December 29, 2024 Pay Attention to the Dreams: Dreams to Protect and Guide | Matthew 2

We are in the time of Christmas this week. We will be continuing our Advent theme Pay Attention to the Dreams. Today we will be reflecting on Matthew 2, Dreams to Protect and Guide. This is a hard story of evil. Herod sees the infant Jesus as a threat and seeks to murder him. God works through dreams to Joseph and the Magi to protect Jesus; leading Joseph and his family to a place of safety. Evil is still in the world today, and Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures to guide us away from evil, to provide comfort and strength when evil enters our lives, and hope in knowing that evil will be overcome by Jesus.

Transcript

Dreams to Protect and Guide
Matthew 2

The Bible doesn't hide from the hard things of life. God acknowledges the pain in life, the tears shed by people because of the suffering that enters into every life at some time or another. The people of Matthew's time know that the history of God's people is filled with blood and tears, but they also know that God hears the cries of his people, sees their tears and responds. As we reflect on the story of the Magi’s journey to find this new king, we see that they encounter those who only pretend to worship, only pretend to pledge their allegiance to Jesus so that they can destroy Jesus in order to hang onto their own power and influence. The Magi follow the star to Jerusalem, assuming that a king would be born in a palace, and end up at Herod’s palace, asking to see this new king that’s been born. 
Imagine the surprise of Herod when these scholars from the East come and ask to see this new king and he realises that it’s not one of his sons! Herod quickly calls his own wise men to come and tell him where this new king is! Now Herod’s cunning, he calls the Magi and shares with them what his scholars discovered, “For this is what the prophet has written, But you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means the least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.” Then Herod tells the Magi, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” Herod’s goal is to have the Magi find the child, tell him where he is, let the Magi go home and then move in and kill this threat to his throne. 
The Magi have come from the East to see the King of the Jews who has been born, a time of celebration and wonder. The Magi at this time don’t realise what Herod’s true plans are, they listen to his directions to go to Bethlehem and as the sun sets and the stars once again appear in the night sky, they see the star again and are overjoyed. They follow it to the house where Jesus and his parents are now living. They come up to the house where they see the child Jesus with his mother Mary and they bow down and worship him, knowing that this is a child anointed by God for divine work. 
They go to their camels and take down their treasure chests and unpack the gifts they had brought for this child king; gold frankincense and myrrh. Each gift is later given symbolic meaning by the early church; gold is given to a king, frankincense is offered to a God so that prayers might go up to the heavens on its fragrant smoke at the time of sacrifice, and myrrh pointed ahead to Jesus’ suffering and death as it was often used to anoint the bodies of the dead. These Magi simply give valuable gifts to this child to honour him and to acknowledge him as the one the heavens announced as king of the Jews. 
These Magi from the east come and offer some of their best to this king who’s not even their king. How we normally come before our king and what gifts we offer to him. Who do we offer our loyalty and allegiance to; what are the most important things in our lives, is Jesus even close to the top of our lists? This past week we celebrated Christmas and we offered plenty of our wealth on the altar of commerce. What do we bring to our king as we come to him? We reveal our hearts by where we offer our gifts of wealth, time and attention. The Magi realised the importance of their gifts, not that God needed gold or frankincense or myrrh, but they knew that their gifts revealed their hearts and their loyalty. We’re called to give our lives to Jesus, not to just try harder to be good or nice. God now tells the Magi in a dream to not return to Harod, so they go home by another route. 
Herod decides to get rid of this threat to his throne by murdering the boys in Bethlehem up to the age of 2. Matthew uses the words of the prophet Jeremiah to express the pain of the parents of Bethlehem, "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." A high school student in Thunder Bay was angry over this story. She asked, "Why does God only save Jesus, why doesn't he save the other boys?" She wondered if God didn't care enough. These are honest questions and there are no feel-good answers. The question "why" is a powerful question and often comes out of pain. The reality is that there are evil people in the world and sin has been around ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, bringing the brokenness of sin into the world. Sin is such a part of our lives, that we often don't even realize our sin. We never measure up to God's perfect standard, even though we were created in the image of God. Satan has been able to lead some people to do great acts of evil; Herod’s only one example. Evil is real and its consequences often hurts many innocent people. 
Matthew's reference to Rachel weeping for her children refers to the pain and suffering the people of Israel experienced when they were taken out of their country into exile and slavery by the Babylonian Empire a couple of hundred years earlier. When you read the larger context of Jeremiah’s time, God offers hope. Jeremiah goes on to offer hope and restoration for the people, "This is what the Lord says: “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” declares the Lord. “They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your descendants,” declares the Lord. “Your children will return to their own land. “… Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,” declares the Lord."
 An angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt and stay there until it is safe. Joseph obeys, faithfully bringing his family to a place of safety. Joseph takes his family to Egypt to flee the wrath of the wicked king Herod. It’s not a straight path to a place of safety for Jesus’ family. They spend time in Egypt, likely in the area of Alexandria where there was a large Jewish population. There’s always been a complicated relationship between Israel and Egypt, still today. Egypt sometimes is a place of safety and sometimes a place of oppression. This time it’s a safe place and when it becomes somewhat safer in Israel, God once again comes to Joseph and tells him it’s time to go home, and then when he arrives in Judea, God directs him in still another dream to go to Galilee, away from Herod’s equally evil son. A long and winding route to settle in a place where Jesus can be raised in safety, again, echoing the journey of Israel under Moses.
The scholar Rodney Reeves in his commentary on Matthew explains that Matthew’s Christmas story reflects a confrontation between kingdoms: “The story of Jesus’s birth is more than a narrative of Israel’s covenant story coming true. It’s about two kingdoms colliding, two irrepressible forces clashing. The kingdom of heaven invading earth. The reign of God verses the rule of men. Herod against Joseph.” The early church hears an echo back to Moses being saved from an equally murderous king thousands of years earlier as God now saves Jesus from Herod so that he can lead God's people out of our slavery to sin. 
That clash of kingdoms is still ongoing today. St Augustine writes that there are two cities, the City of God and the City of Man. Augustine writes, “Two loves have made the two cities. Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city; and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city.” These cities are what they love.” Herod’s kingdom was in love with power and control, with status and love of self. Jesus brings in the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom where love of God comes first and then flows into love of other. God’s kingdom is a kingdom of willing sacrifice, outward looking, to build up others over ourselves as we guide them to choose Jesus as their king and ruler in life.