Welcome to the first study in the Gospel of Matthew with Chuck Missler. The subject of this tape, Matthew chapter 1 through chapter 2, verse 12.

Father in heaven, we praise you. For the opportunity to gather together in thy name. Father, we know that there are no accidents in your kingdom, so we are all here by a divine appointment to share this hour with you. We would ask you, Father, to open our hearts and our understanding that we might behold great and wondrous things out of your word, and that we might in all these things come to know Jesus Christ, that we might in all these things come to know your perfect will for our lives.

We thank you, Father, for this privilege. We thank you, Father, for being heirs of that redemption in him with whom we have to do, in whose name we pray. Amen.

As I think Pastor Chuck announced last night, after some prayer and thought and counsel, it seemed like a good opportunity to get back into the New Testament. And what more appropriate book in the New Testament, having spent quite a bit of time in the Old, would be, of course, Matthew. So tonight, we're going to undertake a beginning of a series of expository explorations in the book of Matthew.

Now, like all of our studies, to give you my framework, I visualize us all having started in the book of Revelation, having gone through those studies, which I think most of us have. If you're in the room and haven't, or listening to the tape and haven't, somewhere along the way I commend you getting hands-on. They're free so you can get them for the asking tapes in the book of Revelation.

But we really look at all the other books as supporting that study. So all of our studies, whether it was Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel, and so forth, all I tend to view as studies in prophecy. But specifically giving us that background that makes the book of Revelation relevant to us and visible to us.

Now, since some of you may be here with me the first time, I have some preliminaries. The regulars who have been with me some time just might bear with me because I know this gets to be like a broken record. But I have several admonitions and concerns to get out up front.

I'm often asking how many are here for the first time and how many have been here. Not the first time, I get about 70% in both groups, so I've never figured that out, so I don't ask that question anymore. But I'm going to assume for the moment that we're all sort of starting from scratch.

So let me remind you, Acts 17:11. Acts 17:11 was Luke's way of telling you not to believe anything Chuck Missler tells you. Acts 17:11 describes the Bereans and extols them because while they received the word with all readiness of mind, they searched the Scriptures daily to prove whether those things be so.

And so one of the things that I lean on very heavily is the role I see myself in, which is to stimulate you to do your own study. I like to regard myself as really someone that stirs things up rather than teaches. As I think I point out to you, I've read what James and others tell about teachers, and I'm scared of being called a teacher.

So I'd really like to see myself as just a basic troublemaker and one that will stir up questions in your mind, and I'll throw out thoughts that I have about where to find tools that are useful to try and unravel those things. But basically, I'm going to rely on you to distrust me. I'm going to rely on you to do your own homework.

That will give me the license and the freedom to wander off the mainstream and get into some kind of peculiar areas from time to time. I'll do that because I'm going to presume the group is mature spiritually and will do that. So please help me out.

Now, something else I'd like to talk about a little bit so you sort of know where I'm coming at are my presuppositions about the Scripture, first of all. You're sitting in your lap. You have a collection of 66 books written, or I should say penned, might be more precise, penned by 40 authors over a several thousand year period.

And the point of departure that I take personally, or my orientation, is the demonstration that those 66 books written by those 40 authors over those many thousands of years can be provably committed to a single source. This is evidenced by their design, their structure, their linguistics, their theme.

There's content in those books that far transcend the understanding, the perception, the abilities of the individual penman. Furthermore, that single source obviously has to be outside our time domain. He authenticates that message by describing things that could only be perceived from outside our time domain, namely by seeing the end from the beginning.

In other words, we call that prophecy. Now, and what we'll attempt to do during this study, as we have in some of the other studies, is focus on those things that evidence design that give visibility to the fact that whether it's Matthew or Moses or whoever at various times, we're simply the instrument of a greater mind carrying a greater message and authenticating that message to us in anticipation of hostile jamming and in anticipation of all the kinds of noise that the communication channel would sustain over these many, many years.

Obviously, the goal of that message is to present to us a person, the most unique person in history. And so our real goal is not to really get into bibliology as such or something of that nature, but really to understand the person, the person of Jesus Christ. Who was he? I should say who is he to be precise, but I'm speaking in a secular sense.

And what are his claims? What does that have to do with us today? So that's really what we're after.

Now, before we jump into the New Testament, let's focus on the Old. We've been through Genesis and Exodus and Joshua in recent months and Isaiah, Daniel, and others earlier.

The Old Testament, of course, really consists of four things: unexplained ceremonies, unachieved purposes, unappeased longings, and unfulfilled prophecy.

Now, you haven't heard me express the Old Testament that way before, but it sets us up nice for the new, right? Unexplained ceremonies, many of the rituals in the Old Testament, while they have historical context, actually have a prophetic purpose. They're not explained.

One of the most exciting things you can do is to discover the seven feasts of Moses and their significance prophetically, not historically. Unachieved purposes. There's interrupted ministries. Moses' ministry was not finished. Elijah's ministry is not finished, Scripture tells us.

Well, when you see the book of Revelation, chapter 11, you get some insight as to what their role is going to be. And unappeased longings. Gee, the burden of the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, you name it. In terms of the burden they saw.

The burden for the throne of David to be filled by the Messiah. Has that ever happened to date? Not at all. That's interesting.

We're going to see a lot in the Gospel of Matthew about the kingdom of heaven. What is the kingdom of heaven? Incidentally, the answer is not a simple saying it's the church. Nuh-uh.

There's an earthly throne that still the church's got nothing to do with. In a direct sense. The throne of David. We'll talk about that.

And, of course, the big thing is unfulfilled prophecies. Matthew's a fun guy because Matthew really links the old with the new. As he goes through the New Testament chronicle that he lays out, he reaches and ties to each thing to these prophecies.

We're going to see again and again. He says, this happened as a fulfillment of this prophecy, such and such.

Now it's going to be very interesting because when you go back and look at those prophecies, you're going to have a tough time figuring out how did Matthew realize that. And he will give us a lesson, not just in the fulfilled prophecy, but he'll give us a lesson that we can appropriate to ourselves as just how literal the Lord is, and just how perceptive He wants us to be at looking at other prophecies.

We're going to learn some brutal lessons from Matthew about Bible studies. Now, Matthew is often called the Genesis of the New Testament, the beginning. It's a good place to begin.

We're just in anticipation of the Christmas season, so it's kind of a neat time to jump in. It's a great time. If you or you have a friend that's always wanted to get into a Bible study, didn't know where to begin, Matthew's a great place to begin.

And many people, when they jump into the book of Matthew, say, skip the first 18 verses. They're just a bunch of names. We're not going to do that tonight. We're going to discover some interesting things in the book of names.

But that means somebody that missed tonight can jump in, you know, next Monday comfortably. But it's a neat place to begin.

And so, but before we do that... I'd like to put in perspective the four Gospels. We're going to talk about Matthew in a moment, but I think it's useful because I think all of us have wondered why are there four Gospels? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And they don't seem to quite fit with one another. You have all kinds of little problems trying to fit A and B and C and D. You can get really wrapped around your axle trying to reconcile why are there four in the first place and so forth.

And the answer, of course, is that we have the gospel in quadraphonic. We have four views. And I'm being cute, and yet I'm not, because it's interesting to see how the Lord has skillfully engineered this fourfold presentation of the person of Jesus Christ.

I want to be careful here. We tend to think of the presentation of Jesus Christ in the four gospels. That's really a mistake. Jesus Christ is present in every book of the Bible. The Gospels just have a certain narrative quality that causes us to focus on that.

But let's, before we jump into Matthew, talk a little bit about the four Gospels to put Matthew in perspective.

Now, Matthew was, of course, a Levi, very Jewish, not only by background, but his whole orientation was to demonstrate that Jesus Christ was the Mashiach, the Messiah of Israel. His focus is on his kingship.

And therefore, he's writing primarily to the Jew. He focuses on his genealogy from Abraham, son of Abraham through David and so on. He's focusing on the legal right of Jesus Christ to the throne of David.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that.

Now, in contrast to that, Mark... Many people see similarities between Mark and Matthew because there's some things that seem very similar. Mark's a little briefer, perhaps. Mark really sees what he sees through the eyes of Peter, but Mark writes really to the Roman.

And Mark's focus is not that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, but rather that he is the servant of Jehovah. And so we're going to discover some things about his gospel from that point of view.

Luke, as I think you all know, was a Greek. By the way, that doesn't mean he wasn't a Jew. We often get confused there. He clearly was of Greek background.

He was a physician by training. He writes from a Greek perspective, but just as an aside, a small footnote, not important.

It's also possible he still was of Jewish background also. I mean, we glibly get into partitioning these things, forgetting the fact that, of course, he could be a Jewish Greek.

But he's very Greek in his orientation, and he writes to the Greek, and from the point of view of a physician, he is interested.

He's not really that interested in the Jewishness. He's interested in Jesus Christ as the Son of Man.

And as a friend of sinners, and he takes his genealogy from Adam. Yes, and he goes backwards, but he's not that focusing on David or Abraham.

He goes all the way back to Adam.

He also takes the genealogy of Mary. I'll come back to the genealogy in a little bit.

John is a different breed of cat altogether. John has the perception or the focus or the purpose that Jesus Christ was whom. Son of God. He even says so.

At the end of his gospel point, he admits his purpose is to present Jesus Christ as Son of God.

So therefore, Matthew presents him as the king. Mark, the servant. Luke, the son of man. And John, the son of God.

Matthew's writing to the Jew. Mark, the Roman. Luke, the Greek. John, the church.

Interesting, isn't it? The message, of course, in Matthew is that Jesus is Israel's Messiah. Mark is that he's Jehovah's servant. Luke is that he's a friend of sinners. John, that he's the incarnate word.

Now, this relates to the genealogy. Each one, in effect, relates there. Matthew, of course, takes the genealogy from Abraham and carries the royal line.

Mark is interested in a servant. We're never interested in the pedigree of a servant, so he doesn't have a genealogy. He's the only one that does not.

Luke has a genealogy, but he, being a physician, focusing on the Son of Man, takes it from the first man, Adam, through the bloodline that is through Mary.

John has a genealogy, although it's not recognizable as such, and that's the first three verses, where he takes Christ's origin back to his preexistent with God throughout all eternity. That's really, in effect, a genealogy of sorts.

Now, interestingly enough, you can carry this theme that I've just described right on through each of those four Gospels. Example, in Matthew, he's interested in the Mashiach, right? The key word, the most frequent word that appears in the book of Matthew is fulfilled. 38 times, fulfilled.

This was fulfilled by the prophet, etc. Mark is the action guy. And his key word is straightway, 42 times. Straightway, right away. He's the cameraman, the quick snapshot guy. Mark is focusing on action. He doesn't get into relevancies.

Luke is, it came to pass. Luke is the storyteller. Luke is the most novel-like dealing. It came to pass. It flows step to step 40 times.

John is the interpreter. He doesn't really have a narrative. He really has an argumentative tract that he is presenting you. And 24 times, the word verily, verily. shows up.

24. Those of you that are familiar with, you know, Revelation chapter 5 can make a big thing out of 24 relative to the church, if you like. I wouldn't want to make a big thing of that. I just mentioned it in passing.

Now, if we look at these Gospels in terms of the first miracle that's described, it's consistent with that purpose. Matthew alone opens his Gospel with the healing of a leper.

Now, fine, don't misunderstand. There's a healing of a leper. Great. What's that symbolically to a Jew? Leprosy represents sin. Got it. And so that's a very Jewish kind of, it's a Messiah kind of thing to deal with.

Gentiles, in both cases, both Mark and Luke, the first miracle is the casting out of a demon. Which is also very relevant to that circumstance.

And John gets mystical on us. The water turns to wine. The wedding at Cana. Strange miracle. Strange miracle. I mean, who really benefited? The fact that the party was a little better because they had good wine?

You sort of get into our study on John, if you weren't there, and dig into the water and the wine. It's very interesting. It's a strange miracle.

Not only to record, let alone put first, like John does. Okay.

Now, notice the way the four Gospels conclude. Matthew, being a Jew, concludes, takes us as far but no farther than the resurrection. That's important. That's very Jewish if you're sensitive to that.

Mark takes us to the ascension, the completion of the mission of the suffering servant. Luke, focusing on our manhood, mankindhood, excuse me, girls, concludes with a promise of the Spirit.

John, speaking to whom? Concludes the promise of Christ's return. Now, don't misunderstand. All of these ideas are in all the Gospels, but I'm just saying the concluding note is characteristic of that purpose.

Now, we sometimes call Matthew, Mark, and Luke the synoptic Gospels. Now, if you're in seminary in a theological class and haven't really learned a lot, the way you compensate for that is to give it a long name.

And, you know, so like in the Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ, you call those a theophany because that lets people think you know what they really were. No one does.

Well, a synoptic gospel is simply Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the first three, and it simply means that they have certain common similarities.

They're very similar in a way, and yet John's different. That's all synoptic means.

But the three gospels are similar in the following ways. They deal primarily with the outer facts, the external facts of Christ's ministry.

John deals with the internal, private life. Matthew, Luke, Mark deal with the public life. Also, Matthew, Mark, and Luke focus primarily on the Galilean ministry, not the Judean ministry. Matthew will give us some of both, but John focuses almost entirely on the Judean ministry.

Now, just to give you... Okay, that's all just raw background. One interesting focus, though, that I think is awfully interesting.

Erasing the blackboard, so to speak, figuratively speaking, for a moment. We know, when we studied Exodus, we discovered that the tabernacle is a model of heaven.

We study the tabernacle and its layout and its prophetic significance in order to really understand what's going on in the book of Revelation.

It's also interesting, when you get in Numbers 2, to study how the nation Israel laid itself out. In the center, we had two million people that would occupy a 12-square-mile area called the camp. In the center of the camp was the tabernacle, this tent-like structure, managed by the Levites.

The 12 tribes, bear in mind there's 13 really, because the tribe of Joseph is split into Ephraim and Manasseh. So you really have 13 to choose from. If you want 12 and you want to leave Levi out, you're all right. If you want 12 and want to count Levi, you just take Ephraim and

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

Manasseh, lump them together and call them Joseph. You still end up with 12. So you can get 12 tribes by having 13 letters in your alphabet, so to speak. So anyway, Levi's in the middle. You still have 12 tribes. There are 12 tribes that are in the marching order. That is, they go to war. And the 12 tribes would naturally camp on the north, south, east, and west of the tabernacle. Three to the north, three to the east, three to the south, three to the west. The principal entry to the tabernacle was from the east, so the easternmost area is the critical one. Each side of the camp had three tribes, and the three tribes had sort of a lead tribe.

On the east side of the tabernacle was Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. And those three tribes collectively were called the camp of Judah. There are 12 tribes, but four camps, so to speak. Collectively called, yes, the camp of Israel, but the camp of Judah were the three tribes to the east. On the opposite end, on the west side, we had Ephraim, Benjamin, Manasseh, and they collectively were called Ephraim.

To the north, we had Dan, Asher, and Naphtali, and they were the camp of Dan. And to the south, we had Reuben, Gad, and Simeon, called the camp of Reuben. And at that particular standard, or ensign, was what they would gather around when they made up camp.

Now, what's interesting, you wonder, what on earth, what's he getting all this for? Well, it's kind of interesting to notice that the four camps use the ensign of the lead tribe as their symbol. Now to the east we had Judah. The three tribes were at the camp of Judah. What was the symbol of Judah? The lion. The lion of the tribe of Judah was an idiom from prophecy and the lion became its standard.

To the west at the other end we had Ephraim whose standard was the ox. And to the south we had Reuben, whose standard was the man. And to the north we had Dan, whose standard was the eagle. Now these four symbols strike our notice because when we get in the scripture in Revelation 4, and Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel, both 1 and 10.

I'll repeat that for those that want to dig in. In Revelation 4, in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 and 10, all four of those places, we have visions of something which we call a cherubim. Isaiah actually calls it a seraphim. The I am just means a plural, more than one. A seraph and a cherub appear to be, most scholars think they're just equivalents, although we're not sure.

But a cherub is some kind of a super angel. He's higher than, in a very special kind of role. Now, what makes those passages intriguing is, while they're different, they have many differences, there are four elements that always surface. The cherubim in all four cases are the guardians of the holiness of God, apparently.

They're around the throne, they're in the most inner circle, and they're there with multiple faces, and they're very strangely described in typical visionary terms. But in each case, there are the four faces. Sometimes there's four cherubim, each with a face. Of what? A lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle.

In other cases, each one seemed to have four faces. Now, we're speaking in spiritual language here, so we need to be cautious. But what has to be pointed out is that, first of all, the camp of Israel, when it was encamped, seemed to be, by God's design, a model of the throne of heaven.

Because we had the tabernacle, and it's seven pieces of furniture in the center, and we've dealt with that heavily in the book of Exodus. The white righteousness to the outside, it had no form or comingness on the external. Inside, of course, we had the gold wrapped around the acacia wood, the deity and the humanity.

Everything there speaks of Jesus Christ at the very center. The seven-branch candlestick, the light, the showbread, the whole thing. Around that, then, you had the priesthood. And around that you have the camp of Israel with what? These four faces.

When we peer at the throne of God, actually, through these visions, we see the same kind of imagery, these four faces. Now, why am I bringing this up with the four Gospels? Very interesting. It may be just a coincidence, but it's a coincidence that's worth pointing out.

Matthew's preoccupation was that Jesus Christ was the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Mashiach of Israel, the King. Symbol for Matthew, if you were going to pick one, would be a lion. Mark, not interested in those issues particularly. He's interested in the servitude, the service.

Jesus Christ presented, and what's the classical biblical symbol of service is the ox, the beast of burden. Luke, son of man, and the eagle is often as the lone, solitary, highest flying. Idiom is a symbol of deity or God in some cases.

So it's interesting to notice that these four Gospels may be, idiomatically speaking, four focuses on this person. That we, I think, prefer to review as the Son of God. Of all those idioms, I think that's the one that, I was going to pick one, the one I think is the most relevant to us, at least.

Okay? If you're Jewish, it might be the Mashiach. You can pick one. You can pick any of them. They're all relevant, of course. But I think just to, maybe just become an enthusiast of John, but I think that, to my mind, is the highest.

Now, something else I might point out, let's take those, if I had a blackboard, I'd draw the four camps, but I would draw east and west, we have the king and the servant. Aren't those interesting opposites?

Jesus Christ was an embodiment of two complete opposites. The suffering, servant, obedient even to death, the death of the cross. And yet the king of the entire universe, all authority is given to me, he says later.

All authority of the universe. Physical, political, spirit, you name it, is given to Jesus Christ. It's got to be an interesting extreme. Let's go the other way. You have God and man. What a fascinating apparent contradiction that God could become man.

You know, in fact, that contradiction has two sides. When I was a kid and first coming to intellectual or emotional grips with the idea that, gee, what Jesus Christ is all about is God actually becoming a man. And that took me a long time to really try to, that was mind-blowing.

As I became older and, I think, more mature in the Scripture, I began to realize what sin was and what man was guilty of, and as I became conscious from the Scriptural teaching of what the righteousness of God demands, a fact that blows my mind even more than God becoming man is the realization that today, this night, there's a man at the throne of God.

That's probably a more overwhelming statement than the other. Incidentally, it came at a dearer price, that we have a representative, a man. We always think of Jesus Christ, I sometimes idiomatically, grammatically fall in the same trap.

We think of Jesus Christ as having been here. He became a man, spent 30 some odd years in his ministry, was crucified, dead and buried and rose to heaven. We often think of his manhood ending, then he went back to be God or something.

Well, we forget he became man permanently. What happened with Mary there to give birth to the child? Made him man permanently. It wasn't a little episode he went through on our behalf for a few years. He's a man today, indeed, in his resurrection body.

But that's just the point. We're going to deal more with that as we get into Matthew. Anyway, that's a view of the four Gospels, one horizon, one... mapping of them that may or may not be useful to you.

At this point, we'll start focusing a little bit more on Matthew, but we will, as we go, see increasing evidence of Matthew's preoccupation with Jesus Christ as the Messiah, as the royal one. Now, Matthew himself was, in a sense, well-suited to this task because he was a Levi, not only Jewish, but a Levi, presumably from a tradition of precision.

In a textual and scholastic sense. He was by profession or by job a tax gatherer. A publican, I think, is one term you'll keep running into, but that's a quaint King James-type term for what you and I would call a tax gatherer.

And I think that that, throughout all the ages, has not been a particularly endearing profession. We joke about it today. I think taxes, tax gatherers are never popular, but when the taxes are oppressive or without adequate representation, they really become a form of extortion or theft.

And so a tax gatherer is not particularly liked anyway. But in Matthew's case, he was not only a tax gatherer, but he was a tax gatherer of the oppressor. They were under the heel of Rome.

But at the local level, the actual instruments of the Roman system was to have locals do the dirty work. And so the collection of the taxes was obviously given to Jewish employees.

And they were hated by the establishment. The Jewish establishment hated the tax-gatherers more than they hated the Gentiles. Now, to really understand that, you really have to understand how they hated the Gentiles.

We often kid in today's vernacular the Jewish word for Gentile is goy, plural goyim, which is the same word they use for a dog, but in the disparaging sense. And there's many examples we could draw upon to show that the real estimation there was... Lower than that.

They did not believe that a Gentile was capable of being saved. Except maybe, and that reluctantly, by proselyting and so forth into the camp. So they were very low.

And when one of their own joined... The analogy that we... Probably the closest thing you and I might come to conceptually is a collaborator.

We think of wartime conditions where someone collaborated with the enemy. That was the atmosphere that greeted Matthew.

And we'll see him handle that with some humility all the way through here. You have to really be clever to see where Matthew refers to himself. He really keeps himself fairly invisible.

He keeps a low profile. He shows evidence in a number of ways of great humility throughout his role here. Okay?

Now, something else I should mention. Matthew is preoccupied with the throne rights of Jesus Christ. Now, where do they come from? Let me turn with you to Genesis 22, 18.

Some of these things are really worth taking a look at to refresh our memories. You remember when we were in Genesis? In Genesis 22, we have the offering of Isaac. Abraham offered Isaac.

And I think as we covered on our study then, it's my belief that Abraham knew he was acting out prophecy. He was acting out a role that was fulfilled on that very same hill 2,000 years later when another father offered his only son.

But at a climax of that, if you recall... After the substitution of the ram, and Abraham names the place Jehovah Jireh, verse 14, then it says, The angel of the Lord called unto Abram out of heaven the second time. Called out first time to substitute the ram for Isaac earlier.

He says, And by myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply.

Thy seed is the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore shall thy seed possess the gate of his enemies. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

I want you to know that all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast made my voice. We could also go, we could follow a very elaborate chain, but I'm just going to pick out a couple to give you the flavor of what we're up to tonight.

The promise to Abraham is not simply just a Jewish promise. That's one point I want to make. Even in Genesis 22, you know it's all the nations. But turn with me to Isaiah.

I think most of you in this group realize that Isaiah was written by Handel. And we'll quote from Handel's Messiah, which obviously I'm being facetious, of course, that he wrote most of that obviously from Isaiah.

But Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6. For unto us a child is born. How familiar we are with this with Christmas cards, right? For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder.

Oh, when did that happen? Hasn't been yet, has it? He hasn't borne governmental responsibility. They didn't exactly, you know, allow him to do that back then. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, of the increase of his government and peace.

There shall be no end, now notice this, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom. To order it, to establish it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even forever.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall perform this. Now, that was the promise given to Mary, we shall see shortly. It's also the promise that Matthew is very preoccupied with.

He's going to be preoccupied with the idea of establishing that Jesus Christ was that heir. He's also going to establish, interestingly enough, that he did not fulfill that in his first coming.

We'll deal with that as we get to it. That means it has yet to happen. And that's going to raise some interesting questions for us. What do we mean by the kingdom of heaven? We like the idea of saying, well, that's the church now.

Well, I'm not sure that's right. The church isn't really oriented to a political throne in Jerusalem ruling the world. That's a different idea. And so we'll be dealing with that as we go here.

Okay. Now, there's another interesting thing that we're going to deal with, as long as we're just laying some prophetic background here, refreshing your memory about a few things.

Turn to me to Jeremiah 22, verse 30. Now, the throne of David passed through a number of kings, and these kings went from bad to worse in the chain.

I won't take you through all of them, obviously, but we're going to come down to a guy by the name of Jeconiah. And Jeconiah was so bad.

That God cursed he and his seed forever. And you'll find a reference to that in Jeremiah chapter 22, verse 30.

Thus saith the Lord, Write this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, and no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah.

Now God, that's in God's word. You know, so let it be done, so let it be written kind of thing, right?

It's my personal belief, just a view of my own, that when that happened, when God cursed the line of Jeconiah, I think, personally, that in the councils of Satan, there was a party that probably was hard to parallel.

I personally suspect that they thought, fantastic, they'd finally achieved what they'd been looking to do since Cain and Abel.

We discover in Revelation chapter 12 that Satan has attempted from the beginning to thwart God's plan for redeeming the planet Earth and for man. His first attempt was to destroy the seed of the woman, thinking that it was, you know, Cain and so forth.

And all the way through, when Moses was born, the slaughtering of the babes in Egypt was a satanic plot. We're going to see the same thing happen under Herod with the slaughtering of the babes in Bethlehem.

All the way through, you can actually go from cover to cover in this book.

And as prophecies focus where the Messiah is coming from, it allows Satan to focus his attack. It was supposed to be the house of David.

Well, the house of David was singled out with a lot of trouble. And you can read the line of the kings, and there's plots and plots to kill off the offspring.

And all kinds of screwy schemes to try and break the royal... I think the flood of Noah had to do with the...

He may have been the last. In fact, the scripture, we say that in Genesis. Get the Genesis tapes if you haven't heard this before.

But I think Noah was the last pure human.

And the mythologies that are embodied in our Greek legends probably have the root in the same discussion as is inferred in Genesis 6.

Why? Because the... Earth had to be redeemed by an heir, a pure heir, of Adam.

And the flood of Noah was God's answer to that plot.

You can go through the whole scripture and paint this. What's interesting now, here, finally, Satan has to feel, wow, we've made it.

Because the Messiah has to have legal title to the throne of David. Great. But the legal title to the throne of David carries a blood curse on it forever.

The Messiah can't have a blood curse on his head. That doesn't work either, right?

And we're going to discover the answer to that is what we have in the two genealogies in the Scripture, the legal line and the blood line.

And we'll get into that in a moment. Matthew's interested in the kingship of Jesus Christ. He's the only one that records the Magi. What's the Magi all about?

And we have a good chance of getting into that tonight. If not, we'll catch it next time.

Well, at this point, let's go ahead and jump in. And unlike what many people do, we're not going to skip the first 18 verses. We'll go over them lightly and just highlight a few things.

Anyway, let's just start in verse 1. I'll pick it up as we go. Matthew 1, verse 1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

The son of David, the son of Abraham. So you notice the summary first.

That's Matthew's focus, right? He's the son of David and the son of Abraham. Why is he saying it?

Because he's Jewish. He's interested in the Mashiach ship.

Verse 2, Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brethren, and Judah begot Perez and Zerah of Tamar.

Now, this is the first of an interesting episode. Never in a Jewish genealogy do you find

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

Y is she in the genealogy? How is anyone saved? By their merit? By grace. We see that several places here. Paris begot Harrison. Harrison begot Ram. Ram begot Aminadab. Aminadab begot Nation. Nation begot Solomon. And Solomon begot Boaz of Rahab. Now here's another girl mentioned. Simon begot Boaz of Rahab, and Boaz begot Obed of Ruth. And Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king. And David the king begot Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah. And there's Bathsheba mentioned, not by name, but by inference. So we've got four girls. Three of them have pretty tough reputations.

One thing that's interesting here is it's a good place to point out something else. Ruth, incidentally, had two interesting mother-in-laws. Rahab, on the one hand, was her mother-in-law, right? And so was Naomi. What was Naomi a type of? Israel. What is Rahab a type of? That's complicated. Be careful. You need to study the book of Joshua to really unravel that one.

But certainly when Yehoshua led his army to dispossess the land of the usurpers, he really sent ahead of him two witnesses. The two witnesses went there for what purposes? To save Rahab. It's what you type of. You can wrestle out with it on your own if you're stumped, dig into the Joshua tapes.

But something else, when Boaz and Ruth were married... They said, may your house be like Perez. Sounds like a neat toast until you go find out who Perez is. Well, Perez was this offspring of Judah and Tamar in a horrible relationship. Illegitimate son. You wonder, what's all that about? That's a strange toast to give them.

Then you get into the Levitical law and you discover that there's a tenth generation. Under illegitimate son, it takes ten generations to purge the line. Who's the tenth from Perez? David. Isn't that interesting?

Is that a prophecy in the book of Ruth at the time of the judges of King David? I think so. Does that mean that David was some kind of afterthought? We weren't going to give him a king. They wanted Saul, so they gave him Saul. And he didn't work out, so they gave him David.

That's the way you sometimes see it presented. Nonsense. God knew that David would be king from the beginning. He gave him Saul because they were screaming for a king, Okay, we'll give you Saul. But that wasn't what God originally had intended. And, of course, it ended up in disaster.

Saul was like Solomon. Started off great and ended up in a mess. Notice something else here. Jesse begot David the king. You notice he's the only one mentioned that way. Matthew points out that David the king. Now notice how Solomon is mentioned. Where's the kingship of Solomon? That's a big thing for a Jew. He gets hung up on that. Solomon was the great king. No.

David. In fact, the Holy Spirit goes here to almost put Solomon down. Why? Because he led the place to disaster spiritually, commercially prospered. He introduced idolatry in the land. We got Solomon of her that had been with the wife of Uriah, which is obviously Bathsheba.

And Solomon begot Rehoboam. Rehoboam begot Abijah. Abijah begot Asa. Asa begot Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat begot Joram. Joram begot Uzziah. Uzziah begot Jotham. Jotham begot Ahaz. And Ahaz begot Hezekiah. Hezekiah begot Manasseh. Manasseh begot Ammon. Ammon begot Josiah. Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brethren.

Now I'm going to come back to a few problems in a minute. About the time they were carried away to Babylon. After they were brought to Babylon, Jeconiah begot Shealtiel, and Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel begot Abihuud, and Abihuud begot Eliakim, and Eliakim begot Azor, and Azor begot Sadduk, and Sadduk begot Achim, and Achim begot Eliahud, and Eliahud begot Eliezer. Eliezer begot Nathan, and Nathan begot Jacob.

Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary. There's the fifth woman mentioned. Of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the generations of Abraham to David are 14 generations. And from David until the carrying away into Babylon are 14 generations, and the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are 14 generations.

Now you've got a couple of problems. I'll come to those, because you know, someone that really accepts the word doesn't have these problems, but you're going to run into people who have a big hang-up with a couple of loose ends here.

First of all, you'll discover if you go do your homework in verse 8, there are three kings missing. Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. And they're clear very simply, they're missing. And every reference, many scholars who disagree about a lot of things seem to agree on this point, namely that they're omitted by the Holy Spirit specifically.

All three of them were descendants of Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. And she specifically attempted to annihilate the kingly seed of the house of Judah. Again, it's a reflection of the plot described in Revelation 12.

Did the Holy Spirit omit them from the genealogy? I hope so. I mean, I should hope so.

Now, a more significant problem occurs with Jeconiah. There's some confusion about verse 11. And a confusion occurs because Jeconiah is the name that Jeconiah's father was also called by. His father was Jehoiakim, sometimes called Jehoiachin, and sometimes called Jeconiah.

All words in Hebrew mean Jehovah will establish. They're variations of one another, and it causes all kinds of confusion to the Bible student who's trying to unsort this thing.

Jehoiakim the father was carried away to Babylon in 2 Kings 24.15. He had brethren. Jeconiah did not. 1 Chronicles 3.15. It is generally inferred one possibility here is that the first Jeconiah is simply a sin of speaking of the father. That they're the same.

In verse 12, however, we have Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim. And since Saltil is the son of Jeconiah, 1 Chronicles 3.17, that's one possibility. We've got a father-son thing.

The more significant problem is that if you count 14 generations, the last cycle of 14 only has 13 members. And that's explained two possible ways. One way is that a copyist failed to write down Jeconiah in there. The other way is that he is, in effect, punned because of the double Hebrew. It's a technical discussion.

I don't think it's a material one. I just want you to be aware of that.

Okay? Now, one other thing that you will notice, I just want to get this out of the way. When you compare this genealogy with the one in Luke, you will find a Zerubbabel and a Soliteal in Luke, but they're different people. They're at a different time frame.

But in going through, if you lay them out, you'll be confused because these two characters show up later on, and you'll be trying to fit them. Zerubbabel simply means born in Babylon. And Saltil, I forget what it means. They have common meanings.

They were relatively common names. So they happen to be, you know, just like there's Joseph's and Jacob's. There's lots of them. So don't get confused on that point.

What is more material, though, is to study the two genealogies in another dimension. Matthew takes the genealogy of Jesus Christ from Abraham to David through Solomon to Joseph, the legal father of Jesus Christ. The legal father. And therefore, Jesus Christ had legal claim to the throne of David. Because he had a legal line.

Even though he wasn't the blood son of Joseph, he was the legal son, adopted son of Joseph. That's fair. That's competent. That means that Jesus Christ had claim to the throne of David. Because he went through Solomon.

When you study Luke's genealogy, who has a whole different orientation. Luke's interested in the fact that Jesus Christ is the son of Adam. He takes the genealogy. He has to go backwards. He takes it through Mary's father, Eli. And carries Mary's line back through David, obviously back to Abraham.

And he goes even further, all the way back to Adam. But a subtlety that you may miss, unless you look for it, is that if you're trying to build a family tree, and you get from Adam to Abraham to David, when you get to David, if you're following Matthew, you go down through Solomon.

The legal line, the kingly line. If you look at Mary's genealogy, it goes through Solomon's older brother, Nathan. So through Mary, Jesus Christ had a blood relationship to David. She also had claimed to be in the house of David, but was not in the line that carried the blood curse.

How interesting it was, Satan's plot foiled again, because here God engineered the Mashiach to have legal claim to the line, and yet be immune from the blood curse on Jeconiah. That may sound like a lot of technical detail to you, but I think it's very fascinating, especially when you realize he did this all in advance.

Remember David wanted to build the temple? That was his dream. God says, hey, I can't do it. You're a man of war. Solomon will build the temple. David figures, that's okay. I'll pay the bills in advance. That's exactly what he did.

He stockpiled all the materials. But he said, I'll do something else for you. Instead of letting you build a temple, I'll build you a house. He gives David the promise that the Messiah will be of the house and lineage of David. And when you read that prophecy, you assume those are synonyms.

They're not. You see? Jesus Christ was of the house and lineage of David. Both. Legally entitled to the throne, but not carrying the blood curse that was subsequently, you know, that was on Jeconiah.

Interesting. Interesting. Now, I'm not suggesting you spend a lot of your time trying to unravel these genealogies. I am suggesting if you peel the onion, you find often rich rewards lying underneath them.

And I think this is perhaps the most important one, namely this business of the claim of Jesus Christ at the throne of David.

Now, one thing I should mention to you, we'll get into this later, but I think it's good to keep this in focus. Did the throne of David exist during the days of Jesus Christ on the earth? No. Rome was in charge. There was a throne, Herod's throne. Was that David's throne? No. Herod was not a Jew. He was Ediemaet from Edom. He was put there by the Romans as a puppet, so to speak.

Is that the throne of David? No. Did the throne of David exist? No. Could Jesus Christ have sat on the throne of David? No. It wasn't there.

You can search the Gospels. You will find there's one occasion, and we'll talk about that, where Jesus Christ allows himself to be presented as king to Jerusalem. That doesn't mean he has David's throne.

The technicality is very important because he is destined to rule the world from David's throne. He hasn't done that yet.

And that's an idea that the classical Orthodox Church for centuries is uncomfortable with. It's nice to spiritualize these things. The idea of a literal throne makes a lot of people very uncomfortable.

The more you get dependent on Arab oil, the more uncomfortable you are with that particular idea.

Okay. Now, okay, we'll pick that up in a minute. Well, let's go on. We can actually, yeah, okay, good. Let's take, we're down to verse 18.

Now, Matthew has front-ended his gospel with a genealogy. Genealogy is always important to Jewish people because they were, first of all, the critical one is the most critical genealogy is the one we just read.

Because that's the one everybody dreamed about for thousands of years, the Messiah. But another reason genealogy is so undergirding everything they do, that was the way land was conveyed.

The original land grant was to Israel, and it was then granted to the tribes. The tribes could sell land, but always with the right of redemption. It was really what you and I would call a lease.

And your claims were heavily hung up on your genealogy. So genealogies were very, very important to the Jewish culture.

So Matthew opens his gospel with the genealogy, but then he gets into the narrative that starts at verse 18.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way. When, as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with a child of the Holy Spirit.

And Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately.

What was he really planning to do? Is it covered all up and hide it? Why?

To save her life. Because if it was publicly found that she was illegitimately with child, it was the death penalty. They took things seriously in those days.

In that regard. So that was his plan. His scheme was, whoops, we've got to, for Mary's sake, put her away privately.

But while he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

And she shall bring forth a son. And thou shalt call his name Jesus, and he shall save his people from their sins.

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.

Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and took unto him his wife, and knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son and called his name Jesus.

Now, very familiar story, of course, to all of us, and should, if we had time, we'd read the parallel account in Luke, which amplifies the whole situation.

Even more thoroughly.

And there's not a lot to be, for me to elaborate here, because I think this is well-traveled ground for most of us.

A couple of things here, though. It's interesting, saying, Joseph, thou son of David. You notice that emphasis again? See, Matthew's in there, never misses a lick. Thou son of David.

Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

One other thing. There's another thing I want to show up. Earlier in that verse, it says an angel of the Lord. Right?

Now, it's interesting to me, this concept of the angel of the Lord occurs in the Old Testament many times. It's a phrase that's used with Hagar. Remember Hagar, the Egyptian? Abraham, Jacob, the children of Israel, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah, Manoah's wife.

Jacob, at one time, calls the angel of the Lord the Redeemer. Right?

In Isaiah 63, I believe it is, that the angel of the Lord is referred to as the angel of his face.

It has the very name of God in Exodus 23. In Jewish teaching in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord is often taught as the word of God, as a presentation of the Messiah before bodily form.

In Protestant theology, you'll hear the term "a theophany," an Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ in its pre-incarnate form.

Now, why am I emphasizing all this?

There's only one place in the Bible that I'm aware of where it doesn't say the angel of the Lord, it says an angel of the Lord, and that's here in verse 20.

Now, that's kind of interesting, because if you were an imposter trying to fabricate this tale, it's very likely you would have said, you would have borrowed that Old Testament expression, said the angel of the Lord came, right?

Unless you recognized that the angel of the Lord was Jesus Christ, and that isn't appropriate here.

Interesting, isn't it? Follow me? A little subtle thing, but I think those are the kinds of things that you continually run into that I think have value.

Okay.

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

I thought it was kind of interesting to turn to Psalm 69. If there's any Catholics here, I apologize. I may inadvertently be offensive. It's not my intention to be. But in the Gospels, and I'm not going to get into it now because we'll get there later, his brothers are mentioned. In fact, James, one of the four Jameses, the one that wrote the epistle, Jude, are two of them that became saved.

But interestingly enough, in Psalm 69, verses 7 and 8, I came across something I think is kind of interesting. I believe this passage is messianic, first point. But I want you to notice what it says. Because for thy sake I have borne reproach, shame hath covered my face, I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children.

Now, it takes a long time to prove that this is messianic. I won't get into that tonight. But those of you that are interested in that, it's kind of interesting that not only did Mary have children, but it was prophesied that she would have. And if that's a hang-up, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal.

But those of you interested, I thought I'd mention that. I'd like to keep moving. I think we'd like to keep moving. I'm trying not to get hung up. Those of you that know me well are breathing a sigh of relief because you know it's my capability to wallow around in the genealogy for about a month and a half.

And we've snuck through the most important genealogy in the Scripture rather easily tonight. I think we can congratulate ourselves. It's very difficult not to resist the temptations to so many digressions, but I thought it would be more fun to get into chapter 2, because chapter 2, those of you that know my interest in the book of Daniel will understand why chapter 2 is so important to me.

That should have confused you. Chapter 2, verse 1. Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came Magi from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

And here the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where the Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah. Art not the least among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel.

It's quoting from Micah chapter 5, verse 2. But anyway, going on for now. Then Herod, when he had privately called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search diligently for the young child, and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

I don't think I'd like to be worshipped the way he had in mind. But anyway, verse 9. When they had heard the king, they departed, and lo, the star which they saw in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was, and when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented to him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

Okay, the famous story of the Magi. Now, a couple of things. First of all, I want you to notice, make an observation. I want you to notice there are not three of them. Church tradition for hundreds and thousands of years, whatever the number is, has always assumed there were three magi.

Probably, we guess, the reason they assumed there were three, because there's three gifts, gold, myrrh, and frankincense. And you always have the image that each one brought one of those things. That's a quaint little tradition. And like probably all the traditions of Christmas, it's wrong.

Okay? Those of you that... If you want to celebrate Christmas, read Jeremiah 10 when you go home tonight. Just to touch on that lightly, we won't make a big thing of it, but all we know about the birth of Jesus Christ is that it couldn't have been in winter.

No Roman administrator worth his salt would have taxation take place when most of the empire was impassable. Secondly, the flocks were in open field, we find out from Luke, and they're not in open field after October in Judea. It's too cold. If you don't believe me, listen to the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 when he talks about the end times.

He says, pray that your flight be not in winter. Why? Because that's a rough part of the country in the winter. Okay? There are other reasons, too. Most scholars would estimate that it was probably sometime no later than October in the year from various inferences.

Why do we celebrate December 25th? Because it was the time of the Roman Saturnalia. And at 312 AD, when Constantine undertook what is sometimes called his conversion and made Christianity the official religion of the empire,

They were used to, they had a cultural tradition of celebrating all kinds of holidays. They celebrated Ishtar, the goddess of fertility with her eggs and what have you, around the time of the vernal equinox.

We call it Easter. I'm always very fond of that photograph which has a cross and an Easter bunny nailed to it. Many people are very offended by that. But the message is the Easter Bunny didn't die for your sins. Jesus Christ did.

The Saturnalia celebrated an ancient Babylonian myth. about Tammuz and Nimrod. Rather, Nimrod and his wife, I've forgotten her name, Semiramis, that's who it was, had a child, supernatural presumably, by the name of Tammuz.

The first letter of his name was a cross, by the way. That was the way the Babylonians made it to what we call a T. And what he did is he died and was born again. He was tied to the sun god.

And at the time of the winter solstice, when the nights are the longest, is when he was thought to have died. And he's born again the day after the winter solstice. The way they celebrated this was to take a log called a Yule log. Yule in Chaldean means infant.

And burn it that night. And the following morning put in its place a trimmed tree celebrating the rebirth of Tammuz. This is a Babylonian tradition thousands of years ahead of our Christian era.

Now, they celebrated all this sort of thing in December, what we would call, the winter solstice is December 22nd or 23rd, depending on sidereal and solar calendar adjustments. And when the Babylonian system shifted under the Persian Empire of Pergamos,

And when Rome took over, it shifted to Rome. And this became the basis of the traditions of pagan Rome. And when Constantine became converted, they didn't change their habits.

They're used to selling a lot of liquor that time of year. They just gave it new names, right? And so the concept of mistletoe, the concept of the yule log, the wassailbow, all these things have their roots in Babylon.

And if you're interested in this kind of thing, one of the ancient texts, it's a very old text, difficult to read, but still interesting to have in your library if you're interested in this sort of thing, there's a book by Alexander Hislop, H-I-S-S-L-O-P. It was out of print for many years.

It's an old text, 1800. But it's called The Two Babylons. His interest in Babylon isn't because of Babylon. His interest in Babylon is because of the references in the book of Revelation.

In order to understand what mystery Babylon is, his thesis was, you have to understand what ancient Babylon was. And so he did a lot of research. A lot of it's quite argumentative. A lot of it is quite anti-Catholic. Not necessarily sound. Some of it is, some of it isn't.

You've got to be cautious. But it's interesting. But he does... tear into some of the ancient Babylonian background, and it's very, very illuminating.

It gives you a startling insight into our traditions today. And so don't confuse our holiday period with the birth of Jesus Christ. They're two different things.

Now, if you don't believe me, look carefully at who you're giving gifts to. How many of you are giving gifts to Jesus Christ this year, as opposed to giving gifts to each other?

The only place I see in this Bible where people are giving gifts to each other is when the earth dwellers are celebrating the death of the two witnesses in Revelation chapter 11.

And I don't think that's what you're doing. I'm just saying it's, you know. Every once in a while, I've got to send you home with a good guilt trip, right?

Okay. Magi. There's an English word. If you add one letter to that, what do you get? Magic, same root. The Magi.

These wise men were Magi. Now, who are Magi? They're an occultic group of Zoroastrian priests. Occultic, occultic group within the Zoroastrian priesthood.

Zoroastrian priests are a derivative of the Persian religious system. So if you track Magi back, you discover that they're a subset.

They're within the culture of the Persian priests. Now, if you think of Persia, you can immediately think of some guy that was in charge of them some five centuries earlier. Who was that?

Daniel. Daniel chapter 2, when he took over Babylon. Now, when he was in Babylon, he arose to be in charge of the seers, the astrologers, the wise men, all these characters.

Daniel was. Now, when Babylon was conquered by the Persians, that night, you recall, the handwriting on the...

Now, by this time, Nebuchadnezzar's great-grandson was in charge. Daniel had retired. They called the queen. They were all shook up because it would tend to cloud a party to have a flaming finger right on the wall that, you know...

And so Belteshazzar was a little shook by that. They knew that Cyrus and his gang was outside the walls, but they knew they were impregnable, so they just had this big party, and this finger writes on the wall a mystic message.

I won't get into that whole thing. It's in Daniel chapter 5 on the tapes, if you're interested, but the essence of it was they called Daniel out of retirement, and Daniel really puts him down, but points out that this day is the empire delivered into the enemies,

And Cyrus the Persian, in a league with the Medes and the Persians, they take over. And Daniel shows Cyrus a letter that was written to him 150 years earlier by Isaiah, what we call Isaiah chapter 45, where it mentions Cyrus by name and describes the strategy by which he was to take over Babylon.

That so freaks him out that he is very, very permissive and supportive of Daniel and his people. Daniel rises to be one of three guys that's second in command in the Persian Empire.

Daniel also, and we're going to cover this later in Matthew, because Jesus Christ makes Daniel the key to understanding prophecy in Matthew 24,

And we'll use that as an excuse to get into the 70-week prophecy. But I'll say at this point, Daniel is famous for having predicted the very day that Jesus Christ was to present himself as king to Jerusalem, some 484 years earlier, and to the very day.

And we'll deal with that when we get there. The point is, many scholars believe that Daniel had some other prophecies not in his book,

And that he founded a group. That kept the secret through several centuries and knew when Jesus Christ was to be born and when he was to fulfill this mission.

They also may have had fragments of Balaam's prophecy. Balaam was also from the East. And in Numbers 23 and 24, you'll find that this strange character called Balaam prophesies about a star.

And I won't get into that tonight because we're running a little late in time. But the point is, the Magi were probably a fulfillment of a mission given to them some generations earlier by none other than our friend Daniel.

Now, who was the angel that primarily dealt with Daniel in Daniel 9? Anyone? Gabriel. What's Gabriel's mission almost exclusively in the Bible?

Jesus Christ, who talked to Mary, who talked to Joseph, you know, the whole thing. Gabriel. Interesting role. And we discover if we watch that these angels have missions.

Michael is the militant. He always fights on behalf of Israel. Gabriel is always oriented to the Messiah, birth, and so forth to Jesus Christ. Interesting.

Now, a couple of other things. I want you to know something else here. The city of Jerusalem was well populated. I think it was Josephus that records that the district of Galilee had, what, three million inhabitants?

In fact, that's another way, but that's what is implied. Don't get the impression that these are little villages uninhabited.

There's a big population there. A whole different ecology in those days, too, of course. Now, the point is, the idea that three guys dressed kind of neat on cameras came in and shook up the whole city is a little naive.

Furthermore, these guys probably came a long, long way with a lot of preparation. We do know that it stirred up the whole city, and they got an audience with a king.

What I personally believe or visualize is a caravan with attendants, power, authorities. These are heavy dudes. Notice something else now.

They came there and they asked, where is he that is born king of the Jews? They still didn't have precision. They saw the star. They apparently did not see the star for a while.

That's caused them to make inquiry because it was discovered later they rejoice again when they see the star again. So it's apparently withheld from them for a while.

You'll hear people speak of it. Now, notice something else I'd like to point out. Notice these are Gentiles. Who were the first to worship? Jesus Christ. Interesting.

Where's Jerusalem in the meantime? Why didn't they go to Bethlehem and find out what's going on? Strange, isn't it?

Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Not just the religious establishment, everybody was talking about it.

It was a big deal. When he gathered all the chief priests and scribes, not the Sanhedrin, not just the council, all, it says, chief priests and scribes, people together,

Demanded of them where the Christ should be born. And they dig in, they do their homework, they find out in Micah chapter 5, verse 2, it predicts that Bethlehem would be the home.

Not the least and so forth. Okay, and so Herod, of course, encourages them because he'd love to find out what's going on.

Now bear in mind, Herod's not Jewish. He's an idiotic man. Does he feel threatened by this? You bet.

Now you can secularize and say, gee, if everybody believes he's king of the Jews, then I better watch it and just look at it that way.

Or it might even run deeper than that. That's something we can just only speculate on.

But we'll get into the Nazarene thing in a minute. So let's, I'm running a little over time. Let's just finish it down to verse 12 then.

Okay, verse 10, when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. See, they see the star again, so you get the impression it's withheld.

Now, there's all kinds of speculations. The library's full of guys who believe it was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and all that sort of stuff.

I personally don't believe that. Now, there are, in fact, a number of people who discover there was a conjunction of those two planets about that time,

And they sort of think maybe that was a star. Every planetarium show... Around Christmas time, we'll go through some show and go through about five or six basic astronomical theories as to what the star at Bethlehem is going to be.

And all of that misses the point. Because all those astronomical events are repeatable. There may be thousands of years, but I mean, they're repeatable.

The event that happened in Bethlehem is non-repeatable. Never happened before and will never happen again. I mean, it's a unique event. It's a supernatural event.

You had a virgin birth. Oh, I missed to get into that, too. I'm sorry. That's something I'll take up next time.

I want to talk a little bit further about that. The Alma business. In going through my notes, we should have picked that up last time.

Clearly, you've got a supernatural event. I believe the star was a supernatural event. Whether the star was an actual star, as you and I think of it,

Or whether it's a special light, whether it's an angel carrying a lantern, I don't really care, but the concept that it might be such and such comet or a conjunction misses the point.

Misses the point. You could argue, well, gee, God could engineer this thing so as to accomplish purpose. Sure he could. That doesn't seem to me his style when it comes to the Messiah.

He goes all the way. It's unique. It's special. So I think we're wasting our time going into astronomical speculations about the star at Bethlehem.

Herod is obviously very paranoid. I should point out to you, how many of you visited Masada in Israel? Have you had a chance to do that?

That was built by Herod out of his paranoia because he's afraid of Cleopatra. Did you know that? Herod is frightened, nervous.

Those guys in those days lived kind of, you know, it was tenuous. And so he's also perhaps a type of the usurper. He was on the throne, had no right to be there.

And that may be a type of some future thing. I'll stop the text at this point. We'll pick it up next time at verse 12. But I want to leave you with some ideas.

I want you to notice Herod is full of hatred. We're going to see him slaughter every child two years and under. Remember, he asked when

Here is the cleaned sermon transcription:

I had all these visitors, right? The Magi go into the house where she was, right? So this is at least a few days later when they finally had room either at the inn or a friend or something. So they're in a house when the Magi visit.

It might have been two years later because that's what Herod picks to slaughter the kids, two years and under. I don't think so. I think that was when the star first appeared. It was two years earlier. I suspect it may have taken them some time to organize the tour and make the travel arrangements and make the journey. They may have been a year en route.

Now, another thought, though, is that were they living in Bethlehem that long? They might have. They might have, you know, moved out of the stable, lived in the house, and that was just, you know, time. We don't have a sense of time in that sense here. So it's not, I want to give you a broadening horizon.

There's another possibility. It's very remote, but it's another, just a stretch of mind. There's one very competent scholar that believes they went back to Nazareth after the census. And they were down here when? At Passover. And stayed with some friends. Where? In their hometown. Where? I mean, you know, in Bethlehem.

And it might have been a co-occurrence. I don't think that... I'm saying... I just want to get us out of the classic little idioms that we're victims of. Clearly, though, they're going to flee to Egypt as a response to the supernatural insight, what Herod is up to.

But basically, what's interesting here, you're going to discover in chapter 2, as we finish chapter 2, two reactions to Jesus Christ. Hatred or homage? We have a group of Gentiles that travel probably a year to get there to give them gifts. Prophetic gifts. Gold, myrrh, and frankincense.

The Bible says that in the millennium when he rules on David's throne we're going to give him gold and frankincense. No myrrh. Myrrh speaks of his death. Gold is deity. Frankincense is priesthood. But his burial and death. And that obviously is a one-time thing that's behind it, so in the millennium they don't have it.

But those three gifts, it's a prophet, priest, and king, is his three offices that he is filling. Did the Zoroastrian priests know that? Probably. I mean, Daniel had a pretty good handle on things, and he may have taught them well.

But notice they have homage. What did the establishment do? It had hatred. They actually slaughtered all the kids they could find two years and under out of Bethlehem. That's a heavy thing.

I'm going to suggest that every one of you in this room has no opportunity to be indifferent, really, to Jesus Christ. You'll either pray Him homage, or you'll be in an adversary position.

And one thing we might do this Christmas is to try to search ourselves and see where we're at. Are we really calling Him Lord? Are we really worshiping Him as the coming King? Is our focus this season to give Him gifts? Or not. Or to put him out of our mind by busying ourselves in the economy, the commercialism, the routines that we hide behind.

Are we going to give him gifts? What kind of gifts can you give him? That's a good question. Only one. Yourself. Yourself. Now, that's not a trivial thing. Don't bother giving him anything unless you're going to give him the whole thing. You're wasting your time.

What you might think about doing this Christmas is just a little private thing between you and the Lord. Is it to give Him, as the wise men did, gifts. Gift of yourself. Make Him truly your King, your Mashiach, your Lord of your life. Every part of it. Not just Sunday mornings or Monday nights or what have you.

Is He really ruling your life? Is He a participant in your decisions? Are you really putting, yielding, that God has given you your sovereignty as an awesome heavy responsibility in your creation. You have sovereignty. You will not violate that. He's given you a free will. That means he won't take it away from you.

But that's a heavy thing. You're going to give it back to him and say, Lord, you take over. It's all yours. That's really what he's asking for. That's really what it's all about. Having one unified will in the universe, the Lord's. But having that as a result of our yielding ourselves to him.

Let's borrow a word of prayer. Father, we praise you for the privilege of being here tonight. We thank you, Father, for this incredible gift you've given us. We thank you, Father, not only for our creation, but even more for our redemption, that you've gone so far to such an extreme measure to redeem us.

We thank you, Father, for your sovereign election, that you've allowed us to be here this night, that you've reached out and touched us. We would ask you, Father, to give us no peace until we rest in you.

We would ask you, Father, just to increase in us an appetite for these things. Help us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.