One of Many (St. Matthew 2:19-23, Isaiah 61:1-3)

2024 is behind us. For some of us 2024 was a very difficult year.  

For me … a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about my daughter … actually multiple times a day.

But then … I am thankful that she is no longer in any pain and that she is in the presence of her God and Savior … the Lord Jesus Christ.

We also lived through a tumultuous political season with the election of a new President.

It is amazing how many of the political pundits got it wrong … so wrong!

It is amazing how many of the pollsters got it wrong … so wrong!

It’s sort of like all the prophecies concerning the return of Christ that many people make.

I personally think that we should use the Old Testament test for them … which is 100% accuracy … 100% of the time! 

If they are wrong we should take them to edge of town and you know the rest … 

Hal Lindsey … who died in 2024 … now knows the truth … and that is true of every person who has made prophecies about the return of Christ … pre or post trib … Armageddon … etc.

They have all been wrong … 100 % of the time!

But … the same cannot be said for Biblical Prophecies … all of a prophecy has either come true … or we can be assured that one day it will.

Think about all the prophecies concerning the birth and life of our Savior.

But before we do that … we have consider the Bible itself … after all we have to ask … can it be trusted?

And the answer is a resounding YES … as I noted in my sermon for the 2^nd Sunday in Advent!!

The Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years by 40 different authors … that is, those who wrote under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

These writers didn’t know each other … and yet there are no contradictions in the Scriptures … 

… there is one theme from the beginning to the end … and that is … the promise and fulfillment of the redeemer … the Lord Jesus Christ.

As Peter … one of the eyewitnesses to Jesus … says in his 2^nd letter: 

““knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.””

Paul tells us in his second letter to Timothy: ““All Scripture is given by inspiration of God …”” … 

… inspiration meaning simply ““God breathed.”” — that is, the writers recorded exactly and precisely what God wanted them to write.

And on top of that … God has preserved His Word to us through multiple generations … despite the many attempts to discredit it and destroy it!

As Martin Luther said: “It is a miracle how God has so long preserved His book! How great and glorious it is to have the Word of God!”

And so … yes … it can be trusted … and it is truly The Word of God!

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In our service on Christmas Eve worship we read some of the prophecies concerning our Savior and his first coming.

We know that the first promise of a Savior was written by Moses in Genesis 3:15: 

““And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”” …  

THIS prophecy was fulfilled at the cross.

… We know, however, that the actual promise took place 1000’s of years before it was even record by Moses … because the promise was made immediately after the fall … when sin entered the world.

Consider all of our lessons from today. 

And yes, they are all connected … the Collect, the Epistle, and the Gospel and even those lessons in the Lectionary … we can say it’s because of the genius of Thomas Cramner …””

… but consider part of our Psalter from Psalm 89:3,4:

““I have made a covenant with My chosen, I have sworn to My servant David: ‘Your seed I will establish forever, And build up your throne to all generations.’”” 

Jesus is of the line of David … and he is on the throne in heaven waiting to return!

In Micah … written about 700 years before Christ … we read three different prophecies … in chapter 4:1-4 we read a prophecy that had a partial fulfillment with the first coming of Christ … 

… and yet there is a part to be fulfilled at the 2^nd coming of Christ in glory … And so we read …

““They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.””

And then in chapter 5, we read those familiar words that were fulfilled in the birthplace of our Savior … 

““But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting.””

As we know there are a number of prophecies in Isaiah also written more than 700 years before the birth of Christ. … concerning his virgin birth … who Jesus was … his suffering and even his return.

I quote a few … the familiar Isaiah 7:14: ““ Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.””

Isaiah 35:5,6: ““Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.  Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert.’”

The familiar Isaiah 53:5-7 about his suffering: 

““But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.”” 

And there are more prophecies in the Old Testament Scriptures … obviously time does not permit us to look at them all.

But then for the Epistle Lesson we read Isaiah 61:1-3 … another prophecy …  BUT as we compare Scripture with Scripture … we read in Luke 2 at the beginning of the ministry of our Savior these words:

““So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.  And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.””

Jesus read those exact words from Isaiah 61, and then we read in Luke 2:20-21 our Savior’s own explanation of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy:

““Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.””

That brings us to our Gospel lesson from Matthew where we are told how Jesus ended being raised in Nazareth.

When Jesus was a toddler … probably around 2 years old … wise men from the East came to worship him … after inquiring from Herod where he might be.

When the wise men from the East failed to return to tell Herod where they found the infant Jesus … Herod then ordered the massacre of all the male children … BUT this too was a fulfillment of a prophecy that is found in Jeremiah 31 where we read:

““Thus says the Lord: “A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted for her children, Because they are no more.” 

In the Propers of the BCP … that is the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for every Sunday and Holy Days through the year … we see that December 28 on the Liturgical Calendar … is known as The Holy Innocents … 

… the day we remember this massacre of the male children two years old and under … not only in Bethlehem …  but in the surrounding districts as you can read in Matthew 2:16.

If we think about it … it was those innocent children … who were the first of multitudes … martyrs if you will … to die for Christ!

But, prior to this massacre … after the visit of the wise men … Joseph was divinely warned to flee to Egypt … as we read in Matthew 2:13: 

““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.””

… and so again … another fulfillment of prophecy from Hosea which says: ““Out of Egypt I called My Son.””

And that brings us back to our Gospel lesson where Joseph was again told in dream that they could now return to Israel from Egypt … as we read: 

““Arise, take the young Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead.”” … and Joseph immediately obeyed.

Then another warning came from God to Joseph in a dream … so they turned to Galilee and settled in Nazareth.

I wanted to mention a word about Joseph … because we don’t know a lot about. It is interesting that we do not have ONE recorded word of Joseph in the Scriptures.

But we have his unwavering obedience to God … we have his commitment to Mary … and obviously to the baby Jesus …

The other interesting thing about Joseph is that after Jesus was 12 years old we have no mention of Joseph in the Scriptures.

The bottom line in all this is that Joseph fulfilled his God-given role in the story of our salvation!

But back to our passage in Matthew 2 we see that there are the two dreams that Joseph had … that he unquestionably obeyed.

The first is that he was to go back with Mary and the young child Jesus to Israel as Herod had died.  

But then he had another dream and they settled in Nazareth of Galilee because the son of Herod … Archelaus … was the ruler in Judea.

Again, we see the obedience of Joseph.

However, we then read Matthew’s commentary in 2:23: 

““And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.””

There is a couple of very interesting facts about this.

First, there really is no direct prophecy in the Old Testament concerning Jesus being called a Nazarene.

Notice that Matthew says “ProphetS” … using the plural … probably meaning that there were other prophecies which were not recorded for us but which commentators have surmised to be the general consensus of the prophecies concerning Jesus …

… that is … that there was really nothing special about him … including the place he was raised.

In other words … as the Old Testament prophets wrote about the coming Messiah … they told of the humble aspects of his first coming … and the fact that even though he was God in the flesh … even though he performed a multitude of miracles … he would not be respected … in his home town or even by the religious leaders of the day.

We know that Jesus was despised and rejected by men.  He arrived in the must humble of circumstances. 

We read a few verses from Isaiah 53, concerning his suffering … but prior to those verses that I read, we read in 53:2,3: 

““For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.””

When Nathaniel was told by Phillip that they had found the one who Moses had prophesied about we read his response in John 1:46: 

““And Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?””

In John 7, when Nicodemus is trying to defend Jesus before the Pharisees, we read: 

““They answered and said to him, “Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.”” 

… indicating that nothing good came from Galilee, which was where Nazareth was located.

So what do we have … it’s that Nazareth was the other side of the tracks …  if you will. 

It was a place that did not have a good reputation … sort of like Camden, Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore … 

In fact … as we have seen … the general consensus was that there wasn’t anything praise-worthy about Nazareth.

In fact … it was noted even at the cross … as we read in John 19: 

““Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.””

BUT … it goes along perfectly with the complete humility of our Savior’s first coming … as prophesied in the Scriptures … especially as we compare it to his 2^nd coming in glory, judgement and victory.

He was born in a stable … within his first years he had to flee for his life … and then be raised in city that had a terrible reputation …

So, as we begin the new year … let us never forget … not only WHY our Savior came … but HOW he came … in great humility. 

The eternal 2^nd person of the Trinity … becoming God in flesh … for us and our salvation! 

All … so that we could be part of the family of God!

As we read in Galatians 4:4,5: ““But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,  to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.””