The Great Escape

SBS:The Lord is giving me strength. More energy and ideas. I am so excited about what God has to say to me out of this passage that if I am the only one who gets anything out of the sermon I will have still had a great day.

Matthew 2:13-23 The Great Escape

One of the saddest things that I ever do as a minister is the funeral of a small child or an infant. I have done many. The funeral of child left in the bath for a few seconds. The child who dies in the night unexpectedly. The child who dies in the womb. It is a time of sadness as the minister stands before that small casket and looks at the life that might have been.

This is a passage of great hope and great sadness. Jesus is saved, but other children must die. We are thrilled that the Christ child is saved, but we must be saddened that these other little boys will never grow up.

It leads us to ask a question about God. Why would God allow, much less plan and predict this kind of event? Make no mistake this was planned and predicted by God. Matthew points this out when he again tells us that these things were done so that prophecy might be fullfilled. Matthew tells us about fulfilled prophecy four times in the first two chapters (vs. 1:22, 2:15, 17, 23).

WE MUST REALIZE THAT GOD IS WORKING OUT HIS PLAN AND THAT WE MAY NOT KNOW THE REASON FOR EVIL IN THIS LIFE.

We are reminded of several important things by the evil act of Herod.

Standard Outline (headings and body text)REMEMBER THAT EVIL IS REAL RIGHT NOW. V. 16 Those who think there is no evil and sickness. Christian Scientist “he thinks he’s dead now” Should you help a person who is turning blue at a Christian Science awards banquet or does he just think he is choking?

John Lennon song- imagine there’s no evil, it’s easy if you try. It was not easy on the terrible night that Mark David Chapman mercilessly gunned Lennon down outside his Manhattan Apartment.

Evil is caused by Satan who tries to undo the creation of God, which God has said is good.

REMEMBER THAT CHRIST OFFERS HELP IN THE SHORT TERM.

Help through his word- comes through an angel to Joseph, OT to Matthew, Bible to us

Help through redeemed people- Joseph, the wise men’s gifts, people in Egypt

Help through those who will stand up to wicked leaders- JB, DR. Kennedy, Wilberforce, we must call those who do wicked things through their power to account regardless of their party

Help through an educated imagination- Matthew sees more than just slaughtered children he sees the context of Jeremiah 31 -the new Covenant exile now, but redemption and release later. You must read Matthew, and indeed the whole Bible through the lens of exile and redemption.

REMEMBER THAT CHRIST OFFERS HOPE FOR THE LONG TERM. V. 17-18

V. 18 is Matthew’s quotation of Jeremiah 31:15

This is the only gloomy verse in all of Jeremiah 31.

Matthew hopes that his readers will recognize the context of Jeremiah 31:15 and will realize the promise: exile is to be followed by return, sorrow is to be swallowed up in joy, the oppression of the tyrant will be broken by God’s victory. Jer. 31:4 "Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! Again you will take up your tambourines, And go forth to the dances of the merrymakers. Clyde Gunn playing tambourine “I done broke four of ‘em” That is joy

The long term is that we are moving to a city were there is no tyrant, where no baby boys die, where death is swallowed up in victory.

In heaven I believe that God will give us a look at the reason that he took us through the trials that he did. Then we will be glad to have gone through them, not fighting against the one who causes them.

When I was a child I wished that my name was Sampson instead of Samuel, now I wish that it was Samwise. I would be tall for a Hobbit.

Samwise Gamgee’s famous line “is everything bad going to come undone?” Yes it is, and we are on our way home from egypt to the promised land following our Saviour Jesus Christ.