102. God's Unbreakable Plans - Matthew 2

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Good day, and welcome to stories of a faithful god for kids. Dave here. A big shout out to Kinsley, Hadley, and Royce, and their mom, Nicole. They live in Wyoming in The United States. They've been listening to the podcast on the way into town.

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Guys, it was great to hear from you. I'm so glad you're enjoying the show and enjoying learning about our great, great god. Everyone, don't forget to sign up for exclusive access to my new pod, Bible In Your Brain, where I'll help you memorize verses from the Bible. It's heaps of fun, and I really hope you'll join me in learning God's word. You can sign up in the shop section of faithfulgod.net, where you can also sign up to access every episode of stories of a faithful god for kids.

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Now on with the show. Have you ever made plans only to have them ruined? Like, you plan to watch some TV straight away, but someone says, you have to do the washing up first. Or you plan to have an awesome weekend playing running around outside, but it rains the entire time, and you're stuck inside helping your grandparents clip their toenails. Or you plan to fly over to a bridge and rescue a bus filled with children that's hanging over the edge and about to plummet into the sea.

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When you suddenly wake up and realize you're not a superhero with superpowers, You're just a regular hero with regular powers. Our plans change all the time. We don't always have the power to make our plans work, but god's plans always work. What he says will happen always happens, even when evil people try to stop him. And because God's plans are always good, then the fact that his plans always work is the best news in all the world.

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Get ready for our next episode of stories of a faithful god for kids. At the end of our last episode, Mary and Joseph were married, Jesus had just been born, and we discovered that Jesus had arrived to save his people from their sins. Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem, the same town where king David had been born. Jesus was born when there was a king over the land of Judea named king Herod. Now about nine kilometers or five and a half miles north of Bethlehem, there's the great city of Jerusalem.

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One day, a few men, we don't know how many, turn up in Jerusalem. These men are not from Jerusalem or the land of Judea. They're not Jewish people from Abraham's family. They are from a completely different country somewhere in the East. They have a special title, magi.

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Magi were people whose job it was to advise their king. Unfortunately, one of the ways they did that was by looking at the stars and trying to guess what the stars were telling them about the future. I say unfortunately because stars don't have that power. God tells us not to try and read them. But God really wanted to get these guys here, so he very kindly used a star to do it.

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He put a special star in the sky that would make them want to come to the land of Judea. So they turn up in Jerusalem, and they ask a question that no one there is expecting, a question that seems quite shocking, a question that causes a lot of trouble. In Matthew chapter two verse two, they ask, where is the baby who was born to be king of the Jews? We saw his star in the East. We came to worship him.

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The reason it's such a shocking question is because king Herod's thinking, what are you talking about? I'm the king of the Jews, and I haven't had any babies recently. If there's a new baby, who's being called the king of the Jews? That means someone's trying to kick me off the throne. He's really worried.

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And everyone in Jerusalem is really worried. They might be thinking, oh, no. Someone's gonna start a war to make this new baby the king. Or they might be thinking, oh, no. Herod's gonna start killing people.

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That's the sort of guy Herod is. In fact, he's already killed some of his own children because he thought they were trying to get rid of him as king. But the magi, they don't know any of this. They're just like, hello. Yoo hoo.

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We're here. Where's the baby born king of the Jews? King Herod knows that in the Old Testament, the first part of the Bible, God had said he was going to send a very special king, a forever king, a king who would be known as the Christ. So he calls a meeting of all the top priests and religious men, and he asks them where God said the Christ would be born. They answer him in verse five.

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They say, in the town of Bethlehem in Judea. The prophet wrote about this in the scriptures. But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, you are important among the rulers of Judah. A ruler will come from you. He will be like a shepherd for my people, the Israelites.

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They're reading out a section from the prophet Micah in the Old Testament. You see, God hadn't left people guessing where the Christ would come from. He told them. And now it's happening exactly like he said it would. God's plans always work.

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Herod calls a secret meeting with the magi, and he finds out exactly when they first saw the special star. They don't see any problem in telling him, but we're gonna find out later he's gonna use that information for something really evil. He doesn't tell them that. Instead, he tries to sound really kind. He tells them to go to Bethlehem, and he says in verse eight, go and look carefully to find the child.

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When you find him, come and tell me. Then I can go and worship him too. Just a warning. Don't believe everything that Herod says. Anyway, the magi leave the king, and then god does something amazing for them.

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He shows them the same star they'd seen when they'd been back home. Amazingly, though, he now gets the star to do something different and new. Now God actually gets the star to point exactly to where Jesus is. It actually guides them on their way and stops right over the place they need to go. They are so excited.

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They're filled with joy. They go into the house and they see Jesus with his mom, Mary. Now, Bethlehem isn't a very important town. Joseph and Mary aren't very important people. All the important people live over in Jerusalem.

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Normally, if important government visitors come from other countries, they go to Jerusalem. But now, in this small town, in the small house with the small family, these important men come in and treat Jesus like the king he really is. They bow down like you would in front of a very important king. They give him presents that would normally be given to a king, gold and two other things called frankincense and myrrh. Frankincense and myrrh are both made from the sap of certain trees, and they're used to make very expensive perfumes and nice smells.

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All these presents are super expensive. They're not the sort of things people would usually have in Bethlehem, but they're exactly the sort of thing a king would be given. And the magi are right to give them to Jesus because Jesus is the true king. Later on, while they're asleep, god warns the magi not to go back to nasty Herod, so they go back to their own country a different way. Do you know why God had brought them there to Bethlehem?

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He wanted to teach something really important. He wanted to teach us that Jesus didn't just come for one group of people. He didn't just come to help Abraham's family, the Jews. He came to help people from the whole world. These magi were the first people from the wider world to meet him.

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But now, God has made followers of Jesus everywhere, in China and India and Russia and Iran and Pakistan, and England and Australia and Canada and America and South Africa and Uganda and Nigeria and Eswatini and New Zealand and Singapore and everywhere. God's plans always work. But not everyone is excited about Jesus and God's plans. After the magi have left, Joseph is asleep when he's suddenly given an urgent message by an angel in a dream, a message he has to respond to straight away. In verse 13, the angel tells him, get up.

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Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Herod will start looking for the child to kill him. Stay in Egypt until I tell you to return. Joseph doesn't mess around. He gets up, wakes Jesus and Mary, and they leave for Egypt that very night.

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They're gonna stay in Egypt until Herod dies. That may seem like everything's gone wrong, but, actually, it's all a part of God's plan. Matthew tells us in verse 15, this was to make clear the full meaning of what the Lord had said through the prophet. The Lord said, I called my son out of Egypt. God had said that through the prophet Hosea.

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Originally, it had been talking about how God saved the nation of Israel out of Egypt, But God had done that to get people ready for Jesus, who would also come out of Egypt. Everything's happening just like God said it would. Meanwhile, back up in Jerusalem, King Herod is furious. He's really angry. He's just realized that the magi have tricked him, and so he does something horrible.

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Do you remember how he'd asked the magi when they'd first seen the star? He was trying to get an idea of when Jesus was born. Apparently, they'd seen it some time in the last two years. Offered Christmas cards show the magi visiting while Jesus is just a newborn baby, but there's a good chance he was walking by the time they saw him. Herod thinks he can fix this problem of a new king really easily.

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He gives an order to his soldiers, a really terrible order. He tells them to kill every boy who's younger than two years old in and around Bethlehem. Can you imagine how terrible that must have been? Can you imagine how much crying there was around there? The evil king Herod thinks he can stop god's plans by doing this horrible, horrible thing.

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But even this was something god had said would happen. It's not that he made Herod do the horrible thing, but he wasn't surprised by it. Matthew reminds us in verse 17 that god had told the prophet Jeremiah about it. Jeremiah had said, a sound was heard in Ramah. It was painful crying and much sadness.

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Rachel cries for her children, and she cannot be comforted because her children are dead. As terrible as it is, when you go back and read Jeremiah, you discover that when this terrible thing happens, it means something really good is about to happen. As horrible as what Herod's done is, it's a sign to show that god's about to save his people. Even though Herod's trying to stop God's plans, God's plans are still going full steam ahead. Within a couple of years, Herod himself dies.

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An angel comes and tells Joseph in verse 20, get up. Take the child and his mother and go to Israel. The people who were trying to kill the child are now dead. By this time, the land of Israel is divided up into Judea in the South, where Jerusalem and Bethlehem are, and Galilee in the North. When Joseph and the family get back to the land, they discover that Herod's son is now in charge of Judea.

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And Joseph's like, I don't wanna have anything to do with Herod's family. They're nuts. So instead of going back to Bethlehem, they head up north to Galilee to the town of Nazareth. Again, you might think, oh, no. Everything's gone wrong.

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Jesus is meant to be in Bethlehem. But no. He was just meant to be born in Bethlehem. Even this is a part of God's plan. In verse 23, Matthew says, he went to a town called Nazareth and lived there.

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And so what God had said through the prophets came true. He will be called a Nazarene. God made lots and lots of promises about Jesus in the Old Testament. He told us his plans, good plans, wonderful plans. Evil people tried to stop those plans.

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But no matter what they tried, no matter how much evil they did, nothing can stop God. Nothing can stop his plans. Nothing can stop him saving his people from their sin. If you ever feel like God's plans are not working, remember Jesus. Remember that nothing will stop God from doing every single part of his good, perfect plans.

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Back in Jesus' day, as Jesus is growing up, God's about to send someone to get everyone ready for Jesus. This is gonna be a man wearing very strange clothes and eating very strange food. But that's a story for next time. Goliath being taken down by God. Jonah being grumpy because God is so kind.

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Jesus showing us exactly who God is. These are some of the great stories you can hear in the rest of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids. To get access to every episode and to get other great benefits, like the memory verse podcast, bible in your brain, sign up for a club membership. Just go to the shop section of faithfulgod.net. That's faithfulgod.net.