First things first, as Matthew opens up chapter 2, as he continues telling the story, don’t forget the point that Matthew has been making since chapter 1, verse 1, of the Gospel of Matthew is that we have been waiting for the Savior that God promised, and that Savior has come, and His name is Jesus.
That is the point Matthew is making in these early chapters of Matthew.
The prophets in the Old Testament prophesied that God would send this Savior, and this Savior would be from the line of David. In Matthew 1, he shows in great detail that Jesus was born from the line of David. He says that the Savior is going to be from the tribe of Judah. That’s what the prophets in the Old Testament say. Matthew goes to great pains to show that Jesus is from the tribe of Judah.
And now, as we continue on, he is going to show several more of these ancient prophecies that Jesus fulfills.
In Matthew 1, he shows that Jesus was born of a virgin. Isaiah 7 prophesied the Savior would be born of a virgin. So as you are reading through these early chapters in Matthew, if you were a first-century Israelite, there would be one thing on your mind.
You would be saying, “Could this be that Savior we’ve been waiting for?”
And we are going to see that in even greater depth as we continue on in Matthew chapter 2 because, before anything else, Matthew says something that would have shocked any first-century Israelite reading this.
He says pagan astrologers come to worship Jesus.
Pagan Astrologers Come to Worship Jesus
The three wise men were pagan Gentile astrologers.
In the Old Testament, the Lord strongly warns His people away from any form of occultism, any form of witchcraft, any form of any of that. And that includes things even as simple as astrology or tarot reading or other things like that.
When we do stuff like that, we are messing with spiritual forces that are not always honest, that are not always benevolent, that do not always have our best interests at heart. We are messing with something we cannot control. We are messing with something we don’t fully understand. And we are messing with something that very, very often actually has dark and malevolent intentions for us.
These three wise men are part of that.
These three wise men are not Israelites. They are not Jews. They are not worshipers of the true God. They are pagans who worship pagan gods, who practice occult practices that God has forbidden, from Gentile pagan nations.
So this is a group of men who have spent their whole life in spiritual darkness. They’ve spent their whole lives living out falsehoods and lies, practicing false religion for false gods with false worship.
And yet God draws these three pagan astrologers out of their home country to travel far and wide following this star, right?
So they like to read the stars. They’re astrologers. God says, “Hey, I’ve got a star for you to read.”
They see the star, they follow this star, and it brings them straight to the infant Savior.
These pagan astrologers come to the manger. They come to the crib of Jesus, and they offer Him gifts, and they offer Him their worship.
God is bringing these Gentiles. He’s bringing these pagans. He’s bringing these people who’ve spent their lives worshiping false gods to the foot of the true God to worship and be redeemed and restored.
Once again, God is bringing in the outsiders. He is bringing in the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling. He is gathering people who’ve spent their lives wandering in darkness and brokenness to the foot of His throne so that they can be restored and made new.
That’s what’s happening here.
The Religious Leaders Do Nothing
Which makes the next thing that Matthew says even more shocking because at exactly the same time as these pagan astrologers who grew up practicing occult practices and worshiping false gods come to worship the infant Savior, at exactly the same time in Jerusalem, the heart of the nation of Israel, surrounded by Israelites, surrounded by Jews who have grown up and spent their whole lives worshiping the true God, Yahweh, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests and the scribes and the temple rulers—these are the absolute elite in the Israelite religious system.
These were the highest and most powerful and most revered and respected religious leaders in Israel among God’s people.
They hear that the Savior they’ve been waiting for has been born in Bethlehem, and they do nothing.
They don’t care. They’re not interested.
The Magi, these pagan astrologers from the East, they come to Jerusalem and they say, “We see the star, and your God has told us that your Savior has been born. Where do we need to go?”
And the religious leaders say, “Well, the Savior is going to be born in Bethlehem. The prophet Micah prophesied in Micah 5:2 that this coming Savior would be born in the tiny, backwater, insignificant town of Bethlehem.”
So they say, “The Savior is going to be born in Bethlehem, so if you’re looking for the Savior, go there.”
But they don’t even bother to go themselves.
The religious leaders aren’t interested. The religious leaders don’t care.
They are busy with their religious work. They are busy with their traditions. They are busy with their religious busywork.
They’ve fallen in love with their religious system, but they have not fallen in love with the God at the heart of their religion.
The religious leaders in Israel have lost their love for the Lord to the point that they don’t even go when they learn He’s been born in Bethlehem.
Two Mirror Images
And so Matthew is showing us two kind of mirror images.
On the one side, there are the elite religious leaders who practice the right religion and have grown up worshiping the right God, and they don’t care.
And on the other hand, there are these pagan astrologers from the East who have grown up worshiping false gods with a false religion, practicing sinful occult practices that God has forbidden, and yet they hear about the birth of the Savior, and they cannot stop themselves from going, pouring out their gifts and pouring out their worship.
That would have shocked absolutely everybody who was reading Matthew back in the first century.
But the funny thing is that it shouldn’t shock them that much because the coming of these wise men from the East was actually prophesied in the Old Testament.
In Psalm 72, the psalmist prophesies that powerful men from the surrounding nations are going to come and worship the Savior that God sends.
Psalm 72 prophesies that there’s going to be powerful and influential men from the pagan nations around Israel, and they are going to travel to Israel so that they can worship this promised Savior.
He says, “When you see these powerful men from pagan nations coming to worship this newly born child, you will know that is the Messiah.”
What happens here in Matthew chapter 2?
Matthew goes to great lengths to tell us these powerful Magi, these wise men from the East, come to Bethlehem, find Jesus so they can worship Him, just like Psalm 72 says.
So if you were reading this, your first thought would be, “Could this Jesus be that long-promised Savior?”
Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh
But there’s actually more than that because the Old Testament prophecies got even more specific than that.
Because in Isaiah chapter 60, Isaiah prophesied that when these powerful pagan men from these surrounding pagan nations come to offer their worship to the Savior, they are also going to offer Him gifts of gold and incense.
And here in Matthew chapter 2, Matthew goes out of his way to point out that the Magi bring gold, and they bring two types of incense.
They bring frankincense, and they bring myrrh.
These wise men from the East fulfill what the prophet said in Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60.
So if you are an Israelite in the first century and you’ve been waiting for this Messiah who is going to be from the line of David, from the tribe of Judah, miraculously born of a virgin, born in Bethlehem, will be worshiped by powerful men from pagan nations who are going to give Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, you are looking at Jesus now, and you are saying, “This guy fits the bill. This baby in the manger fits the bill. He fits all these criteria that God told us to look for when we are looking for the coming Savior.”
And so Matthew is beautifully showing us every single way that Jesus fulfills all the prophecies about the coming Savior.
Herod and the True King of Israel
And that is good news of great joy, but it’s a problem for this guy named Herod.
Herod was the temporary king over Israel. The Roman government placed Herod as a kind of usurper king over Israel.
At that point in time, Israel was not its own nation. At that point in time, Israel was an occupied territory. Israel was a conquered territory.
They had been conquered roughly 500 years earlier by the Assyrians. Then the Assyrians were conquered by the Babylonians. Then the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians. Then the Persians were conquered by the Greeks. Then the Greeks were conquered by the Romans.
And so now the Roman Empire has the nation of Israel as kind of a captive territory. And so everything that happens in Israel happens under the authority of Rome.
And so Rome appointed Herod as a puppet king.
And Herod was a bloodthirsty, paranoid, power-hungry piece of something I’m probably not supposed to say.
That was Herod.
Herod was the kind of guy who would do literally anything to get power and literally anything to keep power.
We have never in our lifetime seen a politician or a ruler in our own country who was anywhere near the degree of wickedness that was present in Herod.
Herod had almost all of his children executed through the years because he was paranoid and thought they were plotting against him. He was willing to kill his own sons in order to stay in power.
He had almost all of his wives—and he had this revolving door of wives. Just, he would get tired of one, he would get rid of her, marry another teenager, get tired of her, marry another teenager.
So Herod was just, you know, a great guy.
But Herod had almost all of his wives executed because he believed that they were plotting to overthrow him.
He had almost all of his advisors executed because he believed that they were plotting to seize power from him.
There was a saying in the first century. It said, “You are safer being Herod’s pig than his child.”
That was what they said about Herod.
When Herod was nearing his death, he had a whole bunch of the most revered nobles and other cultural figures in Jerusalem arrested, and they were going to be executed on the day of his death because he wanted to make sure there would be mourning and crying in the streets on the day of his death because he knew no one would cry for him.
That was Herod.
So what does Herod do when he learns that the Savior God has promised has been born in the tiny town of Bethlehem?
He says, “I need to kill that kid.”
He learns that the true King of Israel has been born in Bethlehem, and he says, “That baby is a threat to my authority.”
So he has every child who would have been born around the same time as baby Jesus executed. He has every male child killed.
Herod is willing to kill his own wives, kill his own children, kill his own advisers, and he is willing to kill your baby too as a way of maintaining power.
That’s Herod.
The Flight to Egypt
And yet the Lord does not allow His long-promised Savior to be snuffed out by some paranoid, power-hungry king.
So He sends an angel to warn Joseph in a dream to take Jesus away from Bethlehem.
They go to Egypt, which is ironic because thousands of years earlier, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and God saved them from a paranoid, power-hungry king in Egypt and brought them to the Promised Land.
But now God protects Jesus and Mary and Joseph from a paranoid, power-hungry king by sending them to Egypt for a year or two.
And so they spent maybe a year, two years tops, in Egypt, and during that time, God puts Herod out of everybody’s misery.
After the death of Herod, Jesus is safe.
A Prophet Like Moses
But there’s another really interesting thing happening here because Herod has all of the male children who would have been about Jesus’s age put to death, and that is almost exactly the same thing that happened thousands of years earlier when Moses was born.
Moses was the man that God used to lead the ancient Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.
But Moses was almost killed as a baby when Pharaoh saw how quickly this foreign immigrant population of the Israelites in Egypt were growing, and he said, “We need to stop these foreigners from growing so fast.”
So he had every male child put to death when they were born.
But there was a group of Hebrew midwives who said, “No, we are not going to put this child to death.”
So they hid Moses in a basket, put him in the Nile, and let him float off, hopefully to safety.
He is found by someone else, he is adopted, and he is protected. He is saved from this mass slaughter of babies.
Now the same exact thing happens with baby Jesus.
King Herod orders the slaughter of all these babies, but He is miraculously protected.
Why is Matthew pointing this out to us?
It’s because in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses prophesied that the coming Savior would be a prophet like Moses.
The coming Savior is going to be a prophet like Moses, but better than Moses, wiser than Moses, greater than Moses. The prophet was going to do what Moses couldn’t do.
So Jesus is born, and He goes through exactly the same thing Moses went through as a baby.
What is Matthew saying?
He’s saying, “You know that prophet like Moses, but better than Moses, that we’ve been waiting for? Jesus is that prophet.”
Jesus is the Savior who is from the line of David, from the tribe of Judah, miraculously born from a virgin, born in the tiny backwater of Bethlehem, who powerful pagans from surrounding nations came to worship and offer Him gold and frankincense and myrrh, who is a prophet who is like Moses but better than Moses.
And so if you are reading this as an Israelite in the first century, what are you thinking right now?
You’re thinking, “Could this baby be the Savior we’ve been waiting for?”
Jesus of Nazareth
So they get ready to leave Egypt, but Joseph learns that Herod’s son Archelaus has taken up the throne in Herod’s place, which is a problem because Archelaus is just as bad as his father Herod, maybe worse.
So Joseph doesn’t bring his family back to Bethlehem, where they could easily be found.
Joseph takes his family to an even smaller, even tinier backwater called Nazareth.
Joseph takes his family somewhere the royal family will never find them. They will never think to look there.
So Matthew’s painting a picture.
The picture he is painting is that this long-promised, long-awaited Savior, who is going to fix the world, who is going to restore and heal the world, who is going to put everything right again, who is going to undo the fall, who is going to fix everything we have broken, who is going to undo the disaster that our sin and rebellion brought about in the beginning—this Savior who’s going to restore our world and redeem us—is not born with fanfare, is not born with triumph, is not born wrapped in purple robes, is not born with a great royal, triumphant procession.
He is born in a tiny backwater and lives in the tiniest, most insignificant town in all of Israel.
He is a small, poor peasant boy from a small, poor peasant family.
He’s ignored by the religious leaders.
He is almost murdered by the fraud king Herod, but He is worshiped by the pagan astrologers from the East.
That is the birth of the Savior we’ve been waiting for.
Nothing about His birth is like we’d expect.
Nothing About Jesus Is What We Expected
And as we’re going to learn throughout the rest of the Gospel of Matthew, nothing about Jesus is what we’d expect.
He’s a Savior, but He’s not the kind of Savior we expected.
He’s a King, but He’s not the kind of King we expected.
He’s a teacher, but He’s not the kind of teacher we expected.
He’s a prophet, but He’s not the kind of prophet we expected.
He is God Himself, but He is not what we expected when we think of God.
Jesus shows us who God is and what God is like, what God wants for us and what God wants from us.
Jesus shows us what God is really like, but He radically redefined God for us in a way that we could never have seen coming.
And we are going to learn all about the way that Jesus shows us God and redefines everything about what God is like for us as we continue reading Matthew.
Don’t be discouraged if you’re still struggling to understand. Just keep trekking forward, and one year from now, you will understand so much more. Four years from now, you will be helping others understand God’s Word.
So keep it up. Keep reading. Keep studying. Keep meditating on God’s Word. Keep turning it over in your head. Keep talking to the Lord about the things that He is telling you, and keep on asking questions and talking about all of this.
What questions do you have about Matthew chapter 2? What is confusing to you? What doesn’t make sense? What challenges you? What is something that maybe convicted you? What is something that you learn about God from Matthew chapter 2? What is something you learn about humanity, about yourself, about human nature from Matthew chapter 2? What is a promise that Matthew chapter 2 makes that you need to claim for yourself? What is a sin that it warns you to avoid? What’s a command that it gives you? What’s an example that you need to follow?
How will your life be different if you walk out into the world and pour yourself into applying and obeying the things that God reveals through Matthew chapter 2?
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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