God's Provision

this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son.

Now this is from Hosea, that is the prophet. Just a simple observation before we get into what layers we're adding to the story here. Notice it's the Lord who speaks. Our God speaks. We don't need to come up with some new clever way of discovering who he is or what he's doing or how he works. We have his word. He has spoken through the prophets. We have his words that have been written down by his apostles and prophets for us. Praise God, he speaks, take and read. That word fulfill, again, three times in our text. We can go back to the Bethlehem promise, that's another fulfillment. We can go back to the David and Abraham, those are fulfillments. We must understand there's two parts to this Bible. There's the Old Testament and there's the New Testament. The Old Testament is promise, the New Testament is fulfillment. That is the helpful way to understand how these two books relate to one another. Promise, fulfillment. Preparation, appearance. Sign and direction, destination. Mystery and typology, God made known the real, the ultimate. You see, there's many types and promises. There's prophets, priests, and kings in the Old Testament, and none of them were the true prophet or the true priest or the true king. But Christ Jesus, when he is born as a The son of God, he is the final true king. He is the perfect prophet. He's a priest that puts an end to all sacrifices. As we see what Matthew is doing with this fulfillment language, it is all hinged upon the fact that God has made promises speaking through prophets. The simple declaration captures some of the types we see throughout scripture. Out of Egypt, I called my son. So here's where it'd be nice to have a whiteboard or maybe some charts. We're going back to the son typology. Jesus born of Abraham, born of David, born of the Virgin Mary. A son was promised and we're looking for one son who's getting more and more narrow in terms of what family line and where that child would be born. But here back in Hosea, out of Egypt, I call my son. Well, we can actually look back and see how Israel was likened to a son. The people and nation of Israel was likened to a son. The king was oftentimes representing that nation and likened to a son. But in Deuteronomy 1, God says,

I carried you like a son.

The passage around Jeremiah 31 that we'll look at a little bit later, that has also this kind of implied sonship of Israel. Israel was a type of Christ, a people that God chose for himself, a people that was called to be God's own. family, God's own people, God's own nation, and Satan's enmity has been against Eve, then Abraham, then David, the son of Joseph, the son of Mary, and it's all about the sonship, the people of God. Israel, as a son, was supposed to be like God. That's why he gave them his commandments,

be holy as I am holy.

Israel was supposed to be A chip off the old block, that's what sonship is. If you're a son, you're supposed to be like your dad. Dads, you're supposed to be like somebody your sons should want to be like. As God calls Israel to be his son, it's a call up, to be the image bearers humans were originally designed to be. It's a renewal of who we are. Israel as a son was supposed to be a new kind of people, God's own people who followed God's way and therefore were renewed as image bearers like him. But Israel failed. They refused to obey God. They refused to even worship God or submit to him or obey him. The picture there of a God calling us to be his children who are always running out after other gods. There's another vivid picture that we normally associate with Hosea. Hosea uses the marriage, or God actually uses marriage for Hosea to picture how Israel relates to him. Hosea is ordered to go marry a prostitute who will continually be unfaithful. That's how God describes Israel, as a mirror so they could see who they are. They've been called into a covenant marriage with God. They've been shown the love of God and they go and they whore themselves out and worship other gods. What a vivid, gross picture. And that's why Israel was taken out of the Promised Land. Because they refused to be faithful to the God who had called them to himself and loved them as a husband would a bride or a father would a son. Hosea marries a prostitute, Gomer. The names of their children are no mercy and not my children, whereas Israel, as a child of God, is a people of mercy and a people who belong to God. Praise God, the story is of how Hosea redeems his wife and renames his children. But here, with this declaration, out of Egypt I call my son, that referred to Israel when they were being called back out of the exile. They're being called back out of the punishment for worshiping other gods. They're being restored back to himself. But here, this word is fulfilled most fully and most clearly in Jesus Christ as the true son who is brought out of Egypt, where again, God had brought about the greatest salvation and redemption for his people. Israel, as a people, were supposed to be like a son of God. And because they failed over and over again, Jesus has come to be the true son who's truly obedient. This is important as we think about promise fulfillment because the church does not replace Israel. That's skipping a step. Jesus is the son that Israel was supposed to be. And now we are adopted into the family of God through Jesus who fulfills all that Israel was supposed to be, but failed to be. And now we seek to be obedient sons. There's yet another thread, and that's simply out of Egypt. Again, there's a number of Exodus motifs throughout Matthew 2. In the book of Exodus, Israel is brought into Egypt. God is promising Moses and the people of Israel, I will save you. I will deliver you out of slavery. I will take you into the promised land. I will, again, bring you to myself so you can worship me. He does this through plagues, destroying Egypt and showing himself as the great one true God to all the Egyptian gods. And the last one is the Passover, where a lamb would be slain, and the blood would be put on the mantle, and the judgment of God would pass over all of Israel that had the blood on the mantle, but the firstborn of all the Egyptians would die. That's where God first delivered Israel. That is the most significant salvation of the Old Testament. Anytime you see the language of redemption and deliverance, it is referring back to that salvation from Pharaoh and Egypt. Hosea is written to talk about a new deliverance out of the exile God sent Israel into in Assyria or Babylon. All these promises are connecting. Jesus is the obedient child Israel's failed to be. Jesus is the deliverance Israel needs. Jesus is the child who is going to go down into Egypt to identify with the people of God to be the deliverance that they truly need. And what we now need to do is realize Jesus is God's plan of salvation. We must believe in him. Now, one more angle on this. Egypt's typically a bad place. Abraham, that first calling in Genesis 12, go to my promised land, Abraham follows, but then as soon as the famine hits, where does he go? Egypt. In a doubt, in a lack of faith, Egypt goes to Egypt and there gets Hagar and all kinds of trouble happens with Hagar and Ishmael and the way that will affect Israel in the future. Egypt does become a place of sanctuary, briefly, whenever there's a famine, and God sends the small group of Israel and the people of Israel into that land to live in Goshen, to be protected, but then that pharaoh forgets Joseph, and that pharaoh abuses the people. It's important to remember, because Herod is like Pharaoh, only here, the odd thing is, the pharaoh figure is in Judea. The king of the Jews has to flee the promised land back to Egypt to flee the kind of oppression that Pharaoh would bring. What a reversal. The nations are raging. Jesus comes to his own people and they reject him and even the king there is like Pharaoh and he has to go to Egypt to be saved so that he could bring about a great salvation. It's a fantastic way of connecting so many events and then bringing about a reversal. Well, as we think about nations and raging, it's election year, so let's have some fun. I pray that our American experiment lasts. The country's been blessed with incredible freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. We've been opened up by saying how great it is that we can come here without fear of any government interference in what we do. Praise God for that. What a unique time and place to enjoy the freedom to worship God as he has commanded. There is no guarantee this government continues, though, as it is. God has not promised you will always have governmental protection to have freedom to do the things he commands us to do. History tells us every human institution fails. Believers, The church is not a human institution. The church is God's people who by God's grace have his Holy Spirit and his word and seek to make Christ known. We are his body and are the headship of Christ. If the nations rage against Jesus, if the church is faithful in proclaiming him, they will rage against her. Jesus warns us over and over again, don't be surprised. If he suffered for coming to save us, we're going to suffer for following him. Just be careful not to mingle the promises God has made to the church with the hopes of America. Love your nation, be patriotic. Be a good steward of these blessings. Pray for the rulers. Those are all commands in scripture, or you can just memorize 1 Peter 3.17, honor the emperor, love the brotherhood, fear God, I'm sorry,

honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor.

Be sure God's purposes will be completed. Seek to steward the freedom we have now in Christ, in this government. The second unit picks up. We have Herod's plan to destroy God, God completely undermines this plan with one simple dream. We see that Jesus is the son of God who's going to go into Egypt. Now we see Herod's plan after this, verses 16 to 18. Here is where we see the second point, our hope and comfort.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Let's stop there for a moment. So God stops Herod's plan. He's still troubled by the wise men who came to tell him there's a newborn king. He wants to know at what time that child was born, so he has a time frame, he has a location, And now he's angry. He's furious. A tyrannical ruler that's furious is terrifying. He thinks he's been tricked, but God has protected the wise men and the baby. And so we have this evil ruler raging. And since he can't get from the wise men the intel he needs to find the one specific child, he decides to just kill all the children who would be born during that time. All the boys in that region who were born at that time. It's a small town, could have been 10 to 30 boys. This is pure wicked, twisted evil and hate. This kind of wicked hate is rooted in the wicked and twisted self-love of Herod. in his desire to preserve himself, his rule, his authority, he's going to use all his authority to do the most wicked thing, kill innocent children. This is gross? It's supposed to feel gross? You're supposed to hate this? But we must see it's his self-love that's so twisted that thinks he needs to keep himself Protected. Again, this is where we see Herod following the pattern of Pharaoh. Just flippantly ordering the murder of innocent baby boys. Just as Pharaoh sought to kill all the boys of Israel, and Moses, out of all those children, was saved by the midwives. Well, Jesus is saved by going into Egypt. The order from Herod is devastating. to kill the most vulnerable and innocent. Now before we move on to consider verse 17, one of the people everyone in this room needs to consider how we identify with him is Herod. He is the enemy in this story. Jesus is unnamed in this particular section, but really we've got Rachel and the mothers of Israel, we've got Herod, We got to think about Herod for a moment, and I'm just assuming no one could ever imagine doing such an evil thing. But if we're going to be honest with ourselves, we should know that we're capable of any and every kind of sin. Apart from God's grace, apart from God's common grace, we would all be capable of this sin. Apart from God's grace, our sin and our self-love and our twistedness would run amok, and we would cause even more trouble than we do now. We can go ahead in Matthew, and we can see that if you're angry, you're guilty of murder. If you're angry at someone, committing the murder is a whole other sin, but the very fact that you would be angry, You would seek to tear down somebody. You would speak evil. That makes us guilty of sin. To destroy somebody's dignity. To deny their value with their actions and their words. We should be disgusted with Herod and praise God for his grace that we would ever even think of such a thing. But then quickly ask, how does my anger cause hurt and harm towards other with words, with actions. How does my anger burst forth in my speech? The most amazing thing about the gospel is God comes to save sinners. The more we're able to see our sin according to God's law, the more we're able to confess and experience the greatness of His forgiveness. I'm a believer. Praise God you're not like Herod in this most grotesque way. But sin is a problem that if we do not seek proper healing and care for our own twisted self-love by believing in Jesus who alone can untie that knot, who alone can forgive you of that sin, well, we just learn how to sin more by practicing sin. The good news this morning is all of us can confess our sin to a good God who forgives us. Verse 17,

then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.

Again, the Lord speaks and when Herod is seeking to kill these children, there's another fulfillment that has multiple layers because Well, Rachel, that's a Genesis figure, and Jeremiah is writing during the exile, and, well, it's fulfilling, it's being fulfilled now in Jesus. We see, again, there's three different timestamps of three different stages of God's salvation all being pulled together yet again. Matthew draws upon Jeremiah 31. The declaration is that Rachel is weeping.

A voice was heard in Ramah,

that is where The exiles were gathered to be taken into Assyria.

Weeping in loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted because they are no more.

Rachel represents all the mothers of Israel. Or Rachel represents the mother of these children because her ancestors, I'm sorry, her descendants would be taken into exile. The Declaration of Jeremiah is about the people of Israel about to be taken out of the promised land, away from their families. They're captured by a foreign power. It's an occasion for weeping. It's destructive, it's devastating. The Assyrians would actually put hooks in their mouths to pull them away. They're incredibly violent. The context of the verse is significant for what God is doing. But notice the way it ends, she refused to be comforted because they are no more. Now, the greater picture of what Jeremiah 31 is giving us, if you look at your heading, it'll say something like hope or comfort. This verse comes to us in the midst of a passage about hope and comfort. God is promising, I will turn your mourning into joy, I will restore my people from the punishment they deserve for rebelling against me and continuing to whore after other gods. And notice who is speaking. If you were to turn to Jeremiah 31, the Lord is speaking. It's the Lord who says a voice is heard from Ramah. The Lord is saying, I hear the cry. I am not distant or deaf to the pain and suffering of my people. I hear the cry of the mother who is losing her child. I hear the cry of Rachel weeping for her children and I hear that she's even refusing to be comforted. He's not blind to our tears and he's not deaf to our cry. The very next verse in Jeremiah, verse 16, the Lord says,

keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for the future, declares the Lord, and your children will come back to their own country.

God there, as Israel is being taken into exile, taken out of the promised land. Not those exact children, some will die in exile. But your children, Rachel, the children of promise, the children who were born of your own people, there will be a return from exile. I am giving you hope in the midst of what is desperate and devastating. God has heard, he sees, and he has made promises to give comfort. There will be a salvation of your people. And I believe what God, what Matthew is telling us by the fact that this is being fulfilled is the great devastation of all people having suffered death and oppression and suffering. The true salvation is now here. Jesus is the true promise of hope that everyone has been waiting upon. Again, if you go back to Hosea, God is proclaiming, I will redeem a people who's been unfaithful. My child I will call out of exile. Or Jeremiah here, a devastation is being brought and Israel needs to know, hold on to hope. Your mourning will be turned to joy. What's amazing is here, the voice that's heard weeping, the mourning, the crying, the suffering of devastating loss, Jesus is fulfilling this and he's also the one who brings comfort to Rachel. He's the one who's gonna give comfort to Mary. He's the one who's gonna give comfort to Eve. Jesus is the one who comes to bring comfort because he is the great plan of salvation for all those who believe in him and he comforts us. Let's think about Rachel. Too many of us identify with Rachel in a very unique, specific way. We need to consider the suffering of what's taking place with Rachel and how God, he hears us. He is not distant. One of the most devastating things in this passage, you think about a mother, this mother figure, Rachel, the mothers of Israel, refusing comfort. We oftentimes think of the sinner who's in rebellion, who refuses to hear repent. There's also something to just be concerned for the person who's in great devastation and in great anxiety, great, great fear, they refuse comfort. But God does not refuse. to come to us to comfort us. God hears us. He draws near. God comes and brings a word of promise to say this is not the way it will always be. I have made promises and I will fulfill them. I think a broader way in which we can consider this context is it's not just for the people being taken into exile, it's for those who suffer great loss We can apply it even to those who suffer miscarriages, who have difficulty in childbearing in different ways. I praise God we, Don led us in prayer earlier on how we are seeking to care for and love families who love lost ones, especially in miscarriage. The comfort of God is he heals us. He is the great comforter. He does not leave us alone. He will not allow us to refuse his help. He comes to wash us, to cleanse us, to care for us. The other thing, for those who are in Christ, hold on to the promise, there's no such thing as meaningless suffering. God here hears us, knows us, sees us. We might refuse his care for a season, but we might try to isolate ourselves in pain, but Christ will come and he heals us. I praise God that he's with us to care for us. I praise God that we can be thankful for one another in the way we can help one another in these sufferings. The last thing we see here of Christ, he is the servant king. The plan revealed, Herod is going to destroy Jesus so God saves him. Then Herod in his rage seeks to kill every child born of that region, not knowing which exact child it might be. Then we see God's victory in some short way. We see Jesus, the servant king. Verse 19, when Herod died, in his attempts to save himself and his authority and his rule, he doesn't live that many more years.

When Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt saying, rise, take the child and his mother, go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he had heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in the city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled that he would be called a Nazarene.

God's promises are being fulfilled, but dreams have been pretty significant throughout this. If we go back to verse 12, which was last week's text, a dream sent the wise men a different way. In a second dream, Joseph is told to flee to Egypt. In a third dream, Joseph is told to go back. And then another dream, after Joseph is worried about the ruler, the third son, the kind of son that Herod put over Judea, where he was going back to, he's told to go to Galilee. How wonderful it is to see God giving such clear, kind guidance to save this child who will save us all from our sins. Verse 19, significant, behold, Herod is dead. The angel says, rise, take the child, go back home. And just as much as Joseph was convinced in chapter one to not divorce Mary, and then he's convinced here to take the child into Egypt, now he's eager to come home, most likely. But it's not over. Herod had three sons. Archelaus was the least effective and most cruel. And so there's a legitimate fear, and yet another dream sends him to Galilee. This leads to the third fulfillment. And while there's three ways, there's ways in which this fulfillment is different than the others. One, he doesn't quote an exact passage. There is no passage in the Old Testament that refers to Nazarene. Two, he doesn't speak of a prophet, but prophets. What he seems to be doing here is taking different prophecies and summarizing them or paraphrasing them with a simple heading of Nazarene. So Matthew is telling us something fulfillment, and we're going to trust Matthew because we've seen the fulfillment of Bethlehem, we've seen the fulfillment of Isaiah 9, a virgin born whose name is Emmanuel. We've seen the previous two in our own text. So there's lots of hypothesis as to what this might be referring to. There's a vagueness to it, so that gives all kinds of curiosity. I'm going to present the two strongest. He's looking back to the prophets, and Nazarene, the same root as Nazareth, which means branch, and so many connect this back to prophecies such as Isaiah 11, that from the branch of Jesse, pointing back again to the king, the line of David, where he will come and ultimately serve God as the full, true son of David, fulfilling the branch motif, and the branch would fulfill that requirement. The second one is looking within Matthew. And here Nazarene would represent something of lowliness, nothingness, scorned and hated. Jesus is presented as a man without respect, a man who's scorned, a man who has no significant home. If he were introduced as Jesus from Bethlehem, there would automatically be some understanding and connection to David and royalty and greatness. But for him to be known as Jesus from Nazareth, well, we know from Philip's own words and John, what good comes from there? It was a lowly place that no one had any respect for. And this even captures what we see in the Old Testament. Isaiah 53 makes it very clear, there's nothing to look at. There was nothing that would make you think there was something great about Jesus. He came to be like us in the lowliest form, the form of a servant. I think as we consider how sinful we are like Herod, how much trouble there is all around us in needing comfort, There's something wonderful that God Almighty, in his great power, in his great purpose, came down to be like us in the lowliest way, to suffer with us, to suffer for us, so that he can sympathize with us in all our suffering. so that he can be with us and comfort us in every way. So that he, the one who was brought low and suffered, who then was exalted, he comes down to us so that we can be exalted in him and with him. I believe this Nazarene fulfillment is he came to be brought low. He came to be despised. He came to be destroyed. so that he might give us life. Christian, as we just look at the fulfillments, we see the pattern of the world raging against God and his people, and now as his people in Christ, who they tortured and murdered, suffering should be expected. Not looked for, that's different. But we should seek to deny ourselves, carry a cross, and follow Him. And just by definition, if we're following Him, we're seeking to do all the things He has called us to do. And if the world rejected Him, they're gonna reject us. There's something significant in Scripture that is a pattern. Suffering precedes glory. Suffering preceded glory for Jesus. Suffering precedes glory for us. But here are the promises for those suffering. His grace is sufficient for you in suffering. He himself is with you in suffering. He blesses you in the midst of unjust suffering and promises to restore, and he himself will bring vengeance upon those who mistreat his people. God does lead us into suffering, but he never leaves us alone. God calls us to trust Him and rewards us for suffering for His name's sake well. To be blessed in Christ means we have all His salvation. It means we follow Him, the Nazarene. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you have promised such a great salvation. We can see in Christ how you have brought about such a great salvation. Lord, for those who are suffering from the curse of sin, those who are still mourning parents who have passed away this year, death has come into this world because of our sin. May you comfort them. Lord, for those who are fearful of work, employment, future, a new venture into a new city, a new commitment to a new church, not sure what is still ahead of them in a syllabus, a school, we thank you that you're with us. We thank you that whatever our temporary circumstances are that bring fear and even sometimes significant suffering, but we thank you that we're not alone, that you are with us, that you call us to care for one another in that suffering. We thank you, God, that you are our comfort, but we pray that we would know how to comfort one another. as you have comforted us in Christ. May we draw all the more near to you who always sees us and hears us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.