When God Says Go, Do You Obey? - Matthew 2:13 - 3:6 (Session 3)

 God repeatedly guides Joseph during the dangerous early years of Jesus’ life. When Joseph is warned to flee to Egypt, he obeys immediately. Later, God directs him back to Israel and then to Galilee. In this session, Glenn and Steve discuss how Christians should think about dreams and spiritual experiences today and why every claimed message must ultimately be tested against Scripture. 

Matthew also continues emphasizing fulfilled prophecy. Jesus is born in Bethlehem, comes out of Egypt, and grows up in Nazareth—three very different locations that come together in the life of the Messiah. The discussion also examines Herod’s killing of the children in Bethlehem and why the event’s absence from surviving secular history is not especially surprising.

Then Matthew 3 introduces John the Baptist, a rough wilderness prophet with a simple message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We consider what repentance means, why John baptized in the Jordan, and how Isaiah’s prophecy identifies John as the herald preparing the way for the coming King.

Matthew 2:13–3:6 | The Book of Matthew - Session 3

Questions discussed in this session include: 

• Does God speak to people in dreams today? 
•  What about the modern messages people get from Mary? 
•  Were the accounts around Jesus’ birth accurate historically? 
• Does God provide guidance to those who follow Him? 

Transcript

Matthew’s Purpose And Today’s Passage

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. We're working our way through the Gospel of Matthew, a very rich book. Matthew was a tax collector. He was one of the 12 disciples, became an apostle. He presents Jesus to a Jewish audience as the king, the king of the Jews. He has a lot of things in it that focus on Judaism and are relevant to the Jewish people. He has just presented

Joseph’s Dream And The Flight

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Jesus as being born. We're going to pick up in Matthew chapter 2, verse 13. This is the place where Mary and Joseph take flight to Egypt. They've been warned in a dream. So Steve, if you could just read Matthew chapter 2, starting in verse 13, and go down to verse 23.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you. For Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him. So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother while it was still night and left for Egypt. He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken of by the Lord through the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son. Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, he became very enraged and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the Magi. Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled. A voice was heard in Rama, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted, because they were no more. But when Herod died, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, Get up, take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archalius was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Then after being warned by God in a dream, he left for the regions of Galilee, and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene.

Dreams, Discernment, And Scripture Tests

SPEAKER_01 2:32

So in verse 13, Joseph gets this message in a dream. And now years ago, I'm not sure about you, Steve, but I never used to hear anybody about getting messages and dreams. But in the last few years, we start to hear more and more of this, especially in terms of Muslims getting messages in dreams that ultimately lead them to Jesus. We've heard enough different stories of that and different accounts from different sources to where I think it's worth at least taking the question seriously about getting messages and dreams. Whether any one of them happened or not, we can't speak to somebody else's experience, but I think we can speak to the idea of getting messages in dreams and talk about that for just a minute. What I would encourage people to do, first of all, to be very careful about these things, simply because if we look at both the Bible and our own human experience, humans are very capable of deceiving ourselves. And if we're not careful, we can be self-deceived. It's very possible to see messages in dreams. Dreams are sort of unusual. I've had dreams of family members that I knew had died, and it's it's just a dream. There's no message from my ancestor there, things like that. So I think it's very possible to create a problem for ourselves if we take dreams and try to take messages in there without trying to confirm them with the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Wants and desires also get in the way. So sometimes you can interpret specific dreams because you're wanting to come to some sort of a conclusion or your desire is to some human element that's associated with it. So as you pointed out, you can create your own reality through interpreting these specific dreams that you might have.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Because we can be self-deceived, the Bible teaches us this, and we've seen it both in ourselves and in other people. The only way to truly measure any experience by truth, whether that's a true experience or a true message, is to take that to the Bible and check it out. And if it aligns with it, then great. If it doesn't align with it, then we need to reject our experience, no matter how real it is.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

A key difference between then and now also is that as believers, we have the Holy Spirit who is given to us as believers for the purpose of a comforter to give us wisdom and to help. We have the Holy Spirit as believers that are indwelling us, which is different. Holy Spirit was not indwelling people at the time. Holy Spirit was given and taken away by God for specific reasons at the time.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Most of the accounts I've heard were such that they would tell the person to go to a Bible or go to a Christian person for a message. And if that's the case, I would say that's a good thing. If they're merely saying go to this person and they're going to tell you some truth. And it's very specific. And again, we line that experience up with the Bible. If you're going to the correct person, I'd say that's a good thing. And I wouldn't see anything necessarily wrong with it. On the other hand, if you're getting messages that contradict things, then that's when I get very uncomfortable. There's been people that have gotten visions of Mary that give messages. You look at many of these messages that supposedly come from Mary, large amounts of them are what I would call bland and innocuous. It's sort of like, okay, be more spiritual. Okay, well, what does that mean? How do you measure whether that's true or false? It's just nice sounding language. In some cases, these spirits give messages that directly contradict the scriptures. And in which case we know for a fact, I don't care how real the experience is, those things we reject.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

The stories that I've heard with the Muslims, it usually comes about whenever they're actually truly seeking the truth of who the true God is. That's when they usually get the dream, is that they've been seeking for a while actual who is the actual God, and then that's when it comes. On some of these other things that you mentioned, it turns out that it's the glorification of Mary, and that's who's glorified out of it. It's not God that's glorified out of it. And the directive that they're getting, they attribute that then to Mary. They don't attribute it to God. The third thing is that we have to be aware that there are demonic spirits that we know that people can open themselves up with. Now, I don't believe that a Christian, a true Christian who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, can be indwelt by a demonic spirit. But somebody who is not a Christian, that is not a believer, I do believe that they can, if they invite it and want it, that they can't open themselves up to demonic spirits. And that's something that's very, very dangerous to be fooling with. There are deceptive spirits out there.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

And there have been enough false messages given over the decades and over the centuries that I think it gives us ample reason to be very careful. There's one Christian minister that was real popular in the media that claimed he saw an 800-foot-tall Jesus. There was a different one that claimed he had Jesus sit in the car next to him and ride along and give him messages. I think these are just really dangerous things that people claim to have these messages. Most of these, if not all of them, give messages that don't align with the scriptures. And the Bible tells us that the messages of the scriptures were once for all delivered to the saints. There's not blank pages on the back of the Bible with new messages that keep appearing. Anytime we get a specific message about salvation or things like that from a dream or a vision, we should walk, not run to the nearest exit. If on the other hand, they're saying, hey, what I need you to do is go find a Christian and learn from them, then I can't question that experience because it's not something that would contradict the scriptures necessarily. It's something that I would tell people is go find a Christian and learn from them. Getting messages from dreams is just really, really shaky at best. But there's been enough of these and people coming to Christ that I think it's not something we can just brush off.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Just to wrap it up, those are examples, those are non-Christians who are having these dreams. They're not Christians having dreams. One other thing is that in all of these examples, it says here, an angel of the Lord. So we had a session on what the angel of the Lord was in the Old Testament, and the conclusion was that it was a Christophany or pre-incarnate Christ. So this is not the case here. Now, when we get into the New Testament, we no longer see the angel of the Lord. We see an angel of the Lord. So it's a angel again, just means messenger. We see that these are messengers of God, Yahweh, who are coming to Joseph and to Mary, to the Magi, giving them direction and giving them warnings. And we see God directly working in their lives to guide them on what they need to do in these very early stages of Jesus' life.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

So the angel appears to Joseph, gives him a message, verse 13 and

Obedience Now And Prophecy Fulfilled

SPEAKER_01 9:58

14. The angel tells Joseph to leave for Egypt, and Joseph does so that night before dawn. So here's my question when God commands us to do something, how long should we wait before obeying?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Right away. Also, one thing is he's not taking other people. We've seen in the past with Abraham, he took Lot, took other people. He's doing exactly what they're telling to do. He takes him, Mary, Jesus, and they leave.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

And they did it right then. Verse 14 and 15, they go to Egypt, which fulfills this prophecy. Hosea 11:1 says, Out of Egypt, I called my son. What was the significance of Israel coming out of Egypt?

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Well, that's when they were coming out of Egypt into the promised land, where they were taking over the land that God had promised them before. Egypt in general kind of represents the world. And when they had come out of Egypt before, God led them out of Egypt. He brought them out of Egypt.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

While Israel was in Egypt, they were slaves. So they were slaves to Egypt and God enslaved to idols. God brought Israel out of Egypt into where? Promised land. Promised land. Which was as we went through Joshua, we said that signifies salvation. So this picture of coming out of Egypt into the promised land is a picture of leaving the old worldly ways with the false gods and going into God's best and into salvation. Egypt was physical slavery and it was slavery to these false gods. So that was the symbolism. When Jesus comes out of Egypt, what is the parallel? People are born slaves to what? Sin and slaves to idolatry of our own making. Who brings us out of slavery into salvation? Jesus does. That's one reason that Jesus came out of Egypt. So starting just so far with the beginning of Matthew and listing the prophecies that he's fulfilled. Chapter 1, verse 1, son of David, son of Abraham, chapter 1, virgin birth, chapter 2, from Bethlehem, also chapter 2, out of Egypt. In chapter 2, 17 and 18, the children were killed in Ramah, and he shall be called a Nazarene. Several of them so far that are fulfillments of prophecy. This fulfillment of prophecy gives credence, it gives blessing to the message and the messenger that they are correct. Without that, we just have somebody standing on the corner making claims.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

And when you take those on just the surface, you have these several different prophecies given at different times. And you think about it, it says the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem, he's going to come out of Egypt, and he's going to be a Nazarene. And if you just take those three prophecies on their own and you look at them, these are distinct regions. Bethlehem is just right near Jerusalem. Egypt obviously is way south in a completely different country. And Nazareth is up in the northern part of Israel. And so if you take those three before Jesus' birth, you look at him and you say, How is that going to happen? How is somebody going to be born in Bethlehem, come out of Egypt, and then but he's going to be a Nazarene? How is that going to happen? Well, when it does happen, then you can see it. Oh, okay, now I can see how that was. So that's many times how scripture is, too, is that as we look at it, maybe we don't understand what the scripture is or what the prophecy might be. But after it happens, you're able to look back and say, Oh, okay, now I see how that was uh depicted.

Herod’s Violence And Why History Is Quiet

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Chapter 2, verse 16. What does Herod do when he finds out about all this? Slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and its vicinity from two years old and under.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Because he had calculated from his discussions with the Magi roughly how old this is.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

And he's trying to kill them because of what again?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Because he doesn't want and and the be the king of Israel. He didn't want a kingly heir to be born.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

He was trying to do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

He was drunk with power. And he was probably also thinking about it to carry on his own lineage.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

There have been a question have arisen over the years about this and whether it would have ever been recorded in secular history. And people say, oh, well, how could this have happened and nobody else ever talked about it? Well, I submit that it would have been done quite easily if you just consider where this was. The town of Bethlehem was not a big city. This is a small, what we would call today, a little community, really. We don't have to guess that. We we can know. In two different places in the Old Testament, it records the number of people coming back from the Babylonian captivity and where they went. So Nehemiah 7 records 188 people that went to Bethlehem, and Ezra 2 records 123. So this little town of Bethlehem, a few hundred people at the most, and a few hundred people, how many two-year-old and under boys would there be in a town that small? There's maybe 10 or 20 young boys at the most. This isn't mass slaughter of thousands of people. It's a couple of dozen, maybe. Also, this was an evil king in a rough age. If the king were to come along and kill people, who's gonna protest? I mean, you're gonna be the one to stand up and say, I'm gonna record this for history so that everybody else knows. Well, what's gonna happen to you? You'd get it too. So there was nobody there to record it that's not gonna be also killed. It really wasn't in the grand scheme of things. There were battles that killed way more people than this. And the fact that one king goes to a backwater town and killed a dozen or two young boys, it just wouldn't make the news. They get this guidance to go to Egypt. In verse 19, Joseph gets guidance from God to return from Egypt. And in verse 22, Joseph gets guidance from God to go to Galilee. Joseph gets a lot of guidance. Herod does not get a lot of guidance.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

No.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Does God provide guidance to those who follow him?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, most definitely.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

And if you're not getting much guidance from God, what might be a valid question to ask? Well, sometimes it's because God, I mean, there are places we can't make a categorical thing because sometimes sometimes God purposely leaves people out because he wants to test faith. But nevertheless, where do we have guidance? We have guidance from the scriptures, right through the scriptures. People that are following God get a lot of guidance.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

And in order to get guidance from the scripture, you have to read the scriptures. It's not through osmosis, you just can't have it sitting on a table somewhere and going, okay, I'm gonna get guidance from the scriptures and never

Nazareth As Rejection And Prophecy

SPEAKER_00 16:36

read it.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

In Matthew, in a couple of these passages where he quotes these uh prophecies, in some of these places, he is uh paraphrasing some of the old testament prophets. And when they quoted Micah 5.2, it was a paraphrase. And in 223, it says, Shall be called a Nazarene. Well, there's not a verse in the Old Testament that says in just those words, shall be called a Nazarene. So that's raised some questions at some point, but we have to understand what it's doing. It's okay for them to paraphrase, and in the case of Shall be called a Nazarene, being called a Nazarene in those days, Nazareth was kind of across the tracks. It's sort of like an insult. It was the the other college. Oh, he graduated from that other school. That's no good. They were saying this was a place where nobody of record would ever be. But what it does say in the Old Testament is that the Messiah will be rejected and despised. Isaiah 53, 3, Psalm 22, 6, Daniel 9, 26, Zechariah 12, 10, many places in the Old Testament have this theme that the Messiah is going to be rejected, despised, looked down upon. That's a recurring theme in many passages. So what Matthew is doing here is he's using a common phrase, a Nazarene, as an insult. Oh, he's from Nazareth. Instead of quoting every one of these passages, of which there's a big double handful of, of saying he will be despised. That's what's going

John The Baptist Appears In Wilderness

SPEAKER_01 18:09

on here. I think now we can go on to Matthew chapter 3. In chapter 3, we have the preaching of John the Baptist. Matthew chapter 3, verse 1 says this. Now in those days, John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is the one referenced by Isaiah the prophet when he said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Now John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. Here's a question, Steve. Where was it he says he's preaching? Where was John preaching? In the wilderness. So if he had a message that he wanted heard, why didn't he go to the downtown in the largest city?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Well, because it'd been called that he was going to be a voice crying in the wilderness. That's another fulfillment of prophecy.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

That's probably it. Another reason the wilderness was rough, and John was a rough man. This showed how unusual he was. He was doing unusual things. Again, read the book of Ezekiel. God had Ezekiel do all these very unusual things. This is no other. John the Baptist is an example of an Old Testament prophet. He's the last of the Old Testament prophets here on the first pages of the New Testament, and he's doing Old Testament prophet things. Just as Jesus entered the world into a spiritual wilderness, John introduced Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus came to common people, and so John introduced Jesus to common people. In verse 2, what was the message? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And down at the end of verse 6, are they?

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah, and it says, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

So they were repenting and confessing their sins.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

John is Jesus' cousin. He's six months older than Jesus. John is also predicted or prophesied by the angel to Elizabeth that he is going to be the a forebearer, a forerunner of Jesus. So this is something that's known as John is growing up. So as we see the ministry here, we see now 30 years later after Jesus' birth or so, here's John talking about and preaching out there in regards to this Messiah

Repentance, Baptism, And Real Forgiveness

SPEAKER_00 20:37

that's coming. That's that's one. Another thing is that repent. So again, that word repent doesn't necessarily mean feeling sorry that you did something. It's a changing of the mind.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Change your mind and make a decision to turn around and go the other way.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

So they're going in one direction. He's calling them to repent and turn the other direction towards God. That's what repentance means. You're heading away from God. You need to repent, change your mind, change your way of thinking and head back towards God. And repent and change your mind about what? Sin. So sin here, the literal translation that you'll see in sin mostly in the New Testament is talking about a missing of the mark. It's a term that you could think of in regards to like archery. It's where the arrow goes and it misses the bullseye. It doesn't hit where you intend for it to go. So sin is a picture of us missing what God wants us to be or what God has for us. It's a falling short of what God desires for us or what we should be. We have those three things repent and then also confessing their sins. And the reason why is what does it say there in verse 10? What's the reason why? Because the kingdom is at hand.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

At hand means it's right there you could touch it. Near. That's what at hand means. It means it's very near. It's it's right here where you could reach out and touch it. Repent from your sins and confess your sins and be baptized, right? Which is a public thing. How much is God concerned with holiness? He's very concerned with holiness.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

And then he's a holy God. And that holiness, I know we're kind of going through terms here, but I think it's holiness means to be set apart, not to be like the world. You're to be holy. And God is holy. He is set apart from all other gods and from anyone else. So here's a personal question, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

What does it feel like to truly repent, to confess everything before God and experience forgiveness? What does that feel like? What does it do to your conscience and your soul when you know you're not doing right, but then you go to God and you confess the sin and you know he's washed you.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

What does that feel like? It's a freedom. It's it's something that you it's it's hard to express in my life while I came a believer at a very young age. It wasn't until my late 20s, right around 30 or so, whenever I truly repented, I changed my mind and I said, I'm tired of doing things on my own, God. I'm turning my life completely over to you and for you to control my life and to guide my life. That was a key for me watershed of repentance, of a truly changing of the mind that I had. And I can tell you that it's great. Doesn't mean that my life has been hunky-dory ever since then, but it does mean that it's a relief off of my mind that I don't have to try and figure things out on my own. I have God who is there with me, helping me, guiding me, and I seek him continually to ensure that I'm doing what I need to be doing, what he wants me to do, that I'm hitting the mark that he wants me to hit and not falling short of that mark.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

What I think of when I ask the question, what does it feel like to be forgiven? To know that your sins have been washed. It feels clean. It feels clean. It feels like a burden's been lifted, a burden that you didn't even realize it was so heavy and carrying you around, and all of a sudden, oh man, and it's gone and you feel light, you feel unashamed. You don't have to guess whether you're gonna go to heaven, you don't have to guess whether I'm gonna please God or not, because a lot of times the Old Testament law was doing these religious things in order to try to win God's approval. But when you're truly forgiven, it just feels clean, it feels light, it feels like you have a new life, a new, new energy. And I would encourage people if you haven't ever truly repented, because these people here in Matthew, they were following John out in the middle of nowhere just to confess their sins and publicly proclaim their confessions and be baptized.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

And that word baptized is the Greek word baptismo. What that means is to be fully immersed. The word picture of that is think of you have a garment that is white and you want to dye that t-shirt to a color of blue. So you have the dye in the bucket that's blue, you have the white t-shirt. Whenever you take the t-shirt and fully immerse it in that bucket of dye, you're baptizing it in the dye. And when you pull it out, it's now identified with the color blue. And so that's the word picture of what baptismo means is it's a full immersion, and the purpose of it is to be identified. So in verse six, it says they were being baptized by him in the Jordan, they're being identified with John's message of repentance and also from their changing of mind of turning back to God and confessing their sins. It's an act of identification, is what baptism and it's full immersion.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

So then in verse three, it says that John is the one referred to by Isaiah. So it's claiming that John the Baptist was a fulfillment of prophecy. Before the Lord was to come, there would be someone coming before him announcing his coming. And again, this fits with Matthew's teaching of Jesus as the king. When an earthly king comes, what comes first? There's an entourage that arrives, and there's someone that proclaims the king, a herald. So the herald or someone comes, oftentimes there's horns playing, there's banners waving, there's soldiers marching, there's a big entourage that arrives before the king. And so Jesus had an entourage.

Isaiah’s Herald And Jesus As Yahweh

SPEAKER_01 26:52

In this case, it's this simple man with this simple message that's out in the wilderness, and there were no horns blowing, but there was a old testament prophet, and he's saying, The king is here. And Matthew 3:3 is quoting Isaiah 40, verse 3 the voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare you the way of the Lord, all caps, Yahweh, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. So that's the full message that Matthew doesn't quote the whole passage here. He says, Prepare a path for our God, Yahweh, mentions that three times in there. So when John the Baptist was preparing a way for the Lord, what does that say about Jesus? That he is God. That he is God Almighty. He is Yahweh, because that's who Isaiah 40 verse is supposed to be preparing the way for. This says that Jesus is God, the doctrine of the deity of Christ is everywhere in the scriptures. Verse 4, what did he wear and what did he eat?

A Rough Prophet And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Camel's hair, leather belt, locusts, and wild honey. Sounds kind of scratchy and itchy. Why would he do unusual things and eat unusual food? Because he was an unusual man with an unusual message and he wanted to draw the attention. Same reason God had Ezekiel do unusual things. Ezekiel laid on his side for over a year. They're just unusual things.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

When you see prophets depicted in their stories throughout the Old Testament and now here with John the Baptist, they're not rich people. Many times they're mostly they're despised people. They're not welcomed in many areas because the people don't want to hear what they have to say. Jeremiah was the weeping prophet and that he had zero converts in all of his deal. Much different picture than what today's people, some people claim to be prophets today, flying around in leer jets and living in multi-million dollar mansions and things like that. That's not really the way that the scripture depicts prophets.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

So it's probably a good spot to pause for today. Next time, we'll pick up with Matthew chapter 3, verse 7, and we're gonna see what John's message is. He was a rough man and he had a rough message. He was very blunt, but everything he did was very straightforward. And we hope you'll stick with us as we go through and as we reason through the Bible.