Jesus is Tempted in the Wilderness
Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13

Jesus is tempted in the wilderness DIG: Under what circumstances was Yeshua tempted? For each of the three temptations: What was its nature? What potentially might appeal to Jesus? What price would there be if He would to give in to it? How does the Adversary’s use of Scripture differ from the way the Lord uses it? How did Christ combat Satan during His temptations? Why were the temptations all directed against the divine Son of God, when this had just been confirmed at Messiah’s baptism? Why did ADONAI allow His Son to go through this?

REFLECT: What spiritual wilderness has God sent you into? What has that done for your sense of His love? How did it change you? Notice the tempter attacked Jesus when He was vulnerable. He uses the same tactic with us. If the deceiver had three shots at you, what three temptations would he use? What is your greatest temptation right now? How are we to combat the devil with our temptations (Ephesians 6:10-17)?

The clear relationship between Christ’s baptism and His temptation should not be missed. This connection is seen in two ways. First, at His baptism He said He came to fulfill all righteousness. At the temptations of Jesus, this righteousness was tested. Second, at the baptism of Yeshua He was declared to be the Son of God by God the Father. At the temptations of Jesus, He will be tempted to prove it.

Both ADONAI and Beelzebub had a purpose for the three temptations. Satan’s purpose was to cause Messiah to sin. The means was to keep Yeshua from the cross by offering Him a short cut to His messianic goal, which was for Christ to inherit and rule all the kingdoms of the world. This is exactly what the evil one offered Him. While Satan wanted to have the Meshiach killed, he did not want Him to die at the proper time (Pesach) or in the proper way (crucifixion). That is why throughout the life and ministry of Jesus there were numerous attempts to have Him killed prematurely in a wrong manner such as by the sword or by stoning. If the Son of God had died in at any other time, or in any other way there would have been no atonement (see my commentary on Exodus, to see link click Bz – Redemption). God’s purpose was to prove the sinlessness of His Son. YHVH did not merely want to prove that Jesus was able to restrain Himself from sinning, but more importantly, to prove that Christ was not even able to sin in the first place.²⁷²

In rabbinic literature, the prince of demons is said to be involved in three specific actions – he seduces people, he accuses them before God, and he brings punishment of death (Tractate Bava Batra 16a). The deceiver is also said to have instigated the Golden Calf incident in the wilderness by (see my commentary on Exodus, to see link click Gr – Aaron Made an Idol in the Shape of a Calf), after forty days, stirring up turmoil in Isra’el and casting doubt on the return of Moshe from the mountain (Tractate Shabbat 89a). Since his rebellion before the creation, Lucifer has opposed the plan of ADONAI. Not surprisingly, that ancient Serpent comes to oppose Yeshua, yet God the Father will use it to test and prepare His Son for the messianic mission.²⁷³

As Arnold Fruchtenbaum points out, Messiah plays a representative role for two groups of people in the temptations. First, He was representative of Isra’el in five ways. First, in the use of the term the son of God. Whereas Isra’el is the son of God nationally, Jesus is the Son of God individually. This is to show where Isra’el was not obedient, Messiah was obedient; where Isra’el had failed, Christ succeeded. Isra’el is called the son of God (Exodus 4:22-23; Hosea 11:1), and Jesus is called the Son of God.

The second way of seeing this relationship between Yeshua and Isra’el in these temptations is that both testings occurred in the wilderness. First Corinthians 10:1-13 states that the wilderness was not merely a place for Isra’el to pass through between Sinai and the Promise Land; it was also a place where God was testing the loyalty and faithfulness of Isra’el. The Meshiach was also tested in the wilderness. Mark 1:13 states that Jesus was in the wilderness forty days. Matthew 4:1 and Luke 4:1 both make the same point. He was taken into the wilderness just as Isra’el was, and for the same reason: to be tested.

The third way this representative role between Yeshua and Isra’el is seen is in the figure forty. Isra’el was tempted for forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2), Jesus was tempted for forty days by the great dragon. This is an apt translation of the Hebrew word satan, as it describes the fallen angel who opposes all that God is trying to establish.²⁷⁴ The Hebrew word tempted is a present tense participle, and speaks of continuous action. Satan tempted the Messiah constantly for forty days.

The fourth way this relationship between Jesus and Isra’el is illustrated in these temptations is by the presence of the Spirit. The Ruach Ha’Kodesh was present with Isra’el in the wilderness (Isaiah 63:7-14), and the Holy Spirit was present with Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus, full of the Spirit, left the Jordan and was immediately driven by the Spirit into the wilderness of Judea, which consists of desert and foothills (Mark 1:12). The word driven is a very strong word (from ekballo, literally to throw out from, to drive out). The first act of the indwelling Spirit of God was to bring the Messiah to the place of testing and temptation.

The fifth way the relationship between the Son of God and Isra’el is brought out in these temptations is that when He resisted the Enemy of souls by the by use of Scripture, all three of Yeshua’s responses came from the book of Deuteronomy. Received at the foot of Mt. Sinai before being led through their wilderness wanderings, the book of Deuteronomy is the covenant book between ADONAI and Isra’el. The word deuteronomy means second law because it served as a summary of many of the commandments already found in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. However, the purpose of Deuteronomy is not merely to repeat those commandments, but, to put them in a format of an ancient contract or covenant. It was no accident, then, that Yeshua quoted from the book of Deuteronomy when tempted, because it is Ha’Shem’s covenant with the nation of Isra’el.

In these five ways, Messiah played a representative role on behalf of Isra’el. The point is that where Isra’el, the national son of God, failed; Jesus, the unique, eternal, individual Son of God, succeeded on Isra’el’s behalf. He became Isra’el’s substitute, not only in these three temptations, but also as the final substitute, the sacrifice for sin.

Secondly, Yeshua played a representative role for of all mankind. The Bible teaches that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet He was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). This does not mean that we are tempted in every way that He was, or that He was tempted in every single way that we are. For example, I have never been tempted to turn stones into bread. Or Christ was never been tempted to spend His whole day wasting time surfing the internet. It means that we suffer temptations in the same three categories that Jesus suffered temptations: For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh (the first temptation), the lust of the eyes (the third temptation), and the pride of life (the second temptation) – comes not from the Father but from the world (First John 2:16). Consequently, every specific temptation will fall into one of these three categories.²⁷⁵

The First Temptation: After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry and was tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:2; Luke 4:2). The fast for forty days and forty nights would sound familiar to Mattityahu readers, as this parallels the experience of both Moses (Exodus 34:28) and of Elijah (First Kings 19:8). After fasting for forty days, both Matthew and Luke record what seems to be an obvious understatement – that He was hungry. In the first hunger pangs of a fast, a person may have an extended period of time during which the body is strong with no ill effects from the lack of food as it draws on the stored excess fat. But, around forty days into the fast, there will be some new pangs. These are not merely due to the hunger, but actually indicate that the body is beginning to starve itself. Jesus was at a critical point when the great dragon came to Him with the first of three incredible temptations.

The first test centers on the claim that Yeshua is the Son of God. The tempter came to Him and said: If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread (Matthew 4:3; Luke 4:3). Satan first suggested what Christ ought to do for Himself. This first temptation was essentially the same mocking taunt that the crowds made at the crucifixion: If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross (Mattityahu 27:40-43 NASB). It also included the wicked attempt to cause the Second Adam (First Corinthians 15:45-47) to fail where the first Adam had failed – in relation to food. The deceiver wanted the Messiah to fail because of bread, just as Adam had failed because of fruit (Genesis 3:1-7). Above all, however, he wanted to solicit the Son’s rebellion against the Father. This was a test of Yeshua’s relationship with God.

The Adversary tempted Jesus with the lust of the flesh because the temptation of bread after forty days and forty nights must have been virtually overwhelming (First John 2:16a). We must remember that the Meshiach was one-hundred percent God and one-hundred percent man. Consequently, in His humanity Yeshua could feel the full force of the hunger. But, because of His divine nature, He could not give in to such testing. It would have disqualified Him from being the sinless Redeemer. For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet He did not sin (Hebrews 4:15).

It was the absolute trust and submission between God the Father and God the Son that the ancient Serpent sought to shatter. To have succeeded would have put an irreparable rift in the Trinity. They would no longer have been Three-in-One, no longer have been of one mind and purpose. In his incalculable pride and wickedness, the prince of demons tried to fracture the very nature of God Himself.²⁷⁶

Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 where Isra’el was tested with hunger so she would learn dependence on God. But she failed to do so. However, Yeshua succeeded by saying: It is written: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of ADONAI” (Mattityahu 4:4; Luke 4:4). If the Word of God was His only resource to fight Satan, shouldn’t we recognize that it should also be ours? The main “food” ADONAI has given to strengthen us is the Bible, the Word of God.²⁷⁷

The Second Temptation: The evil one had first suggested what Christ ought to do for Himself (turning stones into bread). Next he suggested what the Father ought to do for Yeshua (proving the Father’s love for Jesus by sending His angels to rescue His Son). Having failed to induce Messiah to use His divine powers to serve His own self-interests and in that way rebel against the will of His Father, the deceiver continued to tempt the Son to put His heavenly Father’s love and power to the test. Then the devil led Him to the holy city of Jerusalem and had Him stand on the highest point of the Temple Mount (Mt 4:5; Lk 4:9a). The dizzying vantage point in the southeast corner of the Temple Mount was specifically from the Royal Stoa. Both Matthew and Luke use the same Greek word pterygion, which is a diminutive form of pteryx or wing. In New Covenant times, pterygion generally described the outermost part of something. So this expression can be translated tower, apex, peak or extreme point.

Both Matthew and Luke have the definite article coming before pterygion, which indicates that a specific, well known highest point is being dealt with. Not only that, but both authors use the word hieron or Temple Mount, and not naos or Sanctuary, for the expression the highest point of the Temple. Once this is understood, the spot is easy to identify. The most imposing vantage point in the entire Temple Mount is described by the Jewish historian Josephus. He wrote: The Royal Stoa was a structure was more noteworthy than any under the sun. The depth of the ravine [below] was so great, when combined with the height of the Stoa, that no one [would dare] bend over [the ledge] because he would become so dizzy he wouldn’t be able to see the end of the measureless depth (paraphrased for readability).²⁷⁸ Josephus also reported that the drop to the valley floor was some 450 feet. According to early tradition, James, the brother of Jesus and head of the Jerusalem congregation, was martyred by being thrown from the Royal Stoa because he would not renounce his faith.

A midrash, a commentary on the TaNaKh, puts particular emphasis on this exact place, as it states: Our teachers taught, at the time when the King Messiah will appear, He will come and stand upon the roof of the Temple. He will proclaim to Isra’el and will say to the humble, “The time of your redemption has arrived” (Peshikta Rabbati 36).²⁷⁹

Still hoping to undermine the Lord’s relationship with ADONAI as His divine Son, the ancient Serpent again introduced his temptation with the words: If you are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. In the first temptation a need (the lack of food) already existed; in the second a need was created. To make the temptation more persuasive, the great dragon quoted Scripture, as Jesus had just done. Quoting Psalm 91:11-12, he said: For it is written, “He will command His angels concerning You to guard you carefully; and they will lift You up in their hands, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone” (Mt 4:6; Lk 4:9b-10).

With that subtle and clever twist of quoting Psalm 91:11-12, the deceiver thought he had backed Messiah into a corner. It’s as if Satan was saying, “You claim to be God’s Son and trust His Word, so why don’t you demonstrate your Sonship and prove the truth of His Word by putting Him to a test – a scriptural test? If you won’t use your own divine power to help yourself, let your Father use His divine power to help You.” For Jesus to have followed the devil’s suggestion to be saved by heavenly angels would have been, in the eyes of many Jews, sure proof that He was the Messiah.

The miraculous has always appealed to the flesh. Later, Yeshua Himself would warn against this when He warned that false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect (Matthew 24:24). But, such dramatic signs, even when they are from God, do not produce faith; they only strengthen the faith of those who already believe. The same sun softens wax and hardens clay. Yeshua was the greatest sign ever given by Ha’Shem to mankind, yet, as Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years earlier: He was despised and rejected by mankind (Isaiah 53:3; Luke 18:31-33).²⁸⁰ Those who would sing His praises only because of His miracles and impressive words would later turn against Him. This temptation was to get Yeshua to prove that He was really the Son of God. Thus, Satan again tempted Him with the pride of life, which was, in reality, a test on Jesus’ dependence upon the Father.

Jesus would have no part of cheap, faithless sensationalism. So He responded by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16 where Isra’el was tested with thirst so she would learn dependence on God (see my commentary on Exodus Cu – Strike the Rock and Water Will Come Out of It). But, where she failed to trust God, Jesus succeeded by answered the devil saying: It is also written: “Do not put ADONAI your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7; Luke 4:12). Jesus didn’t need to prove to Himself that the Father loved and protected Him. Moreover, He knew that God’s love and protection could not be proved to others by any means but faith. As the writer to the Hebrews would say: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1). For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The Third Temptation: The Adversary then dropped all pretenses and made one final, desperate effort to corrupt Jesus. He finally revealed his ultimate purpose: to induce Messiah to worship him. He had first suggested what Christ ought to do for Himself (turning stones into bread). Next he suggested what the Father ought to do for Jesus (proving the Father’s love for Yeshua by sending His angels to rescue His Son). Now he suggested what the tempter could do for Jesus – in exchange for what Messiah could do for him – quid-pro-quo you might say.²⁸¹ Again, the great dragon took the Lord to a very high mountain and, in an instant, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor that Jesus could easily attain if He bypassed the cross (Matthew 4:8; Luke 4:5). Satan, who was, and is, the prince of the kingdoms of the world, had every right to make Yeshua that offer.

And the devil said to Him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.” (Mattityahu 4:8; Luke 4:6). Until the Lord returns with the title deed to the earth (see my commentary on Revelation Ce – The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David Has Triumphed), the devil is the god of this age (Second Corinthians 4:4). But, by asking Jesus to bow down and worship him, Messiah would be placing Himself in submission to, and acknowledging the superiority of, the Adversary. This would have the advantage of bypassing the cross and gaining the messianic goal anyway. It was as if Satan was saying, “Why should You have to wait for what is already Yours? You deserve it now! Why do You submit as a Servant when You could reign as a King? I am only offering You what the Father has already promised.” It will not be the ancient Serpent’s last attempt to prevent Yeshua from dying on the cross. But here, Christ could see the power and wealth that would be His; thus, this temptation was in the area of the lust of the eyes. This was a test of Jesus’ submission to God’s program of salvation.

Satan is a liar and the father of lies and there is no truth in him (John 8:44). What he really demanded in the wilderness was the soul of the Messiah: If You will bow down and worship me, all that You see will all be Yours (Matthew 4:9; Luke 4:7). The tempter had rebelled against God in the first place because he could not tolerate being second to the Trinity. Here, he thought, was his great opportunity. He could bribe the Son to worship at his feet.²⁸² When you deal with him, he always takes you further than you want to go, and costs you more than you want to pay. What shortcut on his terms has he offered you lately?

Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 6:13 where Isra’el was tested to serve ADONAI only; however, she failed to do so (see my commentary on Exodus Gr – Aaron Made an Idol in the Shape of a Calf). But, Jesus said to the devil: Away from me, Satan! For the TaNaKh says: “Worship ADONAI your God, and serve only Him” (Mattityahu 4:10; Luke 4:8 CJB). Once again the Lord quoted Deuteronomy, this time from Deuteronomy 6:13. The first Adam fell into sin in a perfect and harmonious environment in the Garden of Eden, while the last Adam maintained His sinlessness in an environment that was hostile.

When Jesus resisted these temptations, He did not rebuke the great dragon, call him names, nor did He bind him. Christ merely quoted Deuteronomy 6:16. And each time Satan either misapplied the Scriptures, or used them in a deceitful way, which is one of his favorite tricks. Yeshua simply defended Himself with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17b). That’s one thing the devil can’t stand! The Word of God defeats him every time. Three times Messiah quoted Deuteronomy. When we encounter spiritual warfare from the evil one, this is the way we should resist him as well.²⁸³

Both Matthew and Luke record three temptations, but Luke reverses the order of the last two. The adverbs then (Greek: tote) in Matthew 4:5 and the again (Greek: palin) in verse 8 indicates that Mattityahu is recording the event chronologically. Luke, on the other hand, uses the conjunction and (Greek: kai), which does not suggest a sequential order. While Matthew records the event chronologically, Luke may be listing the temptations topically. For Luke, the temptation at the highest point of the Temple Mount was the climax of the event.²⁸⁴ In this harmony of the gospels, I use Matthew’s chronological order.

Beware of enticements that seem to cost little for the present. The devil hopes to get you to do things his way. And he doesn’t give up easily. When the deceiver had finished tempting Yeshua, he left Him until a more opportune time (Luke 4:13). Satan was still active during all of Christ’s ministry (Luke 8:12, 10:17-18, 11:14-22, 13:11-17). This statement, rather, indicates that a direct confrontation with the ancient Serpent (such as we read of here in the three temptations) did not occur again until the arrest, trial and crucifixion.²⁸⁵

Jesus was with the wild animals, and angels came and attended, or ministered to Him (Matthew4:11; Mark 1:13b). The word attended is in the imperfect tense, indicating continuous action. All during the forty days, the angels continually ministered to Him. This is a vivid picture of spiritual crisis. The only other time this happens is in the garden of Gethsemane (Lk 22:43-44). We are not told what the ministry of the angels included, but surely they brought Jesus food to satisfy His hunger. We know they could not have been in the presence of God without offering Him worship. And they could not have come from heaven without bringing strengthening words of assurance and love from the Father.²⁸⁶

Not only did Yeshua pass these crucial tests of His messiahship, but His Word also provides some vital lessons for us today. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings (First Peter 5:8-9). Consequently, we should not resist him by arguing, binding, or debating in some spiritual manner (by the way, whoever is binding Satan is doing a pretty poor job. I don’t know how it is where you live, but in my neighborhood, the tempter is still pretty active). Jesus simply quoted Scripture. The rabbis understood that Isra’el possessed a secret weapon to overcome the evil one: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Isra’el, My children, I have created the evil impulse, and I have created the Torah as an antidote to it; if you occupy yourselves with Torah you will not be delivered into its power (Tractate Kiddushin 30b). Should we not do likewise?

Lord, help me see the deceiver’s offers for what they are – enticements to sin. Help me to keep my eyes and my heart focused on You and Your Word, and my ears attentive to You in prayer. Amen.

The Baptism of Jesus
Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-23a

The baptizm of Jesus DIG: What is significant about Jesus being baptized at the same time as all the people? What three things happen at His baptism that make it unlike the others? What meaning do you think these events have for Him? In the context of Chapters 3 and 4, what do you think Matthew 3:17 meant to Yeshua? How does this set the stage for His ministry to begin?

REFLECT: How has Jesus been like a “new Adam” for you – giving you a fresh start at life? How has ADONAI affirmed you as His child in Christ? When Messiah calls you, He calls you to come and die. Since becoming a believer in Yeshua, in what areas have you died to self? Was the Lord immersed in the water or sprinkled? What changes could you make in your daily activities and typical priorities in order to cultivate a heart that continues to be stunned by His desire stoop to our level?

Matthew picks up the story at the next vital transition in the preparation of the Messiah. If Yeshua is indeed the promised King and redeemer of Isra’el, then he must go through a final preparation for His holy task. Since mikveh (ritual immersion) must play an essential role, Matthew shares the historical details leading up this highly symbolic event.²⁵⁶ In AD 29, eighteen to twenty years after Jesus became a son of the Covenant, His first act was to make baptism a symbolic doorway to a new kind of life, through which He would be the first to walk through.²⁵⁷

At last the Lord had come to a parting of the ways. Those years of patient, dutiful service to the family, after the death of Joseph, were now complete, and He needed to leave His loving mother to the care of the younger half-brothers, the oldest of which had already come to a responsible age. How much the companionship of Mary now mature in her wisdom and experience of forty-some years, and her Son, strong, yet tender and thoughtful, meant to each other. How she could, secretly in her heart, wish that He might remain at home and go on with His ordinary tasks of a carpenter, while He continued His splendid gift of teaching in the local synagogue and personal ministry among His countrymen in Nazareth.²⁵⁸ But, it was not to be.

The baptism of Jesus was the last act of His private life, and the first act of His public life. It was here that the Holy Spirit officially anointed the public ministry of Yeshua, although it would not officially start until the first cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem (John 2:13-22). Six months earlier the Lord was actually identified by John as the Messiah. Yochanan had already begun a ministry of preaching, announcing that the coming of the Meshiach was very near. People were to prepare themselves to receive Him. To prepare for the Lord, John taught three principles: First, they needed to repent and come back to God. Secondly, they needed to believe the message that King Messiah and His Kingdom would soon come. Thirdly, they needed to publicly verify their repentance and faith in the Messiah and His Kingdom by being baptized by John.²⁵⁹

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. It was not a triumphal entry heralded by a trumpet fanfare. He came alone from Nazareth in Galilee. Nazareth was an obscure village never mentioned in the TaNaKh, the Talmud, or the writings of Josephus, the well-known first-century Jewish historian. Galilee, about 30 miles wide and 60 miles long, was the populous northernmost region of the three divisions of the Land: Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.²⁶⁰

He came to the Jordan to be baptized openly by John (Matthew 3:13; Mark 1:9; Luke 3:21a). To see what the Jordan River looks like today click here. Here we have a man with a common name, from a common town, to participate in a common practice, and share a common experience with humanity. The root word bapto, means to dip, or to dye. In Greek literature it was used in taking a piece of cloth and dipping it into a vat of dye to change its color; hence, to change its identification. It had to go all the way into the dye. From the root word bapto, a second Greek word, baptidzo, came to mean to baptize, or I baptize. Once again, it means to totally immerse, but it always carries with it the idea of identification. The Church knew nothing of sprinkling or pouring for baptism until the Middle Ages, when the Roman Catholic Church introduced it.

God fearers and proselytes in the TaNaKh were baptized when they wanted to identify themselves with Judaism. Therefore, it was a Jewish practice long before it became a practice of the Church that identifies the one being baptized with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:1-23).

Yeshua had no need to come back to God. Nevertheless, He took His place with the righteous of Isra’el and submitted to baptism by John. Because Yochanan was fully aware of the sinlessness and deity of Jesus it records that he tried to deter Him. The imperfect tense, he tried to deter, means that he kept on trying to deter Him, saying: I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me (Matthew 3:14)? It was as if John was saying, “I am only a prophet of ADONAI and I am sinful like everyone whom I baptize. But You are the Son of God and sinless. Why, then, do You ask me to baptize You?”

John resisted baptizing Yeshua for exactly the opposite reason that he resisted baptizing the Pharisees and Sadducees. They were in great need of repentance but were unwilling to ask for it and gave no evidence of having done so. John, therefore, refused to baptize them, calling them a brood of vipers (Matthew 3:7). Jesus, by contrast, came for baptism, though He alone had no need of repentance. Yochanan refused to baptize the Pharisees and Sadducees because they were totally unworthy of it. Now he was almost equally reluctant to baptize Jesus, because He was too worthy of it.²⁶¹

It is easy to understand John’s concern. His baptism was for confession of sin and repentance (Matthew 3:2, 6 and 11), which John himself needed. But he recognized that Yeshua was the Meshiach and so did not need to repent. In Yeshua’s first recorded words since the age of twelve, when He told His parents: Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house [or about My Father’s business] (Luke 2:49)? Yeshua replied: Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. Then John consented (Matthew 3:15). With that final act, John the Baptist’s ministry was finished. But, along with that, his fate had been sealed.

Jesus did not deny that He was superior to John and sinless. The phrase: Let it be so now was an idiom meaning that the act of His baptism, though not seemingly appropriate, was indeed appropriate for this special time. Whatever might be their ultimate relationship, it was the right course of action for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. And Yeshua will be, now, as throughout the gospel, perfectly obedient to the will of ADONAI. For God’s perfect will to be fulfilled, it was necessary for Jesus to be baptized by John.

If Jesus was sinless why did He submit Himself to baptism? There are seven reasons. Firstly, to fulfill all righteousness, or to identify Himself with righteousness. Specifically, He was showing in a visible way that He was going to fulfill the righteousness of the Torah. Isaiah 53:11 speaks of the servant of ADONAI as the righteous one who will make many righteous by bearing their sins.

Secondly, to identify Himself with the kingdom of God that was the object of John’s preaching. Yochanan was not only preaching repentance (something that Jesus did not need to be identified), but he was preaching about the coming King and His Kingdom.

Thirdly, to be made known to Isra’el. On this occasion Jesus would be publicly identified as the Messiah Himself. Matthew’s readers familiar with the Scriptures would know that Yeshua fulfilled the prophetic Scriptures by identifying with Isra’el’s history and completing Isra’el’s destiny.

Fourthly, Jesus subjected Himself to baptism to be numbered and identified with the Jewish believing remnant being prepared by John.

Fifthly, Yeshua was immersed to be identified with sinners. Not to be identified as a sinner, but, to be identified with sinners. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (Second Corinthians 5:21).

Sixthly, to receive the special anointing by the Ruach Ha’Kodesh for His mission found in Acts 10:37-38 . . . You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached – how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him. Since the Holy Spirit came down on Him at His baptism, and connecting what happened in Acts 10:37-38, it is clear that this was when He received His special anointing.²⁶²

And lastly, what an opportunity for leadership. Before His ascension to the Father in heaven, He would say: All authority has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-19). Jesus never asks us to do anything that He Himself hasn’t done.

For the first time in the New Covenant, all three Persons of the Trinity are present together at Christ’s baptism. The mystery of the Trinity is beyond the capacity of our very finite and limited minds to comprehend in its fullness. The Trinity is antimony; that is, it seems to us that for God to be three Persons and, at the same time, for God to be one is contradictory, but, both are true. The Bible teaches that there is a plurality in the Godhead, and that this plurality is a unity of only one God. At the same time there is no more, and no less, than three Persons. From the TaNaKh, the evidence is that only three Persons are called God, and no more than three Persons are ever seen together (Isaiah 42:1, 48:12, 61:1 and 63:7-14). In the New Covenant there are three major lines of evidence of the Trinity of the Godhead.

First, only three Persons are ever called God (here in Matthew 3:16-17, 28:19; John 14:16-17; First Corinthians 12:4-6; Second Corinthians 13:14; First Peter 1:2).

Second, only three Persons have the attributes of God: everlasting (Psalm 90:2; Micah 5:2; John 1:1); omnipotent, or all-powerful (First Peter 1:5; Hebrews 1:3; Romans 15:19); and omniscient, or all-knowing (Jeremiah 17:10; John 16:30, 21:17; Revelation 2:23; First Corinthians 2:10-11); omnipresent, meaning God is everywhere (Jeremiah 23:24; Matthew 18:20, 28:20; Psalm 139:7-10).

Third, only three Persons do the works of God: the work of the creation and the universe (Psalm 102:25; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Genesis 1:2; Job 26:13 and Psalm 104:30); the work of the creation of man (Genesis 2:7; Colossians 1:16; Job 33:4); and the work of inspiration (Second Timothy 3:16; First Peter 1:10-11; Second Peter 1:21). As was true with the creation of the universe and man, three Persons are credited with the work of inspiration, which is the work of God.

God the Son was seen in the person of Jesus standing in the water. Just as Yeshua was praying, and was baptized, He immediately (the Greek adverb euthus, omitted in the NIV, is the first of 41 occurrences in Mark) came up out of the water (Mark 1:10a), which indicates that He had been all the way into the water. John was baptizing where there was much water (John 3:23), which would have been unnecessary if only sprinkling were used.

At that moment heaven was being torn open (Mark 1:10b; Ezeki’el 1:1 and Isaiah 64:1). The forceful Greek verb being torn open, or schizomemous, means to split or to divide. This is where we get the word schizophrenia, or split personality. It reflects a metaphor for God’s breaking into human experience to deliver His people (Psalm 18:9 and 16-19, Psalm 144:5-8; Isaiah 64:1-5).²⁶³

And God the Holy Spirit descended upon (eis, not epi) Him visibly in bodily form like a dove (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10c; Luke 3:21b-22a) just like the Lord had promised (John 1:33). The Ruach Ha’Kodesh wasn’t a dove, but, descended like a dove. This is the only time in the Scriptures that a dove is represented in this way. To the Jewish mind of that day the dove was associated with sacrifice. Bulls were sacrificed by the rich, lambs by the middle-class, while the poor could only afford a dove. The descent of the Spirit of God recalls well-known prophecies in Isaiah, which say that ADONAI will place His Spirit upon His chosen servant (Isaiah 11:2, 42:1, 48:16, 61:1-2). The Spirit came upon the ancient prophets for special inspiration and guidance in the beginning of their prophetic ministries. Upon Jesus He came without measure.²⁶⁴ This is not to say that Yeshua had previously been without the Spirit, since Matthew has already attributed His birth to the Ruach Ha’Kodesh (Matthew 1:18 and 20). But now, as the Spirit descended upon Him, Yeshua is visibly equipped and commissioned to undertake His messianic mission.²⁶⁵ It is important to understand that Jesus’ baptism did not change His divine status. He did not become the Son of God at His baptism. Rather, His baptism revealed that He was the Son of God.

Interestingly, this is the same symbolism for the Holy Spirit seen in rabbinic literature. One passage of the Talmud, in dealing with the Creation account of Genesis 1:2, states that, “The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters – like a dove that hovers over her young without touching them” (Tractate Hagigah 15a). In another Talmudic expression, the text says that a voice from heaven testified, “This is my son, whom I love, I am well pleased with him.”

All three Persons of the Trinity participated in the baptism of Yeshua. The Son had confirmed that He was the Messiah by saying: It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), and the Ruach Ha’Kodesh had confirmed that He was the Anointed One by resting on Him (Matthew 3:16). And then the voice of God the Father came from heaven and said: You are My Son (Matthew 3:17a; Luke 3:22a). The rabbis taught that when God speaks in heaven, “the daughter of His voice” the bat-kol, or an echo, is heard on earth. After the last of the prophets, it was considered that God provided the bat-kol to continue to give guidance to the people (Tractate Yoma 9b). How very interesting that the bat-kol testified, after the last of the prophets and before the New Covenant was established, that Yeshua is indeed God’s Son. To Matthew’s audience, this was a voice to be taken very seriously. ADONAI is said to have a Son according to Psalm 2, Proverbs 30, Isaiah 9:6, and elsewhere. At that time, the Messiah had come to Isra’el and started His priestly ministry in the traditional way of baptism.²⁶⁶

While it is true that all believers are, in a sense, children of God (John 1:12b), Yeshua is so in a unique way – His one and only Son (John 1:18a). Two other passages also emphasize this point: one in which Adam is referred to as God’s son (Luke 3:38), and also: Adonai said to Me, “You are My Son; today I have become Your Father” (Psalm 2:7). When combined with First Corinthians 15:45, in which Jesus and Adam are further compared, these verses show us that when we think about Christ and His ministry we must keep Adam in mind. This is especially important in Luke Chapter 4 where the Adversary tempts Yeshua like he tempted Adam.²⁶⁷

All we need to know about our relationship with God and with each other is summed up in this statement: Whom I love (Matthew 3:17b; Luke 3:22b). God the Father affirms God the Son by saying, “I claim You, I love You, I am proud of You.” How simple! How basic! To belong, to be loved, to be praised! Nothing more is needed with our relationship with God, our families and with each other. Each of us has a desperate need to belong. If that need is met, we have the strength of self-identity. We know who we are and no one can take that identity from us. But, if our need to belong is not met, we wander as lost and unclaimed souls.²⁶⁸

With You I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17c; Luke 3:22c; also see Isaiah 42:1; Ephesians 1:6; Colossians 1:13). ADONAI repeated these words about Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5). He will be a king, He will be sacrificed willingly, and He will suffer. No sacrifice in the TaNaKh, no matter how carefully selected, had ever been truly pleasing to God. It was not possible to find an animal that did not have some blemish or imperfection. Not only that, but the blood of those animals was at best only symbolic for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin (Hebrews 10:4).

Three different times in the ministry of Jesus, God the Father spoke audibly from heaven. The first time was at His baptism (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22b), the second time was at His transfiguration (Luke 9:35), and the third time was after the triumphal entry and Jesus predicted His death (John 12:27-29). So Jesus now has the divine confirmation of God the Father as well as the divine empowerment of God the Holy Spirit. Because Yeshua is no earthly king, and His is no earthly kingdom, only God crowned Him, while people watched. Whether or not they also heard the bat-kol is not clear. But, the gospel writers seem most concerned that we have heard of God’s pronouncement.²⁶⁹

Luke alone tells us that Jesus himself was about thirty years old when He began His ministry (Luke 3:23a). If the Lord was born during the reign of Herod (Matthew 2:1-19; Luke 1:5) who died in 4 BC, Yeshua would indeed have begun His ministry in His early thirties. There does not seem to be any reference or allusion to David’s age when he began his reign, at thirty years old (Second Samuel 5:4), and there is even less likely an allusion to Genesis 41:46 or Numbers 4:3. This was simply a general statement by Luke.²⁷⁰

From this point on, the Gospel readers had no excuse for failing to understand the significance of Yeshua’s ministry, regardless of how long it took them to understand that He was truly the Son of God (Matthew 14:33). It would be this crucial revelation of who Jesus was that would immediately form the basis of the first testing that He would undergo in the wilderness. If You are the Son of God . . . And there, as in the account of His baptism, Jesus’ Sonship will be revealed in His obedience to His Father’s will.²⁷¹

Let us re-examine our baptism in light of Yeshua’s baptism for us. We were buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:4). We were baptized into Jesus’ death. If we die with Him, we also rise with Him, forgiven and filled with the Holy Spirit. Everything has been given to us in Messiah. We must only continue, daily, to surrender to the Lord and look to the work of the Spirit in our lives.

The Approval of King Messiah

Previously we recorded the visit that Yeshua made to the Holy City of David to observe the Passover (to see link click Ba – The Boy Jesus at the Temple). Now, approximately eighteen years later, He made a similar journey in order to be baptized by John the Immerser. The specific purpose of the visit was stated: Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John (Mattityahu 3:13). Yochanan had prepared the Jewish people for this momentous event. God the Father would approve of God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit would equip the Kosher King so that He could begin His messianic ministry. Next we see the Anointed One officially presented by the designated forerunner to the nation of Isra’el as her Redeemer and Savior.

I Will Baptize You With Water,
But He Will Baptize You With the Holy Spirit
Matthew 3:11-12; Mark 1:7-8; Luke 3:15-18

I will baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit DIG: What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit? What is the baptism of fire? What does it have to do with doctrine of purgatory? What two metaphors does John use to describe the baptism of fire? Who does Yochanan point to and why?

REFLECT: This message caused quite a stir in Isra’el at this time. Is it still a valid message for all of us to consider for our own spiritual lives today? Why or why not?

Numerous people claimed to be the Messiah in first-century Isra’el, so when the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth prophesied in the wilderness of Judea, the people wondered if he was the Anointed One. The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Mashiach (Luke 3:15). But, Yochanan didn’t claim to be the Messiah, only the forerunner, sent by ADONAI to prepare the people for the promised King’s appearance.²⁵¹

The concept of the Messiah was well established in the Judaism of John’s day; so it was hardly necessary for Yochanan to describe Him. The ancient Synagogue found more references to Him in the TaNaKh than those latter formed in the B’rit Chadashah. This is fully borne out by a detailed analysis of those passages in the TaNaKh to which the rabbis referred to as messianic. The number comes to upwards of 456 (75 from the Pentateuch, 243 from the Prophets, and 138 from the Hagiographa), and their messianic application is supported by more than 558 references in rabbinic writings of the Targumim, the two Talmuds, and the most ancient Midrashim.

A careful examination of these rabbinical writings shows that the Scriptural references to the Messiah in the New Covenant are fully supported by them. Thus, such doctrines as the pre-existence of the Meshiach; His elevation above Moshe, and even above the angels; His cruel sufferings and mockery; His violent death; His work on behalf of the living and the dead; His redemption, and restoration of Isra’el; the opposition of the Gentiles; their partial judgment and conversion; the supremacy of His Torah; the universal blessings of the latter days; and His Kingdom, can be clearly deduced from passages in the ancient rabbinic writings.²⁵²  John could build on this messianic concept in introducing Yeshua as the Messiah.

So, Jesus would take up where John left off, and this is just what Yochanan said must happen. And this was his message in the wilderness: After me will come One who is more powerful than I, (Mt 3:11b; Mark 1:7; Luke 3:16a). This is a summary of John’s message so that he could focus on his main theme. There would be One coming who would be more powerful than Yochanan. His baptism would be with the Holy Spirit and fire.

John answered them all by saying: I baptize you with, or in, water for repentance (Luke 3:16a). John’s own distinctive ministry of water baptism will give way to a different kind of baptism. This is led some to view Yochanan’s ministry as merely a “warm-up act” for Jesus. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The repentance symbolized by John’s baptism was essential to Yeshua’s future ministry. It could not by itself save people from their sins (Mt 1:21), which was to be Yeshua’s unique role. While water could cleanse a person’s body, the Holy Spirit could cleanse a person’s life and self and heart. But one who is more powerful than I will come and baptize you with the Ruach Ha’Kodesh and with fire (Matthew 3:11a; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16b-c). King Messiah is coming. That was John’s promise, and he said Jesus is going to perform two types of baptisms. On the one hand, those who believe are going to be baptized with the Ruach Ha’Kodesh.

First, John promises that the Lord will baptize them with the Holy Spirit. While the baptism of Yochanan was important, the baptism of Christ would go even deeper into the spiritual call of Isra’el. Initially there would be an outward call to prepare for the Kingdom. But then there would be the reality of the Kingdom as experienced by the indwelling of the Ruach Ha’Kodesh.

The phrase with the Holy Spirit is en pneumati in the Greek. Some make a big deal out of the change in adjectives. They say, “Well, you were baptized in the Holy Spirit, but have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit?” Or, “You were baptized with the Holy Spirit, but, have you been baptized by the Holy Spirit.” All this is a smoke screen because the Greek adjective en can be translated either in ,or by, or with (Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5 and 11:16; First Corinthians 12:13). The Ruach Ha’Kodesh is given to believers at the moment of faith (to see link click Bw – What God Does for Us at the Moment of Faith).

The promise of the Holy Spirit goes back to the prophecies of Joel and Ezeki’el. Joel predicted a time to come when the Ruach will be poured out on all the people on the earth, especially upon Isra’el. This must have been especially comforting and thrilling to the faithful Jews among John’s hearers, those who hoped for the day when God would pour out [His] Spirit on all people (Joel 2:28a). Likewise, Ezeki’el foresaw a time in the messianic Kingdom (see my commentary on Isaiah Dc – A Shoot Will Come Up from the Stump of Jesse) when He would sprinkle clean water on [them], and give [them] a new heart and put a new Spirit within [them] (Ezeki’el 36:25-26). In that day they would at last be baptized in the very power and person of God Himself. In other words, John’s baptism was similar to other types of immersions found in first-century Judaism, but Yeshua’s baptism would be of a different, spiritual nature.

Secondly, He will baptize you with fire (Matthew 3:11c; Luke 3:16b). Fire is usually the symbol for judgment or purification in the Bible. The context here demands that when Christ appears again there will not only be blessing of the Spirit for believers, but, that unbelievers are going to be baptized with unquenchable fire (see my commentary on Revelation Fp – The Second Death: The Lake of Fire).

As far as the Roman Catholics are concerned, the word fire here is one of the proof texts for the concept of purgatory. Where, then, does Rome find her authority for the doctrine of purgatory? Four verses are cited, but not one of them has any real bearing on the subject. They are:

(1) He will baptize you with fire, which is the words of John the Baptist concerning Messiah (Mt 3:11c).

(2) If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved – even though only as one escaping through the flames (First Corinthians 3:15).

(3) Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire (Jude 22-23a).

(4) For Christ . . . [who] was made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive He went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits – to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water (First Peter 3:18-20). As a result, the four passages here cited by Roman Catholic Church surely are a very light cord on which to hang so heavy a weight.

But, Rome primarily bases her doctrine of purgatory on a passage in II Maccabees 12:39-45, Douay Version. It is, of course, useful in historical terms but not a part of the canon of Scripture. The most important verse reads, “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be [delivered] from their sins.” But, neither this verse, nor the ones above teach the doctrine at all. Nowhere is there any mention of souls being tortured with the same intensity as the fire of hell, except in point of duration. In fact, the word purgatory is not found here. This, again, is a perilous passage on which to build such a false doctrine.²⁵³

After speaking of vipers and escaping the fire (Mattityahu 3:7), the tree cut down and burned (Matthew 3:10), and the baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matthew 3:11) – John now adds another metaphor for judgment (also involving fire), that of the threshing floor. He said: His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Mattityahu 3:11b-12; Luke 3:17). The verb clear is more literally translated completely clean or purity. In the agricultural imagery it perhaps means that the threshing floor is left bare when all the chaff has been separated and the wheat stored. But, metaphorically the verb points to the purpose of ADONAI’s judgment, the complete removal of all sin, leaving a purified people.²⁵⁴

In Judea, as in many other parts of the ancient world, farmers made a threshing floor by picking out a slight depression in the ground, or digging one if necessary, usually on a hill where breezes could be caught. The soil would then be wetted and packed down until it was very hard. Around the perimeter of the floor, which was perhaps thirty or forty feet in diameter, rocks would be stacked to keep the grain in place. After the stalks of grain were placed onto the floor, an ox, or a team of oxen, would drag heavy pieces of wood around over the grain, separating the wheat kernels from the chaff, or straw. Then the farmer would take a winnowing fork and throw a pile of grain into the air. The wind would blow the chaff away, while the wheat kernels, being heavier, would fall back to the floor. Plainly, nothing would be left but the good and useful wheat. The valued wheat would then be stored for future use, while the chaff would be burned up because it was useless.²⁵⁵

In a similar way the Messiah will separate out everyone who belongs to Him and, like the farmer, He will gather the wheat into His barn, where it will be forever safe and protected. Also, in a similar way to the farmer, He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. This is a striking description of the judgment known as Gei-Hinnom in Jewish literature. In ancient times this valley outside of Yerushalayim was used as a burning trash dump and sometimes was even a place of pagan, human sacrifice. It was therefore a fitting picture for the real place of judgment to come in the messianic Kingdom (see my commentary on Revelation Er – Babylon Will Never Be Found Again). Consequently, these scriptures teach that every person, believer or un-believer, will experience a baptism by Jesus Christ. It will be a baptism of blessing with the indwelling of the Ruach Ha’Kodesh, or it will be a baptism of fire and judgment.

The promise here is of Jesus bringing the predicted times of spiritual filling to those who desire it. This is why Yochanan humbly stated: After me will come One who is more powerful than I. The Immerser pointed people from himself to the Lord Jesus Christ by presenting himself as His servant. In fact he considered himself to be unworthy even to be a servant. He stated that he was unworthy even to be a servant, saying: The straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie, the One he came to introduce (Matthew 3:11b; Mark 1:7; Luke 3:16a). John’s obvious humbleness, yieldedness, and modesty compelled people to listen to him.

And with many other words Yochanan exhorted the people continually and proclaimed the Good News, or the Gospel, to them (Luke 3:18). The message of repentance is Good News, for it means that forgiveness is possible. People can still pass from eternal death to eternal life and become part of the family of God if they repent. The tragedy and consequences of sin are not irreversible, and that, my friend, is good news. By his preaching, John was preparing our Savior’s way.

You Brood of Vipers,
Who Warned You to Flee the Coming Wrath
Matthew 3:7-10 and Luke 3:7-14

You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the coming wrath DIG: What is the difference between John’s baptism, Jewish baptism, and believer’s baptism. Why did the Pharisees and Sadducees travel from Jerusalem to the Jordan River to see John? Why did Yochanan call them a brood of vipers? What was the coming wrath that Yochanan talked about? What fruit was the baptizer looking for? Who asked what they should do? What was John’s response?

REFLECT: Who are today’s “Pharisees and Sadducees?” How is repentance linked to your experience of salvation? Have you followed the Lord in believer’s baptism?

Matthew records this one sample of the preaching of John the Baptist. The parallel account in Luke gives more details, but, the message is the same: a call to repentance and baptism, an inner change of mind and heart, along with an outward act that symbolized that change – and, even more importantly, a manner of living that demonstrated the change.²⁴³

Yochanan was an unforgettable person. His back-to-God movement was creating quite a stir out in the wilderness. Whenever any kind of messianic movement of note took place, the Great Sanhedrin (to see link click Lg – The Great Sanhedrin) had a two-fold responsibility to determine if the movement was significant or insignificant. When Yochanan began preaching a baptism of repentance and drawing huge crowds, it became obvious to the religious leaders in Yerushalayim that this movement needed to be further investigated because some were saying that John was the Messiah. So, the Great Sanhedrin sent representatives to start the first stage of observation (see below). You will notice that John does all the talking here because the Pharisees and Sadducees could only observe.

But, then he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing (Matthew 3:7a; Luke 3:7). The phrase coming to where he was, is in the imperfect tense, and speaks of continuous action. They kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. And immersing is also in the imperfect tense, John kept baptizing, and baptizing and baptizing! But, what was the difference between Yochanan’s baptism and those who were immersed after the birth of the Church (see the commentary on Acts Al – The Ruach ha-Kodesh Comes at Shavu’ot).

John’s baptism was a back-to-God movement looking forward to the Messiah. It was kingdom centered and a baptism of repentance. The difference between John’s baptism and proselyte baptism, was that Yochanan was baptizing Jews. It was much different than the Levitical washings. John’s call for a one-time immersion for those who had been born Jews was unprecedented because it said that ancestry was not a guarantee of one’s relationship with ADONAI. The only one-time washing the Jews performed was for Gentiles, signifying their coming as outsiders into the true faith of Judaism. An amazing admission for a Jew. Members of God’s chosen race, descendants of Abraham, heirs to the covenant of Moshe, came to Yochanan to be immersed like a Gentile.²⁴⁴

Jewish baptism was called proselyte baptism for non-Jews. For a Gentile to become a Jew there were two requirements: baptism, circumcision for the men, and a sacrifice offered by the women. A proselyte by his immersion signified that he was terminating his relationship in his old society, including his allegiance to his old gods. The self-administered immersion, was symbolic of a new birth. A proselyte was regarded as risen from the dead. Yochanan’s baptism, however, was different because it was not self-administered, but also because he immersed Jews.²⁴⁵

Believer’s baptism identifies the new convert with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (First Corinthians 15:3-4). It is an outward manifestation of an inward conviction. That is why those who were baptized by John had to be baptized again after receiving Messiah. It has nothing to do with salvation, but, was merely a point of obedience. Before Yeshua ascended back to heaven He commanded: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I AM with you always, to the very end of the age (Mattityahu 28:18-20).

The Pharisees and Sadducees were not at the Jordan to respond to John’s message. They were there for a different reason. The Sanhedrin had sent them to observe Yochanan. Others did not view this baptism as some new religious experience, but understood John’s baptism as one of repentance and preparation for the Messiah. He was clearly not trying to please the public when he cried out: You brood of vipers (Matthew 3:7b)! The word for brood or offspring is the Greek word gennema. On occasion Jesus used the phrase brood of vipers to describe the Pharisees (Matthew 12:34, 23:33). Vipers were small but extremely poisonous desert snakes that Yochanan surely would have been familiar with.

Calling the Pharisees and Sadducees a brood of vipers exposed their hypocrisy, as well as the fact that their wicked works had been passed on to them by the original serpent (Genesis 3:1-13). In Matthew 23:33 Yeshua calls the scribes and Pharisees snakes as well as a brood of vipers. Later, in John 8:44, the Pharisees challenged Jesus and He said to them: You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Those religious hypocrites were the devil’s children doing the deceitful bidding of the Enemy of souls.²⁴⁶

Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath (Mattityahu 3:7; Luke 3:7)? It’s as if Yochanan was saying, “You are like the snakes which rush from their lair when the brush catches on fire in the wilderness, as they slither away across the stones to their dens.” John’s preaching was clearly concerned with the means of getting into the messianic community and experiencing its salvation, and therefore, he preached a universal call to repentance. While being a pretty straightforward rebuke, it was really no different than the prophets of previous generations had spoken (Psalm 58).

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:8; Luke 3:8a). Yochanan even questions their motives for seeking this baptism of repentance since they demonstrated no fruit as evidence of their sincerity. You can’t turn to God without turning from sin. It was as if John was saying, “You have shown absolutely no evidence of repentance, but, now you have a chance to turn around and go in a different direction. Go ahead and show me that you have turned from your wickedness and I will be more than happy to baptize you.” The rabbis said, “Great is repentance, for it brings healing upon the world. Great is repentance, for it reaches to the throne of God. Some rabbis believed that the Torah was created two thousand years before Adam, but that repentance was created even before the Torah. The rabbis taught that the gates of repentance never close, that repentance is like the sea, because a person can bathe in it at any hour. The meaning of repentance in Judaism has always been a change of heart, resulting in a closer relationship with ADONAI.

Genuine repentance includes a profound sense of wrongdoing and of sin against Ha’Shem Himself. After committing adultery with Bathsheba and having Uriah killed (Second Samuel 11), David cried out: Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in Your sight (Psalm 51). Not only did he see his sin, but, he was also desperate to rid himself of it. In another Psalm he declared: When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long (Psalm 32:3). The sorrow of real repentance is like David’s; it is sorrow for sinning against Ha’Shem, not simply because we have to suffer the consequences of our actions. That is merely selfish regret and only adds to the initial sin. Spiritual fruit is the evidence of true repentance. Of all the people who should have known the meaning of true repentance it was the Pharisees and Sadducees, but sadly, they did not.

John anticipated their response that depended on their supposed superior relationship with Abraham. The Jews believed that the wrath of God would only be poured out on the Gentiles, while they, as Abraham’s children, were certain of escape. In the words of the Talmud, that the night of Isaiah 21:12 was only to the [Gentile] nations of the world, but the morning was promised to Isra’el (Jer. Ta’anit 64a). They believed that all Jews, by virtue of their special connection to righteous Abraham, enjoyed the benefits of a superior standing before ADONAI. So John began by saying: And do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father” (Mattityahu 3:9a). This common doctrine is often found in the prayer service and rabbinic writings; the Avot section of the Amidah prayer for example. The Talmud even declares “all Isra’el has a place in the world to come” (cf. Tractate Sanhedrin 10:1). The reason the members of the Great Sanhedrin would say this silently to themselves, was because it was the first stage of observation and they were not able to engage in any conversation with John.

In response to their hypothetical argument that they had a special relationship with Abraham, Yochanan issues a stinging rebuke. Possibly pointing to the stones on the river bank, he said: For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham (Matthew 3:9b; Luke 3:8b). From stony hearted Gentiles He would make spiritual children of Abraham. The Pharisees and Sadducees needed to learn that one is a son of Abraham of the heart only. Rabbi Shaul would later write: A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code (Romans 2:28-29). Aside from the truth of this statement, there is clearly a classic play on words in the Hebrew text as well. The Hebrew for children, or banim, would closely relate to the word for stones, or avanim, thus reinforcing the problem of trusting only in the merits of the fathers.²⁴⁷

One strong image of judgment succeeds another. The urgency of Yochanan saying that the Kingdom had already come (Matthew 3:2), matches the claim here that the ax is already at the root of the trees (Mattityahu 3:10a; Luke 3:9a). The looming judgment is stressed not only by the initial verb already, but, also by the vivid present tenses of this verse. For the chopping down of a tree is a metaphor for God’s judgment on Gentile nations (Isaiah 10:33; Ezeki’el 31:1-18; Dani’el 4:14). Now Isra’el, too, faces such judgment. Later, Yeshua will take up the metaphor with specific reference to the failure to produce fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them (Matthew 7:19; Luke 13:6-9). And every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire (Mt 3:10b; Luke 3:9b). The cutting at the root indicated a final removal of the tree rather than merely pruning. As a result, the basis of Isra’el’s judgment is not a failure to be children of Abraham, but, the lack of good fruit, which is the evidence of true repentance.²⁴⁸

After observing, they would then report their conclusion back to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. If the movement were found to be insignificant, then the whole thing would be dropped. But, if the first stage was found to be significant, the Sanhedrin proceeded to the second stage of interrogation. Then they asked questions, like: Who are you? Who do you claim to be? What are you doing? Why are you doing it?²⁴⁹

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. Such a question does not suggest that those seeking to have a relationship with God based on their works, but is an appropriate, sincere response to the Good News. Yochanan answered them, “The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none.” The tunic was an under-garment worn over the bare body and beneath an outer robe. A person might wear two tunics for protection against cold on a journey. And the person who has food must do likewise (Luke 3:10-11 NET Bible). These verses clearly have their roots in the TaNaKh (Job 31:16-20; Isaiah 58:7; Ezeki’el 18:7). Any genuine faith must involve concern for the poor and unfortunate, and all of the gospel writers, Luke in particular, sought to stress this point (Luke 6:30, 12:33, 14:12-14, 16:9 and 18:22).

Even tax collectors came to be baptized. Tax collectors were known for their greediness. They were located at commercial centers, such as Capernaum and Jericho, to collect tolls, customs and tariffs. Such people had bid and won the right to collect such tolls for the Romans. The fact that their profit was determined by how much they collected and that their bid had been paid for in advance led to great abuse. They were hated and despised by their fellow Jews. Dishonesty among tax collectors was the rule (San 25b), and their witness was not accepted in a court of law. Thus they were often associated with sinners and prostitutes. Rabbi, they asked: what should we do? He told them: Don’t collect any more than you are required to (Luke 3:12-13).

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied: Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay (Luke 3:14). These soldiers were probably not Romans but Jews whom Herod Antipas employed (Josephus, Antiquities 18.5.1 [18.113]), perhaps to assist the tax collectors with their duties in Peraea.These soldiers were not required to resign but to avoid the sins of their profession, like violent intimidation, extortion and dissatisfaction with their pay.²⁵⁰

This is a very practical message that John gave to us and to people who came to him from different walks of life. Grow where you are planted. If you are a parent, reveal that you are a believer by the way you parent. If you are in business, show that you’re a believer by the ethical way you conduct your business. If you are waitress, make public the fact that you love the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the way you interact with other employees and customers. You expose what you are. Thus, our Lord said: By their fruit you will recognize them (Matthew 7:20).

John the Baptist Prepares the Way
Matthew 3:1-6; Mark 1:2-6; Luke 3:3-6

John the Baptist prepares the way DIG: If you could summarize John’s message in one word, what would it be? What does the term the Kingdom of heaven mean? How did John the Baptist fulfill the prophetic ministry of the latter-day Elijah? How did he prepare the way for Yeshua? How was Yochanan dressed, what did he eat, and what does that tell us about him? What was John’s two-fold ministry of preparation?

REFLECT: Who has been the “John the Baptist” in your life? How did that prepare you to meet Jesus? How does the Bible define sin? What does it take for you to repent? When you sin, do you readily ask for forgiveness? Or do the natural consequences of your sin have to pile up to the heavens before you break down and repent? Exactly how do we repent of our sins?

For the first time we have a message from the viewpoint of the three Synoptic Gospels. The word synoptic comes from two Greek words that mean to see together. These three Gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels because they can be set down in parallel columns, and their common content can be looked at together. The Gospel writers tell the same story from their own unique perspective, or theme. Matthew, Mark and Luke were more interested in what Yeshua did; while John was far more interested in what Jesus said.

Yochanan appears suddenly as he walks onto the pages of the Bible just as suddenly and mysteriously as Elijah (First Kings 17:1), on whom Matthew’s account of John’s prophetic ministry will be modeled. In those days Yochanan came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea (Mattityahu 3:1). The word wilderness does not necessarily refer to dry, arid land, but means essentially uninhabited territory – open, wild territory – in contrast to the cultivated, inhabited areas of the country.²²³ Isra’el’s prophets had predicted a new exodus in the wilderness (Hosea 2:14-15; Isaiah 40:3). There, he could have safely drawn large crowds (see Matthew 3:5; Mark 1:5a below) and it provided him the best places for public baptisms that challenged the authority of the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Thus, John’s location symbolized the coming of a new exodus, the final time of salvation, and the price that a true prophet of God must be willing to pay for his or her call: total exclusion from all that society values – its comforts, status, even the basic necessities (First Kings 13:8-9, 20:27; Isaiah 20:2; Jeremiah 15:15-18, 16:1-9; First Corinthians 4:8-13).²²⁴

In those days serves as a transition between Chapters 2 and 3. It was a common literary phrase, indicating the general time in which the events being described occurred. Neatly thirty years had elapsed between Joseph taking the infant Jesus and His mother to Nazareth and the beginning of John’s public ministry. We cannot understand in these days of instant communication, why Yochanan should not have had an opportunity to know Yeshua personally. It is probable that both Zacharias and Joseph died when John and Jesus were quite young, and if so that might account in part for their separation during a large part of the thirty years. Then, too, ninety miles was not a short journey in those days and the responsibility of a large family such as Mary raised, would make it difficult to visit the aged Elizabeth, which in her youthful days Miryam had considered easy enough. Neither do we know if Elisheva lived for many years, since her name disappears from the Scriptures after the birth of John.²²⁵

Yochanan was the cousin of Yeshua, born just six months before Him (Luke 1:56-57). His name means God is gracious, which is an apt description of the one who will prepare the way of King Messiah. John’s movement was a back-to-God movement. The part of his message that was a spark that ignited Judea was the announcement that the Kingdom of heaven has come near. And Yochanan’s baptism was to identify themselves with that Kingdom centered movement.

John’s message was so simple it could be easily summarized in one word: repent. The Greek word metanoeo behind repent means more than regret or sorrow (Hebrews 12:17); it means to turn around, to change direction, to change the mind and will. It doesn’t refer to just any random change, but always a change from wrong to right, away from sin and to righteousness. Yes, repentance involves sorrow for sin, but it is a sorrow that leads a change of thinking, desire and conduct (Second Corinthians 7:10). In fact, John’s command to repent could be translated be converted.²²⁶

Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven has come near (Matthew 3:2). People needed to repent and be converted because the King and His Kingdom were already present. The Greek word for come, engiken, is in the perfect tense and points to the fact that the Kingdom is already present, not merely still on the way. In Mark 1:15 the same phrase is used when Jesus announces the Good News, also in the perfect tense: The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the Good News. The present reality of the Kingdom is further supported when Mattityahu tells us that the ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 3:10).

Some modern commentators have questioned Mattityahu’s use of the term the Kingdom of heaven. Some even wonder if Matthew’s speaking of a different, spiritual kingdom verses the earthly kingdom (Kingdom of God) alluded to by the other gospel writers. From Matthew’s perspective, the answer is rather simple. As a traditional Jews writing to a Jewish audience, it would be common to avoid pronouncing or writing the holy name of God (YHVH). As the Talmud clarifies, “In the Sanctuary the Name was pronounced as written, but beyond its confines a substituted Name was employed” (Tractate Sotah VII.6). A solution still common today in the Jewish community is to use substitute terms for YHVH such as ADONAI (the Name, more like “Daddy”) or Ha’Shem (the Name, more like “Sir”). In the Talmudic writings we often find the word shamayim or heavens as a substitute for the name of God since it refers to the entire universe that He has created. When Matthew uses the term Kingdom of Heaven, then, he is not speaking of a different Kingdom but simply using a very Jewish way of referring to the Creator.

For the Jewish mind of the first century the expression the Kingdom of heaven was the equivalent for a personal acknowledgement of God. That meant, first, taking upon oneself “the yoke of the Kingdom,” and then, as a result, the commandments. Accordingly, the prayer: Sh’ma, Yisra’el adonai eloheniu, adonai echad, or Hear Isra’el the Lord [is] our God, the Lord alone (Deuteronomy 6:4a)²²⁷ comes before the admonition of Deuteronomy 11:13: So . . . listen carefully to my mitzvot [commandments] which I am giving you today, [and] love ADONAI your God and serve Him with all your hear and all your being. And in this sense, the repetition of the Sh’ma today is itself often seen by Orthodox Jews as taking upon oneself “the yoke of the Kingdom.” Similarly, the putting on of phylacteries, and the washing of hands (to see link click Ei – The Oral Law), are also seen as taking upon oneself  “the yoke of the Kingdom of heaven.”²²⁸

Yochanan was a man who lived his message, but his desire was not have everyone live as he did. He didn’t call anyone, including the apostles, to do so. But, his manner of living was a vivid reminder of the many loves and pleasures that kept people from exchanging their own ways for ADONAI’s.

The secondary title given to him is the Baptist, not because he was a member of the Baptist denomination, but because he was the one who performed ritual baptisms or immersions within the context of Judaism. In Hebrew he is called the Immerser or ha-matbil, which the Greeks called baptidzo, meaning to totally immerse or dip. In secular usage, the term is often used to describe the process of dipping a piece of cloth in a dye in order to change its appearance. Perhaps the best word is identification, as the cloth would then be identified with the color of the dye. This gives us the meaning of immersion. Baptism is a complete immersion to identify with a particular event of message. Certainly the Jordan River would serve as a kosher place to baptize Yeshua, as it would have more than the minimal requirements of fresh water.

There need not be a debate about what kind of baptism Yochanan used. Gentile converts were immersed in a mikveh, literally meaning any gathering of waters. It was used in Jewish law for ritual immersion. The rabbis taught that immersion was required of both men and women when converting to Judaism. The Jewish baptism candidates were often immersed three times because the word mikveh occurs three times in the Torah. The idea of total immersion comes from Leviticus 15:16 (CJB) were it says: If a man has a seminal emission, he is to bathe his entire body in water; he will be unclean until evening. The concept of immersion in rabbinic literature referred to a new birth (Yeb. 22a; 48b; 97b; Mass. Ger. c.ii).²²⁹

As if to prove the point that John was not speaking of a different Kingdom or a new religion, the Gospel writers quote a prophecy well known by the Jews that there would come one who would prepare the way for the Meshiach. It is written (Mark 1:2a), or gegraptai, is in the perfect tense, speaking of an act completed in the past, but having continuing results. It is used here to emphasize the fact that the TaNaKh was not merely handed down from generation to generation to the first century, but that it was a permanent record of what God said. It is, in the language of the Psalmist, forever settled in heaven (Psalm 119:89 ASV).²³⁰

Isaiah the prophet said: I will send My messenger ahead of You, who will prepare Your way (Mark 1:2b). This is why the New Covenant affirms elsewhere that John fulfilled the prophetic ministry of the latter-day Elijah, who would usher in the last days (see my commentary on Revelation Bw – See, I Will Send You the Prophet Elijah Before That Great and Dreadful day of the LORD Comes). His message was effective because he told people what in their hearts they knew, and he brought them what in the depths of their souls they were waiting for. The rabbis taught that if Isra’el would keep the Torah perfectly for one day the kingdom of God would come.When John summoned people to repentance he was confronting them with a choice and a decision that they knew in their heart of hearts they needed to make.²³¹

A voice; there is no definite article in the Greek text. John claimed to be a voice, not the voice. The One for whom he made ready was the Son of God, the unique Son, Himself, very God. Of one calling, boao, meaning to cry out loud to shout, to speak with a high, strong voice in the wilderness. Kaleo in classic Greek meant to cry out for a purpose. But boao means to shout out as an expression of feeling. It came from the heart, and was addressed to the heart. I am a voice shouting out in the wilderness in Judea. Make straight the way of the Lord (Yochanan 1:23). The One shouting out was ADONAI. John was His mouthpiece. Behind John’s preaching to Isra’el was the infinite longing of the God of Isra’el for His chosen people (Isaiah 65:9).

Prepare the way for ADONAI, make straight paths for Him (Mattityahu 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4). To make straight is a poetic way of saying, make easier. When a king traveled in the desert, workmen preceded him to clear debris and smooth out the roads to make his trip easier. Here, the leveling of the land and making straight paths for Yeshua is a figurative expression meaning the way of the Messiah would be made easier because of the large number of people who were ready to receive Jesus’ message (Luke 1:17). The verb make is present imperative, issuing a command to be obeyed continuously. It should be a habit with Isra’el, a constant attitude, not a formal, abrupt welcome and that left at that! But, a welcome that would extend on and on, a habitual welcome that would be the natural expression of the heart.

It was common to combine quotations from the prophets, this is a quote from Malachi 3:1 where the messenger introduced in Isaiah 40:3-5 is identified with Elijah (see Ak – The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold). Isaiah prophesied about the Babylon captivity, which would begin one-hundred years in the near historical future. And an important part of that prophecy was that there was one who would prepare the way for ADONAI Himself. The quotation from Isaiah being the more important than the one from Malachi regarding this messenger. The preaching of  John the Immerser was very important to the early Messianic Community and it is pointed out at the onset that the messenger would come before  the Messiah (Acts 1:21-22; 10:37; 19:4).

Luke continues the quotation beyond the other two Gospel writers, saying: Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low, literally humbled. This refers to the humbling of the proud mentioned earlier in Luke 1:52 and later in Luke 14:11 and 18:14. The pictures in these verses should be seen a metaphors or images of repentance. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth (Luke 3:5). This may be an illusion to the corrupt generation, literally crooked, of Acts 2:40. Luke, like John, understood that repentance is part of the central core of the Good News. And all people will see God’s salvation (Luke 3:6). This being the concept of the Gospel going to the farthest parts of the world because it is a universal message.²³²

John probably knew of the prophecies in Malachi and Isaiah because he dressed similar to Elijah the prophet (Second Kings 1:8). John wore clothing made of camel’s hair (Matthew 3:4a; Mark 1:6a), which was the equivalent of the sackcloth worn by the prophets when they appeared in mourning with a message of judgment. John’s very dress, food, and life-style were in themselves an indictment against the self-satisfied and self-indulgent religious leaders in Jerusalem. This rough clothing seems to have been characteristic of a prophet (Zech 13:4). John did not come with the splendid waistband of the high priest (Exodus 28:8), but rather with a simple leather belt around his waist, which also reminds us of Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). The actual identification of John with Elijah is not made by Matthew until 11:14, but, it is certainly also implied here.

But, more important than that, John symbolizes the breaking of the centuries of prophetic silence recognized by the Jews themselves (First Maccabees 4:46, 9:27, 14:41). Here then is a new thing: a voice from ADONAI out of the silence, confirmed by its power and message, as well as by its unusual messenger. Prophecy appeared again in the midst of Isra’el, the people of God.²³³

John’s lifestyle matched the ruggedness of his message. Yochanan’s food was not that of a priest. The priests ate the flesh of the sacrifices. But John lived on what the wilderness provided, his food was locusts and wild honey (Mattityahu 3:4b; Mark 1:6b). Locusts could be eaten according to the kashrut, or dietary laws, as seen in Leviticus 11:22, and there is dialogue in the Talmud that is very specific about the characteristics of kosher and unkosher locusts (CD 12:14-15; 11QTemple 48:3-5; Tractate Chullin 65a-66a). Locusts were food for the poor in Yeshua’s day. Bedouins cook and eat them to this day, as did the Jews of Yemen before Operation Flying Carpet removed that community to Isra’el in 1950. The wild honey mentioned here was probably date honey, because oases near Jericho are known for the production of dates both then and now, and bees do not live in the wilderness.²³⁴ His diet was compatible with that of a Nazirite. He lived simply – with only the barest essentials for life.

You don’t have to be like the world to have an impact on the world. You don’t have to be like the crowd to change the crowd. You don’t have to lower yourself down to their level to lift them up to your level. Holiness doesn’t seek to be odd. Holiness seeks to be like God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes His enemy (James 4:4).

This tells us that Yochanan lived outside the normal economic framework of the country so that he could be wholly devoted to his ministry. As a result, the multitudes were coming to John, repenting and being baptized by him in the Jordan River. To see what the Jordan River looks like today click here. By doing this, they were identifying with what the Immerser preached and preparing themselves for the imminent return of the Messiah.²³⁵

It is possible that John the Baptist was a Essene but we cannot be certain. It is likely that Yochanan came in contact with them. He certainly must have known of them. What influences they had on him are not known.²³⁶ The Essenes and the Qumran community probably had their origin in the Hasidim of the Maccabean times. At the time of Christ they were zealous for the Torah and resisted the advance Hellenism. There were an extreme ascetic, communal society living as monks, pulling away from society and believing they were the true, holy Isra’el. They withdrew into their own communities, either within cities or in isolated sites, such as Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. There they awaited a coming apocalyptic war when they, as “the sons of light,” would triumph over “the sons of darkness.”²³⁷ Theologically they were even more legalistic than the Pharisees, and clearly John broke from legalism. So, even if he had lived in the Qumran community at some point, when he was called to be a forerunner to the Meshiach, he withdrew to the wilderness.

The heart of his message was to turn from your sins to God. It is important to understand that Yochanan was not calling Isra’el to convert to a new religion but to return (Hebrew: shuwb) to the source of their faith, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The problem in first century Judaism was not a faulty Torah or Temple service, but, that so many Israelites had drifted away from a true spiritual relationship with ADONAI and replaced it with a faulty man-made substitute (see Ei – The Oral Law).

He had a tremendous response to his ministry. And so John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness. The word appeared is a second aorist verb or ginomai, literally to become. It is used here of John’s appearance on the stage of history, and used to show it was not some small current event, but an epoch, ushering in a new dispensation of God’s dealing with mankind. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3).

In a sense, John had a two-fold ministry of preparation. First of all, he was preparing the way. That is clear from Isaiah 40:3, prepare the way for ADONAI; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. The imagery is one of a royal procession and preparing a path for the king. But, Yochanan not only prepared a way for ADONAI, he also prepared a people for ADONAI. Many of the people of Isra’el will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord (Luke 1:16-17).

People went out to him. The verb, ekporeuomai, is in the imperfect tense that speaks to continuous action and shows the widespread character of the movement. What a picture it paints here. They kept on constantly going out to John a steady stream of people from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan River (Matthew 3:5; Mark 1:5a). Yerushalayim is at least twenty miles from the Yarden River and about four thousand feet above it. It was hard going down the rugged Judean hills to the Jordan and even harder coming back up. Normally, no exclusively ethical preacher, as the Jewish historian Josephus would have us believe Yochanan was (Antiquities XVIII, 117.2), could have attracted that kind of interest. But, John was no ordinary preacher, and his back-to-God movement raised popular excitement to a fever pitch.²³⁸

His reputation spread through the southern part of Judea, including the region of Perea across the Jordan River. John 1:35-51 also speaks of Galileans among John’s followers. The prepositional phrase to him indicates that those who came to Yochanan, came because of who he was and what he proclaimed. It was not a blind, indiscriminate movement of a mass of people, but, the deliberate act of each one individually confessing their sins. Josephus mentioned that the number of people flocking to John were so numerous that Antipas, the ruler of Perea, worried that there might be a popular uprising.²³⁹

Confessing their sins (Matthew 3:6a). The Greek word for confess, exomologeo, means agree with, admit, acknowledge, declare publically, literally, say the same thing. In the case of confessing one’s sins, one is saying the same thing about them that God says, acknowledging the deeds to be wrong, willing to declare publically one’s sorrow, guilt and resolution to change. On Yom-Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, and other fast days, penitential prayers are recited that can help people who say them with sincere devotion to become more willing to admit their sins and agree with God’s opinion of them.

The baptism was accompanied by confession. In any act of returning to ADONAI, confession must be made to three people. First, we must make a confession to ourselves. It is part of human nature that we shut our eyes to what we do not want to wish to see. For that very reason we tend to shut our eyes to our sins. There is no one harder to face than ourselves; and therefore, the first step to repentance and to a right relationship with God is to admit our own sin to ourselves. Secondly, we must make confession to those whom we have wronged. It will not be much use saying we are sorry to the LORD until we say we are sorry to those we have hurt, injured or grieved. The human barriers have to be taken away before the divine barriers can be removed. It is often true that confession to Ha’Shem is easier than confession to other people. But, there can be no forgiveness without humiliation. Thirdly, we must make confession to ADONAI. The end of pride is the beginning of forgiveness. When we say, “I have sinned,” that gives God a chance to say, “I forgive.” It is not the one who wants to meet the LORD on equal terms who discovers forgiveness, bu,t the one who whispers through their tears: God have mercy on me, a sinner (Luke 18:13b).²⁴⁰

Sins. We live in an age when many people do not know what sin is. The Bible tells us that everyone who keeps sinning also practices lawlessness – indeed, sin is lawlessness (First John 3:4). The Torah was given by ADONAI to His people to help them live a life that was both to be in their own best interests as well as holy and pleasing to Him. In the so-called Age of Enlightenment, two or three centuries ago, the notion of moral relativism began to take a strangle hold in Western society. This led to a belief that the concept of sin didn’t matter. They said there is no sin, only sicknesses, bad luck, mistakes or the working out of one’s environmental, hereditary and biological input (western terminology) or of one’s fate or karma (eastern terminology). This cultural relativism negates the biblical concept of sin.

The Scriptures devote many verses in explaining what sin is, what the penalty for sinning is, how we can avoid that penalty, how we can have our sins forgiven, and live a holy life free from the power of sin, pleasing to the LORD and ourselves (Romans 5:12-21).²⁴¹ The Bible also explains how to repent of our sins: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word is not in our lives (First John 1:9).

They were continually baptized by him in the Jordan River, literally placed in the river (Matthew 3:6b; Mark 1:5b). But, because John pointed his followers to Yeshua it wasn’t long before Yochanan lost most of his following, just as Jesus would eventually lose most of His. He would receive the same reception that many of God’s prophets received – he would be put to death. Remember, what happens to the herald will happen to the King. The world does not want to hear the voice of ADONAI, especially when that voice speaks of judgment. And John’s message was very strong.²⁴²

The Word of God Came to John,
Son of Zechariah, in the Wilderness
Mark 1:1 and Luke 3:1-2

The word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness DIG: How long is the time gap between appearances of John the Baptist here and in Luke 1:80? What do you suppose Yochanan was doing in those intervening years? Why? Why does Luke list all the political and religious figures in these verses?

REFLECT: When was your beginning with Jesus? This is your testimony. You should be able to explain to others how you came to Christ. This should only take a couple of minutes. You always need to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15a).

The people of Isra’el were well aware that for four hundred years the voice of prophecy had been silent. They were waiting for some authentic word from God, and ADONAI was ready to break the silence as He sent the last of the prophets to the Israelites. And when John spoke, they heard His voice. In every walk of life the expert is recognizable. We immediately know when a speaker really knows his subject. John had come from the LORD and to hear him was to know it.²¹⁷

There are some great opening lines in literature. The one most often quoted is Charles Dickens’ introduction to A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.” Another is the first line of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, “Call me Ishmael.” In contemporary literature, many call attention to Ernest Hemingway’s genius for piquing his reader’s interest and prefiguring the story to come when he begins The Old Man and the Sea with the simple sentence, “He was an old man who fished alone.” But, nothing can match the inspired author of Scripture. In one short and profound sentence, Mark announces his theme and gives a general outline of the whole Gospel story: The beginning of the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God (Mk 1:1).²¹⁸ John’s ministry lasted about one year. All four gospels and several summaries in Acts (Acts 1:21-22, 10:37, 13:27, 19:4), identify the appearance of John with the beginning of the Good News.

The beginning (Mk 1:1a): This is not the beginning of either John or Jesus. It is the beginning of the Good News when Yeshua the Messiah came to this earth and died upon a cross for the sins of the world and rose again after three days. That, my friend, is the Good News. There are three beginnings recorded in the Bible:

1. In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). This goes back to eternity past, a beginning before all time. Here the human mind can only fumble around in the dark. We must put our peg somewhere in the past in order to take off. If I see an airplane in the air, I assume there is an airport somewhere. I may not know where it is, but, I know the plane took off from somewhere. So, when we look around the universe, we know that it took off from somewhere, and that somewhere is God. However, we don’t know anything about that beginning. God comes out of eternity past to meet us. We just have to put down our peg at the point where He met us, back as far as we can think, and realize He was there before that.

2. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1). This is where we move out of eternity into time. Although many people have attempted to date this universe, no one knows exactly how old it is. It is probably around six thousand years old, but, some secular authors try to find a way to accommodate dinosaur years and account for billions of years in the creation story. We know so little, but, when we come into His presence and begin to know fully even as we are known, then we will realize how we see only a reflection as in a mirror (First Corinthians 13:12). I am sure we shall be amazed at how little we really knew in this life. God is great and always right on time.²¹⁹

3. The beginning of the Good News . . . (Mark 1:1), is the same as that which was from the beginning . . . (First John 1:1). This is dated. It goes back to the exact moment when He, Jesus Christ, took upon Himself human flesh. The good news in Greek is euaggelion, or a message of good news. This word was originally used for good news of any kind. For example, the proclamation of the accession of a new Roman emperor was entitled good news. But, the evangelists changed the word from its secular usage, and spoke of the message of salvation as the Good News.²²⁰ Therefore, Yeshua Messiah is the Good News.

In the far northeast part of the Land, occupying at least in part the ancient possession of Manasseh, were the provinces belonging to Philip the tetrarch. In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar – when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, His brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene – during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert (Luke 3:1-2).

Luke, the historian, was careful to identify the time that John the Baptist began his prophetic ministry by tying the dates to secular history. The times were ripe. Rome, which held absolute control over the whole known world, had reached her highest pinnacle of development under Augustus and was on the decline. Two philosophies, Epicureanism and Stoicism, contended for the supremacy; but, the former led to sensuality, the latter to pride, and both to despair. In the end atheism prevailed largely among the philosophers. All religions of all the conquered peoples were tolerated in Rome, but none satisfied the spiritual void in their lives. Slavery was widespread, and indescribable cruelty was practiced against them. The sacredness of marriage had disappeared and only scandals remained. Worship of the emperors led to promiscuous deification accompanied with despicable lusts. Might was substituted in the place of right, and justice could not be found. The degenerated tastes of the people ran to unlawful public amusements, in which the emperor would butcher thousands in the arena to make the citizens of Rome content. Charity disappeared and honest manual labor was looked on with contempt. The philosophies of Rome offered no hope, but, led only to deeper immorality.

Not only was the Roman world in desperate need of ADONAI’s message, but, the nation of Isra’el also needed His Good News. The conditions in the provinces were somewhat more favorable, but, it was the policy of Rome to absorb all subject nationalities. The Jews continued to worship one God and retain their ethnic identity as after the Babylonian Captivity, they were no longer tempted to worship foreign gods, but, Rome still controlled them. The procurators in Judea had changed the high priest four times, although it was supposed to be an office of life tenure; until they found and appointed Caiaphas, who was willing to be a puppet to Roman tyranny. Violence, robbery, insults, venality, murders without trial, and cruelty characterized Roman rule.

The religious conditions in Palestine had deteriorated to an alarming degree. There was a lot of phony worship, but, little faith. The Pharisees emphasized separateness, but, not true holiness. Believing that they were guaranteed a place in paradise because they were the children of Abraham, they lost sight of the fact that the one who sins is the one who will die spiritually (Ezeki’el 18:20). The scribes professed great devotion to the Scriptures, but, emphasized traditionalism and sought to promote themselves. They multiplied regulations for every detail of life, until they became a burden too heavy to be borne. By the time of Christ they had about fifteen hundred oral laws for every one of the six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Torah of Moshe. The Oral Law (to see link click Ei – The Oral Law) was elevated to the point of being superior to the Torah of ADONAI, with the result that the Torah was eventually marginalized.

The Sadducees ridiculed Pharisaic separateness and their air of superiority, but, were themselves indifferent and did not believe in life after death. Consequently, they grabbed everything they could in this life. They praised morality while preferring lives of comfort and self-indulgence. They were favored by the Roman authorities and in turn submitted to their tyranny without much protest (see Ja – Whose Wife Will She Be at the Resurrection?).²²¹

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar takes place in AD 26 (Luke 3:1a). It had been twenty or thirty years since John had gone into the desert, or the wilderness. Harshness characterized the reign of Tiberius in Palestine, and in Rome the Jews suffered severe persecution. It seems likely that Luke calculated these years from the death of Augustus Caesar, the fifteenth year probably would be AD 28, plus or minus a year. The reference of the other rulers is not especially helpful in obtaining a specific date when John began his ministry because there were several years where their rules overlapped. But, Luke didn’t mention their names to get an exact date; he did so to relate a decisive event in salvation history against the context of world history.

As John preached on the banks of the Jordan River and Jesus was about to reveal His true identity, Pontius Pilate stepped ashore in the seaside fortress town of Caesarea to be governor of Judea from AD 26 to AD 36 (Luke 3:1b). It was a miserable appointment, for Judea was known to be a difficult place to govern. And he was no friend of the Jews. One of his first official acts was to order Roman troops in Jerusalem to decorate standards (a statue of an eagle situated atop a metal post), with an emblem bearing a likeness of Tiberius Caesar attached just below the eagle. To the Jews this was an idol forbidden by the Torah. When they rose up in protest Pilate threatened execution thinking they would back down. But, the Jews bent down and stuck out their necks, making it clear that they were prepared to die for their beliefs. For the first time Pilate witnessed with his own eyes the determination of the Jewish faith. He ordered his soldiers to stand down and the standards were removed.

Pontius Pilate merely formulated a new strategy for dealing with the Jews. He formed an uneasy bond with Caiaphas, a Sadducee, the acting high priest for his father-in-law Annas. He had complete power over religious life in Jerusalem, including the enforcement of Jewish law. Of course, while Caiaphas could pass sentence, it was Pilate who decided if it should be carried out. Pilate was a Roman. Caiaphas was a Jew. They worshiped different gods, ate different foods, had different hopes for their people’s future, and spoke different languages. Pilate supposedly served a divine emperor, while Caiaphas supposedly served God. But, they shared a command of the Greek language and a belief that they were entitled to do anything in order to stay in power.²²²

Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee (see Fl – John the Baptist is Beheaded) and Perea, who ruled from 4 BC to AD 39 (Luke 3:1c, also see 3:19, 8:3, 9:7 and 9, 13:31, 23:7-12; Acts 4:27, 12:1-23, 13:1, 23:25): He was the son of Herod the Great, or as many called him– Herod the Paranoid (see Av – The Visit of the Magi).

Herod’s step-brother Philip was tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis (Luke 3:1d): He ruled east of the Jordan from 4 BC to AD 34. Philip was also a son of Herod the Great.

And Lysanias, by the testimony of Luke and confirmed by modern excavation, was tetrarch of Abilene (Luke 3:1e): It is uncertain why the Ruach Ha’Kodesh inspired Luke to mention Lysanias because little is known about him. Some have speculated that it may have been because Luke supposedly came from Syria, and Abilene bordered Syria.

John’s ministry also began during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas (Luke 3:2a): Annas was deposed by the Romans in AD 14 and replaced by his son-in-law Caiaphas, but the Jews continued to regard Annas as the rightful high priest because they viewed the high-priesthood as an office for life (John 18:13). The plural “high priests” is found throughout the gospels, and Annas is called the high priest in Acts 4:6 and John 18:19.

The word of God came to John, son of Zechariah (Luke 3:2b): The word of God here is the rhema, or spoken word, not logos, or the written Word. Therefore, John heard an audible voice from heaven. It was then, that he began his ministry for which he was born. A similar statement is found at the introduction to Haggai’s prophecy (Haggai 1:1), Zechariah’s prophecy (Zechariah 1:1), and Malachi’s prophecy (Malachi 1:1). This phrase was the formula for a prophetic message from the LORD to be delivered to the nation of Isra’el. As a result, John stood in the same relationship to Isra’el that the three great prophets after the Babylonian captivity occupied. He was ADONAI’s messenger with ADONAI’s message to ADONAI’s people.

In the wilderness (Luke 3:2c): Instead of serving in the Temple as his father Zechariah had done (see Ak – The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold), or appearing in the city Jerusalem as had the post-exilic prophets, John went into the wilderness and renounced his priesthood. His very life-style suggested that he was outside the established religious order of his day. He did not want to serve in a corrupt system, and so, he became a prophet.

John the Baptist is one of the most striking characters that appear in the Bible. He reminded the people of Elijah because both were in the wilderness during their years of preparation. He also reminded the people of the coming Messiah. John was a paradoxical person and truly an unusual man. Luke has told us of his miraculous birth (see Ao – The Birth of John the Baptist). His entire childhood is passed over, and the next major development in his life was the beginning of his ministry. He was a priest, a prophet and a preacher. He was a priest by birth because he was the son of Zechariah, but he was called by ADONAI to be a prophet and a preacher. Thus, the scene is set, and John lived a life of seclusion in the wilderness until his ministry began (Luke 1:80).

The Herald of King Messiah

The baptism of John and believer’s baptism are not the same thing. The basic idea behind “baptism” is identification. Whenever you are baptized, you identify with a person and/or message and/or group. In fact, baptism was a Jewish practice long before it became a messianic practice. Among the things that Gentiles had to do when they converted to Judaism was to be baptized. When Gentiles were baptized into Judaism, they were identifying themselves with the Jewish people and Judaism as their religion. In believers baptism you identify with the death, burial and resurrection of Messiah (Romans 6:1-23).

In the case of John’s baptism, those who were baptized by Yochanan, which was a baptism of repentance, identified themselves with his message and prepared themselves to accept the Messiah and His Kingdom. John’s message is not the same as believer’s baptism. That is why those who were baptized by John later had to be baptized again into believer’s baptism. One example of this can be found in Acts 19:1-7 where disciples that had been baptized by John the Baptist were re-baptized into believer’s baptism. They had received the message of Yochanan. They committed themselves by John’s baptism to accept the Mashiach once He was made known. Unfortunately, they had left Isra’el before Jesus was identified as the Messiah. When they met Rabbi Sha’ul in Ephesus, he told them who the Messiah was. In keeping with their commitment when John baptized them, they received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and so, Paul proceeded to baptize them into believer’s baptism because John’s baptism was not the same thing. We should keep in mind that the baptism Jesus underwent was not proselyte baptism, nor was it what we would call today believer’s baptism, but it was John’s baptism.²¹⁶

Jesus Grew in Wisdom and Stature,
and in Favor with God and Other People
Luke 2: 51-52

Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and other people DIG: What does it say about Yeshua that He was obedient to His parents until about the age of thirty? What things do you think Mary treasured up in her heart? In what other ways was Jesus obedient?

REFLECT: How have you honored your father and your mother? How are you raising your children so that they will honor you? Has it been easy or hard? What decision are you faced with if your father or mother asks you to do something against God’s Word? What would Jesus say about that?

Luke provides his readers with a summary statement of the so called “silent years” between Yeshua going to Jerusalem at age twelve and His baptism about the age of thirty. Then Jesus went down to Nazareth with [His parents] and was obedient to them. But His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And He grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and other people (Luke 2:51-52).

With His return to Nazareth from Egypt, after the death of Herod, Yeshua began a life of youth and early manhood, with all the inward and outward development, with all the heavenly and earthly approval that it deserved.²⁰⁹ But, there was nothing exceptional about Jesus’ upbringing. The next eighteen to twenty years were only silent in the sense that God did not send a prophet to speak to His people. But, today, false religions have attempted to undermine the truth of the New Covenant by co-opting “the Christ” into their own value systems. In their spiritual equivalent of gossip-magazines they have invented numerous myths about Him.

They have seen fit to have Christ traveling all over the world during this time. A film has been produced called, “Jesus in India.” Other documents purport that He visited Persia and Tibet. Others said He studied in England with the Druids. While others believe He traveled to Japan. The Mormons teach that the Lord came to America to preach to the lost tribes of the Lamenites, Nephites, Jeredites and Mulekites. Some even believe that He was visited by extraterrestrial beings and performed various miracles and works of magic. Wow, Yeshua seems like one busy guy!

All of this merely satisfies the itching ears of those who are always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth (Second Timothy 4:3 and 3:7). There is not the slightest evidence that Jesus did anything between the ages of 12 to 30 other than live the life expected of the Jewish son of a Jewish carpenter in Galilee. On the contrary, had the Lord been absent for eighteen years His contemporaries would not have been as familiar with Him as they were when they said: Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know (John 6:42)? The purpose of these elaborate fabrications are, on the one hand, to cater to people’s pride in supposedly having some superior knowledge (like the Gnostics), and, on the other hand, to draw attention away from the central message of the B’rit Chadashah. Namely, that human beings are separated from God by their sins and stand in need of atonement (see my commentary on Exodus, to see link click Bz – Redemption), but that Messiah Yeshua has made that once-for-all atonement and offers it to anyone who will believe in Him and His Word.²¹⁰

The Bible simply teaches that He went with His parents back to Nazareth.

Luke had a special interest in the humanity of Jesus. These two verses summarize His upbringing from the age of twelve until about the age of thirty. Then He went down to Nazareth with His parents and was obedient to them. Yerushalayim is elevated above all the surrounding land, so to go anywhere you have to go down. In this case, even though they were going north, they went down to Nazareth.

This is the best evidence to prove that obedience does not mean inferiority. Here we have the God-man, superior in every imaginable way, being obedient to two sinful inferiors because that was the divine order and the divine will for His life at that time. When the Bible says: Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22), the issue is not an inferior being obedient to a superior. Instead, it is a matter of divine order, divine decree and divine will. In marriage what should happen is one equal voluntarily becoming obedient to another equal in keeping with the divine will of God (see my commentary on Genesis Lv – I Do Not Permit a Woman to Teach or Have Authority Over a Man, She Must be Silent).

Yeshua was obedient to His parents (see my commentary on Exodus Do – Honor Your Father and Your Mother), He was obedient to the Torah, He was obedient to the government, He was obedient to His Father, and He was obedient even to death. Obedience characterized His life.²¹¹ This is very interesting in the light of the fact that so many people today are rebelling and demanding their “rights.” They could do worse than to emulate the Son of God.

During the silent years Jesus remained there. He had all the human emotions, the good and the bad, the highs and the lows. He laughed (my Jesus laughs). He experienced the joy of festive family gatherings, and loved His family as evidenced in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. After Joseph’s death, He succeeded His earthly father in becoming the carpenter in Nazareth (Matthew 13:55). No later mention of Yosef in the Gospels leads us to believe that he did not live many years beyond this time.²¹²

Jewish home life, especially in the country, was very simple. The meals were awfully basic. Only on the Sabbath and the festivals were fancy meals prepared. The same simplicity would be seen in dress and manners. Their wants were few and life was uncomplicated. But, the bonds between family members were strong and loving, and the influence on each other was profound. Mary and Joseph were part of the believing remnant, and the teaching of and obedience to the Scriptures was of utmost importance. Still, God the Father would continue to waken God the Son morning by morning to teach Him and point Him to the cross (see my commentary on Isaiah Ir – Because the Sovereign LORD Helps Me, I Will Set My Face Like a Flint).

During those years in Nazareth the Messiah developed in four areas: He grew in wisdom (mental development) and stature (physical development), and in favor with God (spiritual development) and other people (social development).²¹³  But, the young Jesus was not long for the small town of Nazareth. The holiness and magnificence of Yerushalayim called to Him. He came to know the smells and music of the City during His annual visits, even as He became comfortable navigating His way through such local landmarks as the Mount of Olives, the garden at Gethsemane, the Kidron Valley, and the Temple itself. With every passing  year, as Yeshua grew from a small child into a man with a carpenter’s square shoulders and callused hands, He grew both in wisdom and in faith.²¹⁴

For many people being obedient to one or both parents is a very difficult, if not impossible thing to do. There may have been abandonment; there might even been physical or psychological abuse. Even sexual abuse. Addiction to drugs or alcohol. So, how can you be obedient to THAT! Here is the answer: If you are being asked to do something illegal or immoral, the Word of God takes precedence. The Lord Himself said: Anyone who loves their father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds their life will lose it and whoever loses their life for My sake will find it (Matthew 10:37-39).

But His mother treasured, meaning to keep or to guard safely, all these things in her heart. The imperfect tense of the word treasured means that she kept on reflecting and reflecting on her twelve-year-old’s words after returning from Jerusalem, even though she did not really understand them: Why were you searching for Me? Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house [or about My Father’s business] (Luke 2:49)? She had much to remember, and still much to learn. But, the Lord remained devoted to His mother, and she to Him. But, as He approached the age of thirty, Jesus of Nazareth knew that silence was no longer an option. The time had come for Him to fulfill His destiny. It was a decision that would change the world. It would also lead to His agonizing death.²¹⁵

The Boy Jesus at the Temple
Luke 2: 41-50

The boy Jesus at the Temple DIG: What was the significance of these feasts that was an annual tradition with the Lord’s parents? Make a list of Yeshua’s character traits revealed in this passage. What do they tell us about the kind of youngster Jesus was? How much does He seem to know about His mission? How much do His parents know? How much did His parents seemingly forget?

REFLECT: In balancing your hunger for God with your daily responsibilities do you err more on the side of neglecting the Lord or the other concerns? Why? What would a proper balance look like to you? What are some of the questions you have for Him right now? When you don’t get an immediate answer, what do think? Do you have the assurance that He is listening? Do you accept the possibility that He may say no?

Every year Yeshua’s parents went up to Jerusalem. On the fourteenth of Nisan every able bodied Israelite man not in a state of uncleanness was to appear in Yerushalayim for Pesach. Though women were not obligated to go up we know from Scripture (First Samuel 1:3-7), and from the rules laid down by Jewish authorities (see Josephus, Wars, vi. 9-3; and the Mishnah Pes.Ix. 4), that their attendance was common. Indeed, it was a joyous time for all Isra’el. From all parts of the Land and from foreign countries the festive pilgrims came in groups, singing their pilgrim psalms, and bringing with them burnt and peace offerings, according to how ADONAI had blessed them; for none might appear empty before Him. Josephus records that the number of people in the City would swell from the usual 500,000 to about three million.¹⁹¹

Without being named directly, this is the last time that Joseph, the earthly stepfather of the LORD, is in the picture. The imperfect verb went indicates that it was the habit of Jesus’ parents to go up to the City of David to celebrate Pesach. Every year also emphasizes this point. Jerusalem is a higher elevation than Nazareth; therefore, they had to go up to get there. The Passover was one of the three annual feasts, Passover, Weeks, and Booths, Jewish men were required to celebrate (Deuteronomy 16:16).

The parents of Yeshua traveled to Zion every year for the Feast of the Passover in keeping with the commandments found in Exodus 23:14-17 and Deuteronomy 16:1-8. This demonstrated their obedience to the Torah. But, traveling alone or as a family was dangerous because of thieves and murderers on the road. So, when traveling long distances, people usually traveled in caravans for company and protection. A day’s journey was about twenty to twenty-five miles. Luke, under the inspiration of the Ruach Ha’Kodesh, feels compelled to record when Jesus was twelve years old, His parents went up to the Feast, according to the custom (Luke 2:41-42).

When Yeshua was younger His parents went up to Jerusalem without Him. But, now it was time for Him to go along with them. The rabbis taught that the son was to be taken to Jerusalem as a preparation for his bar mitzvah when he was thirteen (Pirke Avot 5.24). In keeping with that Jewish custom, His parents took Him to the City of David when He was twelve years old. At thirteen, a Jewish boy was called a bar mitzvah, or a son of the commandment (Nid. 5:6; Nazir 29b), the age of accountability, when he would take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Therefore, Jesus would have undergone a rigorous program of instruction and preparation for this passage to manhood. But, the modern bar mitzvah ceremony and celebration evolved from Jewish customs in the Middle Ages, so we can only guess as to how Jews celebrated in the first-century. There is little doubt, however, that Luke’s account records this event because it served as an important transition in the life of Yeshua as a traditional Jew.¹⁹²

Pesach lasted but one day, and was immediately followed by the feast of Unleavened Bread for a total of eight high holy days (Exodus 23:15; Leviticus 23:4-8; Deuteronomy 16:1-8). Together, they were commonly called the Passover. Only the first two days of the eight-day festival was personal attendance in the Temple Mount mandatory. The third day started the so-called half-holidays, when the pilgrims were permitted to return home. And many did so, including the caravan from Nazareth. There was really nothing of special interest to detain the pilgrims any further. The Passover meal had already been eaten, the second Chagigah offering had been sacrificed (The first being sacrificed as a representative for the sins of the nation, slaughtered in the Temple grounds at 9:00 am on the fifteenth of Nisan), and the first ripe barley had been reaped, brought to the Temple and waved as the Omer of first flower before Ha’Shem after the Sabbath.¹⁹³

So Mary and Joseph began the journey north to Galilee along with hundreds of other pilgrims, probably including dozens of friends and relatives. And as the whole caravan was returning when they had fulfilled the two necessary days, the boy Jesus stayed behind in the City. But His parents were unaware of it (Luke 2:43 NASB). The caravan probably went around Samaria, on a path that could only be described as treacherous. There were few inns or sources of food and water, and the landscape alternated between desert and rugged wilderness. But, there was safety in numbers so Miryam and Joseph’s fellow travelers were hardly strangers, for they made this same journey together each year.¹⁹⁴

Anxiety struck Mary and Yosef when they realized that they had lost track of their son. They experienced first hand the panic that overcomes a parent when a child disappears at a department store or fails to arrive home on time from school. How did this mix-up happen? The women normally traveled with the younger children on such a journey, separate from the men and older boys. But, Yeshua was twelve years old, and gradually moving from the care of His mother to the training of His father. During that transition, a boy could opt to travel with either parent. Evidently each of His parents thought that Jesus had gone with the other. It was an honest mistake.¹⁹⁵

Thinking He was in their company, they had traveled on for a day. Caravans of this day traveled about twenty miles a day. Then they began looking for Him among their relatives and friends (Luke 2:44). The imperfect tense denotes thoroughness and repeated action. They repeatedly walked the length of the caravan in search of their lost son, growing more concerned by the moment, pleading with fellow pilgrims for some clue as to their son’s whereabouts. But, not a single person could remember seeing Yeshua since the moment the endless column of travelers left the City of David.¹⁹⁶  When they did not find Him, they hurriedly retraced their steps and went back to Yerushalayim to look for Him (Luke 2:45). A second full day was spent returning to Jerusalem.

Somewhere, among the merchants, soldiers and exotic travelers in the crowded, hectic City, they had to find their son. As the third day started and the so-called half-holidays had begun, things started to return to normal in the Holy City. The soldiers had returned to their barracks in the nearby Antonia Fortress, allowing the worshipers to return to their normal routines of prayer, fasting, worship, sacrifice and teaching. Jesus was in His element.

Yeshua was probably quite aware that His parents had already begun the journey back to Nazareth. He was not insensitive, but, His thirst to share His insights were so great that it probably never crossed His mind that Miryam and Yosef would be worried once they discovered Him missing. Nor does Yeshua believe His actions were disobedient. But, the things of God overwhelmed every other consideration. Like all Jewish boys, He was growing into manhood. But, Jesus was far different from all the other Jewish boys His age.¹⁹⁷

Meanwhile, Mary and Joseph frantically searched the narrow streets and bazaars of the Lower City. That was the most logical place to start. They just couldn’t understand His disappearance. It just wasn’t like Him to wander off without telling them where He was going. Not finding Him in the Lower City, they went to the Temple Mount itself.

They trudged up the thirty uneven steps as fast as they could go, then through the entrance to the southern Double Gate,

and, at its end, up the stairway to the open-air stone courtyard known as the Court of the Gentiles that covered the majority of the Temple Mount.

It was a three-acre platform with walls stretching a quarter mile and could have held two amphitheaters the size of the Roman Coliseum. Being five hundred cubits square, it could hold a total of about 200,000 people.¹⁹⁸ They found themselves standing on an extremely large crowded plaza, where they begin scanning the many worshipers for signs of their son. It seemed impossible to know where to look first. What should they do next? Where should they go? Moving toward the Sanctuary, they passed through the Beautiful Gate and entered the Court of the Women.

This inner area of the Temple compound was open to both men and women. Certainly, it was the common place for worship for everyone and functioned to a certain extent as a Temple synagogue in the open air. It was a large area that covered 70.87 by 70.87 meters, 5,023 square meters, or 16,475 square feet.¹⁹⁹ All around it ran a simple porch 60 feet square. Just a few days earlier at the height of the Passover it was capable of holding up to 6,000 worshipers. But, now with the so-called half-holidays, many of the pilgrims had returned home. It was still crowded enough, however, that it took longer than they wanted to finally come to the conclusion that Jesus was nowhere in sight.

The search had become a process of elimination. Their son was obviously not in the Chamber of the Lepers. The Chamber of the Hearth housed priests while they were on duty and contained only dormitories and offices, so that was unlikely. The Chamber of the Nazirites, that, too, was out of the question. But, Miryam and Joseph were desperate and willing to look anywhere. They scoured the Temple grounds with the same frantic urgency with which they searched the bazaars and alleys of Jerusalem earlier in the day.²⁰⁰                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Finally, as a last resort, they went to the Royal Stoa. It was a large open-air plaza that ran the length of the entire southern wall. It was built according to the plan of a basilica, or a large structure in ancient Rome. Rectangular in design, it consisted of a roofed hall entered from porticos at each end. It had a wide central aisle, or nave, and was separated from the two side aisles by rows of columns. The nave walls rose above the aisle roofs and were constructed with windows to admit light.  It was not a sacred place and was actually an extension of the Court of the Gentiles. The rabbinic description for it was called chanuth or chanuyoth in the Talmud, which means something like shop or market. In the last week of His life, Yeshua would drive out the moneychangers from that very spot (to see link click Iv – Jesus Entered the Temple Area and Drove Out All Who Were Buying and Selling).

From 30 AD on, the Great Sanhedrin (see Lg – The Great Sanhedrin) met in the southeastern corner of the Royal Stoa. Earlier in its history, they met in the Hall of Polished Stones on the southern side of the Temple. But the Talmud reports that the Jewish supreme court moved into the Royal Stoa 40 years before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.²⁰¹ Normally, the members of the Jewish supreme court, who sat as a court of appeal from the close of the morning sacrifice to before the evening sacrifice, were occupied all day long. But, there were occasions, like Sabbaths and feast-days, when they would come out onto the colonnade of the Royal Stoa to teach. Those porches were the most convenient places for discussion, religious or otherwise. In such a setting, more latitude for asking them questions would be given. The learners sat on the ground at the feet of the rabbis who were themselves seated in their normal teaching position.²⁰²

Even as a young boy, Jesus had clarity regarding His mission. He was on this earth to do His Father’s will. He was sitting among the rabbis, listening to them, understanding them and asking them questions (Luke 2:46). The feast of Unleavened Bread was still being celebrated, because Yeshua could not have been sitting among the rabbis after the close of the Feast. Yet, at the age of twelve He was able to intelligently discuss issues in the TaNaKh and the fine points of the Torah of Moshe with those who where supposedly the experts in its interpretation. Apparently He was asking them questions they could not answer. It was extraordinary that His questions could show such insight as to attract the special attention of the learned rabbis.

Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His profound answers (Luke 2:47). The Greek word existanto, used to describe the response of the rabbis is fascinating for two reasons. First, amazed literally means to remove oneself; figuratively it means to lose one’s wits, to go out of one’s mind, or to be terrified out of one’s wits. Today, we would say: They were beside themselves. Therefore, amazed doesn’t really capture the utter astonishment and excitement that seized Israel’s most gifted rabbis. He was a child prodigy. The Greek words point to the fact that Jesus could put concepts together and come up with insights that should have been far beyond the grasp of a twelve year old. He could get to the heart of the issue like no one they had seen. By the age of twelve, Jesus knew that He was the Messiah of Isra’el.

The second reason the use of the word amazed is extraordinary, is that the Greek translation of the TaNaKh, or the Septuagint, uses the same word to describe the reaction of people who had seen ADONAI. Of all the words Luke could have chosen, he used the most theologically loaded word possible. Undoubtedly, his readers didn’t miss the point.²⁰³

There were several reasons for their amazement. First was His age, second was His knowledge, but third, Jesus was from Galilee and not from one of the Jewish rabbinical schools in Jerusalem. Last, and even worse, He was from the town of Nazareth, where the schooling was even of less value than that of other Galilean schools. But, in reality, Yeshua had the best training of all (see my commentary on Isaiah Ir –Because the Sovereign LORD Helps Me, I Will Set My Face Like a Flint). He was trained and discipled by God the Father; and therefore, able to carry on an intelligent dialogue with the experts of the Torah. Consequently, all that heard Him were amazed.²⁰⁴

Sitting in the Royal Stoa where some members of the Sanhedrin taught the pilgrims during the Passover, Mary heard His voice. After three days of frantic searching, they found Him safe and sound; calmly listening to the rabbis and asking them questions, seemingly, unconcerned about His parent’s distress. When they saw Him, they were astonished because the words coming from His mouth were nothing like they had ever heard before (Luke 2:48a). Mary and Yosef were shocked at the ease with which their son discussed the things of ADONAI.

Nevertheless, they were understandably irate because they hadn’t seen Him in three days. They were probably worried that He was dead on the side of a road somewhere. So, naturally, they spoke to Jesus like any parent would upon finding a lost child (I’m so relieved I found you, now I’m going to strangle you). Remember, Mary and Yosef were raising a normal healthy boy. He didn’t run around wearing a halo.²⁰⁵ When His exhausted, but, relieved mother finally got to talk to Him, she began to scold Him. She said: Son, why have You treated us like this? Your father (the most natural way of describing Yeshua’s relationship to His step father Joseph) and I have been anxiously searching for You (Luke 2:48b).

When you think about it, Jesus’ reply was probably the last thing she expected to hear: Why were you searching for Me? Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house? The words Me and I are emphatic. Upon first glance, His answer might appear a little disrespectful, but, we can’t hear the inflection of His voice in print. Their frantic searching all day before looking for Him at the Temple genuinely confused Him. If His parents had remembered the words of Simeon and Anna, the Temple should have been the first place they should have looked upon returning to Zion. Where else would the Son of God be but in His Father’s house? But, inexplicably, sometime during the twelve years of Yeshua’s upbringing, the words of the angels, the shepherds, Simeon, Anna, and the magi had all faded. The humdrum of daily life seemed to have washed them away. Mary and Yosef didn’t connect the dots, and didn’t understand what He was saying to them (Luke 2:49-50).²⁰⁶

Within the context of the Jewish family, Jesus was right where He belonged – making the appropriate shift from His mother to His Father to learn and become active in the family business. At the tender age of twelve, the Messiah signaled a turning point in His relationship with His parents. He returned to Nazareth with them and continued to honor them with His obedience (see Bb – And Jesus Grew in Wisdom and Stature, and in Favor with God and Other People). Joseph  taught Him the trade of a carpenter. But, the family business Yeshua was to take up belonged to His Father in heaven.²⁰⁷

In 1915 Pastor William Barton started to publish a series of articles. Using the archaic language of an ancient storyteller, he wrote his parables under the pen name of Safed the Sage. And, for the next fifteen years he shared the wisdom of Safed and his enduring spouse Keturah. It was a genre he enjoyed. By the early 1920s, Safed was said to have a following of at least three million. Turning an ordinary event into an illustration of a spiritual truth was always a keynote of Barton’s ministry.

“There came to our home, our Little Grandson. And he sought out his Grandmother Keturah, that she would give him a Roll. And she would have understood him plainly, but he said that he wanted a Pyonder Roll.

Now Keturah can make Pocket-Book Rolls, and Parker House Rolls, and Hot Biscuits, and if there be any kind of Rolls that are good, she can also make them. And when she serves them with Golden Butter and Maple Syrup or Honey or Preserves, they cause the mouth of a Graven Image to water. But, she did not know about any Pyonder Roll.

And the little lad said, I want the Roll that’s called a Pyonder.

Then did a Great White Light begin to dawn upon the mind of Keturah, and she said, Tell me the rest of it, my dear. And he said: When the Trumpet of the Lord shall sound and Time shall be no more. And the Roll is called a Pyonder (From the hymn: When the Roll is Called Up Yonder) I’ll be there. And she gave him a Roll, and he was there.

Now I thought myself of the Strange Mental pictures that our Grown-Up words bring to the mind of children. And I considered that our Heavenly Father knows that our minds also are but the minds of Little Children, and all our Mental Pictures of Celestial Things are limited, as Mary and Yosef demonstrated so well, and that much that we learn of Divine Truth is even as the Pyonder Roll.

And I am thankful that we have our Pyonder Rolls, even our Daily Bread, and that the way of essential righteousness is so plain that a little child may learn of it. And it is my earnest hope that when the Roll is called Up Yonder, I’ll be there.”²⁰⁸

Herod Gave Orders to Kill all the Boys in Bethlehem
Two Years Old and Under
Matthew 2: 13-18

Herod gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem two years old and under DIG: What kind of a king was Herod? What does his response of fear and anger show about his view of the Messiah? What is Matthew’s point in emphasizing God’s loving protection and care of His Son? How was God orchestrating events and starting His plan of salvation through the fulfillment of Hosea and Jeremiah’s prophecies?

REFLECT: When, like Herod, have you felt threatened by the lordship of Christ when He wanted you to turn over to Him something you thought was yours? Your finances? A future husband or wife? Your spouse? A child? A job? How do you react in those times? How do you react when threatened by the world? From Joseph’s responsiveness, what do you learn about faith and obedience?

When the magi came, there was no doubt they were a source of great encouragement and assurance to both Joseph and Mary, confirming the incredible message of the angels to them (Mt 1:20-23 and Luke 1:26-38), to Zechariah (Luke 1:11-20), and to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-14). It also confirmed the testimonies of Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-45), and of Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:25-38) about the child to whom Mary gave birth. Even the magi from far off Babylon had been told the news of God and came to worship Yeshua and give Him gifts.

But, the rejoicing didn’t last very long. The first conflict in the story begins as Herod, the illegitimate king of the Jews, sought to kill Yeshua, the legitimate King of the Jews.¹⁶⁴ No sooner had the magi gone, than an angel of ADONAI appeared to Yosef in a dream, giving him a warning from God. This was the second of Joseph’s four dreams (Matthew 1:20, 2:13, 2:19 and 2:22). 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 in order to kill Him (Matthew 2:13).

Herod’s rule was brutal because his kingdom was different than any other under Rome’s iron fist. The Jewish value system and the Roman value system were diametrically opposed. The Jews worshiped the one, true God, while Rome worshiped many pagan deities. Herod was in the middle of that mess. But the Romans didn’t care. They would hold him responsible for any problems caused by an alleged new king of the Jews. They would not tolerate a ruler that they themselves had not chosen. Rome didn’t tolerate any threat. And if the followers of that new “king” stirred up a rebellion, there was no doubt that Rome would immediately step in to brutally crush it. No, it would be better if Herod handled it himself.¹⁶⁵

Now just as the magi had been warned by the LORD to disobey Herod, Joseph was warned by Ha’Shem to flee the murderous king.¹⁶⁶ When danger threatened, Yosef dropped everything that he was doing, shut down his carpenters shop, and relocated to another country to insure the safety of his family. He loved his wife as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). No one will ever know how much it cost him.

So, immediately Yosef got up in the middle of the night (Matthew 2:14a). He understood the urgency of the situation. Even though traveling at night was potentially more dangerous, Joseph demonstrated exceptional faith and obedience that did not allow him even to delay until daylight. While Rome controlled territory as far north as Gaza, even the nearest parts of Egypt proper, the city of Pelusium and the eastern branches of the Nile delta would be at least 75 miles from Bethlehem, and another 100 miles or so would be necessary to get to Egypt and safely removed from Herod’s power. Traveling with a child made the trip even slower than usual and more difficult. Consequently, they would probably be traveling for more than a week.¹⁶⁷

Under cover of darkness, Joseph took the child and His mother and left for Egypt (Matthew 2:14b). He told no one that they were leaving or in which direction they would travel. Mary mounted the donkey and held fast to her Child. Yosef yanked the halter strap and started the long plod along the white-stoned road south to Egypt. It stands to reason that during the long trip Joseph had plenty of time to think. It probably seemed strange to him that anyone would want to hurt a child. Any child. It seemed even stranger that ADONAI was keeping this one a secret. Before, it seemed that beside themselves, the only ones who knew this child was the Son of God were the Jewish shepherds and the Gentile magi. But, the king of all Judea, Herod the Great, had heard about Him, and his reaction, according to the angel, was to plot to murder Him. They were in flight to spare the One who had come to save the souls of all mankind. Why? Joseph just didn’t understand.¹⁶⁸

According to Mattityahu, all of these events had a purpose in the sovereign plan of God. They stayed there until the death of Herod. Matthew’s account is extremely brief and basic. He tells us nothing of the journey, except that it began at night. He gives us no details about where the family lived in Egypt, or how their time was spent although there has been much speculation. Some ancient writers, thinking they could improve the biblical account, came up with stories about the Child Messiah healing a demon-possessed youth by placing strips of burial cloths on the afflicted child’s head, of causing robbers to run away into the desert, and of causing idols to disintegrate as He merely walked by them. Others, like the second-century pagan philosopher Celsus, tried to discredit Christ by claiming that He spent His childhood and early adult years in Egypt learning about the occult, for which Egypt was famous. Like many of His Jewish opponents, Celsus argued that Jesus then returned to the Promised Land to impress people with signs and miracles to trick them into thinking that He was indeed the Meshiach.¹⁶⁹

The typology between Moses the deliverer and Jesus the Messiah continues to be seen in Matthew. As if to retrace the steps of the Exodus, Yeshua left Egypt for the Land that God had promised to Israel. So was fulfilled what ADONAI had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son” (Mattityahu 2:15). Indeed, the Holy One would be the Isra’el that the LORD had longed to call His Son. But, Isra’el would choose to worship false gods and suffer repeated invasions until finally exiled from the Promised Land to Babylon. When restored to their homeland, they worshiped ADONAI outwardly, while worshiping wealth in their hearts. To judge that sin, Ha’Shem withdrew His protection, gave them over to corrupt leaders, and stopped talking to them. Then by the time of Herod, four hundred years later, the religious leaders of Isra’el had erected a new idol to stand alongside that of wealth: their own self-righteousness.¹⁷⁰

There are four ways that the New Covenant quotes the TaNaKh and two of them are found in this file. The second way is a literal prophecy and the fulfillment as a type. Matthew declares that Yeshua’s stopover in Egypt fulfills Hosea’s prophecy: Out of Egypt I called My son, comes from Hosea 11:1. The context is the exodus, where ADONAI says: Let My Son go (Exodus 4:2). So, the literal meaning of Hosea 11:1 was that Isra’el came out of Egypt. But, this also becomes a type of a future event when Jesus, a more perfect Son of God, a more unique Son of God, would also come out of Egypt.¹⁷¹ Mattityahu’s ability to quote Scripture accurately (here he ignores what was probably the most common Septuagint translation – His children – and translates the Hebrew directly) suggests the he and the Jewish community knew the context very well.¹⁷²

Because the Jews do not believe in the Trinity, or believe that Yeshua was the Meshiach, the rabbis teach that when Jesus was down in Egypt He made cuts in His skin and inside these cuts He inserted the four-letter word for God, or YHWH. They say that because Yeshua was not God and could not do miracles by Himself, by this cunning means His miracles were accomplished.

The king’s palace was a place of splendid courtyards and many oil lamps on the west side of Jerusalem, about three hundred yards from a place called Golgotha, or Calvary. Men of importance were rushing, on this night, in and out of the palace. When Herod realized that the magi had outwitted him, he was furious (Matthew 2:16a). Yes! They tricked him! More than likely he arose from his throne, a man with deep-set eyes like caves in a forest, and his gray beard parted as he spat out words. Many would pay for the trick that had been played on him. Many would die. His attendants trembled because if the lives of his loved ones could be sacrificed at a whim, their lives were less than worthless.

The king was seventy years old and very ill. He suffered from lung disease, kidney problems, worms, a heart condition, sexually transmitted diseases, and a horrible version of gangrene that had caused his genitals to rot, turn black, and become infested with maggots. Yet, his rage enslaved him and he lashed out at everything and everyone. Herod’s newest threat, though it came from a mere infant, seemed to him to be the most dangerous of all.¹⁷³

No one was going to make a fool out of him! Those magi had no intention of keeping their promise to return to him with news of the newborn Messiah. “The census,” he roared. That would provide a solution to the problem of the make-believe Savior. “The census!” It would have the names of all the families who had children. If the magi could see the light in the sky, why couldn’t his councilors see it? Could they be in league with the little majesty that wanted his throne? He was extremely paranoid. Now he believed that there was a two year old out there somewhere conspiring to depose him! And he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the magi (Matthew 2:16b). Herod’s slaughter of helpless boys resembled the infanticide of Pharaoh, as the “new” Moses motif of Christ’s birth continues to develop.¹⁷⁴ From this verse we know that Jesus was about two years old at that time.

It was the shepherds that worshiped the baby Yeshua, and it was the magi that presented their treasures of gold and of frankincense and of myrrh (Mt 2:11). Joseph and Miryam used these gifts to finance their escape to Egypt. Although they had been poverty stricken, the gold, frankincense and myrrh, gave them the means to travel and live in Egypt as long as they needed to. Then they would return to Nazareth after Herod’s death.

Some have said this massacre never happened, while others have exaggerated the number of children murdered.This slaughter of male children is mentioned only here in the Bible. Even the famous Jewish historian Josephus did not mention it. But, it is not surprising that he and other historians overlooked the death of a few Hebrew children in an insignificant village, for Herod had committed many more monstrous crimes than that. However, some have inflated the number of children slaughtered. There is a tradition that says fourteen thousand were slain. But estimates of the total population of Bethlehem in the first century are generally under a thousand, which would mean that the number of male children up to two years old at any one time could hardly be more than twenty. Catastrophic as it was for the local community and the individual families, it was not on a scale to match the more spectacular assassinations recorded by Josephus.¹⁷⁵

Herod cannot see Beit-Lechem from his palace, a mere five miles away. He cannot see the blood flowing in the streets or hear the wailing of the terrified children and their parents. He believes he is doing what must be done.¹⁷⁶ 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 (Matthew 2:18). This event too was said to be the fulfillment of a prophecy. Originally, Jeremiah 31:15 referred to the weeping of the nation as a result of the death of children at the time of the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BC. But, the parallel to Herod’s slaughter was obvious, for again children were being murdered at the hands of Gentiles. Also, Rachael’s tomb was near Bethlehem, and she was considered by many to be the mother of the nation of Isra’el. That is why she is seen weeping over these children who were cut to pieces by Herod.¹⁷⁷

A third way that the B’rit Chadashah quotes the TaNaKh is a literal prophecy and the fulfillment as an application. Matthew quoted Jeremiah 31:15 when he wrote: Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled (Mattityahu 2:17). The context is the Babylonian captivity from Jerusalem. As the captives went north, they went by Ramah where Rachel, the symbol of Jewish motherhood, was buried. Thus, the Jewish mothers came out of Ramah weeping for sons they would never see again. Here, in the slaughter of the little boys, the event in the TaNaKh is applied to the New Covenant event. The application is seen in the fact that the Jewish mothers were once again weeping for sons they will never see again (Matthew 2:18).¹⁷⁸

The response of Herod to the child Yeshua stands intentionally in sharp contrast with that of the magi in the preceding file. “Surely the so-called Messiah was among the many who died,” Herod surely thought. There was no chance that any child had escaped the slaughter. There was weeping and great mourning all over the Land and Herod was well pleased.¹⁷⁹ But, just as Satan and Pharaoh were unsuccessful in their attempt to destroy Moshe, Satan and Herod were also unsuccessful in their attempt to destroy the Meshiach.

It seems astonishing that Miryam, Yosef, the shepherds, and the magi all did exactly as they had been told. Mary yielded herself to God; Joseph took her home as his wife; the shepherds went to Bethlehem to find the baby in a manger; and the magi followed the Sh’khinah glory. With no idea of the outcome, they all took the next step by faith in ADONAI. Amazing!

How is it with you? Will you trust God and follow His leading even when you face uncertainty and overwhelming circumstances? When you and I obey the Lord, the outcome is truly amazing! That does not mean that everything will turn our pleasant. It didn’t for Messiah’s apostles. And, it may be that the fruit of obedience will not be seen in this life, but in the next. But, as God said: Now if you obey Me fully . . . then you will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests . . . a royal priesthood, a chosen people a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light (Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 28:1-14; First Peter 2:9-10). Could anything be better than that?

He Will be Called a Nazarene
Matthew 2:19-23 and Luke 2:39

He will be called a Nazarene DIG: What relocation options did Joseph face? How did God use prophecy, dreams, faith and circumstances to guide him? What was Luke trying to show believers today?

REFLECT: How long would it take you to say, “Yes,” if God asked you to move on with Him? Would there be any delay? Why or why not?

Although Jesus would face more persecution in His adult years, Herod’s death granted Him a time of relative reprieve until His public ministry began. While Matthew mentions Herod’s murder of the children once, he notes Herod’s death three times – indicating the LORD alone holds the ultimate power of life and death. To oppressed believers, whether persecuted for their faith (Matthew 10:22; First Peter 4:13-14) or repressed for other unjust reasons (Mattityahu 5:39-41; James 5:1-7), this reminder of the oppressors’ mortality is a reminder that all trials are temporary and that their loving Father is in total control of the time and place of their passing (Matthew 10:28-31; First Peter 5:10).¹⁸⁰

After Herod died, an angel of ADONAI once again appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said: Get up, take the Child and his mother and go to the land of Isra’el (Mattityahu 2:19-20a). What does the B’rit Chadashah call the Holy Land? Not Palestine but Eretz-Isra’el, or the Land of Isra’el. Similarly, the regions north and south of Jerusalem are not called the West Bank but Y’hudah and Shomron, for Judah and Samaria (Acts 1:8). The New Covenant, like the Israelis of today, uses the names the Hebrew Bible uses, not those employed by the Romans or other conquerors.¹⁸¹

For those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead (Matthew 2:20b). The angelic direction to return to Eretz-Isra’el would clearly point to the exodus. Now ADONAI said to Moshe in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead” (Exodus 4:19). Any Jew remotely familiar with the story of Moses’ story would have recognized the reference; like Moses, Jesus had outlived His persecutor and would lead His people to salvation (Matthew 1:21; Acts 7:35). Herod was probably nearing the end of his life when Joseph and Mary fled with their Child to Egypt, but we have no way of knowing how long they stayed there. Estimates range from a couple of weeks to a couple of years. So, any guess would be mere speculation.

But, we do know Herod died a horrible death. He had sought relief for a little while in the mineral baths of Callirhoe. There he attempted suicide but was prevented. Josephus reported that Herod’s colon was ulcerated, and a transparent fluid had settled itself about his feet and at the bottom of his belly, which was putrefied and filled with maggots. When he sat upright, he had difficulty breathing and also had convulsions in all parts of his body (Josephus, Antiquities, ch 17 6. 5). An appropriate end, I suppose, for one who caused so much misery to others during his lifetime. Not so appropriate, however, was the funeral that his eldest son and successor, Archelaus, arranged in his honor – seeing that just five days beforehand, Herod, by permission from Rome, murdered another son, Antipater, because of a supposed plot against his father. Needless to say, they had issues.

When Yosef and his family fled to Egypt they left from Bethlehem, the town were they apparently had chosen to settle in after Yeshua was born, perhaps keeping in mind the prophecy of Micah 5:2. While Micah 5:2 did prophesy that the Messiah would be born in Beit-Lechem, it never prophesied that He would also be raised there. When Jesus was two years old He was taken to Egypt and lived there for an unknown period of time.

When the young Jesus returned to the Land, He was brought to Nazareth. The people were generous, impulsive, simple in manners, full of intense nationalism, free, and independent of the traditionalism of Judea. The rabbinic circles of Jerusalem held the Galileans in contempt, because of their manner of speech, colloquialisms, and lack of a certain type of culture characteristic of those who lived in the Holy City. The Galileans were accused of neglecting the traditions of the elders (to see link click Ei – The Oral Law), while Judea claimed to be the proud storeroom of orthodoxy and defender of Jewish institutions. The contempt with which the Judeans looked upon the Galileans was unjust due in a large part to envy, since their own barren land could not be compared to the fruitful and beautiful country of Galilee. It was in the midst of this vigorous, rustic, liberty-loving Galilean people that Jesus was born.¹⁸²

When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Torah of ADONAI, [they] took the child and returned to Galilee to their own town of Natzeret (Matthew 2:21; Luke 2:39a). Luke portrayed Joseph and Miryam as models for his readers. They, like Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:6), kept the Torah faithfully. This was not a simple historical anecdote that had no value to his readers. Rather, Luke sought to show that this was how Theophilus (Acts 1:1-2) and other believers should live.¹⁸³

This is the last time we hear of Joseph in the gospels. He is really the forgotten man in the story of Jesus. We know he was a common man who did not add much excitement to the scene, but, he is a silent hero. He was a devout man of simple faith in, and obedience to, ADONAI. Scripture does not record a single word from his mouth; however, our legacy of Joseph is not what he said, but in what he did. How did Yosef’s children turn out? Two of them, James and Jude, wrote books of the Bible, and they committed their lives to service for their human brother and spiritual Lord, Jesus. What a testimony to a faithful father.

Herod the Great was dead. A few days before his death, Archelaus, his son by a Samaritan wife (Josephus Antiquities 17:20), was named ruler. But, his son Archelaus, a man even more brutal and erratic than his father, reigned in Judea. Joseph was afraid to go back to Bethlehem, having been warned not to in a dream. So, he withdrew his family to the district of Galilee and settled in a forgotten little town called Nazareth (Matthew 2:22-23a; Luke 2:39b). Natzaret was about 55 miles north of Jerusalem, in the district of Galilee, where the Holy Spirit told him to go. It was an elevated basin, about one and a half miles across. Because it had an excellent view of the Valley of Jezreel and was easily defensible, it was a Roman outpost. The Roman soldiers were crude and violent, and the people of Nazareth followed their lead. Thus, the term Nazarene became a term of contempt used to portray anyone who was low class, rough and rude.

As hard as it is to comprehend, Archelaus was worse than his father Herod. He possessed all of his father’s vices but none of his few redeeming qualities. He was so bad that eventually Rome banished him to Vienna in Gaul (Josephus Antiquities 17:342:44). When Jesus returned from Egypt, however, Archelaus was in charge of Judea. He was known for his tyranny, murder and instability. Hated by the Jews, as soon as he came to power, he slaughtered 3,000 Jews in the Temple at the Passover. More than likely he was insane as a result of close family intermarriages.¹⁸⁴ Therefore, in order to avoid problems with him (who may have had the same paranoia as his father), Joseph was faithful to the messenger in his dream and moved his family to Galilee because it was outside the jurisdiction of Archelaus. Galilee was under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, who was also a son of Herod the Great, but, at least he wasn’t as paranoid as his father.

The settlement in the town of Nazareth in Galilee would create a stigma for the rest of His life. The rabbis said that if you wanted to get rich go north, but if you want to be wise go south. To go north meant north to Galilee, and to go south meant south to Judea. The rabbis thought that those who were only interested in materialism would go live in Galilee, but those who were really spiritual and interested in divine wisdom would go south to Judea where all the rabbinical schools and academies were found.

In fact, one day a fellow Pharisee told Nicodemus: Look into it, and you will find that no prophets come out of Galilee (John 7:52). Of course that was not true because there were prophets who came out of Galilee such as Jonah, Hosea and Elijah. But, not only did Judeans look down on Galileans, fellow Galileans looked down on those from Nazareth. Even a fellow Galilean would one day say: Nazareth! Can anything good come out of Nazareth (Yochanan 1:46)? While it was true that Natzeret was politically insignificant, it certainly was divinely significant.

There are four ways that the New Covenant quotes the TaNaKh and the fourth way is a literal prophecy and the fulfillment as a summary statement: So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that Yeshua would be called a Nazarene (Matthew 2:23b). The way you spot the fulfillment as a summary statement is by the use of the plural word prophets. The first three quotes were singular (Mattityahu 2:6, 2:15 and 2:18), yet here the word prophets is in the plural.¹⁸⁵

However, the specific quote that He will be called a Nazarene is absent from the TaNaKh, or any other contemporary literature. So where could such an idea of the Messiah be found by the prophets? It was found in the prophecies depicting Christ as being despised and rejected by men (Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalms 22:6-8 and 69:20-21). Indeed, the gospel writers make it quite clear that He was scorned and hated (Mattityahu 27:21-23; Mark 3:22; Luke 23:4-5; John 5:18, 6:66, 9:22 and 29).

Matthew was not ignorant of the fact that there was no such verse that specifically mentioned Nazareth. Nevertheless, any educated Jew would understand the connection between the town of Natzeret and the Messiah. The town’s name is, in fact, derived from the Hebrew word for branch, which would call to mind a common term for the Savior Himself. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from His root a Branch will bear fruit (Isaiah 11:1), and tell him, the LORD of heaven’s angelic armies says: Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and He will branch out from His place and build the Temple of ADONAI (Zechariah 6:12), and Jeremiah 23:12, “The days are coming,” says ADONAI, “When I will raise a righteous Branch for David. He will reign as king and succeed, He will do what is just and right in the Land. In His days Judah will be saved, Isra’el will live in safety, and the name given to Him will be ADONAI our righteousness.”

What Matthew is pointing out is a good play on words that the Netzer (Branch) is now residing in the city called Natzeret (Branch). In his mind, this is the perfect fulfillment of this concept that is indeed mentioned by several writers in the TaNaKh (note the plural through the prophets in verse 23). Instead of being an oversight that there is no specific verse mentioned in the TaNaKh, it actually underscores the messianic qualifications of Yeshua in a manner that many first-century (and modern) Jews would appreciate. In Matthew’s mind, Yeshua is perfectly qualified to be Isra’el’s King Messiah, and he no doubt hoped that his readers would continue to explore that possibility.¹⁸⁶

Therefore, the prophecy that He will be called a Nazarene represents an expectation that the Messiah would appear from nowhere and would, as a result, be misunderstood and rejected. Of course, the prophets could not speak specifically of Nazareth, which did not exist when they wrote. But, the suggestion of the despised term Nazarene as applied to Jesus captured just what the prophets had predicted – a Messiah who came from the wrong place, who did not conform to the expectations of Jewish tradition, and who, as a result, would not be accepted by His people. Consequently, even the embarrassment of living in a place like Nazareth was helpful to Mattityahu in constructing a picture of Jesus as being despised and rejected by men. So, this prophecy was fulfilled as a summary statement.¹⁸⁷

It was, therefore, at lowly and despised Natzeret that the royal Son of God, along with His righteous parents, made their home for the next thirty some years.¹⁸⁸

And the Child Grew and Became Strong,
He was Filled with Wisdom
and the Grace of God was Upon Him
Luke 2: 40

And the child grew and became strong, He was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him DIG: How was Yeshua filled with wisdom? Where did it come from? What and when was the evidence of that instruction in wisdom?

REFLECT: How can you emulate Jesus’ being filled with wisdom? Who do you need to spend time with every morning? Is there another time of day that is better for you? When is it? Besides wisdom, what else can you gain from such a quiet time?

Since Luke focuses on the humanity of Christ, he is the only one to record this. Mary probably told it to Luke later on in her life. Of the many years spent in Nazareth, Jesus passed from childhood to youth, from youth to adolescence, and from adolescence to manhood. This section reflects His Jewish upbringing by parents who were part of the Jewish believing remnant of that day. Yeshua was raised in a spiritual home where both Joseph and Mary were committed to ADONAI.

The third gospel alone notes: And the child grew and became strong; He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on Him (Luke 2:40). Between the ages of about two and twelve, we know nothing of Jesus’ life. This one statement, however, summarizes Messiah’s development during that time period. Luke tells us more in one sentence than all the apocryphal books with their silly legends about the miraculous powers of the child Jesus.

As a child, the Lord was still human and needed to be taught. Certainly it was not possible to learn what He learned from His schooling in Nazareth. To some degree we can deduct from what we know from the New Covenant. We know that Jesus was brought up in a very spiritual Jewish home for both Yosef and Miryam were part of the believing remnant of that day. So much of what Yeshua knew about His Jewishness, the Jewish world, and the Scriptures could have easily come from His stepfather and mother. But that would not explain the uniqueness of His knowledge by the age of twelve (Luke 2:41-50).

We cannot assume His knowledge was there because of His deity, for while it is true that He was still God in His childhood, in His humanity, He had to undergo the same learning experience all humans have to go through. He had to learn by study and being taught. When He took on humanity, He set aside certain things. Part of which seemed to be His omniscience, or infinite knowledge, at least for a while. Scripture teaches that His Father taught Him.

ADONAI Elohim has given Me the ability to speak as a man well taught, so that I, with My words, know how to sustain the weary. Each morning He awakens My ear to hear like those who are taught (Isaiah 50:4 CJB). As the boy Jesus was growing up, each and every morning, ADONAI, God the Father, would awaken God the Son, take Him aside and begin to teach and train Him in the word of God. Yeshua was being discipled for His purpose in this life. That was how He was filled with wisdom, and gained knowledge that could only come from God. ADONAI Elohim has opened My ear and I neither rebelled nor turned away (Isaiah 50:5 CJB).

As He began to realize in His humanity that His purpose was to come to the earth to die a substitutionary death on the cross, He was not rebellious, but rather kept an open ear and did not turn away from His calling. When it came time for Him to fulfill His mission He did not waver, but set His face like a flint to complete it. I offered My back to those who struck Me, My cheeks to those who plucked out My beard; I did not hide My face from insult and spitting. For ADONAI Elohim will help. This is why no insult can wound Me. This is why I have set My face like flint, knowing I will not be put to shame (Isaiah 50:6-7 CJB). He offered His back to those who struck, scourged and whipped Him. He did not try to turn His cheeks away from those who wanted to pluck out His beard. He did not try to hide His face from the spitting and shame that came with it. My vindicator is close by; let whoever dares to accuse Me appear with Me in court! Let whoever has a case against Me step forward! Look, ADONAI Elohim helps Me, who will dare condemn Me? Here, they are falling apart like old, moth-eaten clothes (Isaiah 50:8-9 CJB).

What was merely summarized in Luke 2:40 is given in some detail in Isaiah 50:4-9. The Son of God, in His humanity, was specifically taught and discipled by God the Father each morning. As a result, by the age of twelve He clearly understood His mission and His relationship with ADONAI. We see the evidence of this instruction next when Jesus confounds the rabbis in the Temple a year before His bar mitzvah.

The Visit of the Magi
Matthew 2: 1-12

The visit of the Magi DIG: Why was it important that Jesus be born in Bethlehem? From whom did the magi learn about the King of the Jews? What was this star? Where did they learn about it? Why did they follow it? Who was King Herod? What was he like? In light of the prophecy in Matthew 2:6, why was he so concerned that the Child be found? What do the star, the magi, the gifts, the worship, and prophecy tell us about the nature and significance of the Messiah?

REFLECT: In your journey toward God, how are you like these magi? Unlike them? Have you had to leave anything to follow Jesus? What did you leave behind? Was it worth it? What are the gold, frankincense and myrrh in your life? How have you responded to Yeshua?

The purpose of Matthew’s gospel is to present Jesus as the King of the Jews. Through a carefully selected series of quotations from the TaNaKh, Mattityahu documents Yeshua’s claim to be the long-awaited Messiah. Consequently, the first thing he needs to establish is that Yeshua of Nazareth was born where the Meshiach must be born – in the town of Bethlehem. He explains how it was in fact the birthplace of Christ, even though later events would dictate His relocation to Nazareth in Galilee.

Jesus was born between 7 and 6 BC. The reason He was born BC, or Before Christ, is that Dionysius Exiguus, the sixth-century monk who set up the modern calendar, made a mistake in determining the date which was not corrected until later. Instead of the terms AS, or Anno Domini, meaning in the year of [the] Lord Jesus, and BC, the Jewish community normally represents these time periods by using CE, or Common Era, and BCE, Before the Common Era, to avoid using a dating system that points to Yeshua as the Meshiach.¹⁴³

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, Joseph and Mary evidently decided to continue to stay and live in the town of their ancestry. Two years later, during the reign of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked repeatedly: Where is the One who has been born King of the Jews (Mt 2:1-2a)? The word asked is a present participle, emphasizing continuous action. They kept on asking and asking. They had calculated exactly how many years would transpire before the Messiah would come (Dani’el 9:24-27). Although they were familiar with the book of Dani’el and the book of Numbers, they were, however, not familiar with the book of Micah, where in Micah 5:2 it predicted that the Meshiach would be born in the town of Beit-Lechem. As a result, they came to Yerushalayim because they were desperate to find Him.

Around Christmas time, the nativity scenes are put up and they all look about the same. There is a little hut to represent a barn, and within it there are three people: Miryam, Joseph and the baby Jesus in a manger, or a feeding trough for cattle. Facing them are three shepherds on one side and three magi on the other. The whole scene is really unbiblical because the shepherds and the magi never saw each other because they were separated by about two years.

There are several misconceptions in the common nativity scene as well. First, is the very popular Christmas song that begins with, “We three kings of Orient are.” There is no way of knowing how many there were. The Bible merely mentions them in the plural. There could have been two, twenty or a hundred. We don’t really know. The second misconception is that they were kings. They were not kings, but magi or astrologers from the east. Why would those Gentile astrologers want to worship a Jewish king? These were magi from Babylon. In the past, Dani’el had saved the lives of all the magi of Babylon by interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (see my commentary on Jeremiah, to see link click Dq – Nebuchadnezzar’s Troubling Dream). The source of Dani’el’s ability was not the stars of the heavens but the God of Heaven. As a result, a line of Babylonian astrologers spanning generations worshipped the One true God, and having Dani’el’s prophecy, looked forward to the coming of the King of the Jews. We can conclude from the book of Dani’el that Babylonian astrologers did know the time Messiah was to be born. But Dani’el says nothing about a star that would proclaim the birth of the King of the Jews. So how did the magi know about it?

Balaam, another Babylonian astrologer prophesied that: A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will arise out of Isra’el (Numbers 24:17). Traditional Jewish sources have long regarded this verse as referring to the coming of the Messiah (Tractate Taanit IV.8; Targum Onkelos). But it is not a literal star because the star and the scepter in this verse are one and the same. We know this because Balaam’s prophecy is in the form of Hebrew poetry, which is not based on rhythm or rhyme but on parallelism. The term scepter is a symbol of royalty or kingship. This star that would come out of Jacob, would be a King Himself.

Furthermore, Balaam’s occupation was that of an astrologer. Even more significant is that he came from Pethor, a city on the banks of the Euphrates River in Babylonia (Numbers 22:5; Deuteronomy 23:4). With the book of Dani’el and the prophecy of Balaam, we have a double Babylonian connection. Therefore, the revelation of a star in relation to Meshiach’s birth came by means of a Babylonian astrologer who, no doubt, passed the information down to his colleagues. Centuries later, Dani’el was able to give further details to the Babylonian astrologers about the time that the star of Jacob would appear.¹⁴⁴

These magi said that they saw His star when it rose and had come to worship (Greek: proskuneo, meaning to kiss the face) Him (Mattityahu 2:2b). The Greek word translated star is aster, and means light, radiance or brilliance. What they saw was the Sh’khinah glory, or the visible manifestation of God. There are five reasons why this could not be a literal star. First, it was uniquely the Messiah’s star because it is called His star. In that way, it is not true of any other star. Second, this star appears and disappears. Third, this star moves from east to west, from Babylon to the holy City of David. Fourth, it moves from north to south, from Yerushalayim to Bethlehem. Fifth, it hovers over the very house where the child was living. A literal star cannot hover in one place. So, just as the Sh’khinah glory was used to announce the birth of the King of the Jews to Jewish shepherds, it was also used to announce the birth of the King of the Jews to Gentile astrologers (see my commentary on Genesis Lw – The Witness of the Stars).¹⁴⁵

Without condemning astrology, Matthew’s gospel challenges his Jewish audience about their prejudice against outsiders to their faith (also see Mathew 8:5-13 and 15:21-28). His inspired message communicates that even Gentiles may respond to Yeshua if given the opportunity (Jonah 1:13-16, 3:6 through 4:1 and 10-11).¹⁴⁶ They, unlike the Jews, prove receptive to the King and God’s purposes for Him.¹⁴⁷

Several years after the Jewish shepherds had worshiped the Messiah in a cave in Jerusalem, the very presence of God, His Sh’khinah glory, appeared in the eastern sky (Matthew 2:9). It was seen by many, but followed by few. The magi were probably excited to see it for they remembered Balaam’s prophecy and knew its true meaning. They immediately loaded up their precious gifts and turned their plodding camels toward the brilliance. They traveled almost a thousand miles across the sands of the desert, with the rising sun behind them. They pitched their tents by day and mounted again when the evening sky turned deep blue, following the radiance along the rim of sky and earth. It was a long hard trip by camel, probably over a year. They eventually came through the passes of Moab into Jericho, where the Dead Sea and the River Jordan meet, and they crossed the river and went up into the City of David.

When they came into Jerusalem the magi probably desired to speak to someone in the Temple. After entering through the Huldah Gate, they entered the massive 500 cubit square Temple Mount. After some dozen meters they came to the dividing wall of partition, which ensured complete separation between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14). It consisted of a low wall of 75cm upon which a wooden see-through fence of 52.5cm was secured (see the commentary on Acts Cn – Paul’s Advice from Jacob and the Elders at Jerusalem). It was built low and allowed a view through so that no one, not even a child, might be prevented from seeing the glorious view of the golden Sanctuary.¹⁴⁸

So, there they stood – looking through the fence for a Levitical priest on the other side. One happened to be walking by and they asked, “Where is the Child King of the Jews? We have come to worship Him?” It stands to reason that although the magi would be happy and expectant, the priest would not share their joy. “If the Meshiach had returned,” the Levite probably reasoned to himself, “He would not reveal Himself to Gentiles, but to the Jews . . . to the high priest himself!” The high priest was possibly summoned with the magi explaining when they had seen and their interpretation of the happy sign. But, he knew of no such sign. How could it be true? Surely if anyone would know it would be him! But, as a mark of respect, he probably detailed the beliefs of the Jews concerning the Messiah and Bethlehem was mentioned.

The magi may have thought that this was the most promising clue since the brilliance they had seen was close overhead. Beit-Lechem, five miles to the south of the Holy City would be a good place to go. They probably thanked the high priest and camped outside the walls for the night because they were very tired from their travels. They would head for Bethlehem the next afternoon. But, more than likely the high priest did not wait until morning, he reported to the place of King Herod and relayed the news.

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him (Mattityahu 2:3). This is one of the great understatements in the Bible. He should have been called Herod the Paranoid instead of Herod the Great. He was cruel and merciless. He was incredibly jealous, suspicious and afraid of any royal rival. Fearing a potential threat, he had his high priest, who was his wife Mariamne’s brother, drowned in what turned out to be a rather shallow pool (Josephus War 1.437). Then he provided a magnificent funeral and pretended to weep. Later, he had Mariamne herself killed, then her mother and two of his own sons, Alexander and Aristobulus were wrongly strangled to death for supposedly plotting against him (Josephus Ant. 16.394; War 1.665-65). Five days before his death (about a year after Jesus was born), he had a third son murdered. Herod was a supposed convert to Judaism so he did not eat pork. Small wonder the great Roman emperor Caesar Augustus was rumored to have openly said of Herod, “It was safer to be Herod’s sow (huos) than Herod’s son (huios).”¹⁴⁹

One of the greatest evidences of his bloodthirstiness and insane cruelty was having the most distinguished citizens of Tziyon arrested and imprisoned shortly before his death. Because he knew no one would mourn his own death, he gave orders that those distinguished citizens should be executed the moment he died, to guarantee that there would be mourning in Yerushalayim (Josephus Ant. 17.174-79; War 1.659-60).¹⁵⁰ Fortunately his orders were not carried out. As a result, when he was disturbed, all Jerusalem was disturbed with him. The citizens of the City feared revenge from this heartless and cunning tyrant.

The prominent role of Herod in the story prepares us for his political holocaust in the next file (see Aw – Herod Gave Orders to Kill all the Boys in Bethlehem Two Years Old and Under). The Jewish reader could hardly fail to see the connection between Herod and Pharaoh in the time of Moshe. Pharaoh’s infanticide threatened to destroy Isra’el’s future deliverer (see my commentary on Exodus Ah – The Hebrew Midwives in Egypt), while Herod’s holocaust threatened to destroy Israel’s future Savior. Moshe’s escape from the slaughter and his subsequent exile and return when all the men who wanted to kill you are dead (Exodus 4:19), reminds us of Yeshua’s exile and return for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead (Matthew 2:20). This typology between Moses the deliverer and Jesus the Messiah runs throughout Mattityahu’s gospel and its solid foundation has been firmly laid here from the outset.¹⁵¹

Herod was always fearful of conspiracies against him and he suspected another conspiracy. No other king would be allowed to take his place no matter who He was. We see the three basic responses that mankind demonstrate when confronted with Jesus when He was on the earth. These are the same three responses throughout human history.

The first response is anger and hostility as seen by Herod. Then the mad king, in frantic fear, called together all the people’s chief priests and Torah-teachers. As a secular man, he knew little about Jewish prophecies. The chief priests were not a particular category, but were composed of various leading influential priests, including the leaders of the daily and weekly course of priests, the Temple treasurer, and other Temple overseers and officials. Together with the high priest and captain of the guard, they formed the priestly aristocracy often loosely referred to as the chief priests. For the most part, these chief priests were Sadducees, whereas, the regular priests were Pharisees. The Torah-teachers were scribes, primarily Pharisees, who were the authorities on the Torah, the Oral Law (see Ei – The Oral Law), and were the most important scholars of Judaism.¹⁵² But, the relations between Herod and the chief priests were not cordial and he really had to swallow his pride (which was a heaping spoon full) to even ask for their help. He despised them – and they hated him. But, he was desperate.

The second response is indifference as seen in the chief priests and teachers of the Torah. He inquired from them where the Messiah was to be born. The imperfect tense of inquire suggests that he kept on asking and asking and asking. Matthew’s interest is specifically in the birthplace of Christ, which was also what the magi wanted to know. When Herod asked, they did not have to look up the answer. They already knew it was in Micah 5:2 because it was a messianic prophesy. But, the Sadducees showed no interest in the possibility of their Messiah’s birth. They had more fear of Herod and for their own lives than courage in protecting him from some rumor of a child king.¹⁵³ In any case, the chief priests and the scribes told Herod what he wanted to know. Christ should be born in Bethlehem in Judea, for this is what the prophet Micah had written (Mattityahu 2:4-5). They had head knowledge about Messiah . . . but no relationship.

There are four ways that the New Covenant quotes the TaNaKh and one is found in this section – a literal prophecy and a literal fulfillment. The literal prophecy is found in Micah 5:2 where it reads: But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from Me, One who will be ruler over Isra’el, whose origins are from old, from ancient times. The literal fulfillment came when Christ was born in Bethlehem.¹⁵⁴ Matthew wrote: But you, Beit-Lechem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler, who will shepherd My people Isra’el” (Matthew 2:6). Mattityahu’s quotation, while keeping the integrity of Micah 5:2, is in fact a more direct reflection of Second Samuel 5:2. Both of these passages from the TaNaKh are closely related. The Second Samuel passage gives God’s original call to David; while the Micah passage describes the coming messianic reign of Yeshua, David’s future descendant. The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to combine these two passages to better suit his purpose and audience of portraying Jesus as King of the Jews.

But, that is not the only change the Ruach ha-Kodesh made. He also changed the archaic title of Bethlehem Ephrathah, to the more specific Bethlehem, in the land of Judah. This emphasized Jesus’ Judean origins, and was vital for Matthew to link Christ’s birth to Bethlehem, rather than Nazareth. In addition, Micah described Beit-Lechem as small among the clans of Judah, but Matthew claims it is by no means least among the rulers of Judah. Therefore,  Micah’s words are not at odds with Mattityahu’s gospel.¹⁵⁵

The next morning, Herod secretly found the magi camped outside the City walls. He found out from them the exact time the radiance had appeared because he probably assumed that the child was born at the exact time the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem saying: Go and search carefully for the child. The term Herod uses for child is a Greek term paidion, which refers to a child that is at least one year old. As soon as you find Him, Herod said coyly: report to me, so that I too may go and worship Him (Mattityahu 2:7-8).¹⁵⁶

But, it was ironic, as Herod agonized and gazed toward Bethlehem, that Yeshua had been right under his nose all along. Twice before, Yosef and Miryam had brought their young son to Jerusalem. The first visit came only eight days after Jesus’ birth so that He might be circumcised (see At – On the Eighth Day, When it was Time to Circumcise Him, He was Named Jesus). At that time the child was formally named Yeshua, in keeping with the prophecy. The second visit came when He was forty-one-days old. The baby Jesus was brought to the Temple and formally dedicated to ADONAI (see Au – Jesus Presented in the Temple). Perhaps if Herod the paranoid had known the messianic threat had been so close – literally, less than six hundred yards from his throne room – his torment could have been relieved. But, Jesus and His parents were just three more bodies making their way through the noisy bazaars and narrow, twisting streets en route to the Temple that day.¹⁵⁷

After the magi had heard the king, they rested until the afternoon then they went on their way. They assumed that Herod was sincere and wanted to worship the king of the Jews once they found Him. The magi waited until the Sh’khinah glory came up, east of Yerushalayim, and then, they mounted their camels and followed it the final few miles. They stared out on the north side of Jerusalem, where there was a bazaar for Gentiles, and passed the Gate of Damascus and went across the swift-flowing brook Kidron to a little place called Gethsemane, then south toward the Valley of ben Hinnom and on up the winding road near the potters field and straight south to Bethlehem.

The radiance seemed to move before them, as stars do when people travel, but when they approached Beit-Lechem the Sh’khinah glory reappeared and went ahead of them until it stopped, or literally took its stand, over the place where the Child was (Matthew 2:9). When they saw the Sh’khinah glory, they were overjoyed (Mattityahu 2:10). It seems as though Matthew was almost at a loss for words to describe their excitement.

On coming to the house, they saw the child with His mother Mary (Matthew 2:11a). By this time Yosef and Mary were living in a house, not a stable or a cave. The shepherds found the baby Jesus in a cave; however the magi found Yeshua in a private house. Jesus is called a child, or paidion, here, rather than a newborn baby, or brephos (Luke 2:12). Once again, He was about two years old at this time. Evidently after giving birth to Yeshua in Bethlehem, Joseph and Miryam decided to remain where their family had originated from, rather than going back to Nazareth. The silence concerning Yosef, however, points to Mary as being the central figure in the narrative.

The third response is to worship Him as seen by the magi. And they bowed down and worshiped Him as the Messiah (Mt 2:11b). The Jewish shepherds were the first ones to worship Him as the Savior, but this was the first Gentile worship of the Jewish King. It is important to note that when they saw the child Messiah they bowed down and worshiped (Greek: proskuneo, meaning to kiss the face) Him. If there ever was a time when Mary could have been worshiped, this was it. But they didn’t worship her – they worshiped Him.¹⁵⁸

Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts. The giving of gifts in the East is very significant. Hardly any transaction of importance can take place without a gift. Consequently, they appropriately presented the royal child with gifts, all of which have tremendous significance from the TaNaKh.

Gold symbolized His royalty (see Genesis 41:4; First Kings 10:1-13, etc), and pointed to the fact that Jesus is a King. Gold was used extensively in the building of the Temple (First Kings 6-9; Second Chronicles 2-4). Matthew constantly presents Christ as King, and here we see the King of the Jews, the King of kings, fittingly being presented with royal gifts of gold.

Frankincense symbolized His deity. It came from Southern Arabia and Somalia, was an expensive perfume, burned not only in worship but also at important social occasions (Song of Songs 3:6). In the TaNaKh, it was stored in a special chamber in front of the Temple and was sprinkled on certain offerings as a symbol of the people’s desire to please ADONAI.¹⁵⁹ (see my commentary on Exodus Fp – The Altar of Incense in the Sanctuary: Christ, Our Advocate with the Father).

And myrrh symbolized His humanity (Matthew 2:11c). Mixed with other spices, it was used in the preparation of bodies for burial (John 19:39). It had several other uses as well. Mixed with wine it was used as an anesthetic (Mark 15:23) and it was also used as a luxurious cosmetic fragrance (Esther 2:12; Psalm 45:8; Proverbs 7:17 and Song of Songs 1:13, 5:1 and 5). It reminds us of the ministry that the man-God, the God-man, came to do: die as the final sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 10:10-18).

Isaiah prophesied that the Gentile nations will bring the wealth of the world to Isra’el during the messianic Kingdom: Herds and camels will cover your Land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and frankincense and proclaiming the praise of ADONAI (Isaiah 60:6). When the magi came to worship the royal Child in Bethlehem they brought gifts with them. But what gift is left out at Messiah’s Second Coming that we see in Isaiah’s passage? Myrrh! They do not bring myrrh because it speaks of death. When Christ comes again, nothing will speak of His death. Gold will point to His kingship, and frankincense will point to His deity. But, there will be no myrrh because He had already died upon a cross for the sins of the world. He will come as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the KING of kings and LORD of lords to rule and reign forever (Revelation 5:5 and 19:16).¹⁶⁰

That very night, the magi were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod with the news of finding the Messiah. The use of dreams as a means of divine communication is seen in Gen 28:12, 31:11; Num 16:6; 1 Kings 3:5 and Job 33:14-16; Mt 1:20-23, 2:13, 19-20, 22. They were not told why; however, Herod would have killed the child if they had not been warned to go back to their own country by a different route. Already in this passage we see a motif that occurs throughout the gospels: the presence of the Messiah demands decision and thus causes division between those who accept Him and those who reject Him.¹⁶¹

The role of the magi in Matthew’s gospel is now complete and they set off for home. But, their route home, no less than their arrival, is supernaturally directed by God.¹⁶² In the morning they probably agreed that, although it would be wrong to ignore the invitation of Herod to return to Jerusalem, it would be even worse to ignore the warning of an angel in a dream. So, they packed their tents and belongings, mounted their camels, and returned to their country by another route instead (Mattityahu 2:12). They went north towards the daughter of Tziyon (Jeremiah 6:2), headed east through Mar Saba, then north to Jericho and back across to Babylon.¹⁶³ They would stay out of Herod’s sight and domain altogether.

Scripture records nothing else of these grateful visitors from the east. But, blessed as they were, they surely must have witnessed about Christ in their own country. Because they were astrologers to kings, the news of Yeshua probably became well known in the courts of the East as it one day would become in the palace of Caesar (Philippians 1:13 and 4:22).

ADONAI, thank You for sending Your Son to be with us, and to die for us; Yeshua, thank You for being my personal Savior; Ruach, open my eyes to the wonderful truth of the gospel. May I be amazed daily by Your grace. May I walk in Your power. May I have courage and joy to share the Good News of Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14).

Jesus Dedicated in the Temple
Luke 2: 22-38

Jesus dedicated in the Temple DIG: What does the Temple ceremony reveal about Jesus’ parents? In Simeon’s prophecies what was he predicting about the ministry of Yeshua? How did the sword of Simeon’s prophecy threaten Mary’s peace of mind? Of whom does Anna remind you? How does she complement Simeon’s prophecy? What impact would these startling predictions by Shim‘on and Anna have on all who were listening that day?

REFLECT: How has Christ brought light to your life? How is He still the cause of the falling and rising of people throughout the world? Did your parents dedicate you to the Lord? How so? If you were not dedicated, how do you feel about that? When has God brought a Simeon or an Anna to confirm something in your life?

Eight days after the birth of Yeshua, Joseph and Mary presented their son for the covenant of circumcision in Bethlehem, which identified Him as a genuine son of the covenant between the LORD and Abraham (Genesis 17:1-14). At that time, they made His name official: Jesus, or YHVH saves. Then, in keeping with the Torah of Moses, they would make the five-mile journey to the Temple in Jerusalem. There, Miryam would offer a sacrifice for her own ceremonial cleansing after childbirth, then she would present her firstborn to ADONAI in recognition of God’s ownership.¹²⁶ This simple ceremony consisted, first, in the presentation of the child to a priest in recognition of the LORD’s ownership.

Then Miryam had to offer a sacrifice as required by the Torah of ADONAI. She would have entered the Temple through the Beautiful Gate to the Court of the Women. At last one of the officiating priests would come to Mary at the Nicanor Gate, and take from her hands the offering that she brought. While a priest slaughtered the doves she was offering on the bronze altar (see my commentary on Exodus, to see link click Fa – Build an Altar of Acacia Wood Overlaid with Bronze), Miryam stood waiting while incense was burned on the golden altar inside the Holy Place (see my commentary on Exodus Fp – The Altar of Incense in the Sanctuary: Christ, Our Advocate with the Father). Since Mary was not presenting an offering that required her to lay her hands on it, she did not have to enter the Court of the Priests to place her hands on the slaughter by the bronze altar. There would be a crowd of worshipers behind her in the large square. As she stood at the top of the fifteen semicircular steps at the majestic Nicanor Gate, she could see into the Holy Place.¹²⁷

The Court of the Women was not just limited to the women. Any Jew who was ceremonially clean could go into this area – men, women and children. Indeed, this was probably the most common place for worship, the women occupying, according to Jewish tradition, only a raised gallery along three sides of the court. Yet, only the men were permitted to go through the majestic Nicanor Gate leading from the Court of the Women into the Court of Isra’el. The Court of the Women covered an area 70.87 by 70.87 meters, 5,023 square meters or 16,475 square feet. The great acts of worship took place there on the occasion of the feasts. This place functioned, to a certain extent, as the Temple synagogue in the open court. Therefore the women had free access.¹²⁸

The first observance was the purification of the mother after childbirth. According to the Torah, a mother was to undergo a purification ritual forty days after giving birth to a boy and eighty days after giving birth to a girl. Since Miryam gave birth to a boy, this event took place when Yeshua was forty-one days old. The Torah considered her unclean, but being unclean does not mean that she was a sinner. It was not a sin to have a baby! The purpose of this observance was for her ceremonial cleansing and purification to restore communion with God. When the time of her purification according to Leviticus had been completed, Joseph and Mary traveled to Jerusalem (Luke 2:22a).

She could not afford a lamb, so she offered a pair of young pigeons, one for a burnt offering (see the commentary on Leviticus Ai – The Burnt Offering) and the other for a purification offering (Luke 2:24). This reveals two important facts about her. First, Mary brought a purification offering (see the commentary on Leviticus Al – The Purification Offering). That ritual of atonement was followed simply so that Mary would be ritually clean and allowed access to the Temple and its sacrifices, but not to be forgiven. No forgiveness was necessary because there was not sin.

Second, it is also clear that Joseph and Miriam were not the poorest of the poor, but they were also not a rich family. In Leviticus, we learn that people who could not bring a bull or a lamb as a sacrifice would bring a pair of young pigeons. If they would have been even poorer, they could have brought a handful of grain anointed with oil. Today’s Orthodox Jewish women cannot offer a sacrifice, since there is no Temple, but, they immerse themselves in a mikveh in partial observance of the purification rite.¹²⁹ Mary did not go to the Temple to be worshiped, but undergo ritual purification.

The Roman Catholic Church, however, holds up Mary as an object of worship. She is called: Mother of God, Queen of the Apostles, Queen of Heaven (see my commentary on Jeremiah Cd – They Knead Dough and Make Cakes for the Queen of Heaven), Queen of the Angels, The Door of Paradise, The Gate of Heaven, Our Life, Mother of Grace, Mother of Mercy, and many other titles that ascribe to her supernatural powers. All of which are false. The average Roman Catholic acts on the belief that Miryam has the powers of deity.

The doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception” teaches that Mary herself was born without original sin. Pope Pius IX issued the original decree stating this doctrine on December 8, 1954. Side by side with the doctrine that Miryam was born without sin, there developed the doctrine that she did not commit sin at any time during her life. Then, as one link reached out for another, they gave her the attribute of impeccability, which means that she could not sin, that her nature was such that it was impossible for her to sin! All of this was a natural outgrowth of their worship of Mary, a further step in her deification. Their Mariolatry demanded it! They sensed that if they were to give her the worship that is due of the Lord, she must be sinless. This doctrine did not become official until 1854, more then eighteen centuries after Christ was born of the virgin Miryam, and so it is one of the later doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.¹³⁰

Isaiah had prophesied: A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from His roots a Branch will bear fruit (Isaiah 11:1). That meant that the shoot, or the Messiah, would appear only when the house of David had been reduced down to where it was, not in David’s day, but, in his father Jesse’s day. That is why Isaiah mentions Jesse rather than David. He pictures the great house of David as a mighty tree that had reduced to a mere stump. But, while it appeared to be nothing but a dead stump, suddenly a shoot will begin to grow and produce life. The point that the Holy Spirit made through Isaiah was that when the house of David had been reduced to poverty again, to what it had been in Jesse’s day – then the Meshiach would appear. From Joseph andMary’s economic status it was clear that Jesus came when the house of David had been reduced once again to poverty.¹³¹

Two offerings were made for Miryam’s purification. As a perpetual reminder that all mankind is born in sin even as David confessed (Psalm 51:5), a mother was deemed ceremonially defiled by the birth of a child, so first a sin offering was made. Secondly, a burnt offering was made for the restoration of communion with the LORD. Payment for the two pigeons was dropped in the third of the thirteen trumpet-shaped collection boxes in the Court of the Women. The sons of Annas, the high priest, supplied the sacrifices after payment was made. Then the Sadducees arranged those women who had presented themselves in the designated place beside the Nicanor gate. There they would be nearest to the Court of Isra’el so when incense was burned on the golden altar in the Holy Place they could see the white cloud of smoke come up symbolizing their prayers. As Mary worshiped there at the Temple in Jerusalem, her grateful heart overflowed with praise to God. She was blessed beyond belief. After the purification ceremony was completed and all stain had been removed from her, then she could present her son to ADONAI for redemption.

The second observance that needed to be performed was presentation and redemption of the firstborn to the LORD (see my commentary on Exodus Cd – The Principle of the First Born). Mary mingled prayer and thanksgiving while she stood there. Then the priest would come to her, and sprinkling her with the sacrificial blood, would declare her cleansed. Her firstborn would then be redeemed at the hand of the priest, with five shekels of silver (Numbers 18:16).¹³²

As it is written in the Torah of ADONAI, the first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to Him (Exodus 13:2). But, after giving their firstborn son to the LORD, the only way a Jewish family could get him back was through redemption (see my commentary on Exodus Bz – Redemption). The ceremony of redeeming every firstborn male would remind them of their redemption from the slavery of Egypt by the blood of the lamb on each family’s door frame. So in obedience, Yosef and Mary took the newborn Jesus to the Temple and went looking for a priest for His formal presentation (Luke 2:22b). Two short prayers accompanied this. The first was for the redemption that God commanded through His prophet Moshe: You are to give over to ADONAI the firstborn male of every womb (Exodus 13:12; Luke 2:23), and the second prayer was for the payment of the redemption price of five sanctuary-shekels. After those two prayers, their child had truly been given over to Ha’Shem in recognition of His ownership, and then bought back again.

God’s desires have not changed (Hebrews 13:8). The firstborn of every womb among the Israelites still belongs to ADONAI. There is no Temple in Jerusalem, and five shekels are not paid, but, the principle remains the same. Today, Jews still set apart their firstborn males to YHVH. Money is still given on a sliding scale. The rich pay more and the poor pay less. But, they continue to redeem their firstborn sons. As believers, it is important to remember that the LORD Almighty has purchased us, not with five shekels, but with the precious blood of His Son.

As Mary descended the fifteen semicircular steps from the Gate of Nicanor, a sudden heavenly light of joy filled the heart of Shim‘on, a righteous and devout man who had grown old waiting for the God to comfort Isra’el (Luke 2:25a). He was a member of the believing remnant, the righteous of the TaNaKh, at that time. The comfort that Luke alludes to here is the main subject of Chapters 40 to 66 in Isaiah (see my commentary on Isaiah Hc – Comfort, Comfort My People Says Your God). That comfort could only come through Messiah.

Simeon was a careful student of the Scriptures and the Ruach Ha’Kodesh had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah of ADONAI with his own eyes (Luke 2:25b-26 CJB). Prompted by the Holy Spirit that day, he went into the Temple courts. The LORD gave Shim‘on the eyes to see, or the ability to recognize the Messiah with a mere glance.¹³³ And when the parent brought in the child Yeshua to do for Him what the Torah required (Luke 2:27 CJB), Simeon, recognized that forty-one-day-old boy as the comfort of Isra’el. His eyes had seen the Messiah.

Immediately, Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms and praised God (Luke 2:28): Like Zechariah and Elizabeth before him, Shim‘on was moved by the Spirit to declare: Now, ADONAI, as You have promised in Isaiah, You may now dismiss Your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen Your salvation (Luke 2:29-30; Isaiah 40:5). Simeon was not speaking English but, in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for salvation is Yeshuah; the Hebrew word for Jesus is almost the same, Yeshua. Both come from the same Hebrew root yasha, which means to save. The only difference is the final letter “h” which is silent. Therefore, in Hebrew the word salvation and the word Jesus sound the same. In a real way, what he said was not only my eyes have seen Your salvation, but my eyes have seen Your Yeshua.¹³⁴

Then Shim’on prophesied about two groups who would benefit from Messiah’s coming, which He had prepared in the sight of all nations (Luke 2:31; Isaiah 52:10). Simeon saw the same two groups that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, had seen. The first group is the Gentiles, for the Anointed One will be a light for revelation to the Gentiles (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6 and 51:4). Zechariah declared that it was the Goyim who were living in darkness and in the shadow of death. Isaiah had already prophesied that the Messiah would be a light to the Gentiles (see my commentary on Isaiah Hp – Here Is My Servant, Whom I Uphold). And the second group to benefit from His coming would be the Jewish people themselves, the glory of Your people Isra’el (Luke 2:32). This is the fourth of four songs recorded in Luke, first by Mary in 1:46-66, second by Zech 1:68-79, then third by a choir of angels in 2:14, and finally here by Simeon in Lk 2:29-32.

The child’s father and mother (the most natural way of describing Joseph’s and Mary’s relationship to Jesus) marveled at what was said about Him (Luke 2:33). It was as if their silent thoughts had been an unspoken question, to which Shim‘on gave the answer. Mystic as it seemed, both Yosef and Mary knew that his words were prophetic.¹³⁵ Simeon’s song was an illusion to Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6, meaning that the Suffering Servant would be a light for revelation to the Gentiles. Aside from the Great Commission, however, we generally don’t see a ministry to the Goyim in the gospels. This prophecy would be fulfilled in the book of Acts (see Acts 10:23b-48 and 13:47-49).

It was as if the whole history of the Messiah upon the earth was passing in rapid succession right before Simeon’s eyes. After pronouncing a blessing on Joseph and Miryam, he turned directly to Mary and prophesied something that she probably didn’t fully understand until many years later. He said, listen carefully: This child is destined to cause the rising and falling of many in Isra’el (Luke 2:34a). How accurate that prophecy would be fulfilled years later. The LORD and His ministry would become a stone that causes mankind to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall (Isaiah 8:14b). The First Coming of Jesus will cause a division among the Jews of the world. There will be those who rise because of Him, or those who believe, and those who will fall because of their lack of faith. Shim‘on prophesied that Yeshua would be a sign that will be spoken against and for the nation of Isra’el that has been true to this very day (Luke 2:34b; Isaiah 8:14). Once again, this concept is started in Luke and completed in Acts. There is a constant division in Isra’el (Acts 14:1-2 and 28:23-24).

Jesus never gave His mother a single moment’s worry over rebellion, bad choices, or running away from God. But that didn’t spare her from worrying or losing sleep over Him. In the Temple, when He was only forty-one-days old, the elderly Simeon set an ominous tone of things to come when he prophesied to Miryam, “And in addition, a sword will pierce your own soul” (Luke 2:35b CJB). These words usually bring to mind the heartbreak she saw at the rejection of her son by the Jewish leadership. But, the time when the sword would pierce its deepest into her soul would be when she saw Him crucified. But, his words also captured the bumpy road that led from the stable to the cross. Those rare accounts of conversations between Yeshua and His mother (presumably because Mary told her story to the other gospel writers) are weighed down with love, but, riddled with pain. Jesus’ remarks always caught His mother off guard and left her pondering His words, trying to figure out what He meant, and to sort through the implications. Exchanges between Yeshua and His mother are memorable and record the steps of Mary’s journey from a mother to a disciple.¹³⁶

Then Simeon also prophesied that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed (Luke 2:35a). Indeed, the thoughts of many hearts were and are revealed through the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As He Himself said: Do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be members of his own household (Matthew 10:34). He makes you choose sides. You can’t sit on the fence with Him. As a result, in that way Shim‘on said that the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed.

Coming up to them at that very moment was a prophetess named Anna, who spoke the Word of the LORD. For a Jewish woman the visit to the Court of the Women was a high point. She could not approach any further, unless she presented an offering that required her to lay her hands on it and go to the slaughter at the bronze altar. She may have taught the TaNaKh to other women, or she may have simply had a private ministry there in the Temple complex offering words of encouragement and instruction from the Hebrew Scriptures to other women who came to worship. Nothing suggests that she was a source of revelation, or that any special revelation ever came to her directly. Even her realization that Jesus was the Messiah seemed to have come from the revelation given to Simeon and subsequently overheard by her. Nevertheless, she is called a prophetess because it was her habit to declare the truth of God’s Word to others. That gift for proclaiming the truth of God ultimately played a major role in the ministry she is still remembered for.¹³⁷ Art by Sarah Beth Baca: see more information on Links and Resources.

Only five women were ever referred to as a prophetess. First, there was Miryam, the sister of Moses (Exodus 15:20). She led the women of Isra’el in a psalm of praise to God about the drowning of Pharaoh and his army (see my commentary on Exodus Cl – The Song of Miryam). The simple one-stanza psalm Miryam sang was the substance of her only recorded prophecy (Exodus 15:21).

The second prophetess in the TaNaKh was Deborah, the wife of Lappidoth (Judges 4:4). Of all the judges who led the Jewish people before the monarchy of Isra’el was established, she was the only woman. In fact, she is the only woman in the entire Bible who ever held that kind of leadership and was blessed for it. ADONAI seemed to raise her up as a rebuke to the men of her generation who were paralyzed by fear. She didn’t usurp their power, but ruled in a maternal role, while men like Barak were being raised up to step into their proper roles of leadership. She received instructions from the LORD (Judges 4:6), so it seems that she received revelation from God, at least that one time.

Third, there was a prophetess named Huldah (Second Kings 22:14-20). She received a word from ADONAI for Hilkiah the priest and others. Nothing else is known about her. She is mentioned only in Judges and a parallel passage in Second Chronicles 34:22-28.

Only two other women are called a prophetess in the TaNaKh. A false prophetess named Noadish (Nehemiah 6:14), and Isaiah’s wife (Isaiah 8:3), who was called a prophetess only because her husband was a prophet. None of these women had an ongoing prophetic ministry like Elijah, Isaiah, or any of the other prophets. There is nothing anywhere in the Bible to indicate that any of these women ever held a prophetic office.¹³⁸

Anna was the daughter of Penuel of whom nothing else is known. And she was of the tribe of Asher. This is one of the supposed so-called “lost” tribes of Isra’el. But, obviously she wasn’t lost, she was right there in Isra’el. The truth is they were never lost. No doubt, a small portion of the northern ten tribes likely drifted off to lands unknown, but the Bible does account for the vast majority, who went through a sifting process whereby the faithful were absorbed back into Judah. After the northern Kingdom of Isra’el broke away from the southern Kingdom of Judah, the books of Kings and Chronicles repeatedly tell of many from the northern ten tribes defecting to the south well before the Assyrian assault on Samaria in 722 BC. Many were still loyal to Jerusalem as the center of worship and pilgrimage, rather than the rival temple set up on Mount Gerizim. Others believed the true successor to King David was in Judah, while Israel’s kings were falling into apostasy. These defections increased whenever civil war erupted between the divided kingdoms. For instance, 2 Chronicles 15:9 says that large number had come over to him [Judah’s King Asa] from Isra’el when they saw that God was with him (2 Chron 11:13-17 and 19:4). Also, when the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity they did not only come from the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, they came from all twelve tribes. Asher was supposedly one of those ten “lost” tribes, and yet Anna was a representative living right in Zion.

By the time of Jesus’ birth Anna was very old. The Greek text is unclear about her exact age. It literally reads: this woman was a widow of about eighty-four years. It could mean that she was a widow for eighty-four years, but more likely, the Bible is saying that she was an eighty-four-year-old widow. She had evidently lived with her husband for only seven years until she became widowed (Luke 2:36-37a). Like Simeon, she also recognized the Messiah when she saw Mary’s baby Boy. Normally, she never left the Temple compound, but stayed worshiping night and day, fasting and praying (Luke 2:37b). What would she be praying for? No doubt the very same thing that Shim‘on had been praying for, the redemption of Isra’el and Yerushalayim through the coming of the Messiah. But, coming up to them at that very moment, she realized that what she had been praying and fasting for was right there in front of her wrapped up in Simeon’s arms.

Immediately, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2:38 and Isaiah 52:9). The imperfect verb tense signifies continuous action. It literally meant that she continually spoke about Him to all. She had good news and she could not keep it to herself. This became her one message the rest of her life.¹³⁹  She could finally leave the Temple compound. After that, she went out and told the believing remnant, or those who were looking forward to it and believed in it, that the coming redemption of Isra’el and Jerusalem was at hand. The Messiah had been born and she had seen Him.¹⁴⁰

The only people in Isra’el who did recognize Jesus at His birth were humble, common people. The magi (see Av – The Visit of the Magi), of course were foreigners and Gentiles, and they were rich, powerful and influential men in their own culture. But the only Israelites who understood that Yeshua was the Messiah at His birth were Yosef and Miryam, the shepherds, and Simeon and Anna. To the world, all of them were basically nobodies. All of them recognized Him, however, because they were told who He was by angels, or by some special revelation. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Luke records all of their accounts in succession, as if he is calling multiple witnesses, one at a time, to prove his case.¹⁴¹

The people we encounter in this file are models of Jewish faithfulness. They were the believing remnant of Isra’el awaiting their Messiah. Zechariah and Elizabeth were of the tribe of Levi, righteous and devout, anxiously awaiting Israel’s salvation. Simeon purposed that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah of ADONAI with his own eyes. Anna was a model of Jewish piety, a widow devoting herself entirely to worship, fasting and prayer. Luke’s purpose is to introduce us to the faithful remnant of the people of God, waiting expectantly for the fulfillment of the promises ADONAI has made to them.¹⁴²

On the Eighth Day,
When it was Time to Circumcise Him,
He was Named Yeshua
Luke 2: 21

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise Him, He was named Yeshua DIG: How did Jesus get His name? Is this His only name? What other names does He have? Why does He have so many names? Under what covenants was circumcision stipulated? What was the significance of each? Whose faith does the circumcision reveal? Why is the circumcision incomplete?

REFLECT: What is the difference between circumcision of the flesh and circumcision of the heart? Has your heart been circumcised? How? When? Where? Why not?

On the eighth day, when it was time to be circumcised, His parents took the infant to the synagogue in Bethlehem. He was named Yeshua, the name the angel had given Him before He was conceived (Luke 2:21). The last day of Sukkot is an additional festival day that the Torah calls “The Eighth Day” (to see link click Gp – On the Last and Greatest Day of the Feast). If Yeshua was born on the first day of the feast of Sukkot (see Gn – Conflict at the Feast of Booths), they must have circumcised Him on the day called “The Eighth Day,” thereby literally fulfilling the scripture which says: On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised (see the commentary on Leviticus Bt – Women After Childbirth).

Under normal circumstances, the parents usually named their children, but, both Mary and Joseph, on separate occasions, were told by angels to name their child Jesus, meaning salvation or savior. They were both members of the believing remnant in Isra’el at that time and as such, followed the Torah of Moses (Genesis 17:12). In the Jewish world, both then and today, the child is named on the day he is circumcised. So, they did not officially call Him Yeshua the day He was born, but, waited until the eighth day. At that time, He was officially named Yeshua in obedience to what the angel had told them.

The ancient prophet Isaiah had prophesied that the name of the Son of God would be Immanuel (see my commentary on Isaiah Bw – The Sign of Immanuel), which means God with us (Isaiah 8:10b). He also said that Messiah would be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6b). But, the only name that embraces all these names is Yeshua, the Hebrew form of the Greek word, Jesus. Also, Christ, which means anointed One, is the Greek version of the Hebrew Messiah. In His public ministry, the Savior was properly referred to as Yeshua Ha’Meshiach.

Brit milah, or circumcision, was prescribed under two covenants. Firstly, it was mandatory under God’s covenant with Abraham (see my commentary on Genesis En – For Generations to Come Every Male Who is Eight Days Old Must be Circumcised), and secondly, under ADONAI’s covenant with Moses (Leviticus 12:3). But, the significance of circumcision was different under each covenant. Circumcision under the Abrahamic Covenant was a sign of Jewishness, while circumcision under the Mosaic Covenant was a sign of submission to the Torah, specifically the first five books of the TaNaKh. When Jesus was born both covenants were in effect, so Yeshua was saved on the basis of both covenants.

Under the Abrahamic Covenant, circumcision was mandatory for Jews only, but, under the Mosaic Covenant it was mandatory for both Jews and Gentiles (see my commentary on Exodus Az – Surely You are a Bridegroom of Blood to Me). Since the death of Christ, the Mosaic Covenant is no longer in effect. Therefore, there is no longer any basis for circumcision for either Jews or Gentiles. But, because the Abrahamic Covenant is an eternal covenant, it is still mandatory for Jews to circumcise their sons on the eighth day as a sign of their Jewishness. Some believe this violates what Rabbi Sha’ul taught in Galatians 6:12-16. However, that is not true. Paul was arguing against circumcision for Gentiles on the basis of the Mosaic Covenant. But, since the Mosaic Covenant has been rendered inoperative, there is no basis for circumcising under the Torah. So, it is clear that in Galatians, Paul was not dealing with circumcision for Jews on the basis of the Abrahamic Covenant, but, circumcision for Gentiles on the basis of the Mosaic Covenant.

In addition, circumcision shows the faith of the parents and not the child. Being only eight days old, the baby cannot comprehend the concept of faith. And moreover, if given the option, he would probably decline. That is why baptism is not the completion of circumcision. Baptism shows the faith of the one being baptized, while circumcision shows the faith and obedience of the parents of the baby boy being circumcised. The antithesis to circumcision of the flesh in the Bible is never said to be baptism, instead it is circumcision of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16, 30:6; Jeremiah 4:4; Romans 2:28-29).¹²⁵

The Shepherds and the Angels
Luke 2: 8-20

The shepherds and the angles DIG: How does the shepherds’ experience with the angel of ADONAI compare to that of Zechariah (Luke 1:11-20)? And Mary (Luke 1:26-28)? Of all the people the angel of ADONAI could have visited, why did God send him to the shepherds? How did Mary respond to all of this?

REFLECT: The LORD appeared to Zechariah, Miryam and the shepherds when they were just being themselves and doing their jobs. What does that imply about what it means to be spiritual? How has God spoken to you in the ordinary flow of life? The shepherds were not accepted by the religious elite of their day. What have you done to include people who might be perceived as social outcasts today?

Shepherds were the social outcasts of their day, a necessary yet ostracized cast without whom the Temple could not function. While they tended the animals required for ritual sacrifice, the conscientious Jew – ever concerned with purity – spurned shepherds as too unclean to stand among other worshipers. There was nothing to romanticize about them. Generally, they were dishonest, and unclean by the Pharisees’ standards because they were unable to observe the Oral Laws (to see link click Fs – Why Do Your Disciples Break the Tradition of the Elders?) concerning the ceremonial washing of their hands before they ate. They were considered unclean. Imagine the reception a dirty migrant worker would receive at the door of a sophisticated country club, and you will realize where the shepherd ranked in Jewish society.¹¹⁶ They were exactly the kind of outcasts and sinners that Messiah came to save.

And there were Jewish shepherds living out in the fields nearby. Shepherds were usually out in the fields with their flocks. Many Messianic believers celebrate the birth of Messiah on Sukkot when He tabernacled among us (John 1:14). For an explanation of this view see Gn – Conflict at the Feats of Booths.

They were keeping watch over their flocks at night (Luke 2:8). Down in the valley, sheep were huddled against the chill. More than likely, the shepherds were trying to stay awake while guarding their sheep. The flocks wandered by day, up and down the grasslands of Judea. Close to Bethlehem, on the road to Jerusalem, there was a tower known as Migdal Eder, or the watchtower of the flock. It was the station where the shepherds watched the flocks destined for sacrifices in the Temple.¹¹⁷ It seems deeply significant that those shepherds, who heard the Good News of the Savior’s birth, who first listened to the praises of the angels, were watching the flocks destined to be offered as sacrifices that pictured the sacrifice of Yeshua Ha’Meshiach on the cross.

Some were probably dozing, a few were watching, when the night sky was unexpectedly split apart. Heaven and earth seemed to merge when suddenly an angel of God appeared to them, and the Sh’khinah glory of the LORD, the visible manifestation of His presence, shone around them. It was brighter than day, more like staring at the noon sun, and the sleeping shepherds awakened and, in fear, hid their eyes in the folds of their coats because they were terrified (Luke 2:9). Sensing this, their sheep may have begun to run in circles because they too were afraid.

This was the announcement of the birth of the Jewish King to Jewish shepherds. For the first time since the days of Ezeki’el (Ezeki’el 10:3-5, 18-19, 23), the Sh’kinah glory was seen. For more than five hundred years the nation of Isra’el had been without that visible sign of God’s presence among His people. And now the Sh’khinah glory, for which Isra’el had waited, was revealed to the shepherds in the field, not to the priests in the Temple. Indeed, the last [would] be first, and the first [would] be last (Matthew 20:16).

But, trying to sooth their rattled nerves, the angel said to them: Do not be afraid. I bring you Good News that will cause great joy for all the people (Luke 2:10). Throughout Luke, joy is often associated with salvation. Good News? This would make any Jew open his eyes and lift them to the skies. They had been afraid of the justice and vengeance of Ha’Shem for centuries. They had worshiped carefully, with respect for all the different rituals, for fear that He might be displeased with them. And now – Good News?

They looked up hopefully and the angel spoke again. His voice seemed to fill up the entire valley. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you (Luke 2:11a). The Greek New Covenant uses soter for Savior, corresponding to the Hebrew word moshia, which is another form of the word hoshia and is related to Yeshua’s own name (Matthew 1:21). The New Covenant uses soter 24 times and the related verb sozo, to save, 44 times. But, its use builds on the foundation already established in the TaNaKh. Therefore, when the question comes up if someone is saved, it has its roots in the TaNaKh as well as the B’rit Chadashah (see Bv – Jesus Teaches Nicodemus).¹¹⁸

He is the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2:11b). Jesus’ role as Savior is qualified by the title Messiah and Lord. This verse gives us a brief summary of the Gospel message and provides the reason for the statement found in Luke 2:11a. The long awaited Meshiach has been born. This Savior is also the Lord. Although the realization of the authority of the titles Messiah and Lord would have to wait until resurrection, in reality, He already was Messiah and Lord. As Peter said: Therefore, let all Isra’el be assured of this: God has made this Jesus whom you have crucified, both Messiah and Lord (Acts 2:36).

When Peter preached at the Festival of Shavu’ot, he confirmed that this prophecy was fulfilled (Acts 2:36 and 10:36). The message was simple and direct: do not fear, a Savior is born and He is the Messiah. This was Good News! It was better than good news. It was the long-awaited News. It was the thing that had been promised by God a long time ago. It was the arrival of the One who would save the people of the world.

Two signs were given to them. The first sign was that the shepherds would find a baby wrapped in cloths, and the second sign would be that the baby would be lying in a manger (Luke 2:12). Again, Doctor Luke stresses Christ’s humanity. He came into this world as a human being. He is touched with the feeling of our frailty. He knows about us. He understands us because the Savior came into this world as a human being. This also means we can know something about God, because He took our humanity upon Himself. That should be a comforting thought to us all.¹¹⁹

Having announced to the shepherds the two signs by which they would be able to find the Messiah, suddenly a great company of angels appeared with the angel of ADONAI, praising God and began to sing a two line hymn: The first line is for God, singing: Glory to God in the highest. And the second line is for humanity: peace on earth to people of good will (Luke 2:13-14). These are people whom the will of God favors and who desire what Ha’Shem wills. This is the third of four songs recorded in Luke (the first two were by Mary in 1:46-66, and Zechariah in 1:68-79), the third here by a choir of angels 2:14, and finally by Simeon in 2:29-32.¹²⁰

When the angels had left them and returned into heaven, the shepherds said to one another over and over: What did you see? Did you hear what I heard? Is it true the Messiah has come to save mankind? After a short discussion, they believed the message and said to each other: Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this word that has happened, which ADONAI has told us about (Luke 2:15). This was much like the action of Miryam after she had heard the message of Elizabeth. Such an attitude contrasts sharply with that of the religious leaders who knew where the baby was to be born (Matthew 2:5-6), but, did not take the time or the effort to confirm it for themselves.¹²¹

As always, in times of crisis, the shepherds delegated a few of their number to guard the sheep. So the rest hurried off and they moved across the dark, grassy valley and up the sides of the hills, they climbed, they talked and they wondered. Could it really be? It stands to reason that the older shepherds believed it was no hoax. The Jews were students of the Torah, the prophets and the writings. Since there were no common books, they memorized all their teachings about ADONAI. He had promised a Savior who would come through the house of David, to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). More than likely, the thing that mystified all the shepherds the most was that the birth of the Messiah was so humble. They could not imagine the Son of God lying in a manger. 

Hadn’t the elders said that when the Savior came to earth, He would be riding on a great white cloud, sitting in august kingliness, listening to trumpets and songs of hosts of angels surrounding His throne as He ruled over heaven and earth? Tonight, the angels seemed to be an afterthought. It was as though His birth had been so insignificant, so humble, that the angels had to come down from heaven to call for a few lonely shepherds to go to a cave and worship Him. Could He not at least have been born in the great palace of Herod the king? A manger, the angel said. They understood the word. It meant a sort of trough out of which animals ate grain. It would have the sweet odor of old oats and barley, and the side would be chewed and chipped. A salt lick would lie in the bottom.

The shepherds walked among the pilgrims of Beit-Lechem, asking where the Messiah might be found. Most turned away from them in silence. A few asked, “What Messiah?” The shepherds probably inquired if anyone had seen the angles. “What angels?” Sometimes the travelers were rude, asking if they were drunk. Abuse was not new to the shepherds. They had known it before. Patiently, they carried on their search, asking here and there and finally narrowing their questions to this: Where can we find a newborn baby in this town? Finally someone pointed out where a young pregnant girl and been seen with her husband. They they finally found the house.

The shepherds approached the home timidly. They moved down the path in their sandals, whispering. As they approached the house, Joseph saw them coming. He studied them carefully, and the leader told him that they had seen angels in the valley, and one had said that the Messiah had been born that night in the town of David. They had . . . if it wasn’t too soon . . . come to worship Him.

Coming in with the hoods down off their heads, their long hair fell on their shoulders, and their beards trembled with soft prayers. In the flickering yellow light of the oil lamp, they saw the young mother, probably around thirteen, seated on straw. She was looking over the side of an old manger. From their knees, they also straightened up and peered over the edge. There He was, wrapped tightly in strips of cloth.

The scene in the family room (see Aq – The Birth of Jesus), warmed by the bodies and breathing of the animals, was, to the shepherds, closer to their hearts than if the Meshiach had come on a big cloud with trumpeting angels. They understood babies, and they understood animals and they were delighted that God would see fit to come to earth in a dwelling only slightly less worthy than their own homes in the hills.

Therefore, the shepherds found Miryam and Josef, and the baby, who was lying in the manger just as the angel had prophesied (Luke 2:16). So, it was the shepherds, and not the magi, who first worshiped the baby Jesus lying in the manger. They must have been torn between wonderment and happiness. The little baby was ADONAI, and the Son of God, but, He was also a helpless, lovable infant. Their hearts surely welled with joy and their smiles were probably erased when they remembered that they were in the presence of the King of kings. They were men of such poverty and humility that their tattered coats spoke more elegantly than their tongues. They worshiped the King with full and grateful hearts.¹²²

When the shepherds had seen Him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about the baby (Luke 2:17). The shepherds carried on what the angels had begun. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them (Luke 2:18). The broadest meaning of the Greek word for amazed is a sense of astonishment with a tinge of fear at what is unusual or mysterious. The travelers who had come for the census where amazed by what they saw and heard. As they selected their sacrifices in the Temple courtyard, how eager, how curious might they gather around to discuss, to wonder, yes, perhaps even to mock the news of the baby Messiah laying in a manger. Nevertheless, how the heart of the righteous and devout Simeon would be overjoyed in the expectation that his life’s hopes and prayers were near; and how the very old prophetess Anna, who had not left the Temple compound, but, prayed daily for the redemption of Isra’el, would be looking for the baby Yeshua from that moment forward (see Au – Jesus Presented at the Temple).

All this made a profound impression on Mary. She treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19). The Greek word for treasured up means to protect, to preserve, to guard, or to keep watch over something. Miryam did not fully understand the implications of all that happened to her. When it says she pondered, it describes someone who is puzzled by what they have heard, but, keeps it in mind in order to understand. Not unlike something like a jigsaw puzzle, she reflected or meditated upon them, placing them together for comparison. Everything that had happened to her: the announcement by the angel Gabriel, the crisis it caused Joseph, the timing of the census, the birth of the Messiah, and the worship of the shepherds all floated around in her mind, challenging her to arrange them in some kind of order.¹²³ Years later she would reveal them to Doctor Luke for his gospel.

In due time, the shepherds returned to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen. It was no accident, they said to themselves, that what they had been told by the angels and what they had seen with their own eyes, led them to believe that Yeshua Ha’Meshiach had indeed been born (Luke 2:20). Accordingly, if one can say that the place of His birth was small, humble place for animals, then one can also say that His first worshipers, shepherds living out in the fields nearby, were the most humble and scorned of men.

The Birth of Jesus
Luke 2: 1-7

The birth of Jesus DIG: In light of the promises of Luke 1:30-35, how might Mary feel as she awaits delivery of her baby in a stable? How does this tie in with God’s plan (Micah 5:2)? What does this story say about the LORD’s control over political affairs?

REFLECT: When did ADONAI last take a situation that appeared hopeless to you and use it for His purposes? What aspect of Messiah’s birth is most amazing to you? Why?

It was not man who became God, but God who became man. 

In Rome, Caesar Augustus learned that many of his subjects were dishonest. He ruled the known world, but, the amount of taxes was not commensurate with the number of subjects. He held a council and his advisers told him that he could not levy an equitable tax until he had an accurate count of the populations of all his provinces. Therefore, in those days of economic oppression by a corrupt empire, political tyranny under a man who thought he was god, and increasing terrorism by hotheaded zealots, families had to report to their ancestral towns to register for the census.¹⁰⁶

Caesar Augustus was born Gaius Octavius. The Roman senate bestowed on him the title Augustus in 27 BC. This title had a religious significance. It was an attempt to deify himself. He ruled until AD 14 and was succeeded by Tiberius (Luke 3:1). Like Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, God used Caesar Augustus to help in the fulfillment of Scripture so that the Messiah, the Son (descendent) of David, would be born in Bethlehem, even though His mother was living in Nazareth.¹⁰⁷

Caesar Augustus issued an imperial decree that a census should be taken of the entire inhabited earth (Luke 2:1). In the provinces people had to report to a censor, who evaluated the character and conduct of others as a part of his tax-gathering duties. This gave him ample opportunities for corruption. So, for righteous Jews it is hard to imagine just how offensive this was to them. Caesar’s decree required Jews, whose only King was ADONAI, to stand in front of a Roman official to give an accounting.

It is the irony or ironies that Caesar wanted to make himself a god known throughout the world. He wanted to be worshiped. So, he signed a decree that caused people in Nazareth to travel to Bethlehem to enroll. One of the women who came in those days was carrying the Son of God in her womb. The irony is that today no one worships Caesar Augustus, but, the child in Mary’s womb is worshiped around the world. Augustus thought the census would give him greater control over the world, but, in the end, all he did was run an errand for God and fulfill this prophecy: But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me, One who will be ruler over Isra’el, whose origins are from old, from ancient times (Micah 5:2).

In another vital proof of Yeshua’s messianic qualifications, Matthew tells his readers that this son of David was also to be born in the city of David. Bethlehem was chosen as the city of this beloved ruler of Isra’el. Although not much more than a village just five miles outside of Jerusalem, the town took on even greater importance as the revelation came through Micah that it would be at Beit-Lechem that Christ, David’s greater Son, would be born. This was later affirmed through rabbinic tradition, as one translation of this verse actually uses the Aramaic word for Messiah in Micah’s prophecy (cf. Tractate Berakhot II.4; Targum Jonathan on Micah 5:2).¹⁰⁸

This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). Some scholars have debated Luke’s facts, pointing out that Quirinius didn’t become the governor of Syria until AD 6 and that Herod the Great died in 4 BC. But, archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Quirinius had been in Syria on a military mission for Augustus from 10 to 7 BC and that, with Herod’s increasing mental illness, the emperor was preparing the region for direct Roman control. Therefore, the Scripture is correct, and this would have been the first census taken while Quirinius was governor.¹⁰⁹

And everyone went to the town of their ancestors to register (Luke 2:3). There was no evidence that the Romans required a return to ancestral homes for tax purposes, but, while that was generally true, Judea was a client kingdom of Herod the Great, and so a census may have been conducted in a Jewish, rather than in a Roman manner.¹¹⁰ This, of course, would put a hardship on millions of people. It would make life more difficult to travel to distant cities, but, it had to be done. The census would be taken in many languages, and in places along the Rhine River, the Danube, in North Africa, Portugal, Syria, Belgium, Egypt, Palestine and all along the north Mediterranean shore.

Many were angry when the decree was proclaimed, claiming Caesar to be a tyrant. This was especially true in Nazareth. Joseph probably sought out the local tax collector and asked if women in the latter stages of pregnancy would be exempt, but, he was told no one would be excused. Even the lame and the blind had to report to the cities of their fathers, and many would have to be carried on pallets. This decree forced Yosef to leave Natzeret while Miryam was still pregnant and take her with him to Bethlehem for the census. It would be a seven-day journey if they went directly through Samaria. But there was nothing to fear, as it turned out, for God arranged everything ahead of time.

So Yosef, who appears without introduction, also went up to the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Beit-Lechem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David (Luke 2:4). Bethlehem was south of Galilee. Due to the height of Bethlehem (2,654 feet above sea level), travelers would go up from Nazareth (1,830 feet above sea level) on the journey to Bethlehem.¹¹¹

Mary was also from the line of David, although apart from Jeconiah (to see link click Ai – The Genealogies of Joseph and Mary), so she also needed to be there for the census. He went there to register with Miryam, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child (Lk 2:5). A considerate husband and a wise wife would start the 4 to 5 day journey from Nazareth to Beit-Lechem several weeks before her due date.

Joseph was returning to the village from which his family originated. The Middle Easterner is profoundly attached to his village of family origin. Even if he had never been there before he could suddenly appear at the home of a distant relative, recite his genealogy, and be among friends. Since Joseph did have some of his extended family in the village, he was honor bound to seek them out. What’s more, even if he didn’t have family or friends in the village, as a member of the famous house of David, Joseph would still be welcomed into almost any village home. Even in the most extreme example, if he was a total stranger appearing in a strange village, he would still have been able to find shelter for the birth of a child.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, there was no room in the guest room (Luke 2:6 and 7d). This was not a public inn with an inn keeper (see Gw – The Parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Greek word pandocheion is used to refer to a public inn), but a guest room (Greek: katalumati) in a private house. In the Middle East where hospitality is a sacred duty, even simple village homes had only two rooms. The main room was for the family where the entire family cooked, ate, slept and lived. They slept on mats that were taken up every morning. The other room was used exclusively by guests, and was attached to the end of the house or on the roof (First Kings 17:19). So, it seems that other guests already occupied the guest room and the host family graciously accepted Mary and Joseph into the family room of their house.

The family room was different than in western culture. At one end of the family room there was a blocked off area for their animals. In the western culture, animals are kept away from the house in a stable or barn. But, in the Middle East, each night the family would bring their cow, donkey and a few sheep into this blocked off area at the end of their large family room. The animals would provide heat in the winter and would be kept safe from theft. Mangers were kept next to the animals so they could eat during the night. And every morning those same animals would be taken out and tied up in the courtyard of the house (Luke 13:15; First Samuel 28:24; Judges 11:31). Such homes can be traced from 1000 BC up to 1950. A private home would have bedding, facilities for heating water and all that would be required for any peasant birth.¹¹²

And there she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. The village midwife and other women would have assisted at the birth. After the child was born Miryam wrapped Him in strips of cloth, and, picturing His humble beginnings, she placed Him in a manger (Luke 2:7 b-c). Therefore, the bread of life (John 6:35) was born in Beit-Lechem (Luke 2:7a), which means the house of bread. There were no trappings of royalty, no purple robes, and no signs of wealth or position, although Jesus was born to be King of kings and Lord of lords.¹¹³

But, make no mistake . . . He was no ordinary baby. Yeshua’s closest friend in this world, John, described His birth this way: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. And the Word was with God, and we have seen His glory, the glory of the One and only Son, who came from the Father. And the Word was God, full of grace and truth (John 1:1 and 14). In the weakness of human flesh, He came to earth. However, when He became a man in the person of Yeshua Messiah, He did not cease to be God, nor did He lose His divine attributes, such as being ever-present and all-powerful. He merely laid them aside for a time. This choice is called kenosis, which comes from a Greek word meaning to empty.¹¹⁴ Rabbi Sha’ul put it this way. Jesus Christ who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:7-8 NASB).

Because of what Luke says, it is possible to determine generally when Jesus was born. We know He had to be born before the year 4 BC for the simple reason that in 4 BC Herod the Great died and Christ was born when Herod was still living. Next, the decree of Quirinius came in 8 BC, so we can conclude the Yeshua was born some time between 4 BC and 8 BC. Josephus, the Jew who became a Roman historian between 80 to 90 AD, wrote that Herod the Great left Jerusalem in 5 BC and went to Jericho and remained there until his death. Since the Magi saw Herod the Great while he was still living in Jerusalem, we can deduce the Messiah’s birth had to be 6 BC or earlier.¹¹⁵

In the final analysis, we just don’t know exactly when Jesus was born. I do not think He was born on a Jewish holiday like the Feast of Booths or during Passover. If you notice, if Yeshua did or said anything on a specific Jewish holy day, the writer always mentions it. It would seem, then, that if He had been born on any Jewish holiday, Matthew and Luke would have mentioned it, as both of them deal with the birth of the Messiah. This would especially be true of Mattityahu, who was writing to a Jewish audience. The total silence of both Matthew and Luke in connecting Christ’s birth with any Jewish holy day suggests to me that the Savior was born on a normal day. For this reason, the gospel writers do not make mention of the date.

It is important to remember the reason for Yeshua’s birth. ADONAI chose to send His Son to take our place as the sacrificial lamb (Leviticus 1:4; John 1:29; First Corinthians 5:7), so those who love and follow Christ as their Lord and Savior, will spend eternity in everlasting joy in heaven with God.

Joseph Accepts Jesus As His Son
Matthew 1: 18-25

Joseph accepts Jesus as his son DIG: How could Mary possibly explain her pregnancy to Joseph? How would you feel if you were in Yosef’s place? What would you say to your family and friends? To God? What were his options? What reasons does Matthew give as to why Jesus was born? Apart from fulfilling prophecy, why was Jesus’ virgin birth necessary?

REFLECT: How have you experienced Yeshua Ha’Meshiach as Immanuel in your life lately? What do you learn about faith from Joseph? What lessons can you learn from Joseph about submitting to the big purposes of ADONAI? When has the LORD seemed the most real, the most tangible, the most near to you?

Having verified that Yeshua’s lineage met the criteria for Him to be the Messiah, Matthew now turns to the actual events of His birth in Isra’el some 2000 years ago. Interwoven into Mary’s story is another story waiting to be told. In religious artwork as in real life, Joseph and Jude are two of a kind (see my commentary on Jude, to see link click Ae – Jude, a Bond-Slave of Jesus Christ). His famous brother James, and his half-brother Jesus eclipsed Jude. Joseph stands in the shadows next to Miryam, who, along with her baby is highlighted on Christmas cards. He seems to always get mixed up with the shepherds. Like Jude, he knew what it was like to be the warm-up band for the real star of the story. The forgotten man in the margins, however, looms large in Mary’s story.

He was an incredible man. He and Mary had entered the first stage of the marriage ceremony (see Al – The Birth of Jesus Foretold to Mary). They had exchanged public vows, taken the first cup of wine under the huppah or canopy, and had entered the one year engagement period. In the eyes of the community they were “married” – but with no sexual contact. His response on learning the shattering news of Mary’s pregnancy proved just how extraordinary he was. Based on the facts, Miryam had betrayed him and broken her vows. Under the circumstances, Joseph had a legitimate right to be furious, or become vindictive, even bitter. He had a legal right to bring her to justice. But, as we shall see, Yosef wasn’t that kind of a man. ADONAI had done a work in his heart. He was a righteous man, intent on doing the right thing in God’s eyes, no matter what it cost him.⁸⁸

Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s perspective. This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18). The emphasis is on the virgin birth because Mattityahu is trying to solve the problem of Jeconiah (see Ai – The Genealogies of Joseph and Mary). On three different occasions the virgin birth is emphasized. In Matthew 1:18 the inspired human author records: before they came together; in Mattityahu 1:22-23 he quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying: the virgin will be with child, and thirdly, in Matthew 1:25 he says that there was no union until she gave birth to a son.

So, when Mary arrived back home in Nazareth, she saw her husband-to-be. More than likely he was not happy that she had chosen to be away from him for three months and, if he knew the secret, he hid it well. He had heard from Miryam’s mother that Elizabeth was pregnant, but surely there were other women in her town that could have taken care of her. The young girl did not argue with Joseph about it. She probably decided, from his attitude, that he knew nothing of the great secret. But, without a doubt, she promised herself that she would not marry Yosef, if he would have her, without telling him of her pregnancy. So, she decided just to do it. If he didn’t believe her explanation, he wouldn’t be a suitable stepfather anyway. There could not be any better way to find out than this. So, she told him.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she said. This must have shaken Joseph to the core. She seemed so loyal and innocent. A virgin conceiving a child without having sex? Unbelievable! What had he missed? She had gone away for three months and came back pregnant!

It would be impossible to imagine the depths of sorrow in both of these young lovers’ hearts. He looked at her tenderly, but, she offered no explanation. In all likelihood she looked away from him and wished that she could tell him everything. The baby was going to need a stepfather – who better than the man she loved, the gentle, dedicated and patient Joseph? Who knows, he might have been chosen for the role for these very reasons. Anyway, he would be the perfect guardian for her Son, the King. The question that had to be eating at her was this, “Why? Why had he not been told?” But hers’ was not to question, she was to trust and obey. She would not sit on her doubt.

Joseph had to get away to think. He was beside himself and confused. How could this happen? He was so sure! He loved her with all his heart and he had visions of a long and fruitful life with her. But, now he felt betrayed and he could not understand it. He kept the awful news to himself while he figured things out.

What could he do? He could divorce her publicly by addressing the elders at the gate of the community. If he did that, they would ask Miryam if she was pregnant. If she said yes, Yosef would have to swear he was not the father. The Oral Law (see Ei – The Oral Law) specifies four kinds of death penalty in descending order of gravity: stoning, burning, beheading and strangling (Sanhedrin 7:1). A man who has intercourse with a betrothed girl is subject to the same penalty as one who has intercourse with his mother, namely stoning (Sanhedrin 7:4). Someone who has sex with another man’s wife is liable to death by strangling (Sanhedrin 11:1).⁸⁹ Of course, Jewish courts in this period dominated by Rome could not execute capital sentences, and by this time would not carry out the death sentence even if allowed to. Nevertheless, her premarital pregnancy would have likely ruined any chance of her ever marrying again. This was a horrible fate in an economically male-centered society where a woman’s honor depended on her status in relation to a man.⁹⁰ However, there was another option. He could merely write her a certificate of divorce and send her away from his house quietly (Deuteronomy 24:1).⁹¹ It would be a private arrangement, not a public scandal. He really hated both options.

In contrast to most of modern Western culture, Yosef lived in a society where he had no option of giving Mary a second chance . . . even if he wanted to. The Oral Law demanded that a man charge his wife immediately on discovery that she had not been a virgin. In a world that considered adultery the ultimate theft – the stealing of another man’s most precious possession, the undivided affection of his wife, the emotional response to adultery was often quite serious. Because a wife’s adultery could imply the husband’s inadequacy or his family’s poor choice of a mate, it shamed the husband as well. Thus, Miryam’s apparent betrayal had also brought him shame.⁹²

He tossed and turned all night in bed. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. What would he do? Exhausted, he finally made up his mind. Because Joseph, her “husband” under the terms of the first stage of the Jewish wedding ceremony, was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he decided to divorce her quietly (Mt 1:19). It would break his heart, but it would be just and, at the same time, merciful.

Within a few moments after the decision was reached, he was relieved. So relieved that he drifted off to sleep. But after he had come to this conclusion, an angel of ADONAI appeared to him in a dream, which was considered a sign of God’s favor (Matthew 1:20a). The rabbis taught that a good dream was one of the three things (the other two being a good king and a fruitful year) that marked the LORD’s favor. This belief was so popular that it developed into a popular saying: If anyone sleeps seven days without remembering their dream for interpretation, call them wicked and unremembered by Ha’Shem.⁹³

This angel said: Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20b). Jesus had no human father, but, He did have a human mother. Only then could the Messiah be the God-Man. This is the most natural and easiest explanation of the Incarnation (the word is taken from a Latin term meaning to enter into or become flesh).⁹⁴ Apart from Jesus’ being both human and divine, there is no gospel. Our whole faith is built on it. The essence and power of the gospel is that God became man and that, He, being both wholly God and wholly man, was able to reconcile mankind to God. Yeshua’s virgin birth, His substitutionary death on the cross, His resurrection, ascension and bodily return are all interwoven aspects of His deity. They stand or fall together.

The virgin birth should not have surprised those Jews who knew and believed in the TaNaKh. As a result of a misinterpretation of the phrase a woman will surround a man in Jeremiah 31:22, many rabbis taught that the Messiah would have an unusual birth. They said that He would have no earthly father. They taught that the birth of the Meshiach would be like the dew of ADONAI, as drops upon the grass without the action of a man. So even many rabbis assumed a unique birth for Yeshua.⁹⁵

She will give birth to a Son, the angel continued, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins (Mattityahu 1:21). The Hebrew word for He will save is yoshia, which has the same Hebrew root (yud-shin-ayin) as the name Yeshua (yud-shin-vav-ayin). Thus Jesus’ name is explained on the basis of what He will do. Actually, the name Yeshua is a contraction of the Hebrew name Y’hoshua, or Joshua, which means YHVH saves. It is also the masculine form of the Hebrew word yeshu’ah,which means salvation.⁹⁶

When Joseph woke up, he wondered what it meant. Dreams were important, yes, but was he merely fooling himself? But, then he remembered that his dream fulfilled an old prophecy to the letter. Isaiah had said: All this took place to fulfill what ADONAI had said through the prophet (see my commentary on Isaiah Cb – The LORD Himself  Will Give You a Sign): The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son (Matthew 1:22-23a). The fact that the definite article, the, is used before virgin shows that Isaiah had a specific virgin in mind – which turned out to be Mary. It wasn’t just any virgin – it was the particular one!

The Hebrew word for virgin used by Isaiah is almah. It is used only six other times in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Psalm 68:25; Proverbs 30:19; Song of Songs 1:3, 6:8), and in each instance it either explicitly means a virgin, or implies it, because in the Bible almah always refers to an unmarried woman of good reputation, or a virgin. Furthermore, Matthew here is quoting from the Septuagint, the first translation of the TaNaKh into Greek. More than two centuries before Jesus was born, the Jewish scholars of the Septuagint chose the Greek word parthenos to translate almah. Clearly, parthenos means virgin.⁹⁷ For example, Athena was the virgin goddess of Athens and her temple was called the Parthenon because parthenos means virgin.

And they will call Him Immanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23b). Matthew quotes this from Isaiah (see above). But, Jesus was not known by that name during His First Coming; rather, His name gave a hint at who He was by describing Him. He is God with us. Those who are His will experience the final fulfillment in the Eternal State (see my commentary on Revelation Fr – A New Heaven and a New Earth), when God will dwell with His people.

Can a person be a believer and deny the virgin birth? You might accept Jesus Christ without knowing much about Him. But, after you are saved and read your Bible you cannot deny the virgin birth of the Lord. Is that a little pushy? Well, I hope so because it’s that important. I want a Savior who can reach down and save me. If He’s just another human like I am, then He’s not going to be able to help me very much. But, if He’s Immanuel, God with us, virgin born, then He is my Savior. Is He your Savior today? He took upon Himself our humanity in this way so that He could die on the cross for you and I.⁹⁸

No doubt Joseph felt like a thousand pounds were lifted from his shoulders. He was refreshed. Joyful. Happy even. The more he thought about his dream, the more clearly he saw the hand of God revealing a great truth to him. It was probably difficult for him to continue to work in his carpenters shop. More than likely it took everything in him not to run to Mary’s house, yelling: I know! I know! But, at the right time, they talked. Joseph was faithful and did what the Angel of the LORD, or Malach ADONAI, had commanded him to do. The following week they were married and he took Miryam home as his wife (Mattityahu 1:24). He knew there would be misunderstanding in the community and much gossip as well, but, Yosef placed God’s plan ahead of his own. Rather than make a name for himself, he made a home for Messiah.

When God revealed the truth to Joseph, he immediately believed and obeyed ADONAI, as unbelievable as it seemed. His response revealed his deep trust in God. Yosef was convinced enough by the dream to believe what was on natural terms impossible. This should be an example for us to trust and obey the Lord, responding differently than those who do not know His Word. Joseph’s obedience to Ha’Shem could have cost him his own reputation.⁹⁹ Yet, Yosef was right there with her no matter how dangerous or difficult her path. He was firmly committed to God’s call on her life just as she was. Instead of privately putting her away, he publicly took her into his home and embraced her as his wife. Mary could have been unbearably alone, facing impossible odds to raise her son. But, Joseph never let that happen.¹⁰⁰

We know nothing else of Joseph’s life except his taking the infant Jesus to the Temple for dedication (Luke 2:22-33), his taking Miryam and the baby Yeshua to Egypt to protect Him from Herod’s bloody decree and the return from Egypt (Mattityahu 2:13-23), and his taking his family to the Passover in Jerusalem when the young Jesus was twelve (Luke 2:42-52). We have no idea when Yosef died, but, it could have been well before Yeshua began His public ministry. Obviously it was before Messiah’s crucifixion because from the cross Jesus gave His mother to the care of the apostle John (Yochanan 19:26).¹⁰¹ He is the forgotten man of the Bible.

But he had no union with her until after she gave birth to her firstborn son (Matthew 1:25a). Joseph had no sexual relations with Mary until after she gave birth. But, in addition, the word until tells us that she did not remain a virgin after the birth of Jesus. Nothing beyond that was needed to safeguard the deity of Christ and the purity of Mary. The Catholic church’s belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary is not biblical. Not only did she not remain a virgin, but, we know she gave birth to at least six other children, four sons and at least two daughters.¹⁰²

The priests in the Roman Catholic church make repeated references to “the Virgin Mary.” They acknowledge that Yosef and Miryam were husband and wife and attempt to portray them as the ideal human family, but, deny that they lived in a normal marriage relationship. But, such an unnatural relationship is absurd on the face of it, and nowhere in Scripture is approval ever given for such an abnormal relationship. In fact, just the opposite is true. In Rabbi Sha’ul’s letter to the church at Corinth concerning married life, he says: The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband . . . do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time (not a lifetime), so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control (First Corinthians 7:3 and 5). Such an arrangement would have been contrary to nature and simply a frustration for both parties. The priests must give up the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity, or give up the idea that Joseph and Mary represent the ideal human family.¹⁰³

And she gave Him the name Jesus (Mt 1:25b). The name had been revealed to Miryam, now it was revealed to Joseph as well. The name was to be given because He will save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21).¹⁰⁴

There was only one thing that was troubling. Knowing the Scriptures as they did, they realized that the King of kings would be born in Beit-Lechem, the City of David. Their Son, however, would be born in Nazareth, a little place over ninety miles north of Bethlehem if they went through Samaria. Mary had no intention of traveling anywhere. In the summer months, and the early fall, the older women of the town would have noticed that she was pregnant, and they probably counseled her to remain close to home. She would not go to see Elizabeth’s baby, so, why would she consider traveling to Bethlehem? Joseph nodded. He felt the same way. Beit-Lechem was too far away and, humanly speaking, he had no intention of taking his pregnant wife on a donkey all that way to get there.

Joseph valued obedience to ADONAI above his own honor. As soon as God revealed the truth to him, he immediately believed and obeyed His will, as unbelievable as the truth might be. This revealed the depth of Yosef’s trust, especially since the revelation was limited to a dream. This should, in turn, summon us to obey the LORD, responding differently than those who do not trust His Word. Because he alone received this revelation, others at that time would still think that he had gotten Miryam pregnant before the wedding. He would remain an object of shame in a society dominated by the value of honor. Joseph’s obedience to YHVH cost him the right to value his own reputation. How much do you trust God?¹⁰⁵

The Birth of John the Baptist
Luke 1: 57-80

The birth of John the Baptist DIG: How did John’s birth fulfill the words of the angel of ADONAI in Luke 1:13-17? How did the neighbors and relatives respond to these events? How does all this begin to promote the gospel? Make a list of all the things that Zechariah praises ADONAI for. How does his song compare with Mary’s in Luke 1:46-55? What, according to this song, is the purpose of salvation? How does Z’kharyah’s song show God’s unfolding plan from the days of the TaNaKh, to the coming of the Messiah?

REFLECT: What does it mean to you that the Lord’s hand is with someone: Success? Courage? Wealth? Endurance? Holiness? How was His hand seen in the life of Yochanan? What does that mean for you? Of the promises listed in this song, which one means the most to you at this stage in your life? Why? How has God unfolded His plan of salvation in your life? Who helped prepare the way for you? What were some key events that led you to your commitment to Jesus?

This begins the motif that what happens to the herald, happens to the King.

When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son (Luke 1:57). The circumstances of Elisheva’s barrenness were widely known; so John’s birth was recognized as supernatural. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy (Luke 1:58). Apparently Elizabeth remained in seclusion throughout her pregnancy. The imperfect tense here shows repeated action, they kept on rejoicing with her over and over.

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. Circumcision on the eighth day of a boy’s life is the sole condition for a Jew’s being under the covenant God made with Abraham (see my commentary on Genesis, to see link click En –For Generations to Come Every Male Who is Eight Days Old Must be Circumcised). Her neighbors and relatives were attempting to name him after his father – Zechariah Jr. . . if you will (Luke 1:59). When the final blessing had been spoken and the circumcision performed, and then came the final pronouncement of grace over the cup of wine, “Our God and the God of our fathers, raise up this child to his father and mother, and let his name be called Z’kharyah.”⁷⁹ But his mother interrupted and spoke up saying: No! He is to be called John (Luke 1:60). Evidently Zechariah had already communicated his experience at the Temple with Elizabeth many times over and she was obedient to the command of the angel of the Lord.

However, that was contrary to Jewish tradition and practice and therefore raised a problem in the community gathered there. They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name (Luke 1:61).” According to the Jewish custom of that day, they would name the child after any relative, either living or dead. The rabbis teach that this was because God changed the names of Abram and Sarai at the time God instituted circumcision. In modern Jewish tradition this is still done to some degree. You name your children after a relative who has already passed away. But, there was no one, in either Zechariah or Elizabeth’s side of the family who was ever named John. So, the other Jewish mother’s at the circumcision ceremony didn’t seem to like what Elisheva was doing and planned to go over her head to her husband.⁸⁰ He would surely set her straight!

Then they made signs to his father Z’kharyah who had been mute for about nine months, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet. He probably was handed a piece of wood that had been hollowed out and filled with wax. And to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is Yochanan.” This act of obedience caused his judgment of dumbness to be removed and he was able to speak. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free. God’s chastening had the desired result and he began to speak, praising God (Luke 1:62-64). His last words in the Temple had been words of doubt; his first words after the lesson of his being mute had been learned, were words of faith and praise.⁸¹ All of us have shown a lack of faith at some point in our lives. But, when God hears and answers our prayers, like Z’kharyah, we really get up and rejoice.

Zechariah’s prophecy filled the neighbors with awe, or a healthy fear of the Lord (Proverbs 9:10), which was the proper response when they realized that the way was being prepared for the long awaited Messiah. And throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. They, in effect, became evangelists who proclaimed throughout the countryside of Judea the truth of what Z’kharyah had told them. Everyone who heard this wondered about it. For this reason many questioned: What then is this child going to be? For ADONAI’s hand was with him (Luke 1:65-66). The phrase hand of the LORD is a common expression of the TaNaKh for God’s powerful presence.

His father Zechariah was filled with the Spirit. Under the control of the Ruach Ha’Kodesh, he prophesied a message with as much authority as any found in TaNaKh (Lk 1:67): He sang the second of four songs recorded in Luke by Mary 1:46-66, here by Zechariah 1:68-79, a choir of angels 2:14, and Simeon 2:29-32.

Zechariah’s song is divided into two main segments. First, Z’kharyah praises the Meshiach who was to come (Luke 1:68-75). The entire first segment consists of a single sentence in the Greek. He started his hymn by singing about the work of God that had already begun with the birth of John and the conception of the Messiah: Praise be to the Lord, the God of Isra’el, because He has come to His people and redeemed them (Lk 1:68). Again we find him relating the coming Messiah to the Jewish covenants. What God had begun to do is what He had promised through the mouth of His holy prophets of long ago (Lk 1:70).

He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David (Luke 1:69). The image of a horn symbolizes the strength of the animal. Since Yochanan himself is not linked to the house of David (Psalm 132:17), the horn of salvation cannot refer to Yochanan, but, to the Meshiach he was announcing. The salvation mentioned here is not political, but personal. It speaks to an individual’s relationship with Christ. It involves the person’s life (Luke 9:24), and is for those who recognize that they are lost (Luke 19:10). It comes through faith (Luke 7:50, 17:19, 18:42), through the forgiveness of their sins (Luke 1:77). Saving faith results in salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us (Luke 1:71; Second Samuel 22:18; Psalm 18:17, 106:10). Luke understood salvation to mean salvation from sin, and this is how, according to Luke, John understood the salvation that Jesus would bring as witnessed in John’s message (Luke 3:7-14).⁸²

There is a play on words in verses 72 and 73. Z’kharyah name means to remember and Elisheva’s name means the oath of God. So we can have confidence that ADONAI remembers His oath to fulfill the promises to the righteous of the TaNaKh. That He will show mercy to our ancestors and to remember His holy covenant (Luke 1:72). This should also be a comfort to us today because we can have confidence that God is a promise keeper. He will keep His promises to Isra’el and He will keep His promises to us.

The oath He swore to our father Abraham (Genesis 17:4 and 22:16-17) to rescue us from the hand of our enemies. Again Luke understood this rescue figuratively (see Psalm 97:10). This rescue involves the kind of salvation that was promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34, where ADONAI pledged that He would forgive Isra’el of their sins, cleanse them, give them a new heart and to enable them to serve Him without fear (Luke 1:73-74) in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days (Luke 1:75).⁸³ The phrase all our days is used as closing in Psalm 16:11 and 18:51. It expresses the eternal nature of God’s salvation and the corresponding human response.

Secondly, Zechariah praises his own son who will be the forerunner to King Messiah (Luke 1:76-79). There is a change in tense at this point, from the past tense, which describes what the LORD has already begun to do, to the future tense, which speaks specifically of John’s future ministry.⁸⁴ Here Zechariah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recalls Malachi’s prophecy that Elijah precedes the Messiah: And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him, Yochanan’s task was to take on the office of a prophet and to prepare the way for the King. While John was a prophet of the Most High (Luke 1:76), Jesus is the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:32). John’s birth to a barren woman was miraculous, but, Yeshua’s birth to a virgin is unique and unprecedented. Yochanan’s role was to prepare the way for the Lord (Lk 1:17), but Jesus is that Lord – the Savior, who is the Messiah (2:11).⁸⁵

John was not the Savior and his message could not save. His ministry was to introduce the Savior who would provide salvation for God’s people through the forgiveness of their sins (Luke 1:77). The redemption that the Messiah will give is not a political liberation, but, rather a salvation that involves the forgiveness of their sins. As a result, the prophecy of Jeremiah would be fulfilled: No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know ADONAI,” because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34).

Salvation is possible only because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven (Luke 1:78). The rising sun means the day star, or the morning star, which announces the coming of the day in the sense that John is the morning star announcing the Son of righteousness (Malachi 4:2) who will come to us from heaven. As a result, Yochanan’s ministry will be twofold, first to shine on those Gentiles living in darkness and in the shadow of death, and secondly to guide our feet, or the nation of Israel, into the path of peace (1:79). This picks up the image of the rising sun in the previous verse. Verses 68-79 are known in the west as the Benedictus (which is the section’s first word in the Vulgate). As with the Magnificant (see An – The Song of Mary), the entire prophecy is couched in the language of the TaNaKh.⁸⁶

And the child grew and became strong (Luke 1:80a). We find parallel accounts elsewhere in the Scriptures. The first seven words (six words in Greek) describing Messiah’s growth are identical to Luke 2:40. But, more importantly, he became strong in the Spirit. Earlier we learned that Yochanan would be filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15), and here we see the fulfillment of that prophecy. Similar language is also found in Judges where we learn that Sampson grew and the Ruach Ha’Kodesh came upon him (Judges 13:24-25 and 3:10). Thus, John grew up strong physically and spiritually.

This is a summary account. He continued to grow in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Isra’el (1:80b). That was not normal for a young person. Because of the special mission that Yochanan knew about from an early age, he followed the role of Elijah (Luke 1:17). Luke mentions John’s name as a literary device, after Z’kharyah’s lengthy song, to bring us back to the narrative. Sometime early in his life, we don’t know when, he leaves the town in which he was born and goes out into the wilderness of Judea. He spends most of his life there. This separated John from the Judaism of his day. When his public message finally did come thirty years later, it was different from that of rabbinic Judaism.⁸⁷