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The Bible Breakdown: Daily Bible Reading
Welcome to "The Bible Breakdown," where we break down God’s Word so we can know God better. I'm your host, Brandon Cannon, and I'm here to guide you through the pages of the Bible, one day at a time.
Each day, we'll read through a section of the Bible and explore key themes, motifs, and teachings. Whether you're new to the Bible or a seasoned veteran, I guarantee you'll find something insightful or inspiring. My hope is to encourage you to dive deeper and deeper.
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Remember, as we journey through the pages of the Bible together, we're not just reading a book, we're unlocking the secrets to eternal life. The more we dig, the more we find! Let's get started!
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The Bible Breakdown: Daily Bible Reading
Matthew 02: The King's Origin Story
The divine origin story of Jesus unfolds in Matthew 2, revealing how God orchestrated seemingly chaotic events to fulfill ancient prophecies and establish His Son as the true King. Like a masterful chess player, God moves each piece precisely where it needs to be, regardless of how puzzling it might appear to human observers.
The narrative introduces us to the Magi—wise men from the East whose knowledge comes from an unexpected source. These kingmakers from Babylon had studied Daniel's prophecies for centuries, watching the skies for the prophesied sign. When they finally witnessed the special star, they embarked on a journey that would terrify King Herod and set in motion a series of events that perfectly aligned with scriptural promises written hundreds of years earlier.
The chapter reveals fascinating historical connections most readers miss. The Magi found Jesus not in a manger but in a house, likely when he was between one and two years old. Their gifts—gold for kingship, frankincense for worship, and myrrh foreshadowing death—funded the family's escape to Egypt, fulfilling Hosea's prophecy, "Out of Egypt I called my son." Each seemingly random turn—from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth—accomplished precisely what prophets had foretold.
Pastor Brandon unpacks the powerful spiritual principle embedded in this narrative: God's sovereignty operates regardless of our understanding. The divine plan rarely follows the straight lines we expect, yet accomplishes exactly what God intends. When life's journey takes unexpected turns, remember Jesus' origin story—what appears chaotic to limited human perspective is actually the perfect unfolding of God's masterful design. Can you trust Him even when the path forward seems unclear? The God worthy of our worship will always be bigger than our understanding.
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today, matthew, chapter 2. And today's title is the King's Origin Story. The King's Origin Story.
Speaker 1:I don't know about you, but I love superhero movies. I love the Avengers, dc, I love all the things, and one of my favorite kind of movies is the Origin Story and a lot of them. They will have this movie where it talks about how the superhero came to be, and that is what we're going to see a little bit of in today's chapter is. We've already seen how Jesus is the rightful king, and now Matthew is going to share with us how this king came into the world, and I can't wait to share it with you. There's a lot of connections, and even a connection to Daniel of the Old Testament, and so, if you have your Bibles, want to open up with me to Matthew, chapter 2. While you're doing that, if you're new around here, take just a moment to like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast it really does help and make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook. Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job and, as always, the more we dig, the more we find.
Speaker 1:Well, if you were with us yesterday, we talked about the overall idea of the Gospel of Matthew is that Jesus is the King, king Jesus, and that's the goal of Matthew, because, as we were talking about the four Gospels, that three of them are similar and one of them is very different. Matthew, mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels and by synoptic, if I can say that right, what those mean is similar. They tell the narrative of Jesus' life. John was more focused on the message of Jesus' life, but then, within the three, luke was written primarily to the Gentile world. Mark was written really more about the acts of Jesus and it was, you know, kind of ghostwritten, you know, in a way by Peter. But Matthew was primarily written to the Jewish nation, and one of the many reasons why is because during the time it was written there was an increasing divide happening between the Jewish nation and the Gentile nation and a lot of the Jewish Christians even had been thrown out of the synagogues. And so it's possible Matthew was inspired of the Holy Spirit to write this narrative because he was no longer allowed to go into the synagogues and tell the narrative of Jesus, which is a lesson all of itself that sometimes bad things happen that create really good things. And so we have this inspired gospel because of this need to tell the narrative of Jesus and we also talked about how Matthew comes out swinging In chapter one he just lays it out there and literally it's like he's waving the papers in his hand and he says at the very least, jesus is the rightful king of of the earthly kingdom, and he says he was from Abraham, which is the seed of promise, and he's also from David, the, the royal line. And so, before we even get into talking about anything else, chapter one proves that at least he has a claim to the earthly throne. But then he spends chapter 2 through 28 talking about how he is so much more than an earthly Messiah he's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Well, now, here in chapter 2, he's going to give us the origin story of how Jesus came to be, and so I want to read this and we're going to stop along the way and just celebrate the goodness of God's word. So if you're ready, here we go.
Speaker 1:Matthew, chapter 2, verse 1, says this Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod. About that time, some wise men from the eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him. King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked when is the Messiah supposed to be born? In Bethlehem, in Judea. They said, for this is what the prophet wrote. And you, o Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, you are not least among the ruling cities of Judah, for a ruler will come from you, who will be a shepherd to my people, israel.
Speaker 1:When Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. Then he told them Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for this child, and when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too. After this interview, the wise men went their way and the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house that's important to remember and saw the child and his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. And they opened their treasure chest and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And when it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.
Speaker 1:So pause, a lot just happened there. Let's break it down. So you've got these wise men other translations would say the magi who appear out of nowhere from the east, and they know all of this about Jesus, about the coming Messiah, and it just terrifies Herod. And so who's Herod? Who's the wise man? All of this? Well, here's the thing During the time, during the time the Romans had conquered everybody I mean, they were in charge but then what they would do is they would set up puppet kings who had authority, as though they did everything Rome told them to do. And so King Herod is in place, but he's in place as kind of a puppet king underneath Roman authority, and he was a very brutal king. He killed a lot of people, killed a lot of his own family members. He was just a very, very brutal guy.
Speaker 1:And now, out of nowhere, here comes these Magi. Now, who are they? Well, the Magi were part of a group of people in Babylon that were called the Kingmakers. They were advisors to the king. Well, how did they know about the Messiah? They knew about him because of Daniel, like that, daniel, the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:So, to do a little history lesson, back during the time of Israel, they were in 70 years of captivity and they were sent to Babylon. And while they were there, a guy named Daniel was there. He didn't want to be there, but he grew where he was planted and God gave him the spiritual gift of being able to interpret dreams. Well, he continued to interpret dreams for the kings and all of this, and so he was eventually put over all the kingmakers, all of the people who had this quote, unquote supernatural power, and they would advise the king from the gods, all this kind of stuff. And Daniel continued to worship only Yahweh, but they couldn't deny he was connected to God. And so he was over all of these kingmakers. Well, as Daniel got older, he started receiving visions of his own and he wrote them down in what we now have as the book of Daniel.
Speaker 1:And so when the people left captivity, went back to Israel, a book of Daniel would have been left for the kingmakers, because they would have revered him as a very powerful leader and for the next 500 years they read the book of Daniel because Daniel, who had been right so many times, had prophesied that one day a king would be born from the book of Daniel says the ancient of days, and so they would have continued to read for 500 years the book of Daniel. And then, one day, because these would have been polyistic astrologers, they were looking up into the heavens and they saw a star that shined a little bit differently in the constellations and it fit the description of what Daniel had said. And so, since they trusted the words of Daniel, they would have gotten permission from their king, traveled along the Silk Road, the king's highway, all the way over to Jerusalem, and basically would have said I don't know if they had a copy of Daniel or not, but basically would have said hey, listen, we've been reading your guy Daniel. And he said the king's born, where is he? Can you imagine how just absolutely frantic that would have made the nation? And it did, as you can tell. And then they went and they found where they were at which, by the way, it says that they were in a house, which would have meant that this point that Jesus was not a newborn anymore, possibly between one and a half to two years old and they presented him with gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Speaker 1:Now, why did they do that? Well, gold number one was one of the most primary gifts you gave a king. You ever been going to buy something for somebody and you don't know, so you just give them a gift card, because everybody loves a gift card. Well, gold was kind of the same thing for a king. If you didn't know what to give a king, you gave him gold. So that was first for his kingship. Frankincense was used a lot in temple worship, so it was a way for them to show homage and worship to him. And the third one was myrrh, which had medicinal quality but was primarily used also to embalm people. So it would have been a way for them to say may your rule last beyond your life. And so it was very kingly gifts, which also, as a side note, many scholars believe that, at least the gold, was most likely used by Mary and Joseph to fund their flight to Egypt we're about to read about. So all of that is why that's so important. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1:Verse 13,. Let's pick it back up. After the wise men, the people from Daniel, were gone, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, flee to Egypt with the child, and Now pause again. Why would they have done that? Well, other than Jerusalem, the highest concentration of Jewish people at the time was in a town just outside of Egypt. So what he was doing is he was saying go to the other collection of Jewish people because there's safety there and he's not under the jurisdiction of Herod. So he wasn't sending him like in the middle of nowhere, he was sending him to a safe haven in another place.
Speaker 1:Verse 14,. That night, Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, and they stayed there until Herod's death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet I called my son out of Egypt. Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him and he sent soldiers to kill the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under. Based on the wise men's report of the first, or the star's first, appearance, herod's brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah. A cry was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her children refusing to be comforted, for they are dead. Now pause.
Speaker 1:Now I think it's worth saying that one baby dying is too many. Right, it's a tragedy, but for what it's worth. I know sometimes we don't have context and so we have things in our head and you may have this picture in your head of hundreds and hundreds of babies being slaughtered, and that would be terrible as well. But according to census at the time and mathematicians who do all the things, this was probably between 20 and 30 babies who died. Now, once again, any baby being slaughtered is a tragedy, but to get a proper context, it wouldn't have been hundreds, it would have been 20 to 30, which is still 20 to 30 too many. All right, let's finish up this chapter, verse 19,.
Speaker 1:When Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. Get up. The angel said take the child and his mother back to the land of Israel, because those who were trying to kill the child are dead. So Joseph got up and returned to the land of Israel with Jesus and his mother. But when he learned that the new ruler of Judah was Herod's son, archelios. He was afraid to go there and then, after being warned in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee. So the family went to live in a town called Nazareth, and this fulfilled what the prophets had said he will be called a Nazarene.
Speaker 1:Wow, what an interesting story that is full of so many different twists and turns that if you didn't know the rest of the story, you would think well, that just sounds like chaos. I mean, this is just there. Can not afraid to say, I'm not afraid to say, I'm not afraid to say doesn't look like chaos to God. Just because we don't see what and understand what God is doing doesn't mean that God isn't doing something. If you think about it, if you had have stopped the story when Joseph, mary and Jesus are in Egypt, you would have thought God, what are you doing? I mean, I thought that I thought Jesus, this baby here. I thought he was supposed to be the Messiah. How can he be the Messiah when we're in Egypt? How is, how is this possible? Well, keep going.
Speaker 1:And then they start going back to, you know, bethlehem, and they have to go to Nazareth, probably thinking well, there there goes, that that was the plan. But I guess not even though actually that was the plan the whole time that we don't understand always the plan of God. But the plan of God was for him to be born in Bethlehem fulfilling a prophecy, but then to grow up in Nazareth, also fulfilling a prophecy, but the the the point from point A rather to point B wasn't a straight line. It went through all kinds of things and I have no idea how and why God does the things that he does. And if someone tells you they know they'll lie to you about something else. God is beyond finding out.
Speaker 1:The Bible says that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. However, what I do know is God has never made a mistake. God is not sitting up in heaven going well, they didn't do what I thought. So let me see if I can figure that out. Anybody who ever tells you that there are varying degrees of God's will and that he doesn't really know what's going to happen and so if you take a wrong turn he's got to figure it all out again, dare them to prove that in scripture, what I see over and over and over again, that what looks like chaos is actually God's plan, and so I want to give you this encouragement, but also give you a challenge today. And here's the encouragement God doesn't make mistakes, he knows what he's doing, and it may not look like it, but our job is not always to reason why. Our job is to say yes, sir. So here's the challenge. Are you struggling with that today? Are you struggling because you really thought God should do one thing and he did another? You really thought God could and it'd been a really good idea for God to do this over here, and instead he did that over there. And now you're just like God.
Speaker 1:I don't understand you and I don't you know. Can I tell you there's going to be many times in our lives when we're not going to understand God, and I don't you know. Can I tell you there's gonna be many times in our lives and we're not going to understand God. And can I tell you that's a great thing. I want to serve a God that is bigger than my brain. I want him to blow my mind, because if he can fit inside my brain, he's not big enough. I need him to be bigger than me, and so can I tell you that that doesn't mean that it stops us from asking questions. It's just helping us to be comfortable with hard questions, to realize I don't have to know everything. I just need to know enough to make a good decision. Can you trust God even when you don't understand? Because chapter two tells us that there's going to be many times when it's going to look like God made a wrong turn somewhere. Actually he's doing exactly what he wants to do.
Speaker 1:Let's pray together right now, god.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for today. He's doing exactly what he wants to do. Let's pray together right now, god. Thank you so much for today. Thank you, god, that you are wiser than us.
Speaker 1:Lord, if I'm honest, I'll admit that there's been many times when I've been confused by your ways. I don't understand, I don't get it and if I'm really honest, I would say sometimes, god, I don't like it. But I'm so thankful that you do not require my permission. All you require is my obedience. I pray you will help me to obey you in all things and to trust you in all things, because your word promises that we can be confident that you, who began a good work within us, will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ, we trust you and we love you. In Jesus' name, we pray amen. You know what God's word says in Matthew 28, verse 19,. It says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. That's my prayer for me and for you. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Matthew, chapter three.
