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Matthew 2:19-20,23

¹⁹After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead."

²³and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."

When Herod the Great died (4 BC), the angel of the LORD spoke to Joseph in a dream. It was the same way God spoke to Joseph about taking Mary as his wife. It was the same way God sent them down into Egypt. We often wonder if we are still in the will of God. We heard from God once and obeyed, but are we still supposed to be where we are? You can trust God that if He changes His plan for you, He can speak again just as clearly as the time He sent you there. It is a good rule of thumb to expect God to reveal any changes in His direction with as clear a leading as you received when He sent you that way. God has no difficulty speaking in a way we will understand. Our problem is most often either endurance or willingness to hear.

Notice that God used dreams to communicate to Joseph. God can work uniquely with each individual. Don't expect God to be limited to using dreams. Don't expect other to hear from God in the manner that you do. Matthew wrote that their return to Nazareth fulfilled a prophecy that the Messiah would be a Nazarene. Scholars once thought this meant a Nazirite. We know that cannot be the case, for Jesus drank wine. Nazareth may be derived from the Hebrew word "Netzor,"meaning a branch or shoot. Nazareth may have been a city inhabited by descendants of David who were looking forward to the fulfilment of the promises of an eternal king descended from David. In that sense, the Messiah would be called a shoot of David, a Netzorean.

Further study on netzor窶� the branch: See Isaiah 11,53; Zechariah 3 and Jeremiah 23:5.