“To Fulfill What the Lord had Spoken”

Sunday, May 09, 2021

Each of the four Gospels has its own flavor, and the distinguishing features have lessons to teach us.  Let’s examine one of Matthew’s tendencies.  From the very start, he stresses the fulfillment of prophecy.  All that led up to Jesus’ birth happened in order
to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). (Matthew 1.22-23)

That prophet was Isaiah, and this is just the first of many times Matthew refers to his book for a 700-year-old prediction fulfilled in Jesus.  But Isaiah is not alone.  A few verses later, when king Herod asks the priests and scribes where the messiah would be born,
They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matthew 2.5-6)

This time, the prophet is Micah, who doesn’t get very much attention these days.  But he was pointing toward the Christ, and while Herod, unsurprisingly, was not terribly familiar with his predictions, the religious leaders at the time were easily able to recognize what God had foretold.

Just after this, Joseph and Mary acted in such a way as to fulfill another prophecy.  God warned them to escape those seeking to harm the child, by going to Egypt.  Why?
This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2.15)

This one came from Hosea.  More than 7 centuries beforehand, God predicted what would happen when his Son became flesh, and gave his servants Joseph and Mary instructions to fulfill that prediction.

Then Matthew mentions another prophecy that pertained to the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, given by yet another prophet.  When Herod acted on the information he’d just received and had all the boys under age 2 killed in Bethlehem, Matthew tells us that this
fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2.17-18)

This one is less specific, and somewhat confusing—didn’t this occur in Bethlehem, not Ramah?  And isn’t Bethlehem in the territory of Judah, whose mother was Leah, and not in the territory of Rachel’s descendants—Benjamin, Manasseh, or Ephraim?  Yet Rachel “was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)” (Ge 35.19), and by the time of Jesus’ birth, it wasn’t just the descendants of Judah living in that territory, but a mishmash of the members of different tribes of Israel who had returned from the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles.  It’s a roundabout way of getting there, but when these innocent young Jewish boys were slaughtered to preserve Herod’s false sense of security on his throne, some of them were the descendants of Rachel, whose remains were buried just down the road from Bethlehem.  Another prophecy, fulfilled.

We’re still in chapter 2, and there’s one more left!  While Jesus is yet a very young child, Joseph brings the family back from Egypt as instructed, and takes them to live 
in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. (Matthew 2.23)

This is one of the oddest fulfillments of prophecy mentioned in Matthew, because there’s no explicit prophecy to this effect to be found in the Old Testament.  However, above and beyond the general theme that the messiah would be despised, which is certainly fulfilled in his Nazarene origins, Isaiah calls him a “branch” from the roots of Jesse (Is 11.1), and the Hebrew word behind that term is נֵצֶר-nēṣer-“sprout.”  Matthew’s point relies on some typical Hebrew wordplay, since Isaiah’s label for the Messiah sounds just like the town in which he grew up.  When Jesus was called a Nazarene, in a sense he was also being called the Branch!

We could go on for some time like this, finding prophecy after prophecy not just being fulfilled, but being pointed out to the reader.  Why?  Well, it’s not just that Matthew enjoyed the scavenger hunt for prophecies; for him, the main reason to stress all of these is that they served as evidence for those who already accepted the authority of the Old Testament.  These are proofs for the Jews that the Messiah they’d been awaiting and expecting for so long is Jesus.

For us, that’s actually a bit less important.  The New Testament is a much better testimony to Christ than the Old.  So what does all this fulfillment of prophecy do for us?  It shows us the power, wisdom, foreknowledge, and the plan of God.  From the beginning, he intended to redeem his broken creation by sending his Son to open the door for us.  This wasn’t a lucky guess or an afterthought, it was always the plan.  At each step he was marching forward and arranging the events of history not just with a view toward justice in the present time, but also redemption to come in the age of Christ.

You’re a part of that plan, too.  Like everyone else, you have the opportunity and obligation to take refuge in him, to obey his will, to be rescued from your sins and have your name added to the book of life.  God has followed his plan to the letter.  Will you?

Jeremy Nettles

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