Christmas Pleasure Amidst Worldly Pain

Jeremiah tells the people that God has not forgotten them, and that He will initiate a new relationship, a new covenant with them (31:31-34). God was going to unite His people together around that covenant.

So when Matthew quotes from Jeremiah, it's as if he's saying amidst the bitter tragedy of Bethlehem, "Yes, the pain is real, but there is hope for your future, and that hope is here. Jesus has come!" Jesus ends the mournful exile. Notice the contrast in Matthew 2. On the one hand, there is horrible news—children dying and mothers mourning and weeping. On the other hand, there is hope in the midst of hurt. There is life in the midst of death. And what is that hope? Where is this life? Matthew tells us: A new King is born—a King who will conquer death, a King who will heal our hurts, a new King who will reconcile us to God.

Along with the coming of a new King, a new covenant is beginning. Matthew quotes from Jeremiah 31, the same chapter where we are promised that God will enter into a new covenant with us through Christ, so that all God's people will know and love and worship God. Jesus brings hope in the midst of hurt and life in the midst of death.

After showing us that Jesus inaugurates the new exodus and ends the mournful exile, Matthew now shows us that Jesus loves His fiercest enemies. In verse 23 we read, "Then he went and settled in a town called Nazareth to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets, that He will be called a Nazarene." If you have trouble tracking down that Old Testament reference, it's because Matthew is not quoting from any particular prophet. In fact, none of the prophets ever say precisely, "He46 will be called a Nazarene." For that matter, the prophets never even talk about Nazareth as a place at all. So why does Matthew say this?

We learn throughout the rest of Matthew's Gospel and the other Gospels that Nazareth was not a very well-respected place. It was at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, to say the least. Recall from John's Gospel that when Nathanael heard that Jesus was from Nazareth, he responded by saying, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46). Nazarenes were scorned, derided, and generally despised. It is this idea of scorn that is all over the prophets, maybe most famously in Isaiah 53, where the prophet says of Jesus, "He was despised and rejected by men... and we didn't value Him" (53:3). This seems to be what Matthew is getting at—the King who has come is going to be rejected by the world. He will be a Nazarene. He will be scorned. But this is actually good news in the end, as we will see.

This final quotation in verse 23 brings chapter 2 to a fitting conclusion. The King of the universe has come to save sinners, and from the start He is defied and derided by the very sinners He came to save. Whether it's Herod, the chief priests, or the scribes, they are all setting themselves up against Jesus as His enemies. The reality is, we do the same thing.

In most of the stories we love, even biblical stories, you have a good guy and a bad guy, and of course, we love to identify ourselves with the good guy. Think about these pairs: Goliath and David, Cain and Abel, Pharaoh and Moses, Delilah and Sampson, Esau and Jacob. Likewise in Matthew 2 we've got good guys and bad guys. The good guys are the wise men, Joseph, and Mary; the bad guys, King Herod and the Jewish religious leaders. Whom do you identify with more? If we're honest, at the core of who we are we probably identify most with King Herod. Instead of bowing in full surrender before the King, we're afraid of how Jesus is going to invade our kingdom, our lives, our plans, and our desires. The reality is that in our minds and in our hearts, we have all rejected Him. This is the core of what it means to be a sinner, and this is precisely whom Jesus came to save.

The story of Matthew 2 and the story of Christmas are not simply about what happened two thousand years ago in the time of the New Testament, or three thousand years ago in the time of the Old Testament. This story is also about you and me. We're all enslaved to sin, in need of an exodus, in need of deliverance. And we are familiar with pain and hurt in this sinful world. We know suffering in our own lives47 and we see suffering all around us, and we long for an end to mourning. Yet, in our sin, we are enemies of the Savior. But He, Jesus, has come to inaugurate a new exodus, to make our deliverance from sin possible. He has come to end our mournful exile, to bring hope in the midst of hurt and life in the midst of death as a new King with a new covenant that unites us to God. And none of this is based on our work for Him, but on His work for us. And He has come to love us in all our sinful rebellion, though in our minds and in our hearts we have all rejected Him. By His grace and for His glory, He has redeemed us.

Christ has come. He has given His life for us, He has shed His blood as a perfect sacrifice, and He has risen from the grave to bring eternal life to all who believe in Him. This is the gospel that brings Christmas pleasure in the midst of worldly pain.