The Bible Study Podcast, episode 410. Today, the Bible Study podcast, continues the study of Matthew's Christmas story in Matthew 2.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. Today we wrap up the version of

Matthew's Christmas story, and it's a very unchristmese feel to it, because we're not doing the

with shepherds, we're not doing the sections with wise men. Instead, we're doing what happens next.

You may remember last week that a bunch of magi showed up in Jerusalem and talked to the king and said, hey, where is that king of the Jews that's supposed to be born? And they found out that he was supposed to be born in Bethlehem. They sent off the magi to go find him. And Herod, Herod the Great, said, why don't you come back and tell me when you find him so I can come and worship him as well?

But the magi were warned in a dream and went back a different way and did not go back and tell Herod.

Meanwhile, Joseph also gets a dream. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Get up, he said. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.

Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.

So he got up, took the child, and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he

stayed until the death of Herod, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet

out of Egypt, I called my son. When Herod realized that so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet out of Egypt I called

my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave

orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity, who were two years old and under,

in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet

Jeremiah was fulfilled. A voice is heard in Rama, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for

her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. If you look at the traditional

church calendar, for those of you who come out of a liturgical background,

you may find that right after Christmas on the traditional calendar, there is the Feast Day of the Holy Innocence.

And it's a day that remembers this part, this usually forgotten part of the Christmas story.

And it is a strange part of the Christmas story because it not only

doesn't have Santa and Talking Snowman, but it has a mass murder. Basically, it has a paranoid

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