God’s Promise and Fulfillment in Dark Days
Notes
Transcript
Handout
The Threshold
The Threshold
The Advent Narrative is not a happy ending so to speak. Light has come into the world, the Christ has been born, but it has created some murderous friction.
Herod, paranoid that there would be another king who would rise up and take his place, wants to search out for the Christ, even as a child, and kill Him.
We see this in his conversation with the Magi and then Joseph is warned in a dream that Herod was coming for the child. Herod’s direct response was to round up any male child under two years old or under and kill them. It was infanticide. He was so scared of any kind of competition, or any kind of rivalry, he chose mass murder.
And so, being warned in a dream to flee to Egypt, the holy family has to flee where it is safe. It’s a strange ending to the narrative but we have learned at this point there is nothing in heaven or earth that can extinguish the will of the Father sent in the person of Christ.
We should be used to light in darkness. We should be used to grace in danger, or mercy in sin, light in our culture. Christ has come into it, not above it or below it. The Advent story ending with the family fleeing to safety is strange but makes sense.
There is a way through.
Us facing the end of the Advent Story is helpful to see what happens.
Let’s look at it this way.
A Threshold. Or a doorway to a much larger story
At the threshold
At the threshold
Let’s look at what happens.
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.” 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.”
This is a difficult sequence of events that take place. Jesus life is literally threatened. And Joseph is warned to flee into a new home. They go to Egypt, a place that was familiar to taking refugees at tht time.
The leave their homeland because of immanent danger and move into a country where they do not know the culture. They are strangers. They move from a place that they cannot settle and move into a place where they cannot settle.
This is a place of in between, a place where they are experiencing something (in this case as the direct result of God’s activity in thier lives), that is unfamiliar and uncomfortable but necessary.
If we look at the action of this event alone, without seeing through a lens of God’s activity, it could out as pretty hopeless.
Past the threshold
Past the threshold
Even as we look at the tail end of the Advent narrative we recognize that we have to hold out both hands and see the difficulty of the situation in one hand but then to be able to look at the other hand and see that there is always more at stake than what we can see.
Like crossing a threshold. It entirely changes how you view something
The Holy Family Orthodox Coptic Church. I drove by it 1000s of times. Never went in
Egyptian food festival. 4 years ago.
Went in, got food, got a tour, met some people. Walked through the building. Now I don’t just see the outside, I know the inside. When we reply to God’s direction and pointing from His perspective that is always near us, it is the difference between driving by a building and getting a tour of it. We see an entire world that we previously didn’t give much attention to.
That is a threshhold.
This story is a threshold. We have to see it as part of a much larger story. The action in this event is the threshold. It is the entryway, but it is not the entire event.
We know it is a threshold because of how Matthew talks about the circumstances.
There is a promise that Matthew includes
This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
With that statement Matthew no longer stands at the doorway, or the threshhold so to speak, but he enters into the house itself. He sees the entire event, not for what is right in front of him but for what the event itself means.
To understand what Matthew means by this event is not to see it for what it is, it is to see it for what it can be.
Matthews, comment “out of Egypt I called my son” means something very specific. His audience was intended to hear that and think of an Old Testament prophet. Moses.
We have taken a step past what this event is at it’s surface and are able to see inside a little bit. We see this terrible event, a family in danger and heading to unfamiliarity but that God is working something out. They are going to Egypt.
This was the place that the Israelites were enslaved for 400 years and where God called Moses to free them. This single line shows that there is more to events than we can see on the surface.
“Out of Egypt I called my son” is the command that God gives to Moses to free His people. Moses becomes the individual responsible for rescuing the Israelite nation.
When we hear Matthew tell us that God is calling his son out of Egypt, and that Christ is now entering Egypt, we can understand that Christ is the new Moses.
Christ will speak what Moses speaks.
Christ will do what Moses does.
If we look straight at the events of the story this morning they look like nothing but turmoil and angst. And it is full of turmoil and angst but there is more than that. There is more than the event.
But we see that there is more than just escape. There is more than just running and more than just danger. The event is never what it is on the surface. On the surface is what is actually happening.
We see that Christ is not just fleeing he is being positioned in the place in which God can communicate who He is. Egypt becomes a place of God’s calling and His identity in God’s redemptive will. God allows the family to flee to Egypt so that we see the very possibility of God in calling Christ as one who is the voice and work of salvation.
The Gospel shows us the very possibility of God.
In The Threshold: We See What is Actual, God shows what is Possible
In The Threshold: We See What is Actual, God shows what is Possible
What God is doing is what is possible. It is important to understand that we deal with what is actually before us, God shows us what things can be.
We see what is actual, God reveals what is possible.
It is easy to look at what happens in our lives as what is only actual. It feels that way because we are in the middle of it.
Look at what happens during their return.
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.
Here’s why possible matters. One part of the story shows the family escaping, but that if Jesus comes from Egypt then we can view him as the new Moses, the one that would now provide freedom and escape.
This part of the story has the family coming back to Israel, but, due to the present political danger, they settle in a small town in the district of Galillee, in Nazareth. In one step of this story the family disappears to a different country, in the second step, the family disappears into a small backwoods town.
But we always have to look past what is actual. Past what we see. It is not just escape, it is not just hiding. It is fulfillment. Fulfillment of identity of what Christ would do, and fulfillment of identity of who Christ will be. He will be called a Nazarene.
Matthew takes this story and shows us what is actually happening but then provides the Gospel possibility. What has God said, what is He saying, what will He say?
What is possible takes what has been and mixes it with future reality. This is what is great about the Gospel. It is not just fused with historical reality, it is not just about what has been.
The reality of Christ in the world, as displayed by the less than desirable events of fleeing your homeland, of living in a small less than desirable town, is able to create a line through what has been, what is and what will be. This is why the incarnation is so necessary, because it is the instance of the restarting of all creation. God brings meaning to events, meaning and events don’t bring meaning to God.
Look at 2 Cor 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Our interactions with Christ are interactions of renewal, meaning that when God comes close, He comes close to bring life to all things. To take our actuals and make them possible.
We see what is and can’t think it can be anything else. God sees what is and thinks He is just getting started.
We are at a threshold. For some of us we are looking at the building itself and are trying to make sense of it. For some we are at the threshold and need to see God’s possibility in our actuality.
We are on the verge of a new year. Likely you aren’t on the lamb. But likely you are facing a number of actuals in your life.
Maybe you aren’t sure what’s happening next in your life. Maybe you aren’t certain how something will shake out. Maybe your actuals don’t look like you had wanted them to.
But here is what God’s possibility allows us to do in every actual. We are able to endure because God is remaking all the difficult things. We are able to persist because God is calling hard things His work.
We are able to show grace and patience because even if we are put off by difficult things, we recognize that God is not. Even if we are the difficult thing, the Good news of Christ is all possibility within your actuality.
And if you feel stuck. If you feel like you have painted yourself into a corner. If you feel like there is no way out, you are experiencing the hardest form of actuality. Know the hope of the possibility of the Gospel.
Look at how the passage continues:
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Oftentimes our actuality is such because we don’t have a better view. We can only see so much. And God’s possibility always has something to offer because His view is perfect. It is because I experience life as actual that I want someone who has a better view of things, who knows what needs to happen.
After the last great battle for Narnia, with the kings and queens and faithful servants of Narnia pressed to the wall against foreign invaders and Narnian traitors, those loyal to the last king of Narnia, Tirian, are forced into a small stable at the top of a hill. At the beginning of the story the stable housed an unwitting Aslanic imposter, and now houses the terrifying god Tash, summoned by unwitting invaders paying lip service to their own god. As they are forced into
The Last Battle
C. S. LEWIS
the stable, they do not meet the grotesque Tash in the darkness of the barn. Instead, they find that it is another world. Unlike most of the other of Narnia's royalty, King Tirian has never traveled between words. So he peaks back through the stable door to see the fading fire beside the stable, Narnia on its last evening.
“Tirian looked round again and could hardly believe his eyes. There was the blue sky overhead, and grassy country spreading as far as he could see in
The Chronicles of Naria
every direction, and his new friends all round him laughing.
"It seems, then," said Tirian, smiling himself, "that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places."
"Yes," said the Lord Digory. "Its inside is bigger than its outside."
"Yes," said Queen Lucy. "In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world." It was the first time she had spoken, and from the thrill in her voice, Tirian now knew why. She was drinking everything in even more deeply than the others. She had been too happy to speak (102-103).
He gives us grace to act in grace. He gives us the margin needed to actually love others well. Allow God to reveal the poissibility of the Gospel this year. We are never stuck.
