, they went to Jerusalem. They went to the capital city of Israel. Doesn't that make sense? That's the place you would go. If you're expecting a king to be born and a king of the Jews, you'd go to Jerusalem because that's the capital city. That's where the king resides. In fact, they go to the palace and they go to Herod the king and they ask Herod, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? Now, for Herod, this had to be a shock. As soon as he hears this, he's thinking, now wait a second, I'm the king of the Jews. What's this I hear about another king? No, there hasn't been a son born in my house lately. I'm the only king of the Jews there is. In reality, this is very, very ironic. This whole passage is full of political intrigue. It's really kind of political satire. You could even say a kind of political cartoon. First of all, the fact that Herod is called a king is a bit humorous in itself. He certainly acted like a king and viewed himself as a king, but really he was Rome's puppet. And actually he was a very wicked ruler. He was self-centered. He was egotistical. He was a self-centered, egotistical maniac. He was corrupt in every way. He took himself way too seriously. I'll give you his rap sheet in a few minutes, but you just need to know Herod was a very bad guy. He was not a king in the biblical sense at all, and even in his own day there were questions about whether or not he really deserved the title king. You'd be very hard-pressed to find a ruler in all of history more self-obsessed and paranoid and pitiful and jealous. And I'm including those people running for president in the U.S. in 2016. You'd be hard-pressed to find somebody worse than Harry. He was capable in one sense because he was ruthless, he could get things done, he was tyrannical, he was brutal, but he was a very wicked man. The mention of this star probably got his attention just as much as the mention of a king. Herod was certainly no disciple of Scripture, most likely he knew the Scriptures, and he probably knew that prophecy of Balaam I already made reference to back in Numbers chapter 24. The promise there of the star, you know, this star arising and the star being associated with the coming of a great king, the prophecy in Numbers 24 goes on to list all the Gentile groups that this king will conquer, and included in the list are the Edomites. Well, guess what? Herod wasn't a Jew. Herod was actually an Edomite. When the star rises and the king comes, among the people groups who will be conquered are the Edomites. And so Herod, certainly at this point, is getting just a little bit nervous. You can see why this would have shaken him and why it would have upset him so greatly. Well, after meeting the Magi, Herod's unsettled. He gathers his chief priests and his scribes. You know, the chief priests you can think of as sort of the theological liberals of the day. The scribes are the conservatives. He wants them both together so he can cross-check their answer. He wants to make sure he gets this right. He asks them, where is the Christ to be born? And they, together in unison, quote for him Micah 5.2, which identifies the little village of Bethlehem, actually almost a suburb of Jerusalem. as the place where the Davidic king will be born. This is where the Davidic king will hail from, is Bethlehem. So Herod, this bloodthirsty, tyrannical, self-absorbed, self-centered ruler, devises a sinister plan. He seeks to deceive the Magi. He tells them, go and search carefully for the child, and when you find him, bring word back to me that I may come and worship him also. Of course, it's all a lie. What Herod really wants to do is slaughter him. And God reveals that to the Magi in a dream so they don't become unwitting accomplices in Herod's attempted murder of the Christ child. God also tells Joseph in a dream, the adoptive father of Jesus, God tells Joseph in a dream, it's time to pack up your bags and escape to Egypt. Now remember back in the book of Genesis, the original Joseph, that Joseph was a dreamer too. And that Joseph also went down to Egypt and there he saved his family. Now another Joseph is going to do the same. He's going to go down to Egypt to save his family. This is the flight of the holy family. They run for their lives, perhaps even using the gifts they've received, these very expensive gifts that were brought to Jesus, perhaps financed their hasty trip. They become political refugees in Egypt. Well, after Herod realizes that the wise men have duped him, what does he do? He has all the baby boys in Bethlehem slaughtered. Just kill them all, Herod says. Better safe than sorry. We cannot let this child live. Better to kill a few innocent babies than to endanger the whole nation by letting this one baby live. Now, I want you to see here, this has all the marks of an Exodus story. Again, if you're a careful reader of scripture, you're getting deja vu constantly as you read this story because it resonates with and echoes so many other stories in scripture. Compare what happens here to the book of Exodus. Pharaoh tried to kill Jewish baby boys. Herod does the same. Moses escaped. Jesus escapes. Pharaoh dies when the Israelites left in the Exodus. When the Holy Family makes their Exodus, Herod dies shortly thereafter. There are other connections, too. In Exodus, it's the Shekinah glory that guides Israel. Here, the Shekinah glory guides the Magi. The Shekinah glory was not seen by Pharaoh. Here, it's not seen by Herod or by others. It's only seen by believers. Israel, the Israelites left Egypt with plunder. Mary and Joseph and Jesus take plunder with them, these gifts they've been given by the Magi, all kinds of links here. But there's an interesting twist, a reversal in the plot, which would be easy to overlook, but once you see it, it's just unmistakable. What especially tips this off is Matthew's citation of Hosea 11.1. He says he uses his fulfillment formula and he says this happened so that the word of the prophet might be fulfilled. It's the word of the prophet Hosea from chapter 11 verse 1. And it's not just that Matthew quotes Hosea, that would be simple enough, but it's where he places this quotation in the narrative. Matthew quotes Hosea 11.1 where God says, out of Egypt I have called my son. But Matthew places it not when the Holy Family leaves Egypt to go back up to Israel, but when they leave Israel to head down to Egypt. It's backwards, it's reversed. They leave Israel and they go down to Egypt for refuge. Later they come back from Egypt and settle in Nazareth. But Hosea 11 one out of Egypt. I have called my son is placed in Matthew 2 15 in the middle of the chapter rather than at the end. It describes their flight from Israel to Egypt. And so this is the twist. What's Egypt in this story? What's Egypt and what's Israel in this story? How do you identify Egypt? How do you identify Israel in this story? What is Egypt? Well, that's obvious now. Being called out of Egypt in this story corresponds to leaving Israel. Israel has become Egypt. Israel has become the land of bondage, the land of slavery. Herod, the king of the Jews, is really another Pharaoh. And so his land is really another land of Egypt. Jesus' own people will not receive him. When he comes, they want to restore him. Just as Moses was not accepted, Jesus is not accepted. Jesus has to escape. Egypt is now the place of refuge. Out of Egypt I have called my son really means out of Israel I have called my son. Out of Israel that has become Egypt, I have called my son. You've got all kinds of reversals going on here. You've got the Gentiles rejoicing over Jesus, the Jewish king. You've got the Jews seeking to destroy their own Messiah. The places of insiders and outsiders have been swapped. The Gentiles are acting like the people of God. The Israelites are acting like the pagans. And of course, all this tells us something else about Jesus and about his identity. If Israel has become Egypt, then who's Israel? Jesus himself. is Israel. Jesus himself represents the nation of Israel. He is the embodiment of Egypt. Moses escaped Pharaoh's murderous rage. Jesus has escaped Herod's murderous rage. Moses came to represent Israel. Jesus now represents Israel. You know, this theme of a chosen son who is attacked in infancy, but who somehow miraculously escapes. It's a common one. It's a common theme in history, in myth, in literature. If we sat here and talked about it long enough, I'm sure we could come up with plenty of examples. C.S. Lewis and Prince Caspian. Caspian's a little bit older. He's not an infant, but it's the same kind of thing. He escapes. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, you know, the opening chapter. When I preached, Matthew chapter 2 in my own church years ago, I called the sermon, The Boy Who Lived, to see who would get it, to see who the true believers were, the real disciples. And a lot of people got it, but most of them were under age 18. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah, Harry Potter, the very first chapter, The Boy Who Lived, that's how Harry Potter's identified. There's an attack on his life in infancy and he escapes. And you got an attack here on Jesus in his infancy, and he escapes. He's the boy who lives. This is Matthew's way of showing us Jesus is the new Moses. He is the greater Moses. Just as Moses represented Israel, Jesus is the embodiment of Israel. Just as Moses came to redeem Israel from bondage, Jesus has come to redeem his people from bondage. In fact, there's really something else that I think is odd about the use of Hosea 11.1 here. If you look at Hosea 11.1, you find it's really not a prediction at all. It doesn't read like a predictive prophecy. It reads more like history. Out of Egypt I have called my son is past tense. It's actually referring back to the first Passover and that original exodus out of Egypt. But Matthew takes it, you know, that's the defining moment in Israel's history in the past, and Hosea's looking back on it. But Matthew takes it as prophetic of the future. It looks like history rather than prophecy, but Matthew treats it as a prophecy that is coming to fulfillment in the life of Jesus. Why is this? What is Matthew doing? What is there to fulfill in Hosea 11.1? It doesn't point to the future at all in any obvious way. We'll have to see what's going on here. You know, Hosea 11.1 looks to be about the history of Israel, Israel's past. Matthew reads it as a text about Jesus, about Israel's future. Matthew is operating with a different view of prophecy than perhaps the one many in the church today are used to. Actually, I think what Matthew is doing is training us. He's showing us how to read the Old Testament. Matthew's showing us the whole history of Israel is a template for the Messiah's work. The Messiah is going to relive Israel's history. Matthew's point is this, Jesus is Israel. He's the embodiment of Israel. He's Israel's God, we've already seen that. We've already seen he's Israel's God, he's Emmanuel, God with us, the God of Israel dwelling with his people, but he's also the embodiment of Israel. He comes to be Israel, to do Israel right, to be what Israel should have been, to do what Israel should have done, to take on the shape of Israel's history, to retrace her steps, but without any of her wrong turns. The story of Jesus is going to line up with the story of Israel in Matthew's gospel. But at every point where Israel went wrong, where Israel stepped in the wrong direction, Jesus is going to relive that history, but step in the right direction. This is what we usually call typology. The whole nation of Israel, the whole history of Israel is a type pointing to Jesus. He's the fulfillment. It's all prophetic. Everything about Israel. Her history, her story, her institutions, her famous personages recorded in scripture, it's all prophetic. It all finds fulfillment in Jesus. We don't just go to the Old Testament looking for isolated predictions that Jesus fulfills. There are predictions Jesus fulfills. There are these, you could say, isolated points of correspondence you can find. But that's not how Matthew wants us to read the Old Testament. He wants us to see everything about Israel. Everything about the people of Israel served as a blueprint for the coming Messiah. Jesus is going to relive Israel's experience as a nation. God embedded in Israel's history an image of what was to come. Israel's called God's Son to prepare the way for the true Son of God. Israel's history is a prophetic foreshadowing of what Jesus will come and do. You ever wish you could go back and redo your life? You ever wish you could relive at least certain moments in your life, go back and do some things differently, make some different choices along the way, take this turn instead of that turn? Well, in Jesus, that's what Israel gets to do. He relives Israel's history, Israel's story, Israel's experience. But without any of the Israelites' mistakes, he's Israel done right. He not only completes Israel's story, he fulfills Israel's purpose. His life is not just the last chapter in Israel's history, it's a complete rewriting of Israel's history from beginning to end. God had chosen Israel. God had chosen Israel for a specific purpose, to bring His blessing to all the nations of the world. Israel would be the vehicle, the mechanism. the mailman delivering God's blessing addressed to all the nations of the earth. Israel failed in that mission, in Jesus it begins to happen. Israel failed because of her sin, Jesus will not fail. Jesus will deliver the blessing. The blessings will begin to flow out to the nations as God intended. So we've looked at the visit, we've looked at the flight, now the slaughter. The Slaughter of the Innocents. We've touched on this already, but just consider the Massacre of the Innocents a little bit further. Herod has been tricked, but he still wants to stamp out the rival to his throne. Now, some have said, surely this account of the Massacre of the Innocents, the Slaughter of the Innocents, must be unhistorical. It must be a made-up story, you know, some kind of pious fiction to show Jesus is going to be a better king than Herod. Because otherwise, why wouldn't it show up in all the other ancient history books? But actually, if you know something about Herod, this isn't that hard to believe in at all. He was appointed by the Romans to rule over Judea in 40 BC. He reigned a long time, but it was one long reign of terror. He was a smart man, but he was incredibly insecure. He was a savvy man, but he was incredibly ruthless. When he first came to power, he slaughtered half the Jewish Sanhedrin just to show them who was really in charge. He slaughtered anyone left in the former Hasmonean dynasty to take out any potential rivals. He once ordered 300 court nobles killed in a fit of rage. Later in his reign, he grew suspicious even of his own family members and his wife and mother-in-law and three of his own sons executed. When he was dying, he had ordered his soldiers to kill one member of every household in the city when he finally passed away so that his death would be publicly mourned. So it would look like there were mourners at his passing. In fact, before he died, he had already made a huge elevated palace to serve as his tomb. It's been said every time the name Herod shows up in the pages of the New Testament, innocent people die. That does indeed seem to be the case. I think that's just about got it. The historian Octavian said it was safer to be a pig in Herod's barn than a member of his own household. You'd more likely end up dead in his household than if you're a farm animal. Historians surmise that based on the size of the village of Bethlehem, this massacre probably involved less than 20 baby boys. Certainly a massive atrocity, horribly tragic, but hardly more than a footnote in a long list of atrocities committed by this tyrant. It would be like if some evil deed was discovered that Herod did, I'm sorry, not Herod, that Hitler did, that wasn't recorded in any of the history books we have right now, it wouldn't be that hard to believe because it would fit with all the other atrocities committed. Okay, this fits with Herod's character. We can rely on Matthew here as a historian. This really happened, the slaughter of the innocents. What makes this so significant for us, of course, is the boy who lived, the boy who survived, the boy who escaped the slaughter. What's the point of this? Why is Matthew recorded this story for us? What does the slaughter of the innocents show us? It shows us that the long holy war of God's people is now coming to a climax. We talked about this a little bit this morning. Genesis 3.15, that declaration of war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This is the seed of the serpent Herod attacking the seed of the woman Jesus. It's a battle that's raged all throughout history from Genesis 3.15 on. Now it is coming to its climax. It's ultimately going to culminate at the cross. See, Matthew 2 foreshadows all that is to come in this gospel. Everything that is to come in the rest of this gospel story that Matthew is telling is foreshadowed here. It's here in seed form. In fact, Matthew 2 really, you could say, is a kind of spoiler. You know, it's kind of like a movie trailer of coming attractions, a preview of coming events. It shows us how the gospel will go, how the gospel will end. You've got an attack on Jesus' life at the beginning of the gospel, and he escapes. You've got an attack on Jesus' life at the end, and he's going to be nailed dead to a cross. A figure named Herod is involved in the attack on Jesus at the beginning. A figure named Herod's going to be involved in the attack on Jesus at the end. As a boy, Jesus lives, but you have this foreshadowing of the death, he will die as a man. The attack here prefigures the passion at the end. The shadow of death has already been cast over Jesus, Jesus' head, Jesus' path. He is born with a price on his head. But that's not the only foreshadowing you have here. At the beginning of this story, what do you have? You have Gentiles coming to Jesus to worship him. At the end, you have Jesus sending out his disciples to the Gentiles so they can worship him. Matthew opens with Gentiles coming to Jesus. It closes with Jesus sending his disciples to the Gentiles. Again, Matthew 2 is a sign of what is to come. It's the gospel. It's the good news in seed form. Jesus will be the sacrifice who takes away the sins of the nations. We see that here. He ultimately will be slaughtered, but he'll be slaughtered in such a way that his blood will cleanse Israel and the nations. But what's the point of all this? Obviously, Matthew is revealing to us the identity of Jesus. He's giving us the gospel in seed form. All these different lines of typology. you know, drawn from the Old Testament, converge in Jesus. Matthew is giving us really a catalog of titles and descriptions for Jesus. Jesus is the promised Davidic king. He's the new temple. So he's Emmanuel, God with us. He's the new Moses, the redeemer and liberator of God's people. He's the new Israel, but now the obedient son of God. He's the sacrifice who will redeem his people. He's the promised seed of the woman. He is the holy warrior who will win the victory for God's people. He's Israel. He's the embodiment of faithful Israel, and he's the embodiment of Israel's God. God, Israel's God, acting in faithfulness to redeem his people. That's the gospel. One last thing here, and we're done. I think this passage presses on us, this whole issue of how do we respond to Jesus? When we see all this, what do we do with it? You know, John Stott once said, no one responds moderately to Jesus. It's either terror, fear, or surrender. Matthew maps out a number of different responses to Jesus. You've got Herod who's really terrified. He is very fearful. He's angered. He's more concerned about saving his throne than he is saving his soul. He's threatened by Jesus. And there are a lot of people who are threatened by Jesus. They see that if Jesus is who he says he is, if he's really a king, then that means I've got to surrender to him. I've got to give my life over to him. And if you don't want to do that, then Jesus becomes a rival to you. If you don't want to give up power, Jesus becomes a rival. Will you give up your power to Jesus? Will you surrender your life to him? You've got the scribes and chief priests. who have knowledge, they know a lot, but actually, at least for the moment, they're indifferent to Jesus. Now, we know that their indifference is not going to last. It never does. That indifference masks a contempt that's going to grow throughout the gospel story. And in a few years to come, they're going to be orchestrating his crucifixion. But note this about the scribes and the chief priests. The scribes have Bible knowledge. They could have won at a game of Bible trivia. They knew things like where the Messiah would be born. They could quote the scriptures with the best of them. They had plenty of information, but they weren't interested in Jesus. They weren't moved to Jesus by their knowledge. Their knowledge didn't take them to Jesus. The Magi, by contrast, only had a tiny bit of information, whatever legacy of information had been passed on from the days of Daniel to look for this Jewish king. They've only got a tiny amount of information, but they are committed and passionate about worshiping Jesus and will even bring him the costliest of gifts. It is so ironic, isn't it? Who has to announce to Jerusalem that their long-awaited king has been born? It's these Gentile astrologers, not the Jewish religious leaders. This is happening right in front of them and they know nothing about it. These Gentiles who come from afar know about it. Here it is the biggest event in Israel's history and Israel's leaders, religious leaders and political leaders miss it. The Magi were willing to travel hundreds of miles to find Jesus, knowing virtually nothing about him. The Jews had all kinds of knowledge of what their Messiah would be like, and they won't walk down the street to worship him. They won't go the five or six miles out to Bethlehem to honor him. Think about John chapter four. Jesus says the Father is seeking worshipers, not the Father seeking theologians. It's not the father is seeking Bible experts or bookworms. I mean, it's great to have knowledge, great to read books, great to do theology. Those are all wonderful things. But knowledge is not enough. You have to act on it. If your knowledge is not driving you to worship Jesus, it's worthless. You can accumulate all kinds of knowledge, all kinds of data, all kinds of facts. But if you never do anything with it, if it doesn't lead you to worship Jesus as God in the flesh, Israel's God incarnates, and it doesn't do you any good at all. It just adds to your condemnation in the end. The Magi here obviously model for us the right response to Jesus. They seek Him. They rejoice over Him. They worship Him. They give Him gifts. See, really, joyful worship is the most basic expression of a faithful response to Jesus. It may have looked foolish. It may look foolish for those magi to bow down before a baby and to give him these costly gifts, to lay these expensive gifts at his feet. It may look foolish to people around us for us to go to church every Sunday morning to worship Jesus. But in reality, it's the wisest thing we can do. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for giving us your son. We thank you that he is Emmanuel, God with us, Israel's God with us. We thank you too. He is the embodiment of Israel, the faithful Israelite, the faithful representative of the nation. We thank you that as the God man, as the God of Israel and as Israel, He has demonstrated faithfulness, and he has won our salvation. Father, may we rejoice over him. May we bring him our gifts. May we worship him, for we know this is true wisdom. It may look foolish to the world, but we know this is the right thing to do, the only right response to Jesus. So we give you thanks and praise for him and in his name. Amen. Thank you, Rich. Look forward to the rest. Campfire? We have campfire, hopefully burning outside. So please join us. Rich may not last a long time tonight since he didn't sleep. But I'm sure he'll be there for a couple of questions if we have them. And don't forget the sign-ups. And even if you want to start a couple of those tonight, we can start working through some tournaments. So if you see somebody that you can play ping pong with, just do it. And with that, you're excused breakfast at 8 o'clock in the morning. See you then. Are you still in the room? Thank you for watching!