The Testimony of the Cosmos about a Coming King: Matthew 2 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

You know, your life is bizarre.

I mean, if you think about where you've been taken and what each of you have been through, that you're here right now, hearing this message is bizarre.

I'm here because of dreams and visions.

How many of you would say you feel like you've had at least one dream that was from the Lord for your life?

God speaks through dreams.

This is such a bizarre story.

You're reading this, and you gotta go.

Man, if you don't believe in the supernatural, you're gonna have major problems with the book of Matthew.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Men and women, we are in the book of Matthew.

The next year we're going to be in the book of Matthew on a Kingdom of God revolution.

And I believe a God, I believe God is bringing a kingdom of God revolution to our nation.

I'm not responsible except in prayer at this point for what happens in Washington, except to vote.

I'm not necessarily responsible except to vote at this point for what happens in the Capitol in Denver.

I'm not responsible in any particular way for Huntsville, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, or LA, for that matter.

I am responsible for here.

And so are you.

We are responsible for Colorado Springs.

God placed us here.

He uniquely gifted every one of you in this room to make a contribution of the kingdom of God through your family, through your job, through your school, through your lifestyle.

And the book of Matthew was written to Jews who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

And Matthew, through divine inspiration, began to write of a king.

And God gave him a vision more than any of the other gospel writers to talk about Jesus as a king who is bringing a kingdom.

And so the theme that I've given for the book of Matthew is a kingdom of God revolution.

That Jesus came not to start Christianity, not to establish a religion, but to establish a movement of the kingdom of God.

Life for the modern man in East and West needs something to give total meaning to an otherwise fragmented life.

He needs an absolute from which he can work down to the relativisms of our day as master light of all his seeing.

The kingdom of God is man's total answer to man's total need.

Jesus gave us and preached about and proclaimed to us of a kingdom of God, of a divine order, men and women, a divine order that I told Liz this morning when we woke up, we were praying together, we're looking out the window, and the snow is still on all the trees.

And I said to her, Yes, honey, there's divine order out there.

The kingdom of God is right there.

There's divine order in a pine needle.

There's divine order in the bark on that tree.

That little greenhouse, that little garden that you do every summer, has a divine order to it.

If it gets sunshine, if it gets the right temperatures, if it gets water, those seeds grow.

And men and women, Jesus came bringing the kingdom of God, not a religion, because he knew that if, listen, and this is important, you'll hear this week after week.

If we tap into and line ourselves up with the kingdom of God and the divine order of God, everything goes better.

That's why Paul in writing to the Romans said, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.

And if you look at the whole passage that he's speaking of in Romans chapter 4, he's talking about religion.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

You eat this or you don't eat that, or some people think they should fast, or some people should think they should eat meat, some people think they should not eat meat that was given to idols and all that stuff that we all battle over.

Religious wars of that time.

He says the kingdom of God is not that.

It's not eating and drinking, it's righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Men and women, when we line up our families, when we line up our churches, when we line up our companies, when we line up our finances according to the kingdom of God, it has all over it righteousness, peace, and joy.

Isn't that exciting?

So Jesus came to inaugurate a kingdom, a kingdom that is here, not completely here, because it will be complete in heaven.

But he called us, and we'll talk about that in the next couple weeks.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Hindus reject it, Muslims ignore it, agnostics and atheists hate it, and Christianity in many cases has misrepresented it.

But Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God.

Everything Jesus said and did was predominantly driven by a desire to colonize the earth with heaven.

Jesus wanted to colonize the earth with heaven.

That's why he told us to pray.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And then he concludes that great prayer with thine is the power, and thine is the kingdom.

For and ever and ever.

Amen.

We learn that prayer.

But the purpose of the prayer is for us to bring heaven down to earth.

And so you don't become members.

You become members of a church.

But we don't become members of the kingdom.

We become citizens of the kingdom.

The king rules the kingdom.

Guess what?

We grew up in a democracy, we grew up in a republic, we get to vote.

We get to vote for our president, we get to vote for Congress.

You don't get to vote in the kingdom.

Jesus does not care about your opinion.

And as great and wonderful as I am, he doesn't care about mine either.

A king is sovereign.

A king is sovereign over his kingdom.

Let me give you a definition of the kingdom.

I gave this a couple weeks ago.

Kingdom.

Kingdom.

King's domain.

The governing influence of the king.

God over his territory.

By the way, what's his territory?

Everything.

The governing influence of the king.

God over his territory, impacting it with his mind, his will, his purpose, his intentions, producing a citizenry of people who express his culture and reflect his nature.

That's a cool definition, isn't it?

I like that.

Let's stand.

I want you to hold hands with the person next to you.

And let's say this, let's say this definition together.

I want us to say it together.

The king's domain.

The governing influence of the king.

God over his territory, impacting it with his mind.

His will, his purpose, his intention.

Producing a citizenry of people who express his culture and reflect his nature.

So, Father, today we gather, we pray together that Father God, we would be a people where you have governing influence over this church.

You have governing influence over this land, right here where we are.

This is your land.

You're the landlord.

You're the landlord.

God, impact us today with your mind, your will, your purpose, and your intention.

God, as we leave this place, may we be an expression of your culture and reflect your nature at the restaurants we go to, the way we drive, the way we treat people, those that we look at who are less than perfect, who have a lot of issues.

May we love them the way you did.

May we be Jesus with your culture and your power and your expression of love and your nature to those that we meet.

God, and we that are married, we pray, God, that our marriages will reflect the kingdom.

We that are not married, that our singleness would reflect the kingdom.

We that go to school, that when we're in class, we reflect your kingdom.

So, Father God, we can't do this except through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We surrender to the Holy Spirit.

God, we believe you want to move across this nation with a citizenship of people that when they come, the glory of God follows them.

That we bring heaven to earth in all that we do.

Father, I pray that you teach us and you would strengthen our faith this morning as we read about the Magi, as we read about the prophecies of your coming.

As Matthew is trying to convince these unbelieving Jews that the Messiah King of glory over heaven and earth has come.

So we bless you, Lord, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Thank you, you guys.

You can be seated.

So the Jews at the time of this writing, who were unbelieving Jews, because many Jews had become believers, many rabbis, many scribes and Pharisees did become believers after the resurrection of Christ.

Some did not.

And Matthew is zeroing in on these non-believing Jews.

And so he's writing to Jews, with Gentiles in mind also, who believed that the Messiah was going to be a political savior, a military king, much like King David, and that he was going to be the king of the Jews and Palestine.

And what you're going to pick up in Matthew is that Matthew, as a tax collector, and one who had been in cooperation with the Romans at that time and in his, I don't know, almost like mafiasso-type work in which he constantly defrauded the Jews who had gotten saved, understood both cultures well, and especially understood the political realm, because he was a political guy.

Matthew's a political guy.

So he's writing to a political Jew, a religious Jew, who really believes that Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament as they saw them.

And it's hard for us to understand this because of the way we've all been raised, but if you can imagine the heavy boot of the Romans crushing everything that you hold dear, year after year after year, and the longing for a Messiah that would come militarily and politically to set them free and set the country free, that it would be a sovereign nation again, as it had been under King David.

For now, Matthew and others say, wait, there's a different kind of king.

It's a different kind of kingdom.

So we look at chapter 1, and in chapter 1, a couple weeks ago, we talked about first that Matthew is describing Jesus coming through a royal line.

And so he starts with Abraham and David.

That this king of the Jews, Jesus, is a descendant of Abraham.

He's a descendant of David.

And secondly, we looked at the fact that this anointed one, Christ the anointed one, the anointed king, had a supernatural birth.

There's no explanation for it.

That he was fully God and fully man through the virgin birth, coming through the birth canal of Mary, but yet having a father.

And so that father being the Holy Spirit, but having an earthly father through Joseph.

So pick up Matthew 2.

So if you if you have your Bibles, let's dig into Matthew 2 a little bit.

So he continues his letter, his treatise, by a testimony now of the cosmos.

That even the heavenlies describe a coming king.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born?

King of the Jews.

Matthew really wants this idea of the king of the Jews to be understood.

For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.

Powerful phraseology here, that they have come not to just an earth, the sense here is not of an earthly king, but a king over even the heavenly realm that they would worship at his feet.

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

When he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the anointed one, the Christ, the Messiah, was to be born.

So they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, but you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you shall come forth a ruler.

Again, Matthew wants it to be understood, this is a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

A shepherd king, not a political king, a shepherd king.

So he's beginning now, even in the letter, to allude to the fact that this is a different kind of kingdom.

This is a different kind of king than what they thought.

Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the young child.

And when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also.

When they heard the king, they departed, and behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was, now called a young child, not a baby.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.

Verse 11, very interesting verse.

And when they had come into the house, so how many had manger scenes in your house where you had the wise men there?

You know, you got the wise men right there, the little manger scene.

We had this really cool manger scene.

Um, but my mom, again, got to understand my family, highly educated.

Everybody was theologically trained.

My dad went to Philadelphia Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Mom went to Duke Divinity School, and so we just, you know, so she was like, she hated that.

Stupid manger scene has the kings there.

They weren't even there yet when he was born.

And she wouldn't even allow any, there was no wise men ever.

You know, we had manger scenes at the church, and she was always like, there's always like this running battle between some of the other staff on dad's church and everything, and she'd come by and I still remember when we're looking around, she'd grab the wise men and she'd stick them in her purse.

They were the wise men, they always say some kid did it, you know, and some kid took them, you know.

And then she'd go put them back in the kitchen somewhere on a shelf.

But they're pointed toward the she'd always point them.

So she did that in our house.

So when I was a kid, we had this manuscreen, really cool manuscene made out of wood and everything.

Really, it was a pretty cool one.

Not the you know, cheesy kind, really good one.

And she this this one had a loose Jesus.

Okay, it was a loose Jesus.

So, you know, a lot of times you got a manger and Jesus stuck to it.

And so we couldn't have that in our house.

It's like, he's not even born yet, you know?

So we came in, this is the whole household growing up.

You always come in and there's an empty manger.

Empty manger.

And she hid Jesus somewhere in the house, and there was always an award or a reward you got if you found it.

So it was, you know, it was like peanuts or maybe we got to have some sugary cereal.

I don't know.

But she'd have, and then there's no wise men.

No magi were there.

And what she would do is she'd go to the furthest part of the house, wherever that was, because we lived in different houses, and she'd set them up there, and then you never knew.

I remember coming home from school.

Where are the wise men, you know?

Because they'd be gone.

And she had moved them to another room, moving closer.

She's there looking at the star.

Epiphany hasn't come yet.

She'd always say, Epiphany hasn't come yet.

So there you go.

That's the way I grew up.

So that's from verse 11.

They came to the house.

I'm still needing counseling to deal with coming into our church, and somebody's got the wise men there.

It's like, that's not right.

They weren't there yet.

But I always wondered about that because it seemed like you should keep the manger scene out.

I remember thinking, wait, mom always said he was like between one and two years old when they finally came.

So I remember one time said, Mom, why don't we keep the manger scene out for another year?

She said, Because that'll ruin next Christmas.

And I said, Okay, I can buy that.

But anyway, it would always be like, it would always be, I think it's 18 days.

I could be wrong on that, but I think it's 18 days after Christmas, is the celebration of Epiphany.

And uh then she put them out, and that's when we put away, put the manger scene away the next day.

So they came to the house, verse 11, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him.

And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

So Matthew is trying to describe the testimony of the heavenlies, the cosmos of this coming king.

And he prophesies with these guys called Magi, these Eastern astrologers, coming and saying they saw something.

They've been following this thing, and then what's going to happen here as we read the rest is that Herod, he's already been born, he's living in a house now.

Okay?

So Herod's gonna figure out through his prophets when this might have happened according to Scripture and what the astrologers told them, and that's why he's going to slay the little children.

So these are wealthy priests, also called magos, taken from the Mede language, and it means spiritual advisors.

Hundreds of years before, they had been appointed by Darius over state religion in Persia, which is modern day Iran, and served as official advisors to the king.

By the time of Christ, Persia has been conquered and was being governed by Successors to Alexander the Great, but it is possible, just possible, there's much disagreement about this, that these magos, Magos, came from the Mesopotamian region of Seleucia.

It has been postulated that these men possibly, listen, were the descendants of those who had been trained by Daniel.

Pretty interesting.

Colin Nichol, in his groundbreaking book, The Great Christ Comet, says this.

Quote, we must now ask how the Magi concluded that the heavenly phenomena pointed to the Messiah, the king of the Jews.

Anyone living in Babylon, with its significant population of Jews, would have been familiar with the basic tenets of Judaism and probably would have known that the Jewish people expected a great future leader called the Messiah to come and ultimately reign over the world.

Suetonius Vespasan 4.5 confirms this.

It reads, An ancient superstition had spread throughout the East that out of Judea would come the rulers of the world.

So look at verse 8 again.

Verse 8, very end, we came and they want to worship him.

Verse 11, they fall down and they worship him.

This is serious stuff, folks.

This is serious stuff.

And Matthew really wants the non-believing Jews to get this.

This was a king like a God.

This is a God king.

This is the shepherd king, the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one.

Even these astrologers, even these wise men from the east came believing this.

Then he continues, verse 13.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I called my son.

Now this is really interesting that he picks that prophetic verse to describe what's happening here with Jesus.

Many believe that, again, what Matthew's doing, he's given us the genealogy through Abraham.

He's given us the genealogy and the analogy of King David.

Some say that he's speaking of a second Moses.

If you think of a second Moses here, it kind of makes sense.

You know, Moses was being hunted down, and God delivered him out of Egypt, we might say.

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry.

And he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all his districts, from two years old and under.

That's the reason we come up with the idea that Jesus was between probably one and two years old, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Rama, lamentation, weeping, great mourning.

Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

Now when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, take the young child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young child's life are dead.

Then he arose, took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.

But when he had heard that Archelius was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee.

And he came and he dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene.

Really interesting that in one sense the prophecy was that he would be born in Bethlehem, but the Messiah would be called a Nazarene.

I mean, if you think about this, I mean, logically, this is bizarre.

You know your life is bizarre.

I mean, if you think about where you've been taken and what each of you have been through, that you're here right now, hearing this message is bizarre.

I'm here because of dreams and visions.

Dreams and visions, it started in Okinawa, Japan in 1991 and continued 30 different times over the years, and we came here.

How many of you would say you feel like you've had a at least one dream that was from the Lord for your life?

Yeah, you know, tons of you.

I mean, God speaks through dreams.

And this is such a bizarre story.

You're reading this and you gotta go.

Man, if you don't believe in the supernatural, you're gonna have major problems with the book of Matthew.

Because he could have used so many images, but what he what he keeps expressing to us here is God supernaturally intervening in normal events to move a couple, a peasant couple, a carpenter and his peasant wife to save that child.

God does that today in your life too.

And God, if you're if you're lining up with the kingdom in your life, God's gonna orchestrate that he's with you, he's guiding you.

He'll sometimes use visions and dreams, he'll sometimes use just the word of God, sometimes he'll use a prophetic word.

I don't know what he uses all the time because there's so many ways that he speaks to us.

But when he speaks to us and it lines up with his word, it's for good.

It's awesome.

It's the kingdom of God of leading us into righteousness, peace, and joy in our lives.

And so, and so this second Moses, this Messiah, I see seven messianic prophetic pointers here.

Seven messianic prophetic pointers in chapter two.

Number one, the celestial heavens, the cosmos, they attest even to a coming king.

Number two, the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem.

Number three, the Messiah will be a ruler.

You can't be a ruler if you don't have a kingdom.

But Matthew hasn't told us what the kingdom is.

That's coming up the next time about the coming of the kingdom.

But he's there's a ruler.

Number four, the Messiah is the long-awaited shepherd king, not a political king.

Number five, the Messiah is a son, capital S, a son of God coming out of Egypt.

Number six, the murder of the innocents prophesied of the Messiah.

And then number seven, the parents of Jesus returned to Israel, to Nazareth, for the Messiah shall be called a Nazarene.

Interesting that in the upheaval of all of this, chapters one and two, is this underlying subplot, church, of politics, right?

Nobody was more politically and religiously connected than Herod.

And Matthew has chosen to talk about Herod because the number one substitute, the great substitute of the kingdom of God is always religion.

It's always politics.

We always think our Savior is going to be in Washington, D.C.

Our Savior is going to be in Denver, Colorado.

I believe in voting.

Every one of you should vote.

It's your God-given right.

But our answer is way bigger and deeper than that.

God is about to move in our land with the kingdom of God.

Revolution.

Not a religious movement, not through Christianity, but through the kingdom of God.

Not through Christendom, but through the kingdom.

That work of the Spirit is through a citizenship.

A citizenship just like you and me.

I've talked about it a couple weeks before.

The word kavod, kavod, people say it different ways, for the glory of God.

The glory of God shall fill the face of the earth.

The glory of God wants to fill the Rocky Mountain region.

The glory of God in this region where the continental divide runs north and south and divides our country east and west.

And might we say right and left?

Some of you are from the left coast.

Some of you are from the right coast.

Even though the right coast is really left these days.

But God has given this nature to Adam in Genesis 1.

It was the nature of the kingdom.

And he gave him this nature of the kingdom, and he said, Adam, rule over the garden.

I give you dominion.

Dominion.

Dome.

Kingdom.

Dominion.

I give you a kingdom.

This kingdom is my heaven on earth.

We will have intimacy with each other.

We will have the presence of my son right here in this kingdom that I'm giving you.

And then he lost it.

He lost it.

So Christ is about to come.

In chapter 3 and 4, we're going to start to see Jesus is coming to reinaugurate the kingdom of God on earth, some call the second Adam, who's coming to raise up a citizenry of the glory of God.

The glory of God, the weight of God, the nature of God, the character of God is upon every one of you in this room.

And when you become a citizen of the kingdom through worship and prayer and time in the word and having intimacy with Christ, the weight of the glory of God, guess what?

It gets heavier on you.

Wouldn't it be cool that your shadow, when your shadow, the presence of God is so heavy on us that our shadow brings healing to people.

That the shadow of the Lord through your physical shadow creates hunger in people because they hung out with you.

Because the light of the glory of God is shining and it's creating a spiritual shadow.

Wouldn't that be exciting?

They said it of D.L.

Moody.

They said it of Charles Spurgeon.

And I could go through the list of men and women through the ages who walked in the presence of God at such a level that when they walked into a room, when they walked into a factory, when they walked into a church, the Spirit of God was there.

Everybody could feel a difference because the presence of God, the Kavod, the glory of God, was so heavy upon that person.

Men and women, there's nobody in this room that God can't do that through.

And he can do it through the youngest of you.

He did it through David.

David enters the valley of Elah with a God-saturated imagination, and he says, Who is that guy?

Who is that fat dude?

Who's that fat guy that's got all that armor on?

He's got to be hot in that.

I'll show him a thing or two.

Because he entered a Goliath-saturated valley with a God-saturated imagination.

And there's no reason why God can't use us that way.

What's interesting about the kingdom, and I'll conclude with this, is that you can't join it.

You can't join a kingdom.

You can join the Kiwanis Club, you can join the Rotary Club, you can join this church.

But you can't join the kingdom.

You have to be born into it.

You have to be born into it.

So turning your Bibles to John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

There's this guy, a leader among the Jews, who comes to Jesus late at night, and he wants to know how to get into the kingdom.

John chapter 3, verse 3.

John 3:3

Let's start at verse 2.

Now this man came to Jesus, name is Nicodemus, verse 1 says, a ruler of the Jews, and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher, come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered and said to him, Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again.

He could have said, You can't join it.

You can't join my team.

I don't have a jersey that you can wear.

I don't have a number on the back.

Rather, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

And Jesus answered, Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born out of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.

So is everyone who is born of the spirit.

So here this morning, have you been born of the spirit?

And the reason I say that is because there's no illegal immigrants in heaven.

You see, I was an illegal immigrant for 18 years.

Because I thought I was in the kingdom because I was Lutheran.

I was a Lutheran Christian, but I wasn't a citizen of the kingdom.

I'd been through baptism, I had been through catechism class, been confirmed, I had done all the things that a good Lutheran kid does.

I was an acolyte, I was a crucifer, I carried the cross.

I carried the cross in.

That's pretty big stuff, man.

I remember thinking, I'm strong enough to carry the cross in.

Pretty heavy cross.

But I was an illegal immigrant because I hadn't been born into the kingdom yet.

So have you been born into the kingdom?

Have you been born again?

And if you have any doubts about it, then probably you haven't.

Because one of the things we know in Ephesians is that when we're born into the kingdom, there's an assurance within our heart that we're born into the kingdom.

We just know that we are.

Some of you can remember exactly when you were born again, and some of you can't remember.

That's not the point.

The point is, do you have that assurance in your heart that you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven and that Jesus Christ lives in you.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

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