40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2018 Christmas Special

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

It's almost Christmas! And that means 40 Minutes in the Old Testament and 30 Minutes in the New Testament are coming together again. Daniel, Chad, and Erick take a look at the 2nd chapter of Matthew and the passages he cites from Micah and Hosea. Bethlehem is blessed and God will call His Son out of Egypt. How are we to understand these things and why should they increase our joy? Have a listen and a merry Christmas! 1517 Podcast Network Here We Still Stand Conference Support The Podcast O Come Emmanuel Available at Communion Arts

Welcome to the special Christmas episode of 30 Minutes in the New Testament, 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, the two exegetical podcasts that you know, that you love, coming together this christmas as we do every christmas to talk about some conversions we're going to talk about something that is in the old testament that appears in the new testament chad eric what's going on hey good morning well good morning to you dan this is an unusual thing we're actually recording in the morning for us dan recording in the morning but it actually feels i feel fresh right now well here the thing about it is is i'm really the one that's that's being this is that's this is difficult for because chad has been up for hours chad's written like three books so far

like this morning so he's been up for a long long time eric's his time zone is just later so he's got he's got that advantage and then there's just me uh just poor damn me dude uh i was up i was up you know super late of course like watching a movie that i should you know that it's dumb i shouldn't have been doing that but hey it is what it is guys as the year is coming to a close there's a couple of things that the audience needs to know one hey if you think about giving the 1517 in christ old fast that's a good time to do it get in that getting that end of the year it's tax deductible so you could you go over to 1517 or christ old fast either one it goes to the same place because it's one big family you can go and do that if you are looking for you know you're

just like man i gotta i gotta make a year-end donation somewhere awesome this would be a good place to do it the second thing that you need to do is if you haven't got your here we still stand ticket yet that's got to happen because that price goes up january 1 and there's not very many tickets left so there's double motivation not a lot of tickets and you don't want to pay more than you should so january 1 it goes up so just go ahead you know what no it's a good stocking stuffer a receipt from here we still stand stick it in there take your loved ones Tell them that you not only care about them and their body, but you care about their soul.

That's what you should probably do. So that would be a good thing to do. It's going to be a hard sell this morning. Yeah. Maybe you could take that Here We Still Stand receipt and nail it to your front door. It would feel real like you were taking a stand. It would feel real Luther-ish.

It would be great. All right, Chad, what are we going to be talking about as we prep up for Christmas? this well we're going to use matthew 2 as uh it's kind of the jumping off point there's there's a lot that is compressed into the second chapter of matthew but there's a couple of a couple of references back explicit references back to old testament prophets micah and hosea and we're going to use those as uh as a frame of reference for talking about how matthew uses the old testament in particular the prophecies of the Old Testament, to describe not only how Christ came to fulfill

these prophecies, but also how he came to fulfill history itself. So we're going to be playing around with Matthew 2, and then Micah 5, and then one brief verse from Hosea chapter 11. So it's going to be an interesting exploration of kind of this back and forth relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Should be fun. Let's start with Matthew 2. So we'll start with the New Testament, and we'll kind of use that as a way to work our way back to Micah. That's where we're going to be starting in the Old Testament. So Matthew chapter 2 starts out with the appearance of the Magi. So this is after Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Herod is the king, And these, the Magi, the wise men show up and they ask, where is he who's been born king of the Jews?

For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. This causes quite a stir. Herod is upset and it says all Jerusalem with him. And so Herod wants to know basically where the birthplace of this Messiah is supposed to be. So he gets together all the theological PhDs. He gets together the chief priests and the scribes, the Bible scholars, and he inquires of them where the Christ was to be born. And here's what they say. This is Matthew 2, verses 5 and following.

They say, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it's been written by the prophet. And here begins the quote from Micah. And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah. for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel so we'll stop there with with Matthew and let's jump back to to Micah we're going to be looking at Micah chapter 5 and we're going to see kind of the the creative and unique way that that Matthew is using this this quote from micah so let me say as a way of preface uh not just to the discussion of micah but the discussion of hosea and actually more generally to a lot of the old testament prophecies

um i think that we that we have a tendency to treat messianic prophecies in particular prophecies of the messiah as uh as sort of like we might treat uh the the prophecies the so-called prophecies of nostradamus i think we kind of had this idea that the prophets were would kind of seclude themselves and god would come to them and he would put these words in their mind about something that was going to happen centuries later and they would they would write these down these prophecies down just waiting for someone centuries later to come along and to pluck those prophecies out of their writings and to apply them specifically to the Messiah. And I think that's a completely wrongheaded way to view these prophecies. So let me explain what I think is the

right way. First of all, you have to understand that by the time you get to what are called the minor prophets, like Micah and Hosea and a lot of the other, the 12 minor prophets, by the time you get there you've got centuries of the history of israel you have centuries of other prophets and historical writings not to mention the torah itself so the first thing you got to realize is that the prophets themselves are building upon earlier scriptures so you can kind of picture the bible itself as as layer upon layer upon layer you can you can picture the torah the pentateuch as as the foundation and then everything from joshua after that is in one way or another building upon the scriptures that already exist so that in joshua and in judges and in samuel and

kings and in psalms and in all the prophets what you have is inspired biblical amplification and explanation so the the psalms for instance yes they're they're hymns they're they're inspired poetry but they're also building upon the scriptures that have already been written so to that extent they themselves are preaching or or exposition or or interpretation but the reason i'm emphasizing this is because when you get to micah or when you get to hosea you've got all this scripture behind them that they themselves are building upon and preaching on so when you when you come to a prophecy for instance in micah about the birthplace of the messiah well when you come to this verse in hosea 11 about god calling his son out of egypt

you can't simply just pluck that out of its context and not see where it stands within the rest of the the biblicalness and within the rest of biblical history because if you do that you're going to strip it of all of its uh of all of its history of all of its deeper meaning of all of its way that it is entangled in everything from from genesis onward so we'll just we'll just kind of use that as a way to talk about what's happening here in in micah so in uh in micah chapter four leading up to the prophecy that we're looking at you've got god talking to israel through the prophet micah about how the enemies have surrounded the city how they are wanting to to thrash israel and you have god promising israel through micah that the opposite is going to take place that

instead of getting thrashed that zion or israel is going to thresh the enemies are going to pulverize the peoples so there's going to be a defeat of their enemies and there's going to be a conquering that's given through god so that that is chapter four that's leading up here to chapter five the beginning of chapter five god says that they that the israelites are to to gather their troops and to get ready to fight because the enemy has struck the the ruler or the judge of israel on the cheek now that's verse one of chapter five immediately following that is where we have the words matthew quotes so this is from micah chapter five verse two it says but as for you bethlehem afritha too little to be among the clans of judah

from you one will go forth for me to be ruler of in israel his goings forth are from long ago from the days of eternity. Now, you can't understand Bethlehem in this prophecy of Micah without understanding the history of Bethlehem itself and how it's connected to the history of Israel and to, especially to the rulers of Israel. Because of course, David was born in Bethlehem. David being the king of kings in the Old Testament, the king that is the ideal ruler of the nation. So from this town comes forth David, and David himself is the chosen one, the youngest of the brothers, who himself was insignificant and small like Bethlehem itself. And he's the one that God chooses to be the ruler of Israel. so Micah is drawing from David's past he's drawing from Bethlehem's past in order to talk about

what is going to happen in the future so in in a way you could say in a way you could say that Micah in reading past history and reading about David and reading about Bethlehem is in his own prophecy is is pulling the the eschatology that's embedded in israel's history to talk about what is going to happen in the days of the messiah so he's taking the the the foreshadowing of the end times it's already embedded within the story of david and bethlehem And he's using that to talk about what's going to happen at the true end times that's going to be ushered in when the Messiah is born in Bethlehem. I think that maybe someone might be tempted to think that maybe someone like Matthew is just like plucking prophecy out and then applying it like, oh, well, here's a passage about Bethlehem. So, you know, obvious. And then Jesus is born in Bethlehem. So there you go. He fulfilled it.

But what is interesting is that he's not – it's not Matthew that says this about the birth of Christ. It is these other sort of like you were saying, these other theologians when he talks about – when Herod asks, hey, tell me where this is going to happen, that they actually understood this to mean this. So this was not just like some line that just Matthew happens to connect. So some people say, oh, it's easy for Christ to fulfill prophecy because he knows what prophecies need to be fulfilled, and then you can go do those things, right? So they become like sort of self-fulfilling. You can make it a point to make sure you do all the things. It's tough to make it a point to be born in a certain place. It's a hard one.

And what you have is understanding, it seems, within the theological academia of the day that, and they might not know, maybe they don't know all the details, but there is a connection to the promises of a Messiah, of a Christ, of an anointed one that is connected with, they have connected this to Bethlehem. Yeah, there's a couple things that strike me about the Micah passage in contrast to the Matthew passage right up front here. The contrast between verse 1 and verse 2 are so stark because really there's a reference to two kinds of kings in these two verses. And the one, the ruler of Israel in verse 1, is being embarrassed and shamed by the Assyrian invasion right now. He looks pathetic, can't stand up for himself. And so what I mean, what a humiliating picture is they're gathering to fight back. Their king is being struck on the cheek, you know, and can't fight back himself. Well, who do they contrast with then?

Well, they contrast with this messianic king who is meant to remind the people of David, the great warrior king who can stand up for the people and represent the people. And as Matthew will tell it, be the shepherd of the people that protects against the wolves on the outside. And then just one other quick note that I find interesting, that I think at least I find it a little bit comforting, is one who often doesn't quote Scripture completely accurately. Matthew, in his passage, doesn't quote this passage the way the Septuagint renders it, nor does he do it the way the Hebrew renders it. He's sort of, I mean, but he's got the right idea.

He doesn't say anything that takes away from the essential meaning of the passage. But he doesn't translate it verbatim. And it's just to say that, you know, sometimes we can be a little picky, you know, about proper address, reference, et cetera, having it exactly right. And Matthew's like, no, no, you get the gist. This is what the passage of Micah says. Yeah, Matthew is actually, his whole gospel, he's pretty, he's a paraphrasing quoter the whole time. This isn't the last time that he'll throw something out there that you're like, whoa, okay, I guess you could say it that way,

close enough, I guess, which is interesting about him. But also, Eric, to your point, I love the fact that the Micah passage does seem to be like, you have like, oh, here's two kings, but in reality, because what you don't want is a king who's weak and getting struck on the cheek and this sort of thing. You want the king who's going to destroy the enemy, But the reality is that you have the same guy who destroys his enemy while being struck on the cheek,

even being by struck on the cheek, right? So the greater David is the David who will look like he is maligned, defeated, trampled upon. But in reality, this is the defeat of all of God's enemies. It's a difficult thing for anyone, especially at that time, to wrap their head around. oh well you you'll win by losing uh you'll you'll you'll win by dying that's how that's how you win and that's and that doesn't make any sense whatsoever yeah i think it's one of the reasons that the messiah was so misunderstood is because when the jews were looking at messianic passages in the old testament they didn't always read those in concert i mean you got to read micah 5

in conjunction with isaiah 53 or psalm 22 to get the full picture full picture of the messiah so there's nothing in these verses from Micah to indicate that he's going to win by losing and be humiliated but there is in Isaiah 53 so you have to put these together into kind of a mosaic of all

of the Old Testament verses about the Messiah really to understand fully what he's going to be about what his work will actually entail. And this was not something that the Jewish theologians that they did seem to understand was the sort of they didn't they didn't have this sort of suffering messiah yeah they didn't have

that that was not something they had put together no i mean that was a there were there were a lot of theories about what the messiah was going to be like uh in the in the first century mind i mean everything from oh at kumran among the uh uh the jewish uh separatists there they they had a everything from kind of a a two-fold messiah a priest the messiah and a and a davidic messiah a kingly messiah uh and there were others who uh had you know various versions of what they thought the messiah was going to be but none of it really matched what the messiah was like when actually we actually showed up which uh which which is not surprising because you know until you have the full revelation of who god is in christ then of course you're going to have a lot

of a lot of confusion and you know i suspect it's really like that with us too we have we know we think we know exactly what's going to happen at the end of time at the very end of time but there's probably a lot of things that we're confused about because it hasn't happened yet right so i think the the first coming of the messiah there was a lot of confusion the second coming of the messiah i'm sure we'd we we have a lot of things that we have yet yet to learn too because it's still something that's that's going to happen well and and the fact is that it just i mean read the bible it just doesn't make sense as far as um the way things work out and the way that God does things are not the way that you would think that any of these things

would be done. I mean, it may be easy for us post-Christ to be like, how can you not see that this is how it was going to be? But that's also us forgetting how absurd the idea of, oh, well, what we'll do is you'll be born poor and you'll wander around homeless and then you'll be crucified and that's how we'll save the world i mean that's ridiculous it is and then until you and then you after that happens of course the the church goes back and looks at the old testament and goes oh it's all over the place this you know god is the god of the great reversal and you know of the one who get you know uplifts the the second born instead of the first born and fills the barren woman with the child and but it's not the natural way that we read it it's not a

natural way that we come to anything because we're looking we're very much designed from it seems from our birth to look for power narratives and for narratives that affirm glory rather than a cross and so yeah uh where i can guarantee you i am wrong about some things about the second coming i know this yeah there is no doubt well you know to to the point you just made that's that's why we go we travel back and forward we go forward and reverse throughout the scriptures right so the old testament illumines the new and the new testament illumines the old uh there's it's the way i like to view a lot of these old testament passages or they're like they're like a seed that uh becomes a tree in the new testament now it's all there in the seed

but when you're looking at a seed you don't see a tree but once you see the tree and you go back and look at the seed you say oh okay all right this is this is just waiting for its uh for its full blossoming for its full growth and so we yeah we we we go back and forth between these two because that's i mean that that's that's one of the beauties of the bible is if you believe in its divine authorship well the author is able to to put into to put into his work uh a lot of things that might not be readily visible to to a typical reader but they're there waiting to be waiting to be discovered so god um i don't say he hides things in the old testament but they're not they're not obvious until they're fulfilled and then once they're fulfilled you go back and you're

like oh why couldn't i why couldn't i see that well because you really couldn't see it until the full revelation came came in christ and i just want to say one thing about uh uh what what you mentioned earlier eric about matthew's matthew's quotation of scripture that this very rabbinic of him because the rabbis were doing that all the time i mean if you're thinking of it this way if if your mind is just suffused with with scripture i mean if it's your mind is just full of the the prophecies and the psalms and the torah then a lot of times when you're when you're quoting scripture you're just going to kind of put things together that maybe in the original context weren't together and that's what that's what matthew does i mean he's got

He quotes Micah, but he's also quoting a second sample, a little bit from Genesis 49. So he does a lot of this biblical compression. So he'll pull a little bit from this passage and that passage and another passage. And he might even, I mean, he even altered a few words in Micah 5, as if to say, as if to stress the irony of what's going on with Christ being born in this this little bitty little bitty town of bethlehem so that's what that is where he's very different uh from from us today at least when we're writing we usually okay we need to exactly you know we did not only copy and paste the the verse exactly but we have to also indicate which

version we're using yes matthew's just like pulling it from here and there and you know moving a few words around because his purpose is not to quote verbatim his purpose is to give the the real thrust of of the meaning and so that's that's what he does when he when he quotes because it's it was a rabbinic practice it would not that's one of the it would not have been a problem for a reader to see like this would not have posed a challenge to them you know like oh see he you know didn't quote it exactly verbatim because this was so normal yeah in fact that's one of the ways that the rabbis would it's like when you know the bible as well as they knew it then each of these little phrases you might pull from here or there that automatically sends your

mind to the broader context and so that's one of the ways rather than citing chapter and verse which of course they didn't have at that time just knowing that phrase belonged to genesis 49 or that phrase belonged to Micah 5 or that phrase belonged to 2 Samuel 5, the biblical mind, the mind that knows the scriptures so well is sent into those various contexts. So that's one way that the rabbis would allude

to scriptures all over the place by pulling them together that way. Yeah, that's a huge advantage. You haven't lived, so all of us have written books and you haven't really lived until you've spent you know three hours trying to cite one quote correctly and you're trying to figure out like where did that person say that i know they did like where would they say it when

was it published who published it what page was it on that is the worst oh if you especially if you if you're quoting something from like one of luther's obscure works i mean he's got a few works man he wrote a few words it's yeah it can have you have you experienced this chat have you experience that yeah you you do every google search you can think of you're like emailing your friends you're pouring through all the books in your library and you know it's there somewhere and you cannot find it there's still a luther quote i have never been able to find even though i'm 99 sure it's luther but yeah it's just it's just kind of stuck out there you know why can't we make it simple just like the author of hebrews he's quoting scripture and he's like

and somewhere else it says this yeah he didn't even cite the book much less any kind of chapter verse or author he's like yeah it's somewhere else somewhere in the bible it says this i love in uh what in the new testament to say and in another place it says and i and the people will be like oh he just knows that i'm like he doesn't look at him just rattling stuff off i'm like him saying in another place means that he's that's what he's writing he's like i know it's in there somewhere yeah yeah try try and make that work with the publisher these days so like we need a citation on this all right so uh anyway uh back to Micah and we'll we'll move on pretty quick from Micah to Hosea but uh I you it is helpful speaking of broader context to know that Micah chapter 5

verse two the the messianic part doesn't end with verse two because it goes on to verse three to say this therefore he that is god will give them up that is he will let israel wander in exile until the time when she who is in labor has born a child then the remainder of his brethren will return to the sons of israel so right there i mean so mike is not only prophesying the uh the birthplace of the messiah he's also talking about the uh the virgin mary and her conception and and uh and birthing of the messiah and then he goes on verse four and he that is this child will arise and shepherd his flock in the strength of the lord in the majesty of the name of the lord is god and they will remain they will be at rest because at that time he will be great

to the ends of the earth and this one will be our peace now if you take those that's five verses if you take those five verses and you you really spend some time breaking them apart and reflecting upon what is embedded in those verses you've got you've got everything from the birthplace of the messiah to his divine nature because it says this one who is going to be born his goings forth are from long ago from the days of eternity and then you've got the virgin birth in verse three and you've got a saving work in verse four and at the end of verse four you have expand his expansion of the kingdom to the ends of the earth and the indication that this one himself is our peace so it's like you've got the whole second article of the creed in one way or another

reflected in these five verses from uh from an eighth century old testament prophet it's amazing that's pretty good and i i just yeah i love how succinct it is and how much is there packed into just a few verses one of my favorite passages in the old testament let's move on to uh uh our next our next verse before we uh run out of too much time so let me go back let me take us back to matthew to the jewish scholars of the day they quote this verse and so herod calls for the magi finds out when the star appeared he sends him to bethlehem i'm sure everyone knows knows this story tells him to look for the child and then of course says to come back and report to him so that he can come and quote worship the child as well uh so the wise men go to bethlehem they find they find the

the christ child they bring their gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh and then god warns them in a dream not to go back to herod but to return to to their own country and then in verse 13 we have the next uh next chapter in this uh in this this adventure if you will it says that the angel after them after the wise men left the angel of the lord appears to joseph and he says arise and take the child and his mother and flee to egypt and remain there until i tell you for herod is going to search for the child to destroy him. So Joseph and Mary and Jesus, they make the journey by night to the land of Egypt. And then there's this verse, this is verse 15 of Matthew 2. And they were there until the death of Herod, and what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet

might be fulfilled, saying, out of Egypt did I call my son. Now, I don't know about you guys, But this has to be the strangest prophecy of the Messiah, or at least one of the top three strangest prophecies of the Messiah that are cited in the New Testament. It's strange because when you go back to Hosea, so Matthew is quoting Hosea chapter 11, verse 1, when he says, out of Egypt I called my son. so go back to Hosea chapter 11 and let's let's look at the context of exactly what is happening in in Hosea Hosea is uh is almost a contemporary of Micah they're both 8th century 8th century prophets and uh Hosea of course the the husband of Gomer if you remember that whole story but this is the way chapter 11 begins when Israel was a youth I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son but the more they called them the more they went from them they kept sacrificing to the

bales and burning incense to idols so what hosea is what hosea is talking about is israel when they were a nation when they were god's firstborn son and he called them out of he loved them and he called them out of egypt he called his son israel out of egypt but he says that that the more that i called them the more that they went away from me because they kept running to the bales and sacrificing to to the idols god says i did everything that i could for them and yet they kept turning away from me they kept fleeing from the true god to sacrifice to to the false God so if you if you were just if you didn't know about Matthew and you were just reading through Hosea chapter 11 there's absolutely no way that you would read verse 1 of Hosea is 11 as a prophecy

of the Messiah and said you would read that as as a as a preaching as a historical reflection upon what happened in god's dealings with israel i agree absolutely yes if there's there doesn't seem to be anything from the reading of hosea that would suggest this is a messianic prophecy whatsoever now which is which is why i think in these in these cases and to some extent and in a few other cases as well rather than rather than understanding hosea 11-1 as what we usually call a messianic prophecy i think what matthew is doing is this he's pulling out that phrase from hosea chapter 11 out of egypt i called my son and of course matthew is completely aware of the context of hosea it's not like he uh was just you know thumbing through the old testament and said

oh i like that phrase i'm going to use that in reference to the messiah what he's what he's doing is he's sending us back to the history of israel and he's using this verse from hosea which is depicting the hard-heartedness and the waywardness and the idolatry of israel when god called them out of egypt as a way to alert us to the fact that when the messiah comes when israel personified comes when that when the true son of god comes that he is going to retrace the footsteps of israel and he's going to he's going to follow actually literally their same path he himself is going to go down into egypt but what's going to happen to him is the complete opposite of what happened to israel because when god called israel out of egypt when he called that that particular

son that israelite son out of egypt they fled from him they they uh they built the golden calf they sacrificed to the bales they did everything that they could to pollute themselves through idolatry now what the messiah what the what the true israel what the true son of god is going to do is his yes he's going to go down to egypt too and god's going to call him out of egypt But what he's going to do in his actions is to rectify and to redeem the disobedience of Israel. So he's going to, in the language of one of my favorite church fathers, Irenaeus, Christ is going to recapitulate the life of Israel. That is, he's not only going to redo it, but he's going to redeem it. he's going to follow their same pathways but when he follows that pathway where they are disobedient

he's going to be obedient where they're unfaithful he will be faithful where they worship idols he's going to be faithful in worshiping his father and in that way he as israel reduced to one is going to redeem israel from all the ways that they went astray i love that phrase israel reduced to one i is that horace hummel by the way that that coined that phrase but it not that it really matters either way but it just i i remember hearing this long ago and it changed the whole the whole scriptures for me but you know if you do look just following that same path in matthew you look at the next time that we see jesus i mean we hear about him returning to nazareth but as far as the next part of matthew's narrative is literally him going through his baptism which the nation of

Israel goes through the baptism of the Red Sea. That's the way the Apostle Paul refers to the Red Sea, actually, is as a baptism in 2 Corinthians. And then he is tempted in the wilderness, in which he does the very opposite of what Israel did. He actually beats back the devil's temptations to worship, quote-unquote, the Baals or false gods in place of the true God. And he does everything right. He fulfills everything the way that Israel should have or was meant to, but never did. And so it's just, again, this is so, so, so important emphasis in, I think, this time of year in the incarnation that Jesus doesn't just die for the sins of the world, but he actively lives for sinners in substitution. Like all of his life

is being lived out for you. Every breath he's taking is ultimately just as much in substitution for you as his death is chad we had jared wilson on the podcast uh last week and uh he called he had this great phrase where he called uh as we were looking back to the genealogy of christ and all the scumbags and that thing and how they're all extolled as uh you know as as like oh here's a great lineage uh what and he called this uh the revisionist history of the gospel and and this is much of what jesus is doing here like out of israel i called my son is what he's doing is he's writing revisionist history he's redoing all of it yeah that's a that's a i'm gonna steal that phrase that's a great way to i told him the same thing yeah you kind of have two things going on

with the birth of messiah i mean you you have you have in the incarnation the word becoming flesh of course he is the representative human so it doesn't matter if you're a jew or a gentile we all share the same humanity and that humanity is shared by god himself not only in the lifetime of jesus but but now so we can we can say that god is a man because the son of god is fully human now just as he was from his incarnation forward so he is the representative human that's one side of the of christmas but the other side of it is deeply rooted in the old testament in in in that christ is also the representative israelite so he is the he is the jew who is perfect who is righteous who is unlike even the greatest of the saints in the old testament because he never rebels against

god he never he never gets angry like moses and strikes a rock uh he is the the pious faithful wholeheartedly devoted to Yahweh Israelite and in in that way he fulfills their history by as you say revising it or as I said earlier by recapitulating it by by doing it over and doing it right this time so what he does for all humanity in taking on our human nature he also does for Israel in particular by being that perfect Israelite who in his own personal history Redoes Israel's history So it's like he's the whole He's all of humanity reduced to one

He's also all of Israel reduced to one And so it's a story That's very specifically Jewish And it's also a story that's Specifically human In its ramifications You've got those two stories both going on at Christmas He is the son of David

And he is Israel reduced to one But he's also the second Adam Which makes him all of humanity Boiled down to this one guy And this is all done for Israel, but it's all done for you and me and everyone else. And that is the incredible truth of the Incarnation, is that God has become one of us and has assumed the humanity of all of us to himself. And that is why we are told to celebrate.

Yeah, the gift of the Incarnation is the gift we celebrate this time of year. I mean, when it comes to God, we know that he is one who can sympathize with our weaknesses because he actually is one of us. He is fully human, just as he is fully divine. It's the miracle of Christmas that every year when it rolls around just seems, in my own mind, to become even more miraculous when I consider that God shares our humanity. And because of that, we share an intimacy with him that even the angels themselves cannot experience. Amen. And that's it, guys. That is time for us. I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and you get a chance to listen to this. If you are a listener to 30 Minutes in the New Testament, which this will appear on our feed,

and you haven't checked out 40 Minutes in the Old Testament with Chad and me, well, you should probably do that. And also, if you're a listener to 40 Minutes and you haven't listened to 30 Minutes in the New Testament with me and Eric, well, then you should probably do that. This is the crossover cast. We do this this time of year, and at Here We Still Stand. So we give you two opportunities a year to experience both. Chad, Eric, have a Merry Christmas, guys. Yeah, Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. Rejoice, rejoice Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel

Oh, come what may, spring from on high And cheer us by your drawl, oh night Disperse the gloomy clouds of night And death's dark shadows put to flight Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

O come, desire of nations, bind In one the hearts of all mankind O bid our sad division cease And be yourself our King of peace Rejoice! Rejoice! In the new world Shall come to thee, O Israel Has come to fill this place

Thanks for watching!