A couple of generations back, on my mom's side of the family, there is this dude from whom I am directly descended, so his blood courses through my veins, who was a complete monster. He did horrible things to people in his family. And as a result, everybody's just trying to forget his name and his existence, and all record of him has been as purged as possible from history. On my dad's side of the family, and in fairness, there are awesome people on both sides of the family, but on my dad's side of the family, there's this guy named Uncle Abe, who is referred to as, quote, a prince of a man. I think it actually said that in his obituary. And all the stories about Uncle Abe are about this quiet nobility and sense of decency and goodness that he possessed. And that is kind of his legacy moving forward into history. And nobody wants to forget him. In Matthew chapter 2, verses 13 through, let's call it 18, that's what we're going to look at today. We get a contrast between a complete monster and a prince of a man. The prince of the man we read about in verse 13. It says, When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child and kill him. So the phrase that opens this passage when they had gone is referring back to the Magi, the Christian space wizards, who had somehow, through primitive astrology, slash the miraculous work of God, figured out where Jesus was at and figured out how to thwart the plans of evil, murderous Herod. And come on, it's not like we're ascribing those characteristics to Herod unfairly after the fact. He murdered his way into power. He murdered while he stayed in power. He murdered for the heck of it, and he gladly would do some more murdering to get rid of somebody who he viewed as a potential rival. So there's a real threat that is going on leading up to verse 13. The visit of the Magi is over, and once again, this motif of miraculous messages from God occurring in dreams that you might be skeptical about from the outside looking in, but which are vindicated by the narrative, this motif appears again. So Joseph has another one of these dreams. It feels like this is happening all the time, but it's been a couple years since this had gone down for him. In the dream, the instruction is get up and go to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you this Herod's going to search for the child and kill him. Okay, well, one, the Herod's gonna search for the child and kill him thing. That did end up coming true as well. So that would have been to use the term a second time, vindicating in Joseph's mind that he had rightly heard this dream. But there's some language here, geographically, that I think would have really popped for the original audience once again, and that is this language of Egypt. Now, already we're messing with the idea of the family of faith, the family of God, the people of God. In the first one and three-quarter chapters of the book of Matthew, we got this genealogy, we got all of this, Jesus fulfillment idea that Jesus is the completion of this story. And there are even a couple of little hints that we've looked at that maybe this story is meant to go beyond the boundaries of the Jewish people. And so here again, well, we're getting a little nod in that direction. I mean, what happened in Egypt, right? I mean, this is this is a huge episode in the history of the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. Joseph is famously sold into slavery there by his brothers, and he kind of had to come in because he's kind of a jerk and kind of arrogant. But Joseph changes while he's in Egypt and grows in maturity and humility and righteousness, and he accomplishes these amazing things and helps the Egyptians and earns the favor of the Egyptians. But over time, the pharaohs they come and go and they forget who he is, and the Hebrew people end up in slavery after the brothers are all reconciled, and then you have to have the whole Exodus thing. And Moses is, of course, the character who is raised up to resolve that situation. Now, Moses, I look if there's a Mount Rushmore of first century Hebrew heroes of the past in the Jewish mind. I mean, okay, you definitely got Abraham, you definitely got Moses. Surely Elijah would have to be on there for as much as he comes up. And then I would guess David. Hmm, I should have thought about this in advance. Now I'm gonna stick with those four for now. That might be something to fight about on the subreddit at some point. But I think Moses, we can at least say for sure, occupies one of the first two spots with Abraham. It seems like Matthew is hinting at this idea that Jesus is somehow a new Moses, whereas Moses is the one who received that big conditional covenant, and you all be God and you'll be my people, and if you obey me, I'll bless you, and if you disobey me, I'll curse you. And either way, everybody will know that I'm God. Moses is the guy through whom this people that God creates out of thin air really takes shape with that covenant. Is Matthew hinting that Jesus is going to play the same role? Well, at this point, he's not really answering the question, but he is pointing in that direction. Whatever the case, Egypt is gonna make your brain go, oh, now, hmm, that raises some questions. The same way that if we're talking about military history in the modern era and somebody mentions Russia or the long winter there, that idea is gonna pop for French people thinking of Napoleon's fate there, or German people thinking of World War II and how the German offensive on the Second Front really sputtered as it got into the teeth of very difficult to conquer Russia. Sometimes geography carries this whole story and reminiscence of the past, and I think that's how it would have been received here. Well, lest there is any question, we're gonna get this uh solidified a little bit as we move forward. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, out of Egypt I will call my son. Well, oh great, Herod's dead. But verse 16, when Herod realized, okay, we're doing one of those things where we jump back and forth with the timeline a little bit, we're seeing through the Egypt thing all the way in verses 13 through 15 from the perspective of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. And then we're gonna jump back and find out what happened with Herod. So we'll get to that in a minute. But first, what's the deal with this prophecy? Out of Egypt, I called my son. Well, I'm gonna scroll down to the bottom here as a little note. Hosea 11.1. Oh, that's so weird. I just happened to have that exact page mark. It's almost as if I prepare sometimes. This is what Hosea 11:1 says. When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Now, interesting that Matthew only quotes the second half of that because it seems like the first half is actually really pertinent as well. So, what's going on here with this prophecy thing? Again, we have to think about what prophecy means in the mind of the New Testament authors, and particularly Matthew. Does it mean, on this day this thing shall happen, and then this will be the completion of the prophecy, like the prediction about Cyrus letting the Jewish people go back and rebuild? Like that's a very predictive prophecy. And out of Egypt, I called my son, called, that's past tense. I don't know. That one doesn't really look all that predictive to me. So I think we can write that one out as not being a literal fulfillment. Uh, we could also talk about this being uh an allegory that is meant to just conjure memories for people. And I think that sort of works as well. But I think the better read in terms of what does fulfillment mean in this context is what we've seen right across the board so far in Matthew. And that is the idea that it is a completion of a historical and theological arc that is lobbed forward into the future by the Old Testament and lands in convergence with all of these other theological and historical arcs on the person of Jesus. In other words, it is yet another ba-ba-da-da-ba. Well, first of all, when Israel was a child, I loved him. So the the relationship with the Israelite people is really solidified. They really effectively become a people in Egypt. So this is again sort of a birth narrative of the Old Testament compared with the birth narrative of the completion of the Old Testament in Jesus. But what else happened in Egypt? Well, remember you got the Moses narrative with the little baby being put in the basket because Pharaoh wants to kill all the babies, and he gets rescued by this crazy situation in Egypt. And then as Moses grows up, this is who God uses to redeem the situation here, even though Moses is very flawed, and then Moses leads his people out of that situation. And so again, I think the key note in this completion narrative is that Jesus is a new Moses, and that as a new Moses, he is the being around whom the creation of this new family of faith is going to center. Now, just to be clear, I don't think any of these things in isolation would be enough for a first century Jewish audience member to be like, how might I be saved? I am prepared to give my life to the Lord Jesus. I hear just as I am playing in the background, and it is sweaty conversion time. I don't think that's where their brains would go. But all of these things are just hitting one little point after the next. And we're not talking about an audience here that needs to be reached through propositional argumentation, the way you or I might argue with somebody in a debate today. We're talking about a mind that operated differently. I wouldn't say better or worse. I would just say differently. The notion of story and story arcs would have carried much more weight than it does for you or I today. Story and story arc, that's something we assign after the fact now to make ourselves feel better about things. Here, this was a vehicle by which truth was carried. And there'd been a whole lot of evidence to support that that was a reasonable way to view the world and to view a people or an individual's interaction with God. So we're ticking a lot of boxes, we're raising a lot of questions. And again, if you're listening to this and you're like, that's just not enough for me at this point. That's okay. I don't think it was enough for the original audience either. But Matthew is laying a groundwork that I think is gonna have really big payoffs as we go down the road. And for some of you, you're gonna look at that and be like, yep, that's why I believe in this thing. For others of you, you're gonna look at that and go, this is the first time this has ever actually made sense because we've just taken the time to actually look at all of these connections one bit at a time instead of just rushing through. For others of you, you're gonna be like, it sounds like that could make sense, but you just do a terrible job of explaining it. So maybe I'll go and read a book or something about it, which I would highly recommend. And for others of you yet, you might get through with the whole process and say, I understand my Christian friends better now, and I'm not convinced. Well, Jesus actually predicted that there would be a multitude of responses to the story about him and to his teachings. So no surprise there. Okay, so clumsily landing the plane here because of time. If you're not catching my opening illustration of what I was driving at, it's real simple. Herod's a monster who leaves the legacy of monsterhood. And Joseph is awesome and faithful and loves his kid and loves his wife and listens to God and is a model of righteousness, even though he drops out of the story right after this chapter. Hey, on the way out the door though, uh huge thank you once again to everybody who supports this program at patreon.com slash the tmbh podcast. I say this a lot, and the reason I say it a lot is because it's true. We're doing this because you exist. Thank you for making it happen. All right, I'm Matt, and this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Harrod Baby Murder Spree tomorrow. Man, that was a terrible pitch to tomorrow. Please come back. I promise it'll be more fun than that sounded. All right, later.