Nazareth

There is something about the human experience that causes us to personify cities and places.  If someone moves to a big municipality in hopes of upgrading their career and they are unable to land the job they wanted and leave feeling a sense of failure we would say something like "New York chewed me up and spit me out."  Cities are often mentioned in regards to political ideologies or decision-making centers where a new reporter will say something like "Moscow is declaring a cease-fire" in regards to an international conflict.  And cities can even represent philosophies as we see the great early church father Tertullian saying "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?"  Stating that the city founded on faith in God is greater than the city known for human reason.

While a survey of the way in which our poets ascribe solitary trains to masses of people who all likely think differently is interesting enough it is quite another thing to consider that God does the same thing.  He does this but with one major difference.  For while we affirm the role and purpose of a city when it is fully in function, God declares the destiny of a place before it even has been established.

Such is true about the little town of Nazareth.  A town that unbelieving critics denied even existed until when in 1962 an extra-biblical reference to it was discovered during an archaeological excavation in Caesarea where 3 broken pieces of a marble slab were found in the ruins of a 3rd or 4th century synagogue.  These pieces fit into a large inscription which was a list of the 24 priestly courses named in 1 Chronicles 24:7-18 and where those families moved to after the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.  And in the 1 Chronicles 24:18 portion of this inscription it reads that the family of "Happizzez went to Nazareth".  An archaeological study that among many others vindicated what the Bible taught against its critics, who instead of being like doubting Thomas that upon seeing the scars in Jesus' hands and side then fell down and worshipped Him, rather looked for a different axe to grind and theories to declared.  In doing so they have proved themselves to be more like the Pharisees.  A group who's hearts were so hard that after knowing that Lazarus had been miraculously raised from the dead plotted how to - in addition to killing Jesus - also kill Lazarus because the very fact of him being alive again was making people want to follow Jesus (John 12:10-11).

Yet while thousands of years later it took archaeological evidence for critics to affirm its past God had already declared its destiny before it had even been established.  We see this in Zechariah 3:8-9 which reads,

Now listen, Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who are sitting in front of you—indeed they are men who are a symbol, for behold, I am going to bring in My servant the Branch. For behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave an inscription on it,’ declares the Lord of hosts, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.

In reading this you may be wondering "what does any of this have to do with Nazareth?"  And the answer is that "Nazareth" is Greek for "branch, sprout or watchtower." So read this again with "Nazareth" substituted for the word "Branch".

For behold, I am going to bring in My servant the Nazareth.

Matthew understood the significance of Jesus' hometown being a fulfillment of this Divine play on words when he wrote in Matthew 2:23, "and came and lived in a city called Nazareth.  This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets.  'He shall be called a Nazarene.'" (Note that he says "prophets" because Isaiah 11:1 also refers to a "Branch from the root of Jesse" (who was David's father) - with David being the one in whom was promised that one of his descendants would rule forever - 1 Chronicles 17:12-14.

But more than just being a Nazarene, this Servant that God promised to bring was connected to Him removing "the iniquity of the land in one day."  And what a day that was when the Nazarene died on a Cross for you and for me.  Jesus may I never forget the beauty of all that You did for me on that day.