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 Bible and turn to Matthew chapter two. Matthew chapter two.

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 I wanna speak to you on this subject,

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 the rest of the story.

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 The story of Jesus saturates the entire Bible.

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 You start in Genesis 1.1, you make your way all the way through Revelation 22,

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 and I promise you on every page, Jesus can be found. The whole Bible is about Jesus.

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 Now for the past few weeks, we've been looking and paying attention to the birth of Jesus.

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 We've looked at the ministry of angels, the relationship between Joseph and Mary when he found out that she was pregnant

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 and she was still a virgin.

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 We looked at the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. We looked at the worship of the Magi who came and brought wonderful gifts to the Savior.

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 This part of the Christmas story that we've looked at is great for Christmas cards.

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 It's great for Christmas sermons,

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 and it's great for Christmas carols.

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 I love the part of Christmas that we've already gone over. However, there's another side to the story and we often neglect it and we should not neglect it. It's what I call the rest of the story.

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 Now one striking feature of Matthew's presentation in his gospel is the way he takes

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 Old Testament fulfilled prophecy and weaves the story of Jesus into his story here in Matthew chapter one and two. In fact, five times in two chapters, he refers to fulfilled prophecy. Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14 is referred to in Matthew chapter one, verse 23. It was written 700 years before Christ was incarnated.

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 Micah chapter five, verse two is referred to in Matthew chapter two, verse six. And Micah also was written about 700 years before Jesus was born. Hosea chapter 11, verse one is referred to in Matthew chapter two, verse 15.

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 And it too was written about 700 years

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 before the birth of Christ. And then Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 15 can be found in Matthew chapter two, verse 18. And it was written about 600 years before Christ was born. And then there's an oral prophecy that was passed around among the prophets that we'll find in Matthew chapter two, verse 23.

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 Now I want you to understand what prophecy is. You might wanna write this down.

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 Prophecy is pre-written history.

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 Let me say that again. Maybe you didn't catch that.

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 Prophecy is pre-written history. I wanna tell you, God is not looking down the tunnel of time to see what's going to happen.

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 I tell you, God knows exactly what's gonna happen when it happens. He knows the future as well as the past. There's nothing that ever catches God by surprise. God is omniscient. He knows everything. He knows everything about time. He knows everything about the future. He knows everything about you. There's nothing about you that He doesn't already know.

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 Now God inspired Isaiah to prophesy that His son, the Messiah, would be conceived in the womb of a virgin.

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 That's Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14, in Matthew chapter one, verse 23.

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 And God inspired Micah to prophesy that His son would be born in Bethlehem.

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 That's Micah chapter five, verse two.

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 The details and the precise fulfillment of these Old Testament prophecies written hundreds of years before they came true,

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 they just leave me absolutely floored in awe of God.

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 So I want you to take your Bible.

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 I want you to turn to Matthew chapter two. And today we're gonna look carefully

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 at three more biblical prophecies surrounding the person of Christ.

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 Now contextually, the Magi have already come. They've gone to Herod. They've asked Herod where the Messiah is to be born. Herod calls in the priest and the scribes, and they tell Herod that He's supposed to be born in Bethlehem.

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 And so Herod the king sends the Magi, these astrologers slash astronomers from Babylon or Persia somewhere in the east, and he sends them to Bethlehem to find the Messiah.

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 And we know that they found Him and they worshiped Him,

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 and they gave Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

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 And we know that as they were about to leave to go back home, instead of coming by Jerusalem

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 to report to Herod what they had found, they had a dream.

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 And in the dream, God told them, don't go back to Herod, go home another way. So they found another route to go back home,

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 and that catches us up. Now for the rest of the story.

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 By this time, Jesus was probably between one and two years old.

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 In Matthew chapter two, verse 13, the Bible says, "Now when they had gone, when the Magi had gone, "behold, an angel of the Lord appeared "to Joseph in a dream."

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 Remember, God appeared to Joseph in a dream four times, giving him strict guidelines and directions as to what He wanted him to do.

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 So God appeared to him in a dream and said, "Get up."

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 Now I'm telling you, if I'm sleeping away and I'm having a dream and God tells me to get up, I'm telling you, I'm getting up right then.

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 I am not hesitating.

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 Get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.

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 Now Egypt was a natural place for Joseph and Mary and Jesus to go because it was about 75, or 70, 75 miles from Bethlehem.

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 Now, Egypt was a well-ordered Roman province. It was way away from Herod's jurisdiction. He couldn't get to Jesus in Egypt.

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 It had a large Jewish population. In fact, some scholars say that in Alexandria, Egypt, there was upwards of a million Jews that lived there. That may have been where Joseph and Mary and the Lord Jesus went, I don't know. But if he did, he found a lot of fellow Jews who were living in Egypt at the time.

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 Now you say, well, how in the world did Joseph and Mary have the money to make this kind of trip and to sustain themselves while they were in Egypt? Well, remember they had gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

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 God had sovereignly and supernaturally provided exactly what they needed to sustain themselves and to make the trip and to make sure they had food and covering and everything they needed while they lived there in Egypt.

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 Now, in Matthew 2, verses 14 and 15,

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 the Bible says, "So Joseph got up

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 "and took the child and his mother while it was still not." He didn't wait till the morning. He didn't wait till the sun came up.

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 Right that moment in the middle of the night, he got up and the Bible says, he took the child and his mother and left for Egypt. And he remained there until the death of Herod, the Bible says. This was to fulfill and here's an Old Testament prophecy

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 that is fulfilled to a T. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet out of Egypt, "I called my son."

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 Now this prophecy reminds us

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 that the Lord Jesus is Emmanuel. We just sang about that. He's Emmanuel. He is God with us.

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 God with us in a corrupt, evil, unjust, devil inspired, sin loving, war mongering, baby killing world. He's with us. God didn't send Jesus to a rich family that lived in the lap of luxury, sent Jesus to a very poor couple.

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 He didn't make sure that his son was born in a state of the art hospital.

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 The son of God entered the world in a stable, surrounded by animals with a stench that comes with a stable.

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 The son of God entered a real world with its evils and dangers. Before he could call his first disciple,

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 before he could preach his first sermon,

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 before he did his first miracle, he was the object of a death threat.

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 Even as a young boy,

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 the shadow of the cross fell across his path constantly.

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 The flight to Egypt for Jesus and his family

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 was part of the greatest story ever told. It is the greatest story ever told.

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 Now when you read about the flight to Egypt, I don't want you to think of a 747.

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 That's just a Bible way of saying they got up and they walked to Egypt, okay?

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 The prophecy from Hosea that's quoted here in our text

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 focused on God delivering the nation of Israel from Egyptian bondage.

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 Matthew quoted this prophecy to show that the merciful and gracious God was now providing a new deliverance through his son, his infant son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew chapter one, verse 21,

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 the Bible says she will bear a son

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 and you shall call his name Jesus

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 for he will save his people from their sins.

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 John chapter three, verses 16 and 17,

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 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the son into the world to judge the world, listen,

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 but that the world might be saved through him.

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 Wow, do you get the picture?

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 The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to point to this prophecy in Hosea to remind us that Jesus, number one, Jesus came to save us. That's why he came.

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 He said the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.

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 That's why Jesus came to this planet.

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 He did not come to be a superstar. He came to be a savior.

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 Yes, we live in a broken sin-wracked world.

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 The Son of God entered this world, not an ideal world, but this world to deliver us from sin's penalty, from sin's power and ultimately from sin's presence. Glory to God.

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 Now let's move on with the rest of the story. Look at verse 16.

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 Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi,

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 he became very enraged and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem in all its vicinity from two years old and under according to the time which he had determined from the Magi.

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 We don't necessarily put this in our Christmas stories, do we?

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 We don't find this on Christmas cards, do we?

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 But it's a part of the story. The greatest story ever told about the greatest person who's ever walked on this planet in his name is the Lord Jesus Christ.

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 Herod was an evil, merciless cutthroat, a ruler who was not beyond killing his own wife, his favorite wife, Mary Amny, and killing some of his sons,

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 all because he felt that his own family was a threat to his power and to his throne.

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 So he ordered that every child in Bethlehem in its vicinity from two years old downward be slaughtered.

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 The population of Bethlehem at this time, most scholars say, was about 1,000 people.

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 So there were somewhere, this is a guesstimation, but there's somewhere between 10 and 20 families

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 that saw a little son mercilessly killed

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 by Herod's henchmen.

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 I'm sure that day the whole area was shook to its core.

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 Herod's crime was made even more vile

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 by the fact that he knew that this child was the Jewish Messiah. He knew it and he purposely tried to kill the Jewish Messiah.

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 Now Herod's rejection of Christ reflected and represented the Jewish rejection of Christ. How do we know the Jews rejected Christ?

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 Well, remember who told Herod and who told the Magi where the Messiah would be born? It was the religious leaders.

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 They had studied the prophecy of Micah chapter five, verse two.

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 And they knew what Micah the prophet had said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

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 But what amazes me about this story is that these men who were religious and consider themselves to be religious leaders didn't even care enough to make the five mile journey down to Bethlehem to see for themselves if the Messiah had truly been born.

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 Once again, Matthew points to the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy. Matthew chapter two, verse 17 through 18.

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 Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, written about 600 years

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 before Jesus was born.

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 A voice was heard in Rehma weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and she refused to be comforted because they were no more.

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 Now this quotation is taken from Jeremiah 31.15. And the prophets immediate reference was to the Jewish people being taken into Babylonian captivity. See the Babylonians gathered up all of the remaining Jews that they had not killed. And they took them about five miles to the north of Jerusalem to Rehma.

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 And they put them in caravans and they separated sons from daughters and husbands from wives and they began the long arduous treacherous trip to Babylon to be in exile for 70 years.

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 Can you imagine the weeping that took place as mothers were separated from their children,

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 as husbands were separated from their wives.

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 The people were being ripped away from their homes and being treated like scum.

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 The people wept and mourned the Bible said.

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 Jeremiah reminded them

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 that God had not forgotten them because if you take your Bible and you look a little beyond verse 15, you begin to see, excuse me, verse 17 and 18, you begin to see a ray of hope, a light we might say, just like we just sang about the light. In Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 16 and 17, the Bible says this, "Thus says the Lord, "restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears

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 "for your work will be rewarded, declares the Lord "and they will return from the land of the enemy."

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 Verse 17, "There is hope for your future." Wow.

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 There is hope for your future. You know what God promised the Jewish people when he sent them into exile because they had been so unfaithful to him, they had become idolaters. You know what he promised them? He said, "I'm gonna bring you back to the promised land "after 70 years of being in exile."

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 70 years.

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 And then the Bible goes on to say in verse 31 of Jeremiah 31,

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 "Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel "and with the house of Judah."

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 Praise God for the rest of the story.

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 Now these prophecies remind us first that Jesus came to save us.

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 Secondly, right here in the prophecy we're looking at right now, it reminds us that Jesus came to give us hope.

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 You may be in here today and you've lost hope.

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 You've lost your job.

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 Your family is splintered.

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 You've got a wayward child and your heart is broken

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 and you wonder if there's any hope. Maybe you're depressed.

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 Pastor, is there any hope?

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 Listen to me very carefully.

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 What I'm about to tell you can change your life.

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 If you will embrace this truth, Jesus came to give you hope.

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 Real, genuine, authentic hope.

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 Yes, we live in a broken, messed up, corrupt world

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 where bad things do happen to good people.

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 And in the midst of tragedy and heartbreak,

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 we must cling to this powerful truth. Jesus came to bring us hope

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 and to bring us life in the midst of death.

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 Now back to the rest of the story.

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 Matthew 2, verses 19 and 20.

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 "When Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph," where? In Egypt.

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 He was in Egypt. Remember God had told him to go to Egypt

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 and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother

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 and go into the land of Israel

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 for those who sought the child's life are dead."

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 Now maybe, maybe, just maybe, Joseph didn't have to get up in the middle of the night this time because he wasn't running from somebody who was trying to kill the Lord Jesus.

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 But God said, "Get up, go back to the Promised Land

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 for the one who tried to harm the Son of God is dead." The Jewish historian Josephus reported that Herod, King Herod died of ulcerated bowels,

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 putrefied and maggot-filled organs.

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 Constant convulsions and foul breath

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 and no amount of physicians or warm baths or any of their medications could bring healing to Herod.

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 The Bible says, "You reap what you sow."

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 And Herod died a horrible, horrible death

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 because he was a horrible, horrible man.

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 Now, Joseph seems to have thought about going back to Bethlehem when he got back in the land. Remember, it's about 70, 75 miles from the border of Egypt to Bethlehem.

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 So he's headed back to the land of Israel,

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 but he has a thought.

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 He discovered that Archelaus, who was the son of Herod, was now on the throne there in Jerusalem.

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 And Archelaus was known to be as wicked and vile and as mean and brutal as his father Herod.

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 So God warned Joseph to move on. Don't go to Bethlehem. Look at verses 21 to 23.

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 So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother

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 and came into the land of Israel.

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 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.

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 Then after being warned by God in a dream, here's another dream and God gives him a dream and God gives him specific directions.

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 You know what amazes me about Joseph?

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 He is such a man of God.

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 He never says a word. There's not a word he ever said that's located in the Bible.

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 He was an unsung hero and part of the greatest story ever told.

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 And look at this.

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 The Bible says, verse 23, and he came and lived in a city called Nazareth.

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 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets.

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 He shall be called on Nazarene. Now notice, it doesn't say prophet singular,

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 it says prophets, plural.

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 There's nowhere in the Bible

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 that you will find one of the prophets saying that he'll be called on Nazarene.

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 It seems to have been an oral tradition that was passed around among the prophets themselves

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 that the Messiah would be on Nazarene.

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 Now the word Nazarene was used as a slang term for an individual from a very remote or obscure place. It would be like us saying today, well, he's a country hick.

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 You know, okay, country hick.

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 That's a kind of slang use of the word Nazarene. What we read about this even in the New Testament,

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 from one who would become one of his disciples.

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 In John chapter one, verses 45 and 46, the Bible says, "Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "we have found him of whom Moses in the law "and also the prophets wrote, "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Verse 46, here's what Nathanael said to Philip,

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 "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"

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 Philip said to him, "Come and see."

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 I like that.

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 But I want you to understand that even Nathanael was using the term Nazarene or Nazareth in a very derogatory way.

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 Listen, praise God for the rest of the story.

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 These prophecies remind us, number one, that Jesus came to save us.

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 Number two, that Jesus came to give us hope.

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 And number three, that Jesus came to suffer for us.

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 He came to suffer for, he came to be rejected so that we could be accepted.

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 Don't you praise God for that.

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 Joseph never orders a word,

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 but his immediate obedience to the Lord

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 reflected his commitment and his desire to please the Lord.

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 As a result, God gave in very clear directions.

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 Let me say something to you. Let me just drop down into your world today.

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 You never know the long-term impact of your immediate obedience to God.

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 You never know. Can you imagine what if Joseph

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 had delayed in his obedience to God's word? It would have been devastating.

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 I'm gonna tell you the same thing's true for you

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 because you have the word of God. And when you read the word of God, or you hear a sermon and God speaks to your heart from the word of God, and he gives you clear direction out of the Bible,

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 and you ignore it.

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 You're playing the fool's game, I promise you.

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 You never know the long-term impact of your immediate obedience to Christ. You never know, dad, how it's gonna affect your kids.

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 You never know how your immediate obedience will affect your wife, your spouse. You never know how it'll affect your grandkids, and how it will affect the people you work with.

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 So my caution to you is when God gives you clear direction from his word, obey him immediately.

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 Delayed obedience is not obedience, it's disobedience, okay?

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 So I just thought I'd drop that in your heart because I think it's so important.

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 Now, this prophecy that we find here that was a general prophecy among the prophets,

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 it reveals that Jesus would be scorned and rejected. Now remember, Jesus is only about one to two years old at this time.

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 And here, the prophet is revealing, and the Holy Spirit is revealing to Matthew as he's writing his gospel account that the Jewish Messiah would be rejected,

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 would be scorned, would be a despised person as Isaiah wrote in his prophecy.

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 He would be the victim of slurs and mockery, and he was.

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 In Luke chapter 24, verses 46 and 47,

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 Jesus spoke to some disciples after he was resurrected from the dead, and he said, "Thus it is written that the Christ "would suffer, the Messiah would suffer "and rise again from the dead the third day, "and that repentance for forgiveness of sins "would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations "beginning from Jerusalem." In 1 Peter 2, 24, the Bible says, "And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross "so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness,

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 "for by his wounds you were healed."

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 And then in Mark chapter eight, verse 31,

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 before the cross and before the resurrection,

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 Jesus met with his disciples. Listen to what he said to them in verse 31.

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 Now he's grown, he's within days of going to the cross of Calvary, and here's what he says to his disciples.

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 Verse 31 in Mark chapter eight, "And he began to teach them that the Son of Man "must suffer many things, "and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests "and the scribes and be killed "and after three days rise again."

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 Listen, I wanna say something to you.

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 Jesus came to suffer for us

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 so that we wouldn't have to suffer.

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 Jesus came to be rejected by the religious leaders

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 so that we would not be rejected by the God of heaven.

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 That's how much Jesus cares about you.

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 Sam read from Philippians chapter two how Jesus took a step down in order to do for us what needed to be done.

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 He was willing to suffer for you.

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 I can't imagine the suffering that Jesus encountered on the cross when he bore your sins and my sins on the cross.

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 And he paid our penalty for us on the cross.

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 The suffering must have been horrendous, physical suffering, spiritual suffering, emotional suffering.

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 But he did that for you so that he could save you and give you hope for the future.

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 Now, Matthew proved his point. His point in Matthew chapter one and two with these five fulfilled prophecies, he was proving that Jesus is the legitimate Jewish Messiah.

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 No need to look for another one.

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 Jesus is the true Jewish Messiah.

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 Listen, we can live in the peace of Christ

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 because we know the rest of the story.

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 We know the rest of the story.

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 We know that Jesus came to save us. We know that Jesus came to give us hope. We know that Jesus came to suffer for us

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 and we can live in peace with that. If we turn from our sins and we place our faith in Jesus

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 as our personal savior, Lord,

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 I hope and pray that everybody within the sound of my voice, whether you're watching live stream where they're sitting on the couch drinking a cup of coffee or whether you're here in the worship center today,

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 if you've never repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus, you know what I prayed this morning?

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 I prayed that the Holy Spirit

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 would bring convictions to people's hearts,

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 would convict of sin, righteousness and judgment,

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 and bring people to their knees in brokenhearted repentance and saving faith.

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 And I wanna give you an opportunity today and just a moment, I'm gonna invite our worship team to come, our staff to come, our staff will be across the front.

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 I hope and pray that if the spirit of God has touched your heart today and reminded you that Jesus came to save you, to give you hope and to suffer for you, if the Holy Spirit made that real in your heart and He's convicted you of your own sins, come to one of our staff members.

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 Come to one of our, we know the rest of the story.

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 We can live in peace, amen?

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 So come to Christ today. Our staff members are right here, you just tell them the day that you wanna be saved, that you wanna seal it today.

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 But if you're in this room and you're a believer

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 and you're going through a difficult time,

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 I mean, we live in a broken world.

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 Maybe your family is at odds with each other.

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 Maybe there's a financial issue in your life.

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 Listen, come to this altar, just find a place up here and bow the knee to Jesus and pray about it.

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 He loves you. He can give you peace like no one else. I would encourage you to, maybe God's calling somebody in this room to preach,

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 or to be a missionary, or to be a church planner, or to teach a connect group class. Whatever He's calling you to do, just come just like Joseph did

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 and be immediately obedient to God.

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 You never know the long-term implications

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 of your immediate obedience to God.

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 So you come as God leads you.

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