Jesus: God's Sovereignty In The Midst of Our Tragedy-Matthew 2:1-23

Key Elements

In Matthew 2:1-23, Matthew records three events following the birth of Jesus that show his readers God is sovereign throughout history and in the midst of all situations.

Main idea of the message: Throughout every moment of history and in all situations of life, God is sovereignly working for our good and his glory and this includes moments of immense tragedy.

I want my audience to remember that God is sovereignly working in every moment of their lives.

Intro

Example of a situation in life that I didn’t understand and had to trust God was moving.

The truth is we all have experienced situations in life that we didn’t understand why they happened or why they were happening. And on a purely human level, trying to make sense of those kind of situations is hard. Trying to reason out the meaning or the significance of a situation like that and why it occurred and what’s its purpose can sometimes be an endless struggle. But as Christ followers, we are called to see all the situations of life through a different lens. As Christ followers, when those situations come to us that don’t make any sense, there’s a frame of reference for us that causes us to see those situations beyond normal human perception. Because of Jesus and the transformation that He has brought to our lives, we must see all the situations of life through the lens of the sovereignty of God. Now, I’m not standing up here and proclaiming that doing that makes life’s situations, especially the tragic situations we face, any less tragic. Don’t hear me saying today that we shouldn’t grieve the loss of loved ones or that we shouldn’t get frustrated when life throws us a curve ball. We are all going to react in those ways to different situations we face. We will mourn the loss of loved ones and be frustrated about situations in life we don’t understand. Jesus even experienced those same emotions. But knowing that there is a God in heaven and, if we have surrendered our hearts and lives to Jesus, that’s living inside of us that’s sovereign over every situation of life gives us hope, gives us peace, gives us comfort even in the midst of the most tragic situations we face. And this God who’s been sovereignly working throughout every moment of history is the same God who is sovereignly working in every moment of our lives.

And as we move into Matthew 2 today, that’s what we are going to see as Matthew records for his readers and for us three events following the birth of Jesus that prove God has been sovereign throughout history and that He is sovereign in the midst of all situations.

Which leads to our main idea for today: Throughout every moment of history and in all situations of life, God is sovereignly working for our good and his glory and this includes moments of immense tragedy.

Message

So, before we go any further, I want to talk about the sovereignty of God for a moment. Because we’ve mentioned that word a lot already and it’s something that will be a major theme for us today. I want us to get a simple but good working definition for the sovereignty of God to lay a foundation for us. Now, when we say the word sovereignty, our minds probably automatically go to control. And we use this phrase a lot that “God is in control.” And He is but not in the way we see control. God is not a puppet master over the universe and over all humans forcing us to take certain actions and make certain choices. We all still have the ability, given by God, to make free choices that have real consequences.

Looking at sovereignty, Wayne Grudem has the best definition I believe, he says “God’s sovereignty is the exercise of His power over His creation.” (Systematic Theology,217) John Piper simplifies that definition for us a little better and says that “God’s sovereignty is His right and power to do all that He decides to do.” When God decides to do something, He does it, and no one can stop him. That’s what it means to be sovereign.

Involved in this discussion of sovereignty is the providence of God. We can’t discuss sovereignty without discussing providence as well. Grudem also defines providence for us as well: “God is continually involved with all created things in a way that He keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which He created them, He cooperates with created things in every action, so that their distinctive properties cause them to act as they do and to fulfill His purposes.” (Systematic Theology,315) Piper again simplifies this for us by saying that “Providence is sovereignty in the service of wise purposes. It is God seeing to everything. Everything that needs to be done to bring about God’s purposes, God sees to it that it happens.”

Do we have free choice in all matters of life? Yes. God gives us that. Do we make choices in this life that will have eternal consequences? Yes. We all do. Because we are sinful creatures, we make horrible choices that have horrible consequences. But seeing life through the lens of God’s sovereignty means that everything, even the sinful choices and tragedies of life, God uses all of that for His purposes. John Piper also says this that “The almighty, everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were, by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” Now, we could spend all day going down that rabbit hole trying to analyze all the specific situations of our lives and trying to understand it all. The truth is that we will never understand it all. That there are theologians and pastors so much smarter than me that can’t totally explain all of that. And I think that’s a good thing because if we could figure it all out then God would lose the awe that we should have for Him. But when we rest in the truth that God is so powerful, He is so sovereign that there is nothing that you and I will cross paths with in this life that He hasn’t already seen, that there is no tragedy that will darken our door that He doesn’t already know about, then that leads us to look to Him and to worship Him even in the midst of the most tragic situations we may face. And it helps us as we navigate all situations knowing that God is using all situations to fulfill His purposes in us and in the world.

So, with all of that said and that foundation laid, let’s look at the events of Matthew 2 as we are reminded today that God is sovereignly working in every moment of our lives. Today, we see three areas where this is reality:

1. God is sovereign in His guidance. (vs. 1-12)

So, again we are picking up where we left off last week moving into Matthew 2 today and we are still in the midst of stories we would normally talk about at Christmas. It’s Palm Sunday but we are talking about Christmas stories. Today, we are looking at three events that occurred in the time frame of the first couple of years of Jesus’ life. And this first event really sets up the context and the stage for the other two that we are going to look at today.

Look with me at Matthew 2:1-12...

Matthew is continuing his theme that he has clung to from the very beginning of his gospel that Jesus is the King Israel has been waiting for. And here in the first part of chapter 2 we see that wise men from the East have come looking for Him. Now, let’s talk about these Magie for a moment: Tradition assumes there were three but the Bible doesn’t speak to that. It talks about three gifts but it doesn’t say how many of these Magi came to worship Jesus. What it does tell us is that they traveled from the East, that they were following a star, and that there presence in Jerusalem cause a major disturbance. So, from what the Bible does tell us, we know that these weren’t just men that were part of some star gazing club that got together every once in a while with their telescopes to look into the heavens, no these were high ranking officials from the East that were well respected with roles in both religion and politics in their own lands. They were wealthy, this is indicated by the three gifts they brought. And we know that wherever they traveled from, it probably took them 4 to 6 months and the caravan they brought with them probably consisted of hundreds (including supplies and servants). This was not just three men riding on camels, this was a big deal, this was an entourage. And through their studies of the stars, they were drawn to Jerusalem by a star that was leading them to the King of the Jews.

So, here’s the first insight I want to give you today: Scholars say that there is a high probability that these men were in a school of wise men that were disciples of Daniel from Babylon. If you remember, Daniel was taken into exile in Babylon with the Jewish people after the fall of Jerusalem. Daniel is in exile and through certain situations, he is eventually made a ruler in Babylon over the wise men of the King of Babylon. And becomes the one that disciples these Babylonian wise men. In Daniel 9:24, he predicts the coming of the Messiah to the Jewish people. In Daniel 2:48, we see him rising to this position of power. So, these wise men were the ones in Babylon that the king turned to for counsel. These men had the ear of the king and how they interpreted the things they did was they looked to the stars. And Daniel, now as the head over all of these wise men begins to disciple them in the Jewish teachings and the coming of the Messiah. God in the exile of His people in Babylon, a very tragic situation, sovereignly orchestrates Daniel, a Jew, to eventually become the head of the school of astrology the school of wise men; and 500 hundred years later, God sends a star that these wise men will follow to bring gifts, and here’s another connection, to bankroll the travel of Jesus, the Messiah, and his parents to Egypt to preserve the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Just a little insight and connection back to the OT for us from Matthew.

So, these men are sovereignly directed by God to Jerusalem by a star that has gotten their attention. They travel for months in search of the King of the Jews. And when they arrive in Jerusalem, the stage is set and what connects these three events begins to occur. King Herod, having received word of their arrival gathers the chief priests and the scribes (the Jewish religious leaders and the experts in the Jewish law) to inquire about who this King is and where he has been born. And the first of several OT Messianic prophecies is given by Matthew from Micah 5. The King, the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem. And King Herod, filled with jealously and paranoia, being the ruthless tyrant he was, meets with the Magi and deceptively begins to devise a plan to exterminate this Jewish King that he feels is challenging and threatening his kingship. And the opposition against Jesus that we see throughout the rest of Matthew’s gospel has officially begun.

But God is sovereign in His guidance. The Magi make their way to Bethlehem and continuing to be sovereignly guided by God using the star they come to the house where Jesus and His family are staying. And they present Him with three significant gifts that are symbolic of the character of Jesus and the ministry He will lead. They bring gold symbolic of royalty. You give gold to a king. They bring frankincense which is incense symbolizing Jesus as the high priest because it was used to burn as incense in the Temple. They bring myrrh which is used to prepare bodies for burial. It was a gift symbolizing the preservation of life after death. They are saying this is a child that is going to be king, and priest, and sacrificed and Savior for our sin. And then what does God do for these Magi? We see it in vs. 12, just as He has sovereignly guided them to the Messiah, He sovereignly guides them home by warning them in a dream not to go back to Herod.

So, I want us to think about this for a moment and meditate on the goodness and the purposes of God. These first twelve verses gives us a powerful truth that we need to hang on to: God is sovereign in His guidance in our lives. Just as God guided nature, arranging the sky to announce the birth of His Son; just as God guided the Magi, they followed the star to the promised King and were guided back a different way; and just as God guided the Magi to bring gifts to honor Jesus, to provide the money for Jesus’ family to escape to Egypt, thus preserving the life of the Messiah; the same God who did all of that is sovereign in His guidance in our lives as well. The God who two thousand years ago did all of this is the same God who is providentially guiding us. Who is leading us through every situation we face and will face. This God has not accidentally placed you in the job you work or the school you attend or the college that you go to or on the teams you play for. He has not accidentally got you at the ballpark every weekend around the parents of other kids that you associate with and He has not accidentally placed us as a church in this community located where we are at this moment in time. And this same God, knows your life, knows your heartache, feels your loss, and wants to use all of that for His purposes and His glory. But here’s the key, we have to seek Him. We have to worship Him. We have to give ourselves to Him for His purposes even in the most painful times of life knowing that all of it is used for His glory. God wants to use our lives for His purposes and that happens by first realizing God is sovereign in His guidance.

Which leads us to the second area in which God is sovereign...

2. God is sovereign in His deliverance. (vs. 13-15; 19-23)

As human beings we know something about praying for deliverance. I mean that really is a constant theme in our prayer lives. We all have situations that we ask God to deliver us from. We want physical deliverance from a situation that our poor choices usually have gotten us into, we want emotional deliverance from situations relationships have caused, we want mental deliverance from struggles we wrestle with, and most of the time those prayers for deliverance usually include the phrase “God if you come through, I’ll never do that again.” Only to find ourselves, at some point, maybe back in that same situation. But what we usually find is that deliverance comes in forms or ways that we probably didn’t expect or it may come in timely manner that is slower than we desire. Or God might be providing deliverance for a situation that we might not even know we are about to face. Whether deliverance comes to us when we expect it or slower than we expect, we must lean into the truth that God is sovereign in His deliverance and ultimately we may not find deliverance on earth from what we are facing but as followers of Jesus one day there will be an ultimate deliverance.

And that’s what we notice as we look at the second event of Matthew 2. What we see is God sovereignly continuing to work, setting up the deliverance found in the second event by His sovereign guidance in the first. Look at vs. 13…

So, God is continuing to sovereignly guide Joseph and his family. The Magi leave and God immediately speaks to Joseph and tells him to take Jesus and Mary to Egypt. And we’ll see why in just a moment but Matthew tells us the prophetic reason in vs. 15. He quotes from the OT prophet in Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Where Hosea, again, hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus is reflecting back on God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt and prophesying of the coming of the Messiah out of Egypt. So, why Egypt? Why didn’t God tell Joseph to take his family north to Syria or Asia Minor? Here’s the reason. And it’s found in a second insight for us today from the book of Matthew: Matthew, remember, is writing to a Jewish audience who believes in Jesus as the Messiah; and one of the themes Matthew continues to cling to is that Jesus is the new Moses, He is the ultimate deliver of not only Israel but all people. And so Matthew purposefully includes this event to tie Jesus back to Moses and the OT. In Exodus, we read how the nation of Israel was led by Moses, delivered by God through many miraculous events, out of slavery and bondage in Egypt. Moses leads them to the edge of the Promised Land but is not allowed to enter because he disobeyed God. The nation of Israel had been driven into Egypt and sovereignly delivered from Egypt for their salvation and to fulfill the promise God made to Abraham long before. And now Jesus and His family are being sovereignly guided to Egypt and will be sovereignly brought out of Egypt not just for the salvation of Israel but for the salvation of all people. The first exodus out of Egypt in the OT represents God delivering/saving His people from slavery and bondage. The second exodus out of Egypt here in Matthew represents God bringing the Messianic deliverer, Jesus Christ, from Egypt delivering/saving all people from the slavery and bondage of sin.

Amidst a horrible tragedy occuring in Israel that we are about to look at in a moment, God sovereignly guides Joseph to take His family to Egypt to deliver Jesus Christ, the Messiah, God’s Son from the execution of the children that’s occuring in Bethlehem. And also to fulfill the sovereign plan of salvation and deliverance that was promised hundreds of years before. And God sovereignly in time delivers His Son out of Egypt bringing Him back to Israel where He will eventually provide the ultimate deliverance for all people. Deliverance from sin and death and hell and the grave. You see, God is sovereign in His deliverance.

And this story of sovereign deliverance is not just something that God did two thousand years ago. This is not some ancient story that we should only look at once a year at Christmas. The sovereign deliverance of God applies to us as well. Because we are all enslaved to sin. We are all in need of an exodus and a deliverance from the slavery and bondage of sin. In our sin, we are all enemies of God, but God in His sovereign deliverance sent His Son to provide a new exodus to make deliverance from sin possible for all who would place their faith and trust in Him. And if today, you need to experience that deliverance from your enslavement to sin, God is waiting to save you. If today you are a believer in need of deliverance from anything that is weighing you down, take that to the Lord today. Continue to seek Him and wait patiently on Him and trust that your deliverance from what you’re walking through may come here in this life and is guaranteed as believers that ultimately it will happen in the life to come.

God is sovereign in His deliverance.

Which leads us to the third area in which God is sovereign...

3. God is sovereign in the midst of our tragedy. (vs. 16-18)

In 2010, I had the opportunity to take a trip to Israel, I hope to offer that to our church in the coming years. It’s a trip that changed my life and will change yours as well. And one of the sites we visited was the Cave of the Holy Innocents (show picture). This is a cave that is now found beneath the Basilica of the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem and it is a memorial filled with bones, some believe, of the children who were massacred in Bethlehem during the third event found in Matthew 2.

We read about it in vs. 16-18, it says...

The opposition that was set in motion by Herod in the first part of Matthew 2, finds it’s first culmination in the murder of all baby boys 2 and under in Bethlehem. Herod, finding out there is a King of the Jews born is Bethlehem, being the horrible, tyrannical, evil person that he was, ordered, on a whim, that all the boys 2 years old and under to be executed. Trying to ensure that no king rises up to take his kingdom. Now, in that day and time, Bethlehem was a small village only consisting of around 1,000 people and scholars estimate that around that time there were 20 toddlers killed by Herod, which is 20 too many. 20 innocent boys slaughtered by a paranoid king. A tragically devastating event in the life of all the families of Bethlehem. Imagine the loss, imagine the mourning over this large amount of children being slaughtered.

And God knowing this is going to happen and God knowing that this tragic event as a result of a stupid, selfish decision by Herod is going to take place, He sovereignly guides Joseph and his family and delivers the Son of God, the Messiah from certain death. And marking this tragedy, Matthew goes again to the OT and he quotes the prophet Jeremiah in 31:15, saying… So, a direct quote from the prophet Jeremiah where he is talking about the time when the people of God were taken into exile. The Babylonians came and attacked Jerusalem destroying the entire city. And all the people were taken to Ramah just north of Jerusalem. Now Ramah is the traditional site where Rachel, the wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin in the OT, is buried. Jeremiah is painting a picture of how symbolically Rachel is weeping over Israel going into exile in Babylon out of the promised land. Imagine, at Ramah the people of Israel are in chains after just watching their whole city, the city of God, burn to the ground, they’ve just seen their people slaughtered and now, in Ramah, they are about to be divided up and separated from one another, in their minds, forever. What a tragic, hopeless situation. And Matthew, in talking about the slaughter of these baby boys recalls in the mind of his Jewish readers this tragic event likening it to the event of the exile.

I mean think about it, this not something we talk about at Christmas. Christmas is a celebratory time, it’s the birth of Jesus, we sing happy songs. When we look in the gospel of Luke, his focus is not on pain, his focus is on worship and joy, he has Mary’s Magnificat and the angels singing and Simeon’s song and Anna’s song. But here in Matthew we find tragedy. We find death and violence surrounding the birth of Jesus. We find lamenting. And the point is this, please don’t miss this: Pastor Robby Gallaty makes this point, “We cannot separate the praise from the pain when it comes to the birth narrative of Jesus.” (The Forgotten Jesus podcast) Lament was a part of the culture of Israel, it was more than sadness. It was a response to the seeming silence of God in the midst of tragedy. Pastor Robby Gallaty gives us a good definition, he says, “Lamenting is when we share our heart with God about how we perceive Him to be uncaring and unconcerned with our situation but all the while trusting in Him that He will do best.” (The Forgotten Jesus podcast) On the one hand, I’m sharing my heart with you God and I’m borderline complaining because You say You’re working but I don’t see anything happening, but at the end of the day I trust You. We see this in the life of Job, and we even see lament in Jesus in the Garden the night before He goes to the cross. God I’m in the midst of a tragic situation but I believe You are sovereignly working in the midst of my tragedy.

So, back to Matthew and Jeremiah. Matthew quotes from Jeremiah 31:15 to emphasize the kind of scene that is happening in Bethlehem as parents are mourning over the loss of their children. But there’s an even deeper significance for why Matthew quotes Jeremiah here and it’s found in the next section of Jeremiah 31:16–17 “This is what the Lord says: Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for the reward for your work will come— this is the Lord’s declaration— and your children will return from the enemy’s land. There is hope for your future— this is the Lord’s declaration— and your children will return to their own territory.” Jeremiah is telling Israel in the OT that God has not forgotten them, they will return to their land one day. And Matthew is reminding his readers and us that there is hope in the midst of struggle and oppression. He is saying that in the midst of tragedy God has sovereignly worked to provide salvation amongst the worst situation. That because of Jesus, in the midst of death there is life. That because of Jesus, there is hope in the midst of hurt. That because of Jesus, we can look beyond the hopeless, painful situations of life and see that there is life and peace and eternal freedom. That the promise that Jesus brings to all of us who have placed our faith and trust in Him is that God is always sovereignly working even in the midst of the most tragic situations in our lives. And we can hold on and we can trust and believe that He will always do what’s best. He has come to end our mournful exile, to bring hope in the midst of hurt and life in the midst of death as a new King with a new covenant that unites us to God. By His grace and for His glory, He has redeemed us.

David Platt, Exalting Jesus in Matthew, ed. Daniel L. Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2013), 47.

Conclusion

Today is Palm Sunday. It’s the day that we remember when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on His final leg of the journey towards the cross as part of God’s sovereign of redemption that began with the birth of His Son. And next Sunday, we’ll celebrate the final culmination of that plan that came about through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All for the glory of God and the redemption of all humankind. For it is in Jesus that we see God’s sovereignty in the midst of human tragedy.