Slaying The Innocent and Freeing the Slaves

First thing I want to do is exegete the text.

What Matthew seems to be doing as he continues the account of Christ’s birth and early childhood years, is show us how the whole thing has been paved with prophesy to show us that God is sovereign over it all.

He even draws a parallel for us, that you might have noticed, between Jesus and his exodus to Egypt, and the Israelites and their exodus FROM Egypt over 1000 years prior.

After telling us about the angel relating the warning in a dream, and how Joseph gets them up in the middle of the night and flees to Egypt, he said in v15...This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

He quotes Hosea chapter 11, which is a chapter about how God loved Israel even though Israel constantly turned from Him. Even though God miraculously freed the Jews from their slavery in Egypt, they kept going back to serve other god’s, and God kept on loving.

Hosea 11:1 says When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

So, Matthew tells us that Jesus get’s brought to Egypt as a child, escaping the decree of Herod, so that He might become the ultimate fulfillment of the Exodus story as the true Son of God.

Israel was called out of Egypt to be freed from her oppressors, and Jesus was called out of Egypt, into the land of Galilee, to be the despised and rejected Savior who frees His people from their sins.

In v.16 to 18 another prophesy is mentioned.

Herod is infuriated that he’s been tricked by the magi, so he plans to murder all the male children in Bethlehem, 2 years old and younger, based on the time frame the magi gave about the star.

Matthew connects this horrific act, and the subsequent tragedy with a prophesy in Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31:15 “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.”

So this is an interesting connection that Matthew is making...

Jeremiah is the weeping prophet and he speaks of the time of lament when Israel is exiled into Babylon.

The phrase, “Rachel is weeping for her children” in it’s original context is not about a mother weeping for her dying or dead children, but about the entire nation leaving their homeland and being exiled into a foreign land as slaves to pagan kings.

Rachel was long dead, but the lament was so deep, the prophet spoke as though she was still being heard.

And she refused to be comforted, and that’s where Matthew chooses to end his quote.

So Herod decrees the murder of all males 2 and under. He carries out the mission, and there is great bloodshed, and weeping.

But that’s not the whole prophesy.

The very next verse in Jeremiah 31:16-17 says this…

“Thus says the LORD: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.”

It’s easy to overlook it in the middle of the tragedy, but Herod missed his mark. He sought to kill Jesus, and others did suffer because of His evil, but he missed. So, Matthew’s reference to Jeremiah’s prophesy is more significant than what it presents at first glance.

The mourning and weeping from the mothers and father’s in the town of Bethlehem certainly echoed Jeremiah’s prophecy, but the hope of Jesus in the midst of it is just as real should get our attention.

The final prophesy mentioned is in v23. “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.”

The interesting thing about this one is that there is no OT quote that states “He shall be called a Nazarene.” But if you look closely, Matthew doesn’t make a quote here, but simply says that by Jesus returning to Nazareth after Herod died, he was fulfilling something that was spoken by the prophets.

Most commentators conclude that Matthew is referring to the collective voice of the prophets who predicted the life of Jesus, and that the Messiah would be a man of small earthly reputation, like someone from Nazareth would be.

The one prophesy that comes close to this is Isaiah 11:1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

That word for branch is a word very similar to the root word for Nazarene.

The significance being that Jesus Christ chose a life of humility and poverty, to grow up in a town that was despised.

Matthew makes it clear for us that The life of Christ is surrounded in predictions, and all of them are meaningful…all of them showing us something about His plan to save us.

- Just as Israel was freed from Egypt, Christ, the true Israel, is our ultimate freedom from slavery to sin.

He becomes this fulfillment and in this there is great hope

- Jesus is our real hope in the midst of real lament.

Jeremiah’s prophesy showed us this, and we’ll look at this a little more in depth in a moment, but there was real lament and sadness because of the evil of a tyrant, but that evil NEVER has the final word.

Finally, in terms of the prophecies...

- Jesus is the humble servant-king, the Nazarene who was despised and rejected by men, yet exalted in due time.

This prophesy plays out, not only in the fact the Joseph and Mary settled in a despised town, but throughout history.

Jesus the Nazarene, to us sounds comforting, because it’s who He is, but the significance is deeper. His greatest enemies called him the Nazarene because Nazareth was NOTHING!

When Peter denied knowing Jesus, that was the question they asked him...”were you with the Nazarene?”

Acts 10:37-38 you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

The fact that they overlooked, hated, despised, rejected Christ is not a sign of His weakness and defeat. All of these things mean that those among us who are overlooked, despised, rejected, weak and feeble because of sin can come to him for salvation, because Jesus is God and he conquered sin and Satan at the cross.

Now, I’m going to take a slight detour here...

Seeing that it is Sanctity of Life Sunday, and that today, January 22nd, would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade, and that just a couple of days ago our own governor announced legislation that she will be “strengthening Maine’s reproductive health care laws”, I thought it would be good to preach a little bit on the issue.

First of all, notice in our text that there is a tyrant in the land who’s desire is to take life in order to preserve his empire.

That’s happening on many levels in our day too.

We have a tyrant in the office of Governor in our state, and I say tyrant because she has determined that human life in the human is of lesser value, and therefore disposable.

Look anywhere in the world, and you have tyrants doing Satan’s bidding, the kind of bidding he’s been doing since the beginning of the world.

Similar to Herod, we saw Pharoah in the time of Moses issuing a decree to kill the all the baby boys by throwing them into the Nile river.

Later in the law we see God commanding that Israel not be like the pagan’s who sacrifice their children to Molech. When a child was sacrificed to Molech it was literally passed through the fire with a promise of prosperity and blessing to the parents who sacrifices it.

There has ALWAYS been an attack on children, and it is one of Satan’s primary methods in his attempt to hurt God, destroy life, and thwart God’s plan.

It makes sense…because we are made in the image of God, and what does a baby represent? Innocence, and life, and newness, and purity. When a human life is taken, any human life, it is an awful thing. When an child’s life is taken by murder, it means something different because everyone knows that that child represents the purest form of God’s creation.

Ok, so we know these murderers and tyrants exist today in government, in planned parenthood, in many places of influence all over this world…and so we ask ourselves, what can be done?

We can seek to change laws, and some of you should be doing that.

We can peacefully get our voices heard, preach truth and stand in the way, and some of you are doing that.

Incredibly enough, in the text we’re studying we have a great example that I want us to lean into.

It’s not an exhaustive study of all that can be done, but it is an important one that should not be overlooked.

The magi leave town, and angel appears to Joseph warning him that Herod is seeking to destroy Jesus, and that he’s to take a 100 mile journey on foot to Egypt and remain there unto God tells him what to do next.

“Rise, take the child and His mother.”

Revelation 12:4 And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.

We can see that there are supernatural powers at work to destroy Jesus, but who has God appointed to stand up as the protector, provider, and leader in this situation?

It’s Joseph. It’s the same man who by faith took Mary as his wife even though all of their peers would have sharply disapproved.

This is the man who adopted Jesus to be his own...

and in both of these acts of faith and obedience we see a characteristic in Joseph that exemplifies our Heavenly Father.

God is a father to the fatherless, and we need men in the church, who are willing to be like Joseph, and to turn back the tides of fatherlessness in our culture, and symptoms of fatherlessness in our own homes.

Look at Joseph’s quick obedience to the command of God. He wasn’t asked to do anything easy by anyone’s standards, yet this did not slow him from getting up in the middle of the night to protect the child, and the child’s mother from the harm of their enemy.

When we think about what needs to be done to fight the wickedness of tyrants who want to kill children and destroy families, we need to address the foundational issues.

And what is one thing we see at the foundation of the life God created? The family unit. A man, a woman, united for God’s glory, producing image bearers, raising them in the fear of the Lord - - Women who are not ashamed of being women, created as the weaker vessel yet designed to love, nurture, create, comfort, and be the helpmate of her husband - - and men being men - unashamedly masculine, not using their strength to hurt and control, but to provide, protect, and lead as sacrificial servants.

And that’s what we see Joseph doing here.

He was present and engaged.

God was doing something extraordinary, but he was using the ordinary actions of a just man to preserve life and promote righteousness.

None of this erases the tragedy that was happening in Bethlehem when Herod’s soldiers arrived. That was cause for true lamentation, just as we should weep and mourn at the thought of all that is broken, the millions of aborted babies, the children today who are being led to the slaughter in the public school systems, and the parents who are allowing it. The deception we see regarding the meaning and purpose of life, the utter evil and atrocities being commited against children…for all of this we should lament.

We need to weep at this, but we are never left without hope, and the hope is the Gospel.

It is only in the Gospel that we can make sense of this because it is through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that any sinner can come into a reconciled relationship with God the Father, and begin to see that His design, His heart, his will and is commands are good.

There will always be fatherless children in our broken world, and enemies of Christ, but it is the church’s influence in this world that says - this is not good, and that is wrong, not only by protesting the evil, but by repenting of sin, putting faith in Christ, and being lights in this world.

How does this apply to us today?

I want to say this one thing briefly just in case it’s an encouragement to someone here…if you’ve prayed about adoption or fostering, maybe this year is the year to step out in faith with your family and become the parents of a child who right now is being forgotten or neglected, and who otherwise may become another statistic of brokenness.

You’re in good hands, and this church should and can be a culture for adoption. So, if that’s for you, praise God. The Lord will provide what you need.

But in a more broad sense of application, what is needed more than anything in our culture are Christians who model the willingness, like Joseph, to repent of selfishness and sin, listen for the voice of God, and simply obey Him, and so much of it needs to start in the home.

So, let me challenge you this morning to examine your hearts, and if what you find there is an unwillingness for simple obedience in your own life, whether as a father, mother, husband or wife, single parent, or whatever your position may be, then don’t bother being angry about what Janet Mills is doing, or any other tyrant, because until the church is able to model repentance and faith in Christ in our homes, our marriages, and with our own children, we are playing the hypocrite.

If we are going to value human life and understand it’s sanctity and preciousness, and convince the enemies of Christ, and the spiritually apathetic of the same, then you and I need to model a serious conviction for the truth of Jesus, and a commitment to obedience. This is how we change the world and grow the Kingdom.