Advent - Prophesied 3

 

"Sending orders, he (Herod) put to death all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, according to the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“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 2:16b-17

So we continue from the previous message, as we read through Matthew's narrative of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Here he stated that Jesus fulfilled another old Messianic Prophecy.

This one is of the prophet Jeremiah, who lived about a hundred years after those two lesser known prophets we have talked about in the two previous messages in this series. This is about 600 years before Jesus was born.

Magi

The story of the birth of Jesus is that He was born in the little town of Bethlehem and that unknown wise men or magi (mysterious visitors from the east) came to visit Him to pay homage to the newborn king.

They were guided by a bright star (interestingly with the conjuncture of Jupiter and Saturn, we will see a glimpe of something similar in the heavens by December 21st when these two giant planets will be at its closest and would appear as one bright star).

The Fox Outwitted

The magi went to the king's palace in Jerusalem (just a handful of miles north of Bethlehem) to inquire of Herod, the ruler of that region. He did not know about this newborn king but he told these magi to come to him after they have seen the child so that he himself can also visit and pay his respects. (Of course this was only a pretense as what Herod wanted was to find out the location and to have this supposed king eliminated, as he is a threat to his rule).

Massacre of the Innocents

The magi after visiting Jesus never returned to Herod. So upon learning of this, Herod was livid and he ordered the death of boys two years and younger in that area. A number that is estimated to be not large enough to attract attention, because there really weren't that many people living there and birth mortality was high and life expectancy was low at that place and time.

But Jesus and His family were able to escape this massacre by fleeing to Egypt before the order was carried out.

Weeping and Great Mourning

Still the weeping and the mourning would have been tremendous and real for the families who were left behind.

Herod was known to have ordered the deaths of several people in his lifetime, so this one would have not been out of the ordinary.

And so we add one more in a line of prophesies spoken hundreds of years before about the Messiah that was fulfilled in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Flight to Egypt from Jesus of Nazareth

Advent Series