There Is Hope For Your Future
Matthew 2:13-23
Good morning MGCC!
HEY – as we begin I want to share some good news with you, in fact, it is great news.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” – John 11:25,26
MGCC… B/S… QUESTION…
Do you believe this? Do you believe that…
OKAY – today is week four in our study of Matthew’s Gospel, “The King And His Kingdom” NOW – the first two chapters of Matthew deal with the birth and early childhood of Jesus.
IN WEEK ONE…
As we looked at Matthew’s Genealogy we saw the main point is driving home is that Jesus is King and the true heir to the Davidic Throne. And Jesus as King Has…
• The authority to speak
• The power to rule
• The desire to include
• The right to reward
IN WEEK TWO…
We saw that Joseph (Jesus’ earthly dad) woke up to who Jesus was… the King, the Christ, the Savior, Immanuel (God with us)… When Joseph woke up to who Jesus is, He did what the angel commanded.
And Joseph taught us that obedience..
• Can At Times Be Embarassing
• Obedience Is Often Inconvenient
• Obedience Doesn’t Always Make Sense
• Obedience Usually Comes With A Price
• Obedience Will Always Be Rewarded
AND – last week, the wisemen who visited toddler Jesus in Bethlehem taught us 5 powerful truths about worship, worship…
• Begins with seeing
• Required seeking
• Is grounded and ignited be scripture
• Is best expressed in our submission
• Demands sacrifice
Seeing, Seeking, Scripturing, Submitting, Sacrificing
B/S – that is worship!
QUESTION – so did you do any worshipping this past week?
NOW – that is where we have been… and don’t worry I will not be doing a review every week of all we have talked about.. I MEAN – that would get pretty when we are in Matthew 28, week 64 of study…
OKAY – let’s do this…
AND LISTEN – Matthew in these 11 verses, guided by the Holy Spirit (all Scripture is God-breathed), underscores…
• 3 events in Jesus’ life
• 3 fulfilled prophecies, and
• 2 ‘Major’ events in the History of God’s people
OKAY – so let’s read the text and pray into our study.
When they (the wisemen) 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 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.”
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.
- Matthew 2:13-23
Prayer
MGCC…
Are you ready?
Do you believe that if you have ears to hear and eyes to see, that God has a Word for you this morning?
Now, I hope you do, because He does! AMEN?!
OKAY – there are 3 major points in your outline…
• Out Of Egypt
• A Voice Is Heard
• He Will Be Called
AND – let the unpacking begin!
I. Out Of Egypt
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.”
– Matthew 2:1315
YOU KNOW – I think that we all have a tendency, to read passages like that, and just kind of read over it, and not feel it’s full weight.
I MEAN – it is so easy for me to read, “and Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt…” and then wonder what time the Championship Games are on today…
“Hey Steve, what are you reading?
Oh, just about Joseph and Mary fleeing for their lives.
LIKE – how many of you have read this story, and not felt any anxiety for them in your chest… Anyone else?
Oh yeah, they fled for their lives in in the middle of the night.
I MEAN – who hasn’t fled for their lives.
I… have never… fled for my life. Never.
LIKE - I have no idea what that feels like…
“To flee for my life.”
SERIOUSLY – think about how terrifying that had to be. For them.
I MEAN – just for a moment imagine that you got a text from God at 2 am… that said, “get up and leave the country right now, someone is coming to kill your child.”
Unsettling… terrifying…. Okay, but where do we go?
QUESTION – why did Joseph and Mary choose Egypt as their place of escape? WELL YEAH – because that is where God told them to go. BUT WHY – did God chose Egypt? WELL – for a couple of reasons…
ONE - the border to Egypt (which was outside of Herod’s jurisdiction) was only about 75 miles away…
AND - at the time there were as many as 1 million Jewish people living in Egypt.
I MEAN – Joseph and Mary more than likely had some families and friends living there.
WHICH – would make it much easier for them to find employment and a place to live. Sounds reasonable.
BUT LISTEN – there is something much deeper to this flight to Egypt than simply running away from Herod to a reasonable place.
OKAY – here’s the deal…
God is using their flight to Egypt to both paint a picture and show the parallels, between Jesus and one of the most significant events in the history of God’s people.
AN EVENT – that they had been reliving, year after year since 1400 BC, during the annual Passover Feast.
AND – what is that event? The Exodus of God’s people from Egypt, during the days of Moses, that great hero of the faith.
UNDERSTAND MGCC – God’s miraculous deliverance of His people from Egyptian bondage was always intended to be picture of the greater deliverance that was to come, not just for Israel, but for all mankind, in the person of Jesus Christ.
YEAH - There are many intentional parallels between Jesus, Moses and the Exodus.
BOTH – Moses and Jesus as infants experience an attempt on their life by a ruler bent on preserving his own kingdom. Pharaoh, in the case of Moses, and Herod the Great in the case of Christ.
Like Moses fleeing from Pharaoh (Exod. 2:11-15), Jesus was forced to flee into Egypt for safety from the wrath of Herod and emerged from there to deliver his people.
Moses returned from his time in the desert with his wife and sons to Egypt (Exod. 4:20). Joseph returned with his wife and son from Egypt to Israel (Matt. 2:21).
Moses would deliver the Israelites from bondage to Pharaoh, employing signs and miracles. Jesus delivered his people from the power of a greater oppressor, Satan, also displaying miraculous signs.
Jesus fasted for forty days and nights before teaching the new Law of God on a mountain near the Sea of Galilee (Matt. 4); Moses did the same, ascending Mt. Sinai to receive Ten Commandments.
SO GOD – in a dream tells Joseph to get up, and take Jesus and Mary to Egypt… AND – Joseph got up and the left right then in the middle of the night.
AND MATTHEW – writes…
And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Through what Prophet? The prophet Hosea
NOW HOSEA – was a prophet that God called to demonstrate in an extremely dramatic way, the relationship that God had with His people.
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. – Hosea 11:1
QUESTION – why did God call His people out of Egypt?
BECAUSE – as His people, they were meant to fulfill their destiny not Egypt but in the Promise Land.
Out of Egypt, I have called my Son
NOW – before we move on to ‘A VOICE Is Heard’ I want to read a few of the verses from Hosea chapter 11…
BECAUSE – they paint such a powerful picture of how God relates and feels about His people.
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images.
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them. – Hosea 11:1-4
II. A Voice Is Heard
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.
MGCC…
CAN YOU - imagine a leader so evil that he would order the murder of innocent baby boys?
CAN YOU - imagine a nation and leaders so wrong and so blinded, that they have sanctioned, endorsed even celebrated the taking the life of 63+ million babies in the womb since 1973?
LORD – have mercy on this nation.
Baby Bottles…
They were due today, but I talked with Morgan over at Thrive and said I would a week late in getting these back to her…
Because I know that we can fill up every one of the 50 bottles they gave us.
AMEN!
NOW – most scholars estimate that based on the population of Bethlehem at the time that there would have been around 15-20 baby boys murdered by this evil leader.
AGAIN – at times we can read stuff like this in the Bible and we are like… “Oh, 20 baby boys were murdered… I wonder if there will be a line at the restaurant.”
MGCC IMAGINE – being asleep in your bed, and suddenly several well-armed soldiers, break down your door, grab your 2 year old son from his crib, and slice his throat with their swords… Horrifying!
AND THEN – Matthew as he writes about this slaughter in Bethlehem recalls a tragic event that happened in the nation approximately 600 years earlier.
Then
(When Herod had murdered those 20 baby boys, ripping the hearts out of those families)
what was said through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:15) was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel
Who is Rachel? Jacob’s favorite wife…
mother of Joseph and Benjamin.
“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.” – Matthew 2:16-18
YEAH – how do you comfort a mother who has just watched her baby boy murdered before her very eyes.
NOW – the context for Jeremiah 31:15, that Matthew is quoting, is about the time when God’s people were taken away into EXILE.
By the way, ’The EXILE’, like the EXODUS, was another HUGE… MASSIVE event in the history of God’s people.
IN FACT – Matthew used the EXILE as one of the pivot points in his Genealogy.
Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. – Matthew 1:17
I MEAN – like the Exodus, God’s people would never forget the EXILE… it was a devastating time, after which no king would the house of David would be king and sit on the throne until Jesus.
OKAY – so Babylon comes and lays siege to Jerusalem, burning and destroying much of the city and nation.
AND THEN – after their conquest, they took this defeated people to Ramah, just north of Jerusalem.
AND – at Ramah the people were… separated from their families, put into caravans and scattered throughput the Babylonian Empire.
MGCC – this really happened, and it was a scene of unimaginable anguish.
I MEAN – imagine if you were taken to place against your will and separated from your family and friends with no hope of ever seeing prospect them again.
LIKE – can you even begin to imagine, the weeping and crying that took place in Ramah as families were torn apart.
UNDERSTAND THIS – is the kind of scene that Matthew refers to when he describes the weeping and crying over the children who had been killed in Bethlehem.
BUT UNDERSTAND – there is much more to Jeremiah 31 than God’s people weeping and mourning, as they are taken away into EXILE.
I MEAN – checkout the very next verse…
AND LISTEN – those who first read Matthew would know of the exile and of ‘all’ of Jeremiah 31
Matthew – written with the Jews in mind
Mark – Romans
Luke – Greek
John - Universal
AGAIN – verse 15… great crying and weeping, refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.
The very next verse… And B/S – I still remember where I was when I first, ‘really heard’ this verse.
On the roof top balcony on American Biologics in Tijuana Mexico…
Judy cancer – conventional treatment was not working – so we look to alternative treatments.
This is what the LORD says: “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” declares the LORD.
“They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your future,” declares the LORD. “Your children will return to their own land. – Jeremiah 31:16,17
MAN – I love it…!
Jeremiah is telling the people that even in the midst of the pain and hurt of the EXILE, God has not and God will not forget them…
Restrain your voice from weeping
You work…
They will…
There is…
YES – there was hope for their future!
IN FACT – later in this same chapter God tells His people that the time is coming when He will establish a NEW relationship or covenant with them.
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” - Jeremiah 31:31-34
(Hebrews 8:8-12)
A voice is heard in Ramah is heard weeping…
OKAY – here’s the deal…
When Matthew quotes from Jeremiah, it is as if He’s saying to them in the middle of the bitter tragedy and sorrow of Bethlehem…
“Yes, the pain is real, but there is hope for your future, and that hope is here… Jesus, has come!”
NOTICE – the contrast.
ON THE ONE HAND…
There is horrible news, children being murdered and mothers mourning and weeping.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND…
There is hope in the midst of hurt, there is life in the midst of death, AND…
WHAT - is that hope? WHERE – is this life?
Matthew tells us: A new King is born…
A KING - who will… conquer death, defeat the grave, heal our hurts, usher in a new covenant and reconcile us to God once and for all time!
Out Of Egypt
A Voice Is Heard, next…
III. He Will Be Called
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.
MAN – I really wish that I would respond to what God has called me to do… the way that Joseph did.
God said, and he did
But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.
NOW - Archelaus was one of Herod’s sons who took over ruling Judea when his father died.
HOWEVER – in Herod’s will, Archelaus was given the regions of Galilee and Perea to rule, but Herod on his death bed, in his deranged state (and probably under the providence of God) changed his will giving Archelaus the region of Judea instead.
AND LISTEN – this guy was every bit as vicious as his dad.
IN FACT – right after he took office in Jerusalem he slaughtered 3000 men in the Temple who contested his leadership.
No wonder Joseph was afraid to go back to Bethlehem.
Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee,
(away from Archelaus’ jurisdiction)
and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.
(Yeah, I think Joe was really happy about this dream)
So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. - Matthew 2:19-23
QUESTION…
Jesus would be called what?
And by who?
NOW - if you have trouble tracking down the exact Old Testament reference, it’s because Matthew is not quoting from any particular prophet.
IN FACT - none of the prophets ever precisely say, he will be called a Nazarene.
FOR THAT MATTER - the prophets never even talk about Nazareth as a place at all.
SO - why does Matthew say…
So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. - Matthew 2:19-23
OKAY MGCC – here is what I think is going on here.
NOW - we learn throughout the rest of Matthew's Gospel and the other Gospels, that Nazareth was not a very well respected place.
LIKE - it was on the bottom rung of the social economic ladder, to say the least.
HEY REMEMBER – IN John's gospel that when Nathaniel heard that Jesus was from Nazareth, he responded by saying “Can anything good come out of Nazareth,” John 1:46.
BOTTOM LINE - Nazarenes were… scorned, derided, dismissed, disdained, disliked, looked down upon, and generally despised.
AND LISTEN - this idea of the Messiah being scorned and despised is all over the prophets, LIKE IN…
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads…
My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs; an evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet.
I can count all my bones. My enemies stare at me and gloat.
They divide my garments among themselves and throw dice for my clothing. – Psalm 22:6,7,16-18
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
– Isaiah 53:2,3
Yeah, This seems to be what Matthew is getting at, the king who has come is going to be rejected by the world that He came to save. He will be a Nazarene. He will be scorned and despised, but in the end, this is actually good news.
The poor will eat and be satisfied. All who seek the LORD will praise him. Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy.
The whole earth will acknowledge the LORD and return to him. All the families of the nations will bow down before him.
For royal power belongs to the LORD. He rules all the nations.
- Psalm 22:26-28
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed…
But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in his hands.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.
– Isaiah 53:4,5,10-11
• 3 events in the early childhood of Jesus
• 3 fulfilled prophecies, and
• 2 huge events in the history of God’s people, that God through Matthew wants us to see the both connections and parallels… The Exodus and the Exile
Out of Egypt, I have called my Son
A voice is heard, in Ramah weeping
He will be called, a Nazreen
UNDERSTAND MGCC – I am totally convinced that God has 2 things that He wants to say to each of us, today, January 30th 2022… In light of our study of Matthew 2:13-26
#1 – Listen, God wants to say to you and to me, right now, that because of Jesus… there is hope for your future.
YES, even in…
• the midst of your pain and your hurt, there is Hope
• your sorrow and your weeping, there is Hope
• your sin and disobedience, there is Hope
•
#2 – God wants to say to you and to me, in light of our time in His word today… Share this hope with others!
QUESTION – do you know of anyone who needs a little hope?
