Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

 

 

Introduction: Matthew’s Account of Jesus

This Advent season, we’ve been going through the early portions of the Gospel of Matthew. In the fourth week of Advent, historically in church, the theme has been love. So week one is hope, week two, peace, week three, joy, week four, love. So it’s probably no surprise to you where this sermon is headed. We’ll be talking about the love of God at some point.

What we’ve seen so far in the first chapter and a half of the Gospel of Matthew is, Matthew, who was a disciple of Jesus, is a Jewish Christian now writing to Jews who predominantly are not Christians. He’s making an appeal to them to believe on Jesus. He’s making an appeal that Jesus is the rightful king, that he is the heir to David’s throne, and that he fulfills all of the expectations of the Old Testament, that he is the long-promised Messiah.

That’s the case that Matthew is making on behalf of Jesus. So we saw in week one that Matthew starts with the genealogy, and he shows how the crown would have passed from David all the way down to Jesus. He also alludes to the fact that Herod, who is not a genuine Jew and not in the lineage of David, is not the rightful king of the Jews. He’s been put there by the Romans, and he is a puppet king. He is illegitimate.

After that, we see Matthew telling us about Joseph and Mary, who are engaged. Mary gets pregnant. She tells Joseph that it was the work of the Holy Spirit. He thinks that she’s bonkers, but he loves her and respects her enough to break off the engagement quietly. He’s not going to bring shame to her. That’s his goal.

But an angel appears and tells him, Mary is carrying a child who has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. That she is a virgin, and you can take her at her word. So then Joseph loves Mary and cares for her well. We see this in the early section of the Gospel of Matthew. They end up traveling to Bethlehem, the city of David. And there Jesus is born.

That fulfills a prophecy. Some magi, these wise men from the east, show up and they worship Jesus and bring him gifts and then Herod, who had interacted with these wise men, had told them, when you find out where this new king is, where this royal baby has been born, tell me where he is so that I can come and worship him as well. But of course, Herod’s plan is not to worship the king. Herod’s plan instead is to kill this newborn king.

He is going to squash any rivals, any would-be rivals to his power. So the magi, under the instruction of angels, go through a different way. They do not travel back, and they don’t interact with Herod again. This is where we’ve come to now in Matthew chapter 2, we see also through the first chapter and a half thus far that Matthew has highlighted two specific prophecies that Jesus fulfills. And he’s very precise.

He specifically calls out exactly where that prophecy is. There’s no ambiguity. Anyone reading this knows exactly what where in the Old Testament, Matthew is finding these prophecies. We’ll see that he does that two more times in the next few verses. We also see this elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew, where Matthew is very precise.

When he’s alluding to a prophecy, he wants you to know exactly where that prophecy comes from. There’s no ambiguity. That’s important because at the end of this chapter, he makes a statement that does feel ambiguous. It’s a departure from what Matthew typically does. We’ll see that in a minute.

Throughout this chapter, we see that Matthew is making the case that Jesus is the one that the Old Testament prophets had talked about, had prophesied about for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is all we get from the childhood of Jesus, from Matthew’s Gospel. At the beginning of chapter 3, he skips ahead many years to where Jesus is beyond age 30, and doesn’t give us any details from the time that Jesus is very young until Jesus is well into his 30s.

Three of the four Gospels give us almost nothing about that season of life. The Gospel of Luke gives us one mention of one moment when Jesus is 12. Many of you are familiar with this moment where Jesus gets lost when his parents are at the temple. Other than that, we know very little about the life of Jesus from his earliest years up until his public ministry begins again at age 30.

So before we move on to his public ministry, before we fast forward from the childhood of Jesus to the adulthood of Jesus, Matthew wants to drive home one significant point. He uses the title that Jesus is known by. He alludes to Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth to drive home a particular point. When you first read it on face value to us 21st-century readers, it doesn’t make total sense. But when you examine it closely, you realize that Matthew is unveiling for us a profound truth that has real application for our lives. So let’s pray one more time, and then we’ll look at the text together.

Father in heaven, you are so kind, you are merciful. You came to this planet and exposed yourself to all of the pains. You were disgraced and despised so that we would not have to be disgraced and despised. You were rejected so that we could be accepted. Because you love us, you did this. And this morning, I say thank you, God, thank you for the Gospel of Matthew, this gospel that gives us great insight into your kingdom and your royal reign.

God, I ask that you would use the words of Matthew this morning to transform us, to shape us, to mold us. And lastly, God, I pray if there’s anyone in this room who does not know you, who’s not genuinely born again, I pray that today, they would put their faith in Christ and Christ alone. We ask these things in the matchless name of Christ.

Amen.

 

The Prophecies of the Messiah

If you have your Bibles, go to Matthew, chapter 2, verse 13.

“Now when they departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him’.”

So they had been in Bethlehem. They’re there for some time. We don’t know exactly how long they’re there. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. But eventually, Herod is on the move. He’s going to come after this baby. So an angel tells Joseph, Take Mary, take the baby, and flee to Egypt. They lived in Egypt for a while. We don’t know how long, but it seems like maybe a few years. It seems like Jesus’s earliest years were spent living in the nation of Egypt. Speaking of Joseph, Verse 14:

“And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’.”

This is another moment where Matthew quotes from an Old Testament prophet. It’s an exact quotation from the prophet Hosea. Anyone familiar with the Old Testament would not be confused as to what he’s saying. The prophet Hosea had given this prophecy that the Messiah would come out of Egypt. So the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, but ends up in Egypt, and then comes out of Egypt. All of this is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit to fulfill that which had been prophesied. Verse 16 says this:

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.”

It appears that a period of time has passed from the time that Herod interacted with the wise men until this moment where he realizes he was tricked. It looks like almost two years have gone by. Herod feels a need to have any baby boy who’s 2 years old or younger, to have them slaughtered, killed. This is a heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, vile moment we see. Herod is so desperate to hold onto his power, he kills every baby boy in the town of Bethlehem to make sure that he kills the one.

I was wrestling with this passage this week, and I thought to myself, Lord, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, and by an angel he escapes, and yet that results in the death of so many baby boys who lived in Bethlehem at that time. Most scholars estimate it’s probably somewhere in the hundreds. Hundreds of baby boys ages 2 and under are murdered by Herod’s soldiers. I think to myself, God, that doesn’t seem right. That doesn’t seem fair.

I wrestled with that this week in my own personal prayer time. Why would God allow that to happen? The fact that Jesus was born in that town puts a target on all these little kids. I don’t have a good answer for that other than to say I trust that God is good and that he is in control, that he would work that out for his glory. Imagine one of the other women who were in the town, maybe one of the other teenage girls who had a child who was Mary’s age.

I can imagine Jesus, who’s maybe a year old, playing with another little one-year-old boy. Then Joseph takes Mary and Jesus, and they flee to Egypt. A few months later, Herod’s boys ride into the town, and they say, Where’s the kid? Where was he born? She has to watch her baby be murdered by Herod’s henchmen.

In January, God willing, we plan to do a topical series. We won’t do that often around here, but we’ll do a series on suffering. I’ve been asked as a pastor many times, Why does God let bad things happen to good people? I am going to answer that question; you might not like the answer, but we’re going to spend a few weeks in January talking about suffering. Why does God allow the suffering that he allows? We’re going to hit that head on in January, Lord willing.

But it’s a heart-wrenching moment, and I think it’s fair and helpful for us to pause and to think about the disgustingness, the vile nature of sin that would lead someone like Herod to kill hundreds of baby boys. Then he says this. Go to verse 17. Matthew says this:

“Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; She refused to be comforted, because they are no more.’”

Again, Matthew is saying this is the moment where all these mothers have their baby boys killed in Bethlehem, and these mothers are weeping. This fulfills another prophecy that Jeremiah gave us about 600 years before Jesus was born. That all of Israel would be laid waste. The Babylonians were going to come in, kill a bunch of them, and those who survived would be dragged off into slavery in Babylon. That the nation of Israel would be desolate, that the land would be desolate. So Jeremiah is prophesying that this is going to happen.

Jeremiah says, when the Babylonians come in, there’s going to be a lot of crying. There’s going to be a voice heard in Rama, it’s a region there, there’s going to be lots of weeping and loud lamentations. Rachel is one of the ancestors of the Jewish people. The mothers of Israel are going to be weeping and crying because their children will be dying.

Jeremiah is alluding to the events of his day, around 580 BC, when the Babylonians would come in. But Matthew says Jeremiah is talking about the events of his day. But there’s a dual meaning to what Jeremiah said. Jeremiah is prophesying about the events in his day, but his words are also a prophecy of the events in Jesus’ day. Matthew is saying, when Jeremiah said this, when he made this statement, he was also alluding to the women in Bethlehem who were crying, devastated because their baby boys had been killed.

Matthew is saying, here yet again is another prophecy that Jesus fulfills. This is the fourth time we’ve seen this through the first two chapters of Matthew, where he has called out a specific moment in the Old Testament and has said that it was also alluding to Jesus. Jeremiah also prophesied to Israel, to the Israelites, when the Babylonians were coming in. He says the exile is not going to go on forever. Within 70 years, God’s going to bring you back.

God’s going to restore you. The language of the Old Testament was Israel’s consolation. The consolation of Israel is this idea that God’s going to bring them back and restore them in the land, and that they will flourish once again. But Jeremiah tells us that the women of his day took no comfort in this. The women in Bethlehem took no comfort in the fact that while their baby boys were killed, there would be a Messiah to come.

So Jeremiah is telling us here that there’s a prophecy. Babylonians are going to come in, they’re going to kill a bunch of kids, they’re going to drag you off as slaves, and God’s going to bring you back, and you’re going to flourish. That begins to happen. Within 40 years, some of the Jews returned in multiple ways, and by the end of that 70-year mark, most of the Jews had returned and had begun to rebuild the nation of Israel. But they never really flourished the way the prophecy said. They never quite flourish.

When they’re coming back, they’re under Persian rule. Then, after the Persians, it’s the Macedonian Greeks who are oppressing them. After the Macedonian Greeks, it’s the Ptolemy empire, another Greek empire to come, and oppressing them. There’s a brief period where Israel has independence under a group known as the Maccabees. But the nation doesn’t flourish during that time. There’s a lot of civil unrest and lots of problems going on there. Not long after that, the Romans came into town and occupied them.

When Jesus shows up on the scene, the Romans are in charge, and they are brutal tyrants. They treat the Jewish people brutally. So this idea of Israel’s consolation, that God was going to bring them back and reestablish them in a way that they would flourish. That prophecy has not been fulfilled. Matthew is saying now it’s going to be fulfilled. There have been lots of problems, but there’s a moment coming where Israel’s consolation is finally going to come about.

It’s not quite the way you thought it was going to be. It’s going to be through a God man named Jesus. It won’t just be for the nation of Israel, it will be for all people everywhere that would believe on him. This is the prophecy that Jeremiah is telling us. If you’re an astute Old Testament person or a student, you would pick up on what Matthew was alluding to. He’s saying, remember what they were looking forward to, a moment when Israel would be consoled and comforted, they would flourish. Now is the time it’s going to come, and it’s going to come through this baby who was just born.

 

The Prophecy of the Nazareth

As Matthew is telling his story, he’s highlighting particular things. Luke gives us a version of these events. John gives us a version of some of these events. Mark gives us a version of some of these events. These events are given to us throughout the Gospels, and Matthew highlights particular things for a particular reason. Look at verse 19 again, he’s highlighting a particular thing here. Verse 19 says this:

“But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought to kill the child’s life are dead’.”

So Herod is dead, it is safe to go back. He rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea, Archelaus is Herod’s son. He was afraid to go there. Being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. So he, Joseph, is leaving Egypt now, after several years in Egypt, headed back to Israel. But he doesn’t go back to his hometown of Bethlehem. He doesn’t go back to Jerusalem or any other city that he may have lived in. He goes into a region that’s somewhat unknown to him, the region of Galilee.

They end up in a town called Nazareth. Galilee is where the rednecks live, the country folk of the first century. They are the first century Jewish version of a redneck. That’s where they lived. If you are a redneck, I mean no offense. There’s nothing wrong with being a redneck. Galilee was the place of the people who had limited education.

They were fishermen, people who worked with their hands, people who were sort of disconnected from the center of commerce or politics. They were backwoods people. They didn’t get involved in what was going on in Jerusalem or the cultural engagement of the day. They didn’t get involved in all this stuff. The people who live there don’t engage with the rest of the country. That’s how Galilee was.

Joseph thought that would probably be a wise place to go. We can go to the backwoods and live in a small town. No one will know where we are, and we won’t ruffle any feathers. No one back in Jerusalem will know where we are or try to seek us out or kill us. He ends up in Galilee in a town called Nazareth. Here’s what Matthew says: This is the climax of the story. Everything is headed toward this moment. He says this in verse 23, speaking of Joseph:

“He went and he lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.”

So Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to the city of Nazareth. Nazareth was one of the smaller towns. Most scholars estimate the population of Nazareth at this time to be no more than 400 people or so. Small town, everyone knows their name. That kind of place. No one locks the doors. They’re living in this place called Nazareth. Matthew is saying all these events that happened, Bethlehem to Egypt to Galilee, Herod and the Magi, all of this that took place, is God providentially putting this together for one particular reason.

So that what the prophets spoke about might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. It was so important that Jesus would be labeled a Nazarene that God orchestrated all of these events so that he would end up in Nazareth. That seems like a big deal. All of this would happen so that Jesus would end up in Nazareth. Why is that important? Matthew says that this is to fulfill what the prophets said.

There’s one problem with that. Nowhere in the Old Testament is it ever prophesied that Jesus would come from Nazareth. So this creates a problem for us, 21st-century readers who might be unfamiliar. Matthew is saying that the Old Testament prophesied that the Messiah would come out of Nazareth. But the Old Testament doesn’t prophesy that.

I want to say that you need to give more attention to the text because Matthew does something here in this verse that is very different than what we see at any other moment in his gospel when he’s alluding to the prophets. He’s usually very precise. He calls out the name of the prophet. He gives you a very clear understanding of exactly where he’s getting that from.

In addition to that, Matthew intends to write this and circulate this amongst a bunch of people who know the Old Testament. Matthew knows he’s going to get fact-checked. There’s no doubt. He knows that if he were to make something up or get this something wrong that he’s going to undermine his entire argument. It makes no logical sense whatsoever that Matthew would allow this sort of mistake to be recorded.

It’s an irresponsible or irrational assessment of Matthew’s work here. So what is he doing then? Why is he making this elaborate case that Nazareth is so important? When he says prophets and he doesn’t allude to anything, what he’s doing here, He’s saying, I’m telling you what the prophets of all of them in totality, what the general theme they’ve given us, the general motif of the prophecies, the 700 plus prophecies of the Old Testament, all the prophecies from all the prophets, they point at one thing.

No, there is not one prophet or one scripture that tells us he’s going to be a Nazarene. But the general overarching theme of all of the prophecies tells us he’s going to end up in a place like Nazareth. That’s why understanding Nazareth is important. There’s a lot of scholarship on the city of Nazareth from the first century.

 

Rejected, Despised and Overlooked

Nazareth was a backwoods, low-educated, and very poor place. There’s also quite a bit of evidence from extra-biblical literature that people who lived there were quite immoral. They weren’t religiously fervent the way you would get in Jerusalem or other parts of Israel. They were apathetic toward the Jewish faith.

This is the place where Jesus would spend his most formidable years from the time he was about five or six or seven years old until the time he was in his late 20s. This is where he spends most of his life. Nazareth is not respected at all. In fact, when Jesus is calling his own disciples later, we see this in John chapter 1. Jesus calls Nathaniel, a fellow Galilean.

He says, Nathaniel, come be one of my disciples. Nathaniel’s like, you’re from Nazareth. Nathaniel goes, Can anything good come from Nazareth? Why would I be a disciple of someone from Nazareth? They’re the lowest of the low. I mean, I’m from Galilee, and we’re pretty low. But you’re even lower than I. Matthew is summing up the general motif.

He’s saying the Old Testament prophets were, in essence, telling us that Jesus was going to live a life in which he was rejected, despised, looked down upon, overlooked, underrated, underappreciated, abandoned, eventually betrayed, and murdered. God wanted the Messiah to be the underdog to one who was underestimated, the one who was rejected and despised. It’s a big part of the motif of the Old Testament when the prophecies of the Messiah are coming forth.

What better way to ensure that it becomes a part of the ministry of the Messiah. The identity of the Messiah is to make sure he grows up in a town that is totally despised. A big part of the ministry of the Messiah was to take on rejection so that we could be accepted. God says that element of his ministry is so important that he was going to orchestrate the events of his life, so he would end up in the town that people despise the most.

Eventually, Jesus comes from Nazareth and has a ministry where he is greatly despised. There are many times in the Old Testament where we see this language given. The most famous is from Isaiah 53. It says this:

“He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened his mouth not; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before and before its shearers is silent, he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away.”

We see this elsewhere in Psalm 118. A very famous verse quoted twice in the New Testament. Psalm 118 says this:

“The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.”

When I was in college, between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I came home.
I was going to college in Illinois, and I went back home to Philadelphia, my hometown, for the summer. I got a job working in construction. That was the last summer I ever did that, because that’s for the birds. So I worked one summer of construction, about seven weeks, and decided I was never gonna do that again. But one of the jobs I had in construction was working for a general contractor.

One of the jobs I had was to mix mud. It was like, you know, 95 to 100 degrees every day, 98% humidity in Philadelphia. If you’ve ever mixed mud, it’s terrible. The contractor I worked for had bought this huge water tower that had been knocked down. The water tower is eight stories tall, knocked down tons of bricks, this big, huge pile of bricks. My job was to go through the brick piles and pick them out, and look at the bricks that might still be good and clean and still be usable.

Then I would use a diamond-tipped cutter to get all the mortar off and clean the bricks. I did that for seven weeks. In between, when the bricklayers needed help, I’d go mix the mud for them and then go back and clean the bricks. I did that for seven weeks of my life. By the time I was done, by the end of the summer, the pile of bricks that I had cleaned was about four feet tall, about eight feet wide.

But there were a couple of times where I would go to these bricks and I would look at them and I would think, these are not usable. So I would throw them into a discard pile. Sometimes the General Contractor would come up to me, and he would see a brick and go, This was pretty good. He would try to help me see, but to me, it looked ugly and unusable. Could you imagine if one of the bricks that I had tossed into the discard pile would become the cornerstone of the new building that was being built? It would become the most important stone, the one upon which all the weight of the building is held. How foolish I would look.

You threw that one away, and it became the most important brick in the entire building. Psalm 118 is saying that’s exactly what the Jews did with Jesus. They looked at him and said, he’s useless. He’s a dirty old brick. We’ve got no use for that one. They discard him. He’s a Nazarene. Yet he becomes the cornerstone for God’s plan to save the world. Jesus was rejected over and over and over again in his life by people who lived in Nazareth and people who were outside of Nazareth, in part because he was from Nazareth.

 

The Pain of Rejection

Rejection is a painful thing. I’ve done some research on rejection. There’s a lot of good research in the world of psychology on rejection. There’s a lot of terrible research coming from the world of psychology. A lot of garbage that we should not listen to. But there are some good things. A lot of the studies that have come out on rejection have been really helpful. It shows that if you’re rejected over and over again in your life, it rewires your brain in a dysfunctional way. It causes significant damage to your cognitive abilities.

Your mental faculties are impacted by rejection. Health is impacted by rejection, and of course, the human psyche and self-esteem esteem greatly impacted by rejection. All of us have experienced rejection at some point, in big ways or small ways. Some of us wanted to be friends with someone. They didn’t reciprocate. We sent someone a text message, but they didn’t respond. We didn’t get picked for the kickball team we wanted to be on when we were young.

I remember when I was in high school, there was a girl I wanted to date. She turned me down. Couldn’t believe it. There are all sorts of reasons why we feel rejected. Divorce. Whether it’s your divorce or a parent’s divorce, an absent parent or an abusive parent, or an emotionally distant parent. People who have been orphaned obviously deal with rejection significantly.

I recently had a conversation with someone who’s adopted. Adopted into a great Christian family. Fantastic parents, love them. Very healthy family in so many ways. I was talking to him, and he told me he loves his parents; they’re awesome. He’s so thankful for them. And yet he still has this sense that his biological parents rejected him. He can’t shake the feeling.

We’ve been overlooked for promotions or jobs we wanted. Getting bullied at school, not getting accepted into a school maybe you wanted to get into. There are all sorts of reasons why we might experience rejection. I’ve been dealing with this very recently. I’ll confess to you a bit here. In church planting, fundraising is a big part of what we do. I’ve spent a lot of time fundraising, and I hate it. It’s exhausting. I hate asking for money, but it’s a part of what we do.

I’m regularly reaching out to churches and people around the country. There was a grant that I applied for that would have been significant. $200,000 grant over three years. It would have been game-changing for what we would do here, ministry-wise. I went through the process and applied, and I got rejected. A friend of mine in Hunters Creek planted a church, got accepted. I’m thankful for my friend. I love my friend, thankful for the ministry. But I gotta be honest, I couldn’t help but have the feeling of going, Why? Is he better than me? Is he a better preacher? Is he a better dad? Is he a better pastor? Is he better looking? I don’t know.

I don’t know what it was. I found myself driving, just feeling rejected by this. Then, a couple of weeks later, Malaina and I applied for another grant. This one was $70,000. There are over 88 applicants for this grant, and there were seven finalists. So they flew us up to North Carolina, this two-day interview process, and we were told by someone that it’s highly likely that they were going to select three of seven to give $70,000 to. We were told highly likely that we would be one of the three. And I was very excited.

I had already spent the money in my mind. Then I get an email a couple of days later, and they had decided to go a different direction. We didn’t get the grant. I just feel rejected. I guess I’m not good enough. All these emotions start flowing through. I’m a human being. I’m a 42-year-old man, and I’ve walked with Jesus for 27 years. I’d love to tell you that I have no insecurities, that I’m perfectly emotionally healthy, and none of those types of things bother me. But that would be a lie. Those things bother me. And that bothered me for several days.

I was frustrated. I was frustrated with the Lord. And then I was reading through Isaiah 53, thinking, you know who experienced rejection far worse than me? My Savior. You know who doesn’t reject me? My Savior. Rejection in and of itself is not sin. We’re not sinning. We’re rejected. But so often it leads us very quickly to sin if we’re not careful. Often, it can lead us to some pretty vile, wicked sins. We get bitter, jealous, and envious. Those emotions cause us to make some really poor choices if we’re not careful. Self pity, a desperate, crippling need for approval, an unwillingness to show compassion toward others. All these things are impacted, caused by rejection. Fierce independence is often fueled by rejection.

 

How Do We Navigate Rejection?

Someone’s been rejected, and so they refuse to take accountability or come under someone’s leadership. The refusal to acknowledge their own sins or mistakes. That’s American society, which is fueled by people’s fear of rejection. I’m going to go do my own thing and not be connected to this. I’m going to run away from you before you have the chance to reject me. How do we navigate this? Jesus gives us a model for how to navigate rejection. There are two ways we do it.

1. Take it to Jesus in prayer.

Friends, Jesus gets it. No one experienced rejection like him. God orchestrated the events of his entire life to ensure he would grow up in a town where he would experience rejection. That was God’s plan. He experienced it greatly. He knows how you feel. He gets you. He cares about you. If you’ve been rejected or despised, overlooked, abandoned, disenfranchised, ostracized, misunderstood. Jesus understands all of that. He gets you, and he invites you to come to him. Look what Hebrews chapter 4 verses 15 and 16 say:

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

We don’t have a high priest who doesn’t understand what we face. He understands exactly what you face. The writer of Hebrew says this in chapter 4, verse 16:

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

With confidence, because we know we have a high priest who can sympathize. Have you experienced rejection? Have you been despised? Do you feel abandoned or alone? Jesus gets you, and he says, Come to me confidently and in me you will find help. Take those moments of pain and those emotions to the Lord in your prayer closet.

2. Choose to believe the truth of Scripture over the feelings that we feel.

The truth is, he was rejected, and we are accepted. He did that because he loves you. Christians here today, God loves you. He loves you and he sent His Son, motivated by a Holy love. Jesus was willing to be despised and rejected because he loves you. John chapter 1 says this, verses 10 to 12:

“He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, yet the world did not recognize Him.”

Unbelievable. He made the world, and the world refused to acknowledge who he was. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. The Jews didn’t receive Him. Yet to all who have received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God. He was rejected by his own. But Jesus says, but you know what? Those who believe in me, I’ll to give you the right to become a child of God. First John 3:1 says this:

“See what kind of love the Father has lavished on us?”

Do you know that the type of love he’s given us, the category of love? This is it.

“That we should be called children of God.”

That’s what he says. Of course, John 3:16, probably the most famous verse in the Bible:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Whoever believes, motivated by his love, sent his one and only Son to save you because he loves you. That’s the truth of Scripture. Christ was born for you. Born so that you could experience his love. Church, know that this morning. Know that he loves you. You. He was born for you.

 

The Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus

We must remember that Christ was not merely born and did not accomplish our salvation through his birth alone, but also through his birth, life, death, and resurrection. At Christmas, we want to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But the birth of Jesus, divorced from the mission of Jesus, has little value. We’re celebrating 2000 years later because of who was born and why he was born.

It was God coming to save his people through his birth, life, death, and resurrection. Jesus lived a perfect life. He fulfills all the expectations of the Old Testament. Along the way, he experiences plenty of rejections. Then he goes to a brutal Roman cross. There, God the Father takes all the guilt and shame of the world and puts it on Jesus. God the Father punishes him, pours out his wrath. God the Father punishes the sin that was placed on Jesus.

Your sin and my sin. It should have been you on the cross. It should have been me on the cross. But Jesus dies in our place. But he doesn’t stay dead. God the Father vindicates him by raising him from the dead. Jesus then defeats death, sin, and the grave. So at Christmas, we do not merely celebrate the birth of Christ. We celebrate the reason for the birth of Christ, for the rescue of his people, for Israel’s consolation. Not ethnic, national Israel, not the Jews, spiritual Israel. All who would believe on Him.

 

Closing: Receive The Newborn King

If you are here and you have not put your faith in Jesus, if you have not truly believed on him, what he has accomplished does not apply to you until you fully believe. If you have not genuinely believed, you have not wholeheartedly trusted in Him, If you are not in a place where you’re all in on Jesus, I love Him, I’m living for Him, I’m pursuing Him. I genuinely believe that there is no salvation outside of him, and I am committed to Him. If that is not you, the work of Christ does not apply to you. You have not been forgiven of your sin, and you are not headed for God’s family.

But it can apply to you today. If you today would believe in Jesus and say, I am all in on him and put all your faith in Christ and Christ alone, the work of Christ will apply to you. You will be forgiven, and you will be adopted into his family. You will be declared a child of God. If you are not a genuine believer this morning, I implore you, believe on him today.

I want to close this morning with a quote from a pastor by the name of R.C. Sproul. Sproul was a pastor on the east side of Orlando for many years. He died in 2017. I think I’ve read more books by R.C. Sproul than any other author. R.C. Sproul said this in a Christmas Eve service a few years before he died, talking about the birth of Christ. He said, “Where are you with Christ? For his birth is of no meaning to you if you are not right with him, and there is no middle ground, there is no neutrality. You’re either with him or you’re against him. Either his friend or his foe, his enemy or his family.” As you examine your own heart this morning, either you have rejected him, and so too you shall be rejected, or you have received him, in which case you too shall be received by the Heavenly Father.

You need to answer this question. It’s the most important question you will ever answer in your lifetime. Your eternal destiny depends on how you answer this question for yourself. Do you receive this newborn king, or do you reject Him? That is the question at hand. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather this morning and to look at a few verses here from the Gospel of Matthew. God, I thank you that you experienced all that we’ve experienced in this life, that you were rejected, you were despised. So you understand how we feel. You get us. God, thank you that we have a high priest who understands us. You sympathize with us, and you invite us to come to you confidently.

So, Lord, I pray that when we are feeling rejected, when we are feeling abandoned or alone, we are experiencing these emotions, the emotions of the Nazarene, when we are experiencing that, and we are tempted to allow that to fuel sin in our life. God, I pray that you would give us the grace and the courage to come to you, to take it to you in our prayer closet, to bring those hurts and pains to you.

God, when we bring them to you, would you give us the grace to experience your healing power? I pray, would you do that? I pray that we would believe the truth of Scripture more than our feelings. That we would believe that we have been loved, redeemed, and adopted. May we believe the truth that you were rejected so that we could be accepted.

May we believe the truth that you love us. Lord, sometimes it’s so hard to believe that you love me. It’s so hard to believe it. It’s so easy to believe it for others. I’m so confident that you love every person in this room who has put their faith in you. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I struggle to believe that, Lord. It’s not a felt reality. God, would you help that become a felt reality in my own soul.

I pray that for anyone in this room who has struggled with that, Lord, would you bestow upon them the supernatural ability to believe that God loves? That God loves with a fierce, Holy love. May that shape the way we live our lives each day from this day to the day we see you face to face. May we believe on you. God, I thank you for the opportunity to put faith in you.

And, Lord, again I pray if there’s anyone in here that’s not done that. May your Holy Spirit work in their heart, and may they believe on you. In Christ’s name.

Amen.