Matthew 2:13-23
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 realised 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 Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.’
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.’
(cited
from Jeremiah 31:15)
After
Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in
Egypt and 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.’
So
he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of
Israel. But
when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his
father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a
dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee,
and he went and
lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said
through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.
Who
really is the Son of God? There is much controversy concerning the
title of Son of God. Some love to make mockery of the fact that God
has a Son. They love to speculate as to how a Son might be born to
God and who His mother might be giving rise to all sorts of
blasphemous heresies. We do not need to investigate any of them, they
are depressing and dangerous. I would not even recommend that you
bother to research them, they will only feed your soul with dangerous
doctrine.
Our
quest this morning is to consider who God is referring to when
through the prophet Jeremiah He speaks of calling His Son out of
Egypt. There was clearly a very practical outworking of the prophesy
as Joseph took his family for a while to Egypt for their safety.
However our purpose this morning is to explore the theme of God's
Son.
There
are a number of times when individuals and also angels are referred
to as God's sons but there is one important theme of sonship that
runs through the bible that is our help today. The theme has three
parts and so we will consider them very briefly.
The
bible refers to:
- Israel as God's chosen son.
- Jesus as God's given Son.
- The church as God's adopted son.
Israel
as God's chosen son:
Exodus
4:21-23 The Lord said to Moses,
‘When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all
the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his
heart so that he will not let the people go.
Then say to Pharaoh, “This is what the Lord says:
Israel is my firstborn son,
and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so that he may
worship me.’ But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your
firstborn son.’
Hosea
11:1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of
Egypt I called my son.”
Genesis32:22-32:
That night Jacob got up
and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons
and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
After he had sent them across the stream, he
sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a
man wrestled with him till daybreak. When
the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of
Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the
man. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’
But
Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’
‘Jacob,’
he answered.
Then the man said, ‘Your
name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you
have struggled with God and with humans and
have overcome.’
Jacob
said, ‘Please tell me your name.’
But
he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place
Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I
saw God face to face, and yet my life was
spared.’
The sun rose above him as
he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to
this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket
of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the
tendon.
A man came to Jacob and
wrestled with him, he changed Jacob's name to Israel in recognition
of the struggle that they had had that night the reason being that it
was God who Jacob had wrestled! Jacob afterwards recognises that he
had seen God face to face. But yet it was a man, that is the point it
was the God man! Whenever God appears as a man it is Jesus who the
writer to the Hebrews tells us is the same in the past, in the
present and in the future.
Jacob was chosen by God to
become the father of the nation of Israel. Abraham before him had
become the father of the people of faith and also of a family set
apart by God. Jacob was to go on and have 12 sons who would
constitute a family nation that God had ordained to bring forth the
Messiah.
When Jacob was an old man; due
to a famine Joseph his firstborn son by Rachel brought all of Jacob's
family into Egypt to save them from starvation. After 400 years in
Egypt many of which were as slaves God brought His people out and
eventually led them into a land of their own. Pharaoh king of Egypt
did not want to let the Israelites go even though nine progressively
difficult plagues had been brought upon his people. It required
drastic measures to persuade Pharaoh that God meant business. Moses
had to go to him a final time with the final demand:
“This
is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son,
and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so that he may
worship me.’ But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your
firstborn son.’
God says that Israel is God's
firstborn son and as such Pharaoh will release them but only through
the sacrifice of their own firstborn sons.
Can you see the pattern here,
Israel comes into being through Jesus and are released from slavery
by the death of the firstborn of Egypt. They were passed over from
receiving the same judgement due to the sacrifice of an innocent
victim. The spotless lamb that died on their behalf that night saved
them from judgement.
God was pleased to call His
chosen nation His son. They were chosen not because they were better
than any other nation but because God had a purpose for them. In
Exodus 19 God revealed that purpose to Moses as he was on Mount
Sinai:
Then Moses went up to God,
and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, ‘This is
what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to
tell the people of Israel: “You
yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on
eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.
Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then
out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the
whole earth is mine, you
will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are
the words you are to speak to the Israelites.’
Exodus 19:3-6
Israel as sons of God were to
represent Him to the people of the world. They were to show a needy
world that God expects His people to be holy but also to bring others
to Him as priests do.
Jesus
as God's given Son:
We
are now back to our Christmas day message, God's gift to the world is
His One and only Son. He is Immanuel which means God with us and He
is Jesus which means Saviour of His people. Just as Joshua who
followed Moses saved the children of God from their wandering in the
desert so Jesus saves His people from wandering around in their
sinful state. The name Joshua is an Old Testament name meaning
saviour equally Yeshua or Jesus is the New Testament name with the
same meaning. The angel told Joseph to call Him Jesus because like
His name-sake in the Old Covenant His purpose was to save His people.
It is as God's given Son that Jesus perfectly saves all who belong to
God.
God
Himself declared Jesus to be His Son at His baptism; the first 3
gospels record that as Jesus came up out of the Water the Holy Spirit
descended upon Him and God the Father declared Jesus to be His own
Son whom He loves and is well pleased. The following day John records
John the Baptist's sight of Jesus again and prompting him to declare
that He is the Lamb of God! It was by the sacrificed lamb on the
Passover that Israel God's chosen son were rescued from slavery in
Egypt, it is by Jesus God's given Son that His people will be saved
from their sin.
This
theme of son of God is massive and would take many weeks to do it
justice but for our purposes this Christmastime it is sufficient for
us to see that by God's given Son the Old Covenant nation was called
to witness to Him and also that by His sacrifice:
The
church is God's adopted son:
The
Old Covenant nation was a signpost to the fulfilment of God's
promises made through them. They never achieved God's declared
intention of them. They never were holy, they never brought the
nations to God as a priest ought to do. Israel failed in so many ways
but Jesus calls a people to repentance for the forgiveness of their
sins through faith that the sacrifice made by Jesus' death and
resurrection is sufficient for forgiveness of sin. Christians we are
forgiven all of our sins and they are never to be accounted for
again. You see that Jesus took them as if they were His very own and
so they were fully dealt with as He died on the cross. We can never
take them up again and God will never give them back, Christians we
are a free people. Free from the bondage of sin, we are a new
creation, no more in condemnation. We are a chosen people. The
Apostle Peter says this:
“But
you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s
special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who
called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were
not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not
received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
1
Peter 2:9-10
Peter
is taking the words of Exodus 19 and is applying them to the church
who are now the perfect sons of God. Each one of us has been adopted
into the family of God where we are heirs with Jesus, we are brothers
of the Saviour and as such are true children of God. Not by right of
birth but by sacrifice made by the Given Son of God. Listen to the
words of the Apostle Paul:
For
those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The
Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in
fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your
adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The
Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s
children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God
and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in
order that we may also share in his glory.
Romans
8:14-17
Before
the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law,
locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the
law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by
faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a
guardian.
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of
God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have
clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s
seed, and heirs according to the promise.
What
I am saying is that as long as an heir is under age, he is no
different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir
is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his
father. So also, when we were under age, we were in slavery under the
elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had
fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to
redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to
sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son
into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you
are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his
child, God has made you also an heir.
Galatians
3:23-4:7
We
have the great privilege of being children of God. The Apostle John
urges us to see:
“See
what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be
called children of God!
And
that is what we are!”
1
John 3:1
The
popular song says “I wish it could be Christmas every day” that
is foolishness if Christmas consists of:
When
the snowman brings the snow
Well he just might like to know
He's put a great big smile on somebody's face
If you jump into your bed
Quickly cover up your head
Don't you lock the doors
You know that sweet Santa Claus in on the way
Well he just might like to know
He's put a great big smile on somebody's face
If you jump into your bed
Quickly cover up your head
Don't you lock the doors
You know that sweet Santa Claus in on the way
But
Christmas is much more than a fairy tale be it in New York or
anywhere else. It is all about the Son of God given that we might be
sons of the living God. We celebrate the birth of Jesus every day but
hopefully as we have been urged this Christmas never in isolation to
the full gift which is the Son of God who is also the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world!
The
ministry over Christmas has been to encourage each one of us to see
Jesus more clearly. God has been encouraging us to rest in Him and to
seek Him for the future. It is for this purpose that I produced the
little New Year motto card and accompanying letter. It was when the
disciples had been particulary busy that Jesus told them to come
aside and rest awhile. He led them into the boat as we recently
heard, He was with them and it was whilst He seemed to be inactive
that they learned what the storms of life were about. Jesus was, is
and always will be with His people. He cares for us beyond what we
can imagine. We have gone through much in recent days but the Lord
instructs us to come and rest awhile. Do not be surprised that as we
learn to rest in Him that the storm continues and intensifies:
Jesus
is always with us!
He
will neither leave us nor forsake us!
He
is an ever present help in times of trouble!
Therefore
we will not fear but we will boldly come before the throne of grace
and rest in the everlasting arms of our God.
2015
is a new calendar year, it is a year which we begin by resting in Him
and seeking His blessing for us as the church here in Callington.