Matthew quotes the book of Jeremiah to show what God prophesied and fulfilled when the innocent children of Bethlehem and surrounding communities were murdered by King Herod.
Jeremiah. 31:14
14 This is what The LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamenting and bitter weeping. It is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no longer alive.”
Most of what we hear from those reading this tragic story ask why a loving God knowing this would happen allowed it anyway.
We only need to read the next two verses in Jeremiah to understand why:
15 This is what The LORD says: “Stop your weeping, and dry your eyes, for your work will be rewarded,” says The LORD. “They will return from the enemy’s land; 16 so there is hope for your future,” says The LORD. “Your
children will return to their own territory.
At the time God had Jeremiah write this, Israel had been led into captivity for their unfaithfulness and are given hope of a return into their own land and God is also showing us the hope in our future of the resurrection of the dead and to eternal life.
God is also showing us something very important about His Holy Scriptures in making this connection between an event in the Old Testament and something that was to occur much later. God is reaching out to us through Matthew’s Gospel to show us how to interpret the Old Testament.
If we open our eyes, there are many such things in the Old Testament. Consider the Passover. It was something that happened in Egypt when God was delivering His people from captivity. It was the 10th and last plague to be laid upon Egypt, and it would be so devastating that Pharoah would let God’s people go.
God Told Israel to take an unblemished lamb and kill it and take of its blood and smear some of it on the door to their homes. Some was put on the vertical post and also on the horizontal lentil at the top at the top of the door. The smeared blood formed a cross. Then when the Angel of the Lord came over Egypt to kill the firstborn of both man and beast, when he saw the blood on the door, he passed over that house and saved the firstborn of Israel from being killed.
The unblemished lamb signified Jesus as someone without fault and his shed blood on the cross saved his people from perishing. And Jesus died on the cross on the same day that the Israelites were slaughtering their unblemished lambs in the Passover Day of Preparation just as they did those many centuries back in Egypt.
Then there’s the story in Exodus of Israel wandering in the wilderness and there were many deadly serpents who were biting and killing them. They cried out to God and He commanded Moses to create a serpent made of brass and put it upon a wooden rod and hold it up. When the people who believed what Moses told them and looked upon the serpent, they were healed from snake (serpent) bites.
Those serpent bites are like our sins, and they lead to death but when we look upon Jesus who was raised up between heaven and earth and believe, we are healed from our sins and death.
But how does the brass serpent relate to Jesus? Brass is a symbol for judgement. It is written the He was made sin for us and judged in our place so yes, even the brass serpent represented what Jesus was in effect fashioned into.
Brothers and Sisters, all of these stories from the Old Testament show us how important it is to read and understand it first so that we can understand the New Testament. The New does not replace the Old but rather explains it to us.