Sermon Tone Analysis

! Introduction

Sometimes when I get into an airplane, I wonder if the plane will crash.

When I think that, I usually remind myself that it is much more likely that I will be in a car accident than that the plane will crash and I seldom think about a car accident when I get behind the wheel.

What fears enter into your mind?

As we stand at the beginning of a new year, we may think about the things that could happen in the coming year.

What is the worst thing that could possibly happen?

Perhaps fire or theft will create loss for us.

That would be bad and would create a dent in our life, but I think we would probably eventually say, “It’s only stuff.”

Perhaps a natural disaster will create huge difficulty for us – a tornado or a flood.

But we have lived long enough to know that the grass will grow again.

Perhaps we will have an accident.

But people survive accidents just fine.

Perhaps someone close to us will die or we may face death.

That would be really bad, but we also know that when others die, we learn to cope with it and when we die, we have eternity to look forward to.

All of these things are terrible and I hope none of us will need to face any of them.

They make life difficult and we don’t want them, but I would suggest to you that they are not the worst possible thing that could happen.

I believe that the worst possible thing that could happen would be if God was no longer in control.

This morning, we will look primarily at Matthew 2:13-23, but also all the Scripture which we have read.

Matthew 2 is a story in which God’s control was threatened.

It is a terrible story of devastation.

It raises the question of God’s control and God’s direction in history and it helps us think about what would happen if God lost control, but it also encourages us that God will not lose control.

This story and the other texts give us strategies for when it seems as if God is not in control.

In a moment I will read Matthew 2:13-23, but before I do, I want to make a comment about the other texts we will look at.

As you know since the first Sunday in Advent we have been reading more Scripture in the service.

From the first week I noticed something which was very interesting.

The four texts, which come from four different areas of the Bible – there is always an OT reading, a Psalm, a gospel reading and another reading from the New Testament – often seem to have an interconnectedness to them.

I believe this is deliberate and I want to invite you to take note of it in the future.

It certainly happens this week and I want to point to that interconnectedness as we think about God’s presence with us as we enter 2011.

So, let us read Matthew 2:13-23.

!

I.                   A Terrible Story – Matthew 2:13-23

This is really a terrible story.

After the departure of the magi, Joseph was warned by God in a dream to escape to Egypt.

The reason was that Herod was terribly insecure on the throne.

This extreme jealousy of Herod is completely believable because in his lifetime he killed His wife Mariamne, her mother Alexandra and his sons Alexander and Aristobulus.

When he was about to die he ordered the death of all the notable men of Jerusalem.

So it is not surprising that he wanted to kill someone who had been identified as a king.

It is clear that he believed in the quest of the magi.

He understood the power of dreams and he respected that these men of significance had traveled such a great distance to see a child who would be king.

Therefore, if Jesus was a threat to his reign as king, it was his determination that he had to be put out of the way.

As soon as he heard about the birth of a king from the wise men he determined to kill him and when he found out that they had deceived him by leaving another way, he was furious.

In order to make sure that this king was killed he had all the babies who were under two years old murdered.

The attempt to kill Jesus was, however, not motivated solely by Herod’s jealousy.

Psalm 2 describes the attitude of the world rulers towards God and His plans.

There we read, "The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One."

What happened here was a part of the rulers gathering together against the Lord.

But there was also an even more sinister force at work in this event.

There is a graphic image of world history found in Revelation 12:4, 5 where we read, “The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.

She gave birth to a son, a male child..." In this story all the forces of evil arraigned against God were seeking to destabilize the reign of God.

In this story, the sovereignty of God and the plan of God were threatened.

If Herod would have succeeded, God’s plan would have been stopped and God would have been defeated.

This event is large in the scope of world history.

The difficulty of this story is that from the point of view of a small group of women in Bethlehem and the surrounding regions, God had lost.

In his fury, Herod commanded that all the children 2 and under should be killed and this command was carried out.

It is difficult to know how many children this involved, but Barclay suggests that it was likely no more than about 20 or 30.

Yet for those 20 or 30 families, this was devastating and the text comments on the devastation with the poignant verse from Jeremiah which remarks that there was “weeping  and great mourning” and that women were “weeping for their children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Where was the protection of God for these children?

It is a terrible and disturbing story.

Yet the story tells us that the worst thing that could possibly happen, which is that God would lose control, did not happen.

It tells us this not only through the dreams which warned the wise men and Joseph where to travel, the protection of Jesus by the obedience of Joseph to flee and then ultimately to go to Nazareth instead of back to Bethlehem.

It is also communicated through the prophecies which are contained in this section.

All three prophecies – verse 15 which comes from Hosea 11:1; verse 18 which comes from Jeremiah 31:15 and verse 23 which has no Old Testament verse behind it – are difficult and would not be thought of as being prophecies as we often understand prophecy.

Yet they are included by Matthew to communicate that what happened was according to God’s plan and therefore, what happened was not a failure of God to accomplish his purposes, but was known to God.

God was not caught by surprise nor was his sovereignty or his plan actually threatened in any way.

We think of prophecy as fulfilled when specific things are predicted and then they happen.

The prophecy about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem behaves like we think prophecy should behave.

But we need to see the prophecies in this text in the larger context of the whole Bible and in their intent.

In that way, these prophecies do fit.

The prophecy from Hosea 11:1 is not about Messiah, but about Israel.

It speaks about how Israel had to go through trial by spending many difficult years in Egypt in becoming the called people of God.

The prophecy connects with Jesus in that Jesus also had to go through difficulty in accomplishing God’s plan for Him.

This difficulty would become greater yet as prophecies like Isaiah 53 demonstrate which speak about his suffering and death.

All of these prophecies affirm that God’s plan is not thwarted by difficulty and opposition.

God comes through.

The prophecy from Jeremiah was spoken at a time when God’s people were leaving Jerusalem and taken to Babylon.

As they traveled through the area of Ramah, which is close to Bethlehem and also close to where Rachel was buried, Jeremiah was reflecting on the sorrow of those who were leaving the Promised Land.

Matthew identifies that sorrow with the sorrow of the mothers of Bethlehem at this time.

Both stories reflect on a time of great loss.

The prophecy about Jesus being a Nazarene is notoriously difficult.

The best explanation I could find is that it is of a piece with all the prophecies about Messiah, such as Isaiah 53, which speak of the suffering of the Messiah.

In the New Testament, we find that Nazareth was considered a village of no consequence.

In John 1:46 Nathanael asked.

“Nazareth!

Can anything good come from there?”

So the intent is to suggest that Jesus would come not out of a context of triumph and victory, but of rejection and difficulty.

The theme of this text is that the threat to the sovereignty of God did not happen because Jesus was protected by God and, therefore, the plan of God was not destroyed.

We are encouraged that God is able to accomplish what He wants to accomplish.

We are invited by this story to face the New Year knowing that we have such a God whose will is done.

The part of the story about the young children, who were killed, however, continues to disturb us.

It reminds us that even though God’s plan will be accomplished, terrible things may still happen.

It invites us to reflect further on how we live before God in light of that possibility of tragedy.

The other verses which we have read today give us helpful perspectives as we work through those thoughts.

!

II.

Perspectives on God’s Sovereignty

!! A.                 God Has a Plan – Genesis 46:1-7

One perspective is that God has a plan and will accomplish His plan.

We have already seen that perspective in this story in Matthew.

In spite of opposition by Herod and Satan, God had a plan and God’s plan prevailed, and so it always will.

A similar point is made in the story which we read from Genesis 46:1-7.

The context of that passage takes place at the time when Jacob finally realized that his son Joseph was not dead.

Because of the terrible famine, the invitation had been given to Jacob and his family to move to Egypt.