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I want you to think about something with me right now. Think about how incredible it is that you are sitting here in this place. I don't mean merely that you are in this place and not somewhere else this morning, but also that you and I even exist to begin with.
A few years back, Brianna and I were having a conversation with her father about how he and Brianna's mother met. My father-in-law, Don, went to Pillsbury College in southern Minnesota for a year, but he wasn't sure he was going to go back.
He was kind of up in the air. He had other options that he was also strongly considering, but he decided to go back to Pillsbury that next year, and that's when Brianna's mother started school there. They eventually met, got engaged, and married.
What my father-in-law, Don, correctly told us is that if he decided not to go back for his second year, Brianna wouldn't be here, nor would her brother, Brandon. Every one of us has a story just like that.
God crossed the paths of our parents, and then eventually, we came to be. We had nothing to do with it, but God providentially orchestrated the details of how you and I came into existence. It's remarkable.
I don't know. We don't have to think of it too much. God is writing everyone's story, and nothing can stop the story that he is writing for your life. As God works in the world, he is fully committed to his people.
Before there even was a creation, God planned that his people would be with him forever. When Adam and Eve fell into sin, he planned to redeem his people by sending his son into the world to save them.
So much had to happen for this deliverer to accomplish salvation. He needed to fully fulfill his mission for any of us to have any hope to be saved. Our entire future hanged in the balance. This morning, we are going to see a ruthless king in Israel, King Herod, try to eliminate our only hope for salvation.
What we will see is that God has always been for his people. So I encourage you to turn in me with the Bible to Matthew chapter 2. We'll be looking at verses 13 through 23 as we continue our sermon series through Matthew.
If you're using a red Bible, in the pews, it's on page 960. This sermon is titled Deliverance for Christ and His People. Deliverance for Christ and His people. And our big idea, this is what I want you to take away from today, the big idea, if you are a follower of Christ, the Lord has always been for you in history.
If you're a follower of Christ, the Lord has always been for you in history. And we're going to see one reason why in this text, and that is this, your only hope for salvation was protected from annihilation.
But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon. We looked at the story of the Magi from the East visiting the child King Jesus. These were Babylonian astrologers who studied the formations in the heavens, and they believed that the position of the sun, moon, and stars could tell someone's future.
These were people who were very interested in figuring this out. They likely had some understanding in the Old Testament because the Jews were taken into exile to Babylon. And so when they saw the star in the East, they knew of a prophecy in the Old Testament.
They would have had some familiarity with the Old Testament, and they knew of a prophecy in Numbers that said that a star is going to be over this king. So that's how you're going to know that he has arrived.
And so what they did is they traveled 800 miles west to visit this king. And what we saw is that when they arrived, they asked the locals, where is he? So that we can go and worship him. When King Herod and the other leaders found out about this, they were concerned since they thought another king would rule in their place.
We learned about King Herod last week. He was a man who wanted the honor and praise for himself. He told the wise men that he too desired to worship this child king. Herod wanted honor for himself, but he never received any from the wise men.
When the wise men went to see the child king, they never returned to tell Herod where this child king was located. They were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. While the wise men did not give Herod honor and praise, they did give praise to this child king.
They went and worshiped him. What we saw last week is that we should follow the example of these wise men. They were right to worship him. They were right to worship him because of what the New Testament says concerning Jesus.
He is not only man, but he's also God. He is the only man who is worthy of our worship because he is the God-man. Now last week, we saw that Herod was threatened by Jesus, and today we are going to see what he's trying to do about this threat.
And what we will see is the Lord's sovereign hand over all of this. So let's begin by reading verse 13, and then we'll see what we need to see here as we go through our text. Verse 13. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.
Now the ones who are departing in this text are the Magi. And at this early point in Matthew, it's incredible here to see all of this angelic activity. An angel appeared to Joseph to tell him about the virgin birth and not to divorce Mary.
Presumably, an angel appeared to the wise men and told them not to return to Herod. Now an angel appears again to Joseph in a dream telling him to flee to Egypt. The angel tells him the reason why he's sending them to Egypt.
Namely, Herod is about to search for Jesus in order to destroy him. The Egyptian border was about 90 miles from Bethlehem. They flee to Egypt for a couple of reasons. First, they need to get out of town since this is the specific place that Herod is searching.
Secondly, once they cross the Egyptian border, they are outside of Herod's jurisdiction. So even if Herod found out they went to Egypt, he couldn't do anything about it. What the angel tells Joseph to flee to Egypt is a prophecy.
In our text, Herod had yet to give an edict to search for the child. We'll see that in a little bit. But this prophecy here is flee to Egypt. And this is what they're going to do as we will see. So now let's look at Joseph.
Listen to the command of this angel to flee for safety in verses 14 and 15. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
Out of Egypt, I called my son. What verse 14 tells us is that Joseph, Mary, and the child Jesus leave Bethlehem en route to Egypt. Their journey to Egypt was not a permanent departure. This was not a permanent home for them.
Just as Abraham was not to stay permanently in Egypt in Genesis 12, so the Messiah was not to stay permanently in Egypt for the rest of his life. The beginning of verse 15 tells us that they were only to remain there until King Herod died.
So until the threat passed. As I mentioned last Sunday, Jesus was about a year old when the wise men visited him. And according to the New Testament scholar Harold Horner, I mentioned this gentleman last week, he did a chronology on the life of Christ.
According to his chronology, the visit from the wise men would have been probably in January of 4 BC. And what ancient historians tell us is that King Herod, Herod the Great, died in March of 4 BC. Therefore, according to these calculations, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus would have been in Egypt for about two months.
So not very long, just a brief stay until the problem is gone. And then they're coming back. The true place that Jesus would live would be the land of his ancestors, the land of promise. This is the location on earth where Jesus was to purchase salvation for sinners and where he will reign from in the future.
And that, of course, is Jerusalem. This is the place where God's plan was to unfold, not Egypt. It's interesting, right? Jesus didn't die in Canada, right? He didn't die in China. He died in the Middle East, right in the land of promise, the land promised to Abraham, Israel.
And that's where Jesus would carry out his life. What the text tells us is that this flight to Egypt was a fulfillment of the Old Testament in some way. As the second half of verse 15 says, this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son.
This is a reference to Hosea chapter 11 verse 1. That verse says, when Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son. What Hosea is referring to is the Exodus when the Lord led Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt to lead them to the promised land.
Of course, that's an event we're familiar with from the book of Exodus. They would eventually enter the promised land through the leadership of Joshua. Now, the passage in the Hosea account is not a prophecy predicting the future.
Hosea was written about 700 years after the Exodus. What Hosea 11 .1 is doing is recalling that major historical event in the history of Israel, the Exodus. But why does Matthew say that the Lord leading his son, Jesus, out of Israel to Egypt is a fulfillment?
That's interesting. Maybe you've read this and you wonder, well, what's that all about? Now, Matthew uses the word fulfill in several ways in his gospel. We've already seen one of the ways. The Greek word plairotheia is used that literally means to fill up.
In English, this is translated to fulfill. It is used, as we saw in predictive prophecy from Isaiah 7 .14, that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. A synonym for this, the word fill up, is used in the predictive prophecy of Micah 5 .2 that we also saw fulfilled earlier in Matthew, that the Messiah would be born specifically in Bethlehem.
The word fulfill in our passage in verse 15 is not used in this way as a predictive prophecy. A predictive prophecy is this. The Lord says, this is going to happen way in the future, and it's going to happen precisely how I say it's going to happen.
Okay, so that's a predictive prophecy. But sometimes the New Testament sees a type in the Old Testament and tells us that this person, a structure or event, was meant to point us to something greater in the New Testament.
For example, the priest of God Melchizedek in Genesis 14, as we saw a long time ago, was a type of the greater type, the high priest Jesus Christ. And the author of Hebrews tells us this. Melchizedek was the type and Jesus is known as the anti-type or the greater type.
Now, what we see here in our text is that Hosea refers to Israel as a son who was called out of Egypt. The author Hosea did not know it at the time, but the Holy Spirit, the other author of Scripture, the other author was making a connection between Israel as a son being called out of Egypt and the Son of God, Jesus, being called out of Egypt.
So this is how Matthew uses this word fulfillment to draw a connection between a major event in the Old Testament, the Exodus, and the even more important event, the Son of God being called by the Lord, his Father, out of Egypt.
So you see how that connection here that Matthew is making? And he says this is how it's fulfilled. So he uses the word fulfilled differently than he did before, when he was saying that this fulfills something from the past.
I realize that it's kind of hard for us to understand that, but we need to figure out why he uses it the way he does. It's also neat to see the spiritual meaning of types in the Old Testament. When the New Testament was written, could you imagine the readers, they're now reading the Old Testament differently, right?
In the Old Testament, the temple was there. Now the temple has this new meaning, right? When they read about Melchizedek, okay, now we know why this whole Melchizedek thing happened in Genesis 14, because it was meant to point ahead to Jesus Christ, so on and so forth.
All of these things would just shine the light on so many different things in the Old Testament. The whole sacrificial system in the temple was pointing ahead to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
So it is so helpful to read the New Testament, and it helps us understand the Old Testament all the more. Now what we see in our text is that the Lord is providentially protecting Jesus, and Herod is about to unleash his fury on the small town of Bethlehem.
Let's see Herod's wrath unleashed in verses 16 through 18 in our text. 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 all that region who were two years older under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping in loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be comforted because they are no more.
What verse 16 tells us is that Herod knew that he was tricked by the wise men. Remember in chapter 2 verse 8, Herod told the wise men that once they found Jesus, they were to report to him his location so that they too could worship this child king.
But we know he just wanted to get rid of him. He was trying to fool the wise men, and when the wise men never came back to him, Herod knew that he had been played. Remember the wise men were told in a dream, do not return to Herod, and so they went back to their home after worshiping this child king.
His plan, Herod's plan originally was just to eliminate the one child, Jesus. Now that he does not know the precise location where he resides, in an act of rage, he commands all of the children in Bethlehem and the surrounding region, two years old and under, to be slaughtered.
To say this man was evil is an understatement. What I mentioned last Sunday is that history outside of the Bible paints Herod the same way. When he was upset or threatened, what would he do? Would he try to reconcile with these people and understand them and see these people as a help to him?
No, he killed them. If you saw anybody as a threat, he would just wipe them out. Or if someone crossed him the wrong way, remember the quote last week, it was better to be one of Herod's pigs than one of his sons.
He killed several of his own sons. Now that Herod cannot locate this child, he's willing to eliminate all the little children in Bethlehem and the surrounding region, thinking that if he just wipes them all out, that'll take care of the problem.
The very sad thing for Herod is that this is one of the last things he would do before he died. This is very close to his death. He was consistently ruthless through the end of his life with no repentance.
And after his death, the Lord would repay him for his very, very evil deeds. And what this teaches us is that there's no one above the rule of law. When people get in positions of authority, this happens throughout history.
In fact, it's why our nation created a checks and balances, this balanced government where there's three branches. Because they saw in England that if one person gets in power, and if this person has unlimited power, their heart is going to lead them to do horrible things.
That's what the sinful heart does. And our founding fathers were wise enough to recognize that. So when they came here, they tried to do this checks and balances government where no one would get too much power.
But of course, Herod had unlimited power, pretty much. I mean, the Romans were over him, but they were so afraid of him that they didn't even touch him. And so he was willing to wipe out all of these children in order to solve this problem, what he considered a problem to him.
Now, as Herod wipes out all of these children in Bethlehem, we see another fulfillment passage from Matthew. Okay, so we just looked at a fulfillment passage. Now we look, now we see another one. In verse 18, he quotes the prophet Jeremiah.
This is an Old Testament quotation from Jeremiah 31 15, which which reads, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
What Jeremiah is saying through the Lord in this passage is that Rachel, Jacob's wife represents the mothers in Israel. At the time of the exile, when the Babylonians took Jerusalem into exile 600 years before Christ came came, many children in Jerusalem were taken away from their mothers and brought into captivity.
And I read above from Jeremiah 31 15 gives the picture that they were weeping and refused to be comforted because their children were taken away, never to be seen again. And, you know, we love children, right?
I mean, just reading reading passages like these hurt, especially when, when you see Herod wanting to wipe out these children. And I think it hits you even harder when you have when you have kids yourself.
I mean, I read these passages my whole life, and I was always bothered by but it takes it goes to another level. I feel when you have when you when you when you see your little ones, and you read these passages, and you think about these kids.
And what we see in our text, once again, is that Matthew is drawing a connection with a historical event for the nation of Israel. The connection is between what the mothers experienced during the exile, and what the experienced in Bethlehem when Herod slaughtered all of the children two years and under.
And so he uses the word fulfilled in the same way we just saw, right? He's appealing to a historical event. And he's saying, this event that is happening right here is similar to this event from history, right?
So he's trying to connect with his readers to, to connect with their emotions to show them how horrible this is. This event in Babylon was so horrible when these mothers lost their children. And this event in Bethlehem was so horrible when these mothers lost their children at the hand of Herod.
Now, we just looked at this narrative of Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing from Herod's annihilation of the children in Bethlehem. So the question we need to ask now is what do we need to see out of this?
Okay, every time we read a passage of Scripture, God is writing to us. He wants us to see something here, right? This isn't just history. Oh, that's interesting. No, there's a spiritual significance, a spiritual meaning to everything we read in the Bible.
This event happened far back in history. We did not come into this world until almost 2 ,000 years after these events took place. We didn't exist and therefore didn't know that our salvation was pending on the life of Jesus being preserved.
But God planned this and he would see that his plan came to fruition. God the Father sent his son Jesus into the world on a rescue mission to save sinners. What he needed to do to accomplish our salvation is live a perfect life, take our sins upon himself at the cross, and then God would raise him from the dead on the third day.
And if that didn't happen, every person who ever lived would go to hell. God needed to protect Jesus from Herod in order for him to accomplish this. Every sin is paid for in one of two places, either in hell or at the cross of Jesus Christ.
When we sin before a holy God, we are deserving of punishment for our sins. God's justice demands such. And what is so incredible is that God, through his grace, provides a way for justice to happen where we're not the ones facing the justice.
Have you ever had that situation when you went to school or maybe young kids in this room right now who are in school right now. Now you're in school and you're about to take an exam. And you know, unless I guess right every answer, and you know sometimes they have those scantron tests, right?
And if you guess right, maybe you'll do better than you thought. But you just know I'm going to fail this test. I haven't studied. It's too hard for me. You know, whatever it might be, I remember being in those situations more than I would like to admit also.
But imagine if the teacher came up to you who knows all the answers. Imagine Hansy or Barb or coming up to their students and saying to the student, you know what, I'm going to take the test for you. And the student walks away, the teacher sits down, writes all the answers in, 100 percent.
And the student didn't do anything to get 100 percent. This is what it's like for everyone who's who is saved by Jesus Christ. I remember when I heard this illustration. This isn't my own illustration.
This is someone else's. But it's so helpful to think of our salvation in this way. He accomplishes your salvation for you. Romans 3 .20 says this, and every person needs to hear this because we do this naturally.
We think we can earn our own salvation. This is what Romans 3 .20 says. By works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. That's pretty clear. No human being will be justified on our own.
We can't do it. But a few verses down in chapter three, verses 24 through 25, the word of God says that we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.
So all we're doing when we come into a saving relationship with God is we're receiving what he's done for us. And so I say this to say that if Jesus is slaughtered by Herod, we have no hope. The only one who could save us needed to be spared.
He needed to accomplish his mission of salvation. God protected Jesus for everyone in this room who knows Jesus Christ. And my prayer is that everyone in this room would know Christ. And he did this. God preserved him for everybody, all of his people, past, present, and future.
God knew Herod's plans, but he made them fail. This may have been the first time that Herod ever failed. Any other time he wanted to put someone to death, guess what happened? He succeeded. The person was put to death.
And at this time, he wants to put Jesus to death and he fails because God was protecting him. The Lord sent an angel to warn Joseph. And once Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were saved, that is when Herod unleashed his havoc on Bethlehem.
And now let me say this, which is related, but not the focus of this text. As we think about all these children dying, you know, in Bethlehem, the question that is raised is, well, what happens to children when they die?
What happens to babies when they die? There's a website, gotquestions .com, which I commend it to you. It's a very good website. People ask questions about the Bible and these people answer those questions.
And they have the top 10 list of the questions they received the most. And one of the questions they received the most is, what happens to children when they die? That's a question a lot of people ask.
And it's my understanding from Scripture that they go to heaven. Now, that's a sermon for another day. And that might be a good sermon to preach sometime. But I do think that the Bible does support that.
So as we look at our text here, we can say that not only does Jesus get spared, but God also spares these children. Not physically, right, but he brings them to heaven to be with him. And by sparing the most important child in that town, even these little ones' future was pending on them, right?
Because heaven only comes through the cross of Jesus Christ. So I think we need to keep this in mind as we look at this text. So we see God's provision here for his people. His provision for his son, Jesus, by sparing him.
And our hope relies on him being spared. Remember Matthew 121 we saw a couple weeks ago? What they said when Jesus was born was this, he will save his people from their sins. That was Matthew 121. The Lord knew that the hope of humanity was riding on this little child Jesus accomplishing his mission of earning salvation for everyone who would believe in him.
So the Lord was faithful to providentially protect him for our benefit. Do you see the magnitude of this? I hope you can see the application for you as we dig in here and see this. The Lord is always working for your good.
And it's not just for your salvation. He's working for your good in every detail of your life. This is why you can take courage as you face difficult circumstances in life. And you may be facing trials right now.
You probably are. And in your trials, you may wonder, what is the Lord doing? If I were writing my story, I would have written something different here. But he is writing a different story than I had written.
But everyone here must understand that the Lord is always working for your good, right? We read that today in Romans 8 28 to 32. We know that for those who love God, God's people, that he's working everything for their good.
And how can we have confidence in this? Well, he was working for our good 2000 years ago, when he spared his son from Herod. And then he brought him to the cross. And he had him die on the cross. And he raised him from the dead.
He's always been working for our good even before we existed. So how much more is he going to be working for our good while we go through our lives in the present? And when we come to die and in the future in paradise, bringing us to him there.
Remember 832 Romans, he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? So you can have confidence. If the Lord's for you in the past, he's for you in the present.
The Lord showed his grace towards you when he sent Jesus to die for you. And his goodness shines on you through all the circumstances of your life, even the difficult ones. So that's what we must see in our text this morning.
If you are a follower of Christ, the Lord has always been for you historically. And in our text today, we have seen one reason why your only hope for salvation was protected from annihilation. Now, as we close this morning, let's read Joseph, Mary, and Jesus trip back to Egypt.
And once again, we are going to see the Lord's protection over them. Verses 19 through 23. But 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 and 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 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 a city called Nazareth. So that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.
What we just read is that once Herod the Great died, an angel of the Lord once again appears to Joseph and says, well, don't go there. Don't go to Jerusalem. Go north. Go to the region of Galilee. King Herod Archelaus was Herod's son.
There's this Herod dynasty, right? And you've been heard to say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That really applies to Herod's because none of them were good. They were all bad. And so the angel puts them north, probably about 100 miles.
The region of Galilee is about 100 miles north of Jerusalem. And what's interesting about this is that this is where Jesus would carry out his ministry. And we see Matthew once again use the word fulfilled in verse 20c.
He says he would be called a Nazarene. And what's interesting is that this isn't pointing to a specific passage in the Old Testament. But what it's saying is that there was all these Old Testament prophets who were rejected by the people, and they were rejected because the message that they brought was not popular.
The people wanted to hear happy, good things. And the prophets would come and say, well, because of your sin, I'm telling you judgment. And so Jesus is a Nazarene in that sense, in that he would be one who would speak to people, and it wouldn't be well received, right?
Because he would pronounce judgment on them, just like the people from the Old Testament. The opponents of Jesus did not receive him well. And also, the town of Nazareth is significant here because this was a town that nobody knew about.
It wasn't like Jerusalem, you know, the popular town on the block. Maybe it's like, maybe it's like Cushing, I don't know, you know, the town that nobody knows about, and it is just out there. Nazareth was just not a very well known town.
And so in that way, he was looked down upon because of the place he came from. Now next week, we are going to look at the one who prepared the way for Jesus right before the inauguration of his ministry.
And Jesus would say of this man, and I think you know who I'm talking about here, this man who prepared the way for him. Jesus would say of this man, in Matthew 11, 11, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.
So next Sunday, we're going to take a look at the first Baptist who ever lived, John the Baptist, as he prepares the way for the Messiah, as he prepares the way for his ministry. So let's bow our heads in prayer together.
Father in heaven, I thank you for the word of God that is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword. It has the power to change our lives. And my prayer for each one here, Lord, is that the main point of the sermon was to show people that you are for us.
If we belong to Christ, you are for us. You are for us historically by sparing Jesus, by bringing him to the cross, by raising him from the dead. As Romans 3, 24 and 25 says, you put him forward as a propitiation, as a sacrifice that would make us right with you and turn your wrath into favor toward us.
You offered him for us. And all we have to do is trust, Lord, sincerely trust that you did that and we will be saved. And I thank you for those who are saved, Lord. I pray for those who may not be who are among us today that they would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
Trusting, Lord, your provision for them in the past. And Lord, may we understand that all the circumstances we face in our life, you are for everyone who knows you. You're working the details out. We can trust you, Lord.
You did not spare your own son. And so you will graciously give us all things. So I pray, Lord, that we would take this to heart, each one here in Jesus name. Amen.