Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Matthew 2:13-23

Matthew 2:13-23. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word. For Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.” When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “A voice was heard in Rama, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more.”

But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise, take the young child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young child’s life are dead.”

Then he arose, took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

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Let’s pray. Father, we pray that your spirit would open our ears and more importantly than that our hearts to the meaning of this text. Give us encouragement and give us exhortation, Lord God, in the power of the spirit. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

So it’s been an interesting week in the history of our country. There have been some very—what some have called surreal events this week. Our ruler, our president, was of course impeached on several counts yesterday, and of course there’s been the bombing strike against Iraq with all its attendant difficulties.

I saw Joseph Biden on a news show yesterday, and he said that if he had read these events in a book, then he would have been convinced that the bombing on Iraq was a diversionary attempt to put off the vote of impeachment. But since it isn’t a book and he’s in there in the middle of this being played out, he doesn’t believe that was the intent of the president. I don’t know how we could know for certain. However, the events in our country are dire when at least a goodly portion of the elected representatives and the people believe that it is capable of our president to order bombs and rain down death and destruction on a people in connection with a political attempt to survive his presidency.

We also had, of course, the resignation of the man who was going to be speaker of the house. That’s the third most important position in our country. If the president and vice president die, the speaker of the house becomes president. When it was revealed that he had several affairs in the course of his married life, he resigned. I think that was a result of Larry Flynt, the infamous publisher of Hustler magazine, originally seen as a national shame but now exalted to the position of national hero on the basis of the movie that came out about him a year or two ago. He put up a million dollars to anyone who would bring out these kinds of details on our elected officials.

This morning I listened briefly to the radio. I wanted to get the weather report and traffic report as I do Sunday mornings. I turned to KXL and their book time was on. They speak about books, and they had on two authors speaking because of this new movie, “The Prince of Egypt” or whatever it’s called. One author wrote a book on Moses. The other was an author of a book on Jesus. And of course they both trash the biblical account.

And so that’s the big obstacle to understanding who these men were—or maybe whether Moses really lived at all, or maybe he’s a mythological character. But to create understanding, we need to reject any idea of the scriptures as giving us inspired truth about who these men were.

Now that’s not new to hear those kinds of things. But you know, 50 years ago, a radio station couldn’t have done that without howls of protest from at least a thinly veneered Christian culture in America.

There’s a connection in these events. Of course, the country has forsaken the faith. We’re in captivity. We’re in Egypt. And we’ve got rulers who rule over us, not for the sake of the crown rights of King Jesus, but for their own purposes. President Clinton has been aligned with forces within the Southern Baptist Church for years who have sought to move that denomination away from inerrancy, away from believing what it says about Moses and Jesus. That’s the kind of president our culture deserves.

If every person who had an extramarital affair, if all the elders of our land—that’s what they are, right?—if the elders in our gate in Washington DC and in Salem who had extramarital affairs were to resign as the scriptures clearly say they should—the qualifications for an elder being obvious, and the word “elder” is a civil ruler as well as a church ruler—I don’t know who we’d have left to run the government.

Sorry to bring all this depression to you, but it is an amazing, surreal week in the history of America. And it’s in the providence of God. He has brought us to a text where it is an amazingly surreal week, as it were, in the life of Israel that we read about here.

This last section of Matthew is sort of the concluding portion. The first two chapters of Matthew, which we’ve spent four weeks covering, are a complete unit. Chapter 3 we move on to John the Baptist and him coming and preparing the way for the Savior. So this is kind of the conclusion of the story, and it’s laid out very simply. It’s quite obvious as you look at it that there are three sections here.

In the first section, we have Joseph being warned in a dream that Herod’s going to try to kill Jesus. As I said last week, the contrast between the magi and Herod couldn’t be more strikingly drawn. And here we have Herod now actually being revealed as trying to seek the life of the Savior, the King of Kings, the Messiah, the promised one. So we have this Edomite king seeking to kill our Savior, and as a result he is then taken to Egypt for protection.

That’s surreal. Remember, Egypt is the place of bondage and oppression. But there’s a sense in which, of course, that’s why the children of Israel originally ended up in Egypt—was for protection from the famine. And there is now a famine in the context of Jerusalem, a famine of the word of God. They had to go dig up the dusty books and ask the smartest guys where Messiah was going to be born, because nobody knew, even though it was a common event that people were expecting Messiah at this time.

So it’s surreal. And in this first section, we have this departure into Egypt, and then we’re specifically told that in each of these three sections there’s a fulfillment of prophecy. In this section, the fulfillment of prophecy is that “Out of Egypt I will call my son.”

In the second section we see what happens as Joseph and the child go to Egypt with his mother to be a fugitive there. That’s what the word kind of means there—flee to Egypt, be a fugitive there for a period of time. And then we see why: because back in the area where Jesus was in Bethlehem, Herod now has sent men there, and he kills all the children ages two and under. The so-called slaughter of the innocents.

Now, it’s a horrific story, but it sort of pales, does it not, in comparison with the surreal nature of our country? I don’t know—I don’t know anybody who knows except our Lord, and he’s not talking—how many children there were that were killed in Bethlehem. Scholars say about 20 to 60, maybe. Still, it’s a horrendous event, and it’s drawn here explicitly to show us the fall to which Jerusalem and her Edomite king had descended.

But we live in a land where, for motives that could be traced to very similar motives to Herod—believe it or not—where millions of babies, albeit pre-born babies, infants in the womb, have been killed. The slaughter of the innocents, so-called, to depict this horrific period of Israelite history, is nothing compared to the horrific slaughter of innocence that’s gone on in this ostensibly Christian nation.

We need salvation. We need a Savior. And so did they. And that’s just what they were going to get.

The second section, of course, ends in a prophecy being fulfilled from Jeremiah 31: “Voices heard in Rama, weeping.” Rachel, seen as the mother of the nation, had her burial place by Bethlehem in Rama. Rama was also the place where the people who were taken into captivity—which is what’s being referred to in Jeremiah 31—they’d be brought there for deportation. It was like their deportation center. And so Rachel is seen weeping over the children that were killed by the invading troops and also over the children being taken into captivity.

And so there’s a correlation, of course, to the killing of these children and also the removal of Christ into Egypt, although not into bondage but into protection.

The third section deals with the return, of course, of our Savior. And in that third section, Joseph comes back. Herod has died. But instead of going back to Bethlehem, he’s warned that one of Herod’s sons is now over that region. When Herod died, his empire was broken up into three parts. And the part over Bethlehem was ruled by a more tyrannical ruler than the part in Galilee up in the north where Nazareth was. And so Joseph is told to go there. And again, the citation is made that this is so that things might be fulfilled, the prophets’ sayings be fulfilled, that he would be a Nazarene.

Three prophets’ prophecies. Now, that last prophecy is a little obscure, and I don’t want to deal with it today. I want to deal with, in very summary fashion, the first and second points of this narrative. And I want to deal with them in reverse order.

We have then these fulfillments of prophecy, and we have, rather obviously, and even more if you look at it in detail, a correspondence with the story of Moses and the Exodus. You remember, of course, that Moses was put in captivity by a different Herod—a different Satanically-inspired ruler, Pharaoh. He struck out at the children of God, the children of Israel in captivity in Egypt, and slaughtered the male children. Moses was saved from that, just as Jesus was as well.

So the flight into Egypt recalls for us the protection of the infant Moses from the plot of a wicked tyrant. The massacre of the innocents recalls the slaying of the Hebrew children by Pharaoh. The return from Egypt is explicitly linked to Israel’s exodus from Egypt. And to some extent, Matthew portrays Jesus throughout the gospel as a new Moses, the founder and lawgiver of the true Israel. When we get to Matthew 5, we know the Sermon on the Mount—it’s another giving of the law of God. He’s the greater Moses. And so we have these correlations to the Old Testament picture of the exodus of God’s people.

And I want to deal with these two fulfilled prophecies in sections one and two, not section three. We won’t deal with that.

But we will deal first of all with the middle section with the citation that Herod of course slaughters the innocents, and then the fulfillment of this prophecy is brought to pass: “Rachel weeping in Rama for her children.”

Now, as I said, this was a historical reality in the time of the taking away into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, and the slaughtering of some and the deportation of others. And so Rama was this place historically that is linked to that. But the text gives us a specific explicit link in terms of the book of Jeremiah. So if you could turn to Jeremiah 31, we’ll look at this citation of prophecy as a way of bringing us to worship our Savior today.

The section really begins with verse 10. Let’s read some of that—Jeremiah 31:10.

“Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him and keep him as a shepherd does the flock. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob and ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he.’ Therefore, they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, streaming to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat and new wine and oil, for the young of the flock and the herd. Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden, and they shall sorrow no more at all.

“Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old together, for I will turn their mourning to joy, and I will comfort them and make them rejoice rather than sorrow. And I will satiate the soul of the priests with abundance, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness,” says the Lord.

“And here’s the verse that’s fulfilled: Thus says the Lord, ‘A voice was heard in Rama, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears. For your work shall be rewarded,’ says the Lord, ‘and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope in your future,’ says the Lord, ‘that your children shall come back to their own border. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself. You have chastised me, and I was chastised like an untrained bull. Restore me, and I will return, for you are the Lord my God.

“‘Surely after my turning, I repented. And after I was instructed, I struck myself on the thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated, because I bore the reproach of my youth.’”

The citation from Jeremiah that Matthew brings into this text and helps us to understand the historical event of the slaughter of the innocents is not a text that is filled just with mourning. And in fact, you’ll notice, and we could go on to read the rest of Jeremiah 31, it concludes in the great promise that the new covenant will come and be fulfilled in Messiah and our sins will be forgiven.

The correct understanding of history is that history is God’s actions in time and space, linking events to help us understand events and to help us to understand our own times as well. We’ve got weeping for our country in the midst of the destruction—the slaughter of the innocents of abortion, the slaughter of unarmed combatants in Iraq, the slaughter of the marital relationships by our civil rulers who don’t take that vow seriously, the most sacred of vows. And how could they take seriously their oath of office?

But the context tells us that the way to interpret these events is to realize that God is in the process, working in the context of history to redeem his people, to chastise his elect for their sins, and to bring them back to joy and fulfillment in Messiah.

The text from Jeremiah 31 brings us into the realization that no matter what historical situations are ongoing in our day and age, the sovereign Lord of all history is at work affecting his purposes, using sin sinlessly, using the sin of Herod and the slaughter of the innocents to fulfill prophecy and to show the extent to which God’s people needed salvation.

When people heard about those events, surely it would cause reflection. When things die and people die, things change in people’s perception, and they would then be prepared for John the Baptist, who would come to them and say, “Be baptized for the remission of your sins. Repent. The Savior is at hand.”

Properly understood, this prophecy brings us a note not just of sorrow for present sins but a recognition that present sins are the prelude to God’s chastisement of his people and his recovery of Ephraim, who smites himself on the breast finally and says, “I have been a terrible son. I need salvation.” Messiah has come to affect the repentance of his people, to inaugurate the new covenant, and to cause us to joy in the midst of adversity, knowing that adversity is surely part of the sovereign Lord of history’s providence in affecting the universal reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This prophecy, properly understood, brings us great joy when we understand its significance to our time. But even greater joy is found in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the first section of this narrative account.

Jesus is taken into Egypt that the prophecy might be fulfilled. The text tells us, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” Now that prophecy is in Hosea 11. Turn there if you would please, and we’ll look at that particular prophetic statement and its interpretation. Hosea 11:1-4.

Now we can see some big overarching themes here, of course. In Herod’s trying to kill the child, remember the book of Revelation: the dragon sits waiting for the woman to give birth. And instead of celebrating Christmas, instead of singing songs of joy for the coming of Messiah, the dragon, the serpent of old—that serpent that we learned about and thought through quite a bit about when we did our studies in Genesis this year—that serpent is alive and well and doing things in the context of our Savior’s birth.

He is attempting to kill him just as he attempted to thwart the coming of the promised seed throughout Old Testament history. Now, at the birth of Jesus, the dragon is there, inspiring Herod, demonically inspiring Herod, to strike out at our Savior, just as Pharaoh struck out at the seed of the woman. Satan, the great dragon, using a demonically inspired Pharaoh to strike at the seed of the woman. So here, Herod strikes at the seed of God.

But of course, all of this is in the context of God’s providence.

Hosea 11, beginning at verse one, says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

Now, this is an amazing statement. This tells us that Jesus Christ is the Israel of God. Now, obviously, it’s a historic statement back 700 years before Hosea wrote, reminding God’s people of him calling them out of bondage to sin and death in Egypt—Israel, God’s people, being brought out of bondage to sin and death. But just as surely, we know now that Hosea was pointing 700 years ahead to when our Savior would be born. And this prophecy would find its full fulfillment in Jesus, the Israel of God, the true Son, the second Adam, the head of the new humanity, in him, his elect people, the beloved Son of the Father.

This is who comes out of Egypt.

We see then an understanding that really it was Jesus leading the people of God in the Old Testament out of bondage through the wilderness into the promised land to praise him, and going with them into captivity to chastise them and bring them back to sing praises to him. Jesus is the Israel of God.

But like the passage from Jeremiah, Hosea goes on: “As they called them, so they went from them. They sacrificed to the Baals and burnt incense to carved images. I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them.”

See, when Israel comes out of Egypt—the lesser Israel, the type, the biblically inspired type of the Lord Jesus Christ—they are not perfect. They need. They continue to demonstrate the need for the Savior, the true Israel of God, to come, because they are wayward. The same wayward Ephraim, the ruling tribe, that was corrected in the context of Jeremiah, who comes to repentance for their sins.

The scriptures tell us that Jesus is the true Israel of God. And because we are in Christ covenantally, we are Israel as well.

Galatians 4 says, “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into your heart, crying out, ‘Abba, Father, Father.’ Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

Old Israel was brought to the promised land. New Israel, typological Israel, the ultimate Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ, is brought out of Egypt into the promised land. And we, the sons of God, by covenantal adoption into the work of our Savior, we, the new Israel of God, move as well in the context of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we move now not into Canaan. We move now, following our Savior, into all the world.

He comes back to conquer death and hell for his people and to lead us in victory as the Israel of God.

R.J. Rushdoony, writing in a commentary on the book of Revelation, talked about the many correlations between Jesus and Moses and the Exodus experience of the Old Testament church. He wrote this: “Jesus is both the new Moses and the greater Joshua. He is the deliverer of God’s people. Simeon at the temple declared that his eyes had seen God’s salvation, having seen the infant Savior, for he was one of those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem, deliverance from captivity, from spiritual Egypt.

“Pharaoh’s killing of the infants is paralleled by Herod’s murderous order. The infant Christ is called the true Israel, called out of Egypt. In our text today, Israel’s 40 years of temptation in the wilderness and its failure is matched by Christ’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, ending in victory. Jesus resisted by quoting Moses. Jesus sent out 12 disciples to be the new Israel of God, the new heads of a new nation or people. Jesus also sent out 70, even as Moses gathered 70 to whom God gave the spirit.

“We are given parallels to the conquest of Canaan and the destruction of the city by the fire of judgment in Matthew 10, Matthew 11, and Matthew 24. The old Jerusalem now has the role of Canaan and is to be destroyed. The whole world is the new Canaan to be judged and conquered. ‘Go ye into all the world.’ Both Exodus and Revelation and our text from Matthew point us to the tabernacle—then, the first with the type; the second with the reality, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, Israel come out of Egypt.

“The picture here is that Israel has become Egypt and Israel is going to be conquered by the Lord Jesus Christ. But that conquering will come by way of submission to the cross and going to death for our sins.”

Again, to quote from R.J. Rushdoony: “God from all eternity created and ordained Israel, Hosea, Matthew, Joseph, Mary, and the child. All events are linked in a common purpose and goal because they come from the hand of one Lord.

“Adam was created and by grace was the son of God. Adam fell, but a new covenant son of grace was called out. The covenant people Israel called a son by God himself. In Exodus 4, God said ‘They are my son,’ and he then goes on to say ‘Let my people go that they may worship me.’ This Son was called out of Egypt and given God’s covenant law and the sacrificial system which set forth the atoning and justifying work of God’s Son who was to come.

“The priests of Israel, as types of the Son, had a totally prescribed task, dress, and life because they were stand-ins representing the greater One who was to come. The purpose of God’s covenant is to call his Son out of Egypt, out of bondage and captivity, out of death and sin. In brief, out of the fall. Out of the fall.

“He comes as the second Adam and the true Israel to create, to bring to pass the great Exodus, the true Exodus, to bring us out of the fall and its effects. By prophetic events, words, sacrifices, and rites, God shows his elect people the meaning of past, present, and future events, so that when these things come to pass, they recognize what God is doing for his elect’s sake.

“Thus, whenever Hosea or any other prophet or writer wrote the pages of scripture, they wrote in the Lord and in the context of his purpose, mind, and meaning.”

Now, we’ve talked about the bookends of Matthew—their corollary events at the beginning and end. The concluding bookend to this section of Matthew, moving in four spaces from the end, as it were, is the story of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, and then his death—in the great Egypt, his being placed in the context, taking our sins upon himself in the great Egypt, the great picture of bondage and sin and death.

Jesus comes to affect our deliverance from that death that’s due to us as sinners. But he comes also to destroy Jerusalem, which had now become Egypt. He comes with personal salvation affected through his work on the cross. But to limit the message of Christmas to that alone is far too short a measure, because he comes to affect the beginning of the march, the movement, the conquest not of Canaan but now of all the earth.

And the picture of that is the providential work of the Lord Jesus Christ, coming in AD 70 to destroy Jerusalem, which had become totally apostate in its nature.

Jesus Christ is the Israel of God. And as such, he is the King. He is the true Israel, the one who rules for God. That’s what Israel means. He is God as King, God at war victoriously.

Again, to quote R.J. Rushdoony: “In him God has called his sons of grace, the children of adoption, out of Egypt, out of bondage to sin and death. He has set their feet on the road to the promised land. And he goes before and behind them—a pillar of fire and a cloud—to protect and defend them. He is their assurance of victory and their confidence.

“As long as the covenant people move by faith and in obedience to him, God rules over them and through them, and God wars in and through them. They are God’s Israel, his visible kingdom and army. Christ is God’s true Israel. And we are members of Christ. We, as members of Christ, are the Israel of God. He is King of the nations and King of the earth. And all nations shall submit to Christ the King and his law.

“There are no non-combatants in this warfare.”

The text tells us that we’re either magi or Herods. We’re either the true Jerusalem or we’re Egypt. We are either those who war with the preaching of the gospel and the prayers of the saints ascending to heaven, or we are those who are warred upon by the one whose birth we celebrate this day.

Make no mistake about it. This country is being warred upon. In a sense, the judgment’s not full, but it’s obvious that God is rolling back the curtains and showing all the things that go on in the context of our leadership that probably have gone on a long time. But there is an eschaton. There is an end point. There’s an eschatology to the events that we see in the context of our day as well.

The question is, what side shall we be on? Shall we be those who cover up our sins and try to pretend those sins aren’t there? Shall we joy in the sort of political maneuvers that we’ve seen happen in this last week? Shall we be those who fade away from our commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ?

See the great warning sign that God is placing in front of our road. Children of the Lord, children of godly families here—see the tremendous warning. The path of failure to commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ and failure to grow in consecration to the one whose birth we celebrate in joy in this day is the path to destruction. It’s the path this country is going down.

But it is the path that ultimately ends in the destruction of Herod. You know, Herod died a terrible death—horrible diseases, his entrails were rotting out. He had terrible physical calamities which I won’t go into. That’s the picture of the eternal punishment of him in hell.

And the scriptures tell us that we indeed are called, as the Israel of God, to go forth in action to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, we’ve talked about these. In these two chapters we have been given various pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we read that Jesus is Israel, “out of Egypt I shall call my son,” that means that we are the Israel of God. And that he is with us. He is our new humanity.

When we read of his pedigree, as we read in Matthew chapter 1, coming forth from the kingly tribe of David and the king-bearing seed of Abraham, that’s our pedigree, because we are in Christ. We are the Israel of God. That is our heritage.

When we read of Jesus Christ, the Savior King, we read of ourselves—kings under the great King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, anointed by God and by his spirit for the work of affecting the proclamation of the gospel of the Savior.

When we read of Jesus, we are in a sense smaller Jesuses, Saviors, by taking his word of salvation and pointing people to his work in the great Exodus that he performed in the context of his going to the cross. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus appeared in glory and he spoke of his decease, his departure. The Greek word there is the word Exodus—that he would fulfill in Jerusalem.

God called Jesus out of Egypt, and Jesus went to the greater Egypt of the grave and fulfilled the Exodus for his people in his departure from that grave. And we fulfill our part, as the true Israel of God, as we take that message of salvation of Jesus Christ, his name, his pedigree, his movement toward the future, his proclamation that all the world shall be discipled to him, into everything that we do and say.

I don’t know how this week went for you. I don’t know if you even paid attention to the current events of the day. I’m not saying it’s a good idea to even do it. Maybe your week was filled with plans for Christmas. Maybe it was filled with attempts on your part to get everything ready for this coming week. And maybe in the context of that busyness of life, you forgot what Christmas was all about.

Maybe you forgot to be kind and tender in your speech. Maybe you were lured either through the shopping craze or what’s on TV to have impure thoughts in your hearts and in your minds. Maybe you were just a little colder this week to the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you think that somehow there’s no hope for you. Maybe you have besetting sins that you’ve had to deal with for a long time in your life, and somehow as you come to Christmas, you have an awareness that you’re just not making the grade.

Well, I want you to focus today on the fact that while we are the Israel of God, Jesus is the true Israel of God. “Out of Egypt, I shall call my son.”

This text, culminating as it does this whole section on the recreation of humanity and the Lord Jesus Christ, his anointing, his salvation, his going forth, the promise of his dominion with the star, the Gentile kings coming to him—all of these things are given to help us interpret not just the history of that time, but to help us interpret our history as well.

We are not caught in a plot without the other side of the coming up visible. It is visible because Jesus Christ reigns and he’s affecting his purposes for you and for his culture.

As we focus on the risen Savior, as we focus on his incarnation, his performing for us the great Exodus from the grave, we can come forward and worship him with a sure knowledge that we are covenantally in him and shall be redeemed from all our sins and misery—have been definitively, and shall be progressively—and the culture shall be as well.

The next section of Matthew is John the Baptist coming and preaching that Jesus Christ and his kingdom is here. Repent of your sins.

I would urge you today to worship the risen Savior. I would urge you today, as you come forward with your gifts and offerings, to confess whatever sin you may participate in in your life and in your family, and to confess as well our failure as a nation to adequately look at qualifications for officers in the church and in the state. And to recognize that this shaking that we see going on is not the end of the story.

Just as the weeping was heard in Rama, it was to the end that God’s people might be chastised, that God’s people might be delivered from sin and suffering in their bondage to that sin, that they might indeed bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ and acknowledge indeed that his incarnation means that history is totally relevant to us. And it is to be interpreted on the basis of his word, and particularly on the basis of his Son, whom he has called out of Egypt definitively, and as a result has brought us out of our Egypts as well in terms of bondage to sin and misery.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you, Lord God, for the joy of the Christmas season. And we acknowledge, Lord God, that in the context of our land, that joy has been put in an interesting context.

Help us to take from this text, Lord God, a proper understanding of our history, individually and as a nation. And help us then to joy in the sureness of our deliverance from personal sin and also the cultural and political manifestations of that being worked out in our time as well.

We thank you, Father, for this season. We thank you for this day of singing praises to the one who has affected once for all our great Exodus out of sin and death and bondage. In his name we pray. Amen.