“12 Having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. 13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” 14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
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19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” 21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.””
I hope your Christmas communicates. You certainly bought your gifts in hopes of communicating love. You prepared your home with an eye towards making others feel welcomed. You prepare your Christmas meals and treats in hopes of satisfying others. You want your Christmas celebrations to communicate love, welcome, and satisfaction.
God communicated love, welcome, and an invitation to satisfaction on the first Christmas. His wanted His Christmas to communicate no less than you do. Indeed, He wanted it to communicate a good deal more than your most meaningful Christmas ever has.
This morning we will consider what God communicated that first Christmas. He communicated with the Magi by way of the stars. He communicated with Joseph by way of dreams. He communicated Himself by way of His Son. His Christmas communicated and it communicated with a purpose. It communicated to save. God speaks to save. If you have heard God speak for long enough, you know that He speaks to save. That is the claim of this sermon: God speaks to save.
First: God speaks to the magi. Second: God speaks to Joseph. Third: God speaks through Jesus. First, we will use verse 12 to consider how God spoke to the Magi. Second, in verses 12-15 and 19-23 we will consider how God spoke to Joseph. Third, we will take another look at verses 12-15 and 19-23 and consider how God speaks through Jesus.
First: God speaks to the magi. We began this Advent series considering how God spoke to the Magi by way of a star. They came to Jerusalem asking, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
Now as the Magi prepared to leave, God spoke to them again; verse 12, “having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”
God spoke to the Magi by way of a dream. Now He could have spoken to them by way of a dream when they were still in Babylon. He didn’t need to use the night sky to communicate the birth of His Son in the first place. He chose to do so. The fact that God chose to use a dream now and the night sky before makes clear that God chose to bring them to Christ by way of astrology.
Now this has proven an embarrassment for some because, after all, God warned against astrology and for good reason. Attempting to divine the future by way of the stars was a dark art that led to all sorts of idolatries. The fact remains, however, that God used astrology to bring these Magi to Christ.
If you find yourself surprised by that, remember that God is perfectly able to write straight with crooked sticks. There are plenty of stories of people who went to hear a preacher in order to mock him only to wind up being born again. There are plenty of stories of young people visiting a church to find a significant other only to hear the gospel and become Christians themselves. God works through less than perfect motivations.
Now this doesn’t make astrological charts and horoscopes good. It tells you that God used these Magi’s imperfections to show them perfection. He found them in the darkness, but He didn’t leave them in darkness. He welcomed them out of the darkness.
He welcomed these newcomers. He welcomed these Gentiles. Here at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel we see the inclusion of Gentiles. Gentile was the Jewish term for men, women, and children who were not Jewish. I imagine that category would include most of us. We of all people should be thankful that God welcomes newcomers.
Matthew begins his gospel by speaking of these newcomers. He ends his gospel in a similar fashion. Near the end of his gospel, Matthew tells of a Roman centurion who watched the crucifixion and said of Jesus, “Surely [this man] was the Son of God!” Newcomers like the Magi came to the Christ child. Newcomers liked that centurion saw the glory of Christ. Newcomers come by way of Jesus. Both the Magi and the centurion came by way of Christ.
You can know that you have come to God if you have come by way of Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” You can know the God who made you and you know Him by way of Jesus. The stars that we’ve studied, the comet, the constellations of Virgo and Hydra, the nature of the comet’s tail—all of this communicated with a purpose. They brought the Magi to Christ.
Perhaps you wish that you had some remarkable sign in the heavens like those Magi. You don’t need it. Christ has already been made plain to you. He is made plain week in and week out from this pulpit. He is made clear in the Scriptures. These signs in these heavens were fascinating but this fascination was for a purpose and that purpose was an invitation to Christ. I hope that you have already taken that invitation without the help of the stars.
God spoke to the Magi. He also spoke to Joseph. That is our second point: God speaks to Joseph.
We haven’t considered Joseph throughout this study. We’ve considered Mary. We’ve considered the woman giving birth with a dragon at her feet waiting to devour the child. We haven’t heard anything about Joseph. We do in verse 13, ‘When [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.’
God spoke. Joseph obeyed. Now Joseph’s obedience was costly. As a contractor and woodworker, Joseph had an established clientele whom he left behind. He had an established life which he left in the middle of the night to take care of this mother and child. This new family doubtlessly traveled quite light because they only had what they had taken to Bethlehem in the first place.
Christmas brought its share of hardships for Joseph. Perhaps you’ve seen this picture of Joseph and Mary reimagined for our day. If you could bring up the slide.
It is worth a look because it reminds you that these were real people and Christmas presented them with a host of real problems. In this picture, they are looking for a place to stay because there is no room for them in the inn. You can imagine the hardships of moving to Egypt with most likely little more than the clothes on their back.
They weren’t exactly alone in Egypt because there was a significant Jewish population in Egypt in that day. Jews made up as much as one-third of at least one of the major cities in Egypt. Jews like Joseph were still, however, foreigners in a foreign land. Language and cultural barriers would have taken their toll on him and his work. Thankfully God had provided for them by way of the Magi’s gifts in yet another sign of his Fatherly hand at work in Christmas.
God cared for them in Egypt as is made clear by the angel’s words when they were still in Bethlehem. The angel told Joseph to, “Stay there until I tell you.” The angel’s words make clear, as John Calvin put it, that “the life of the child will, even in future, be the object of divine care.”
That promise had to encourage Joseph. He, a mere mortal, was tasked with protecting the Christ child. He took that as seriously as the most caring father among us would have and he did so in an environment that threated the very life of his child. God promised that He too would take care of the Christ child. God told Joseph to stay safe in Egypt until He spoke with him again.
There is something lovely and familiar about this co-laboring between God and man. God and Joseph both acted as a father to Christ. This co-laboring is lovely because that is the way it should have been. This co-laboring is familiar because that is the way God seems to work. He loves to work through people like Joseph, people like you, and people like me. God loves to work through us even those He doesn’t need to. This act honors us as it honored Joseph.
Just as an angel spoke to Joseph telling him to flee to Egypt so an angel spoke to Joseph telling him to return to the Promised Land, “for,” in the angel’s words, “those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
Matthew doesn’t record the rather grizzly details of Herod’s death. According to a recent study of the descriptions of Herod’s death, the sixty-nine-year-old king died of chronic kidney disease in addition to gangrene. Herod suffered intense itching, convulsions in every limb, breathlessness, and painful intestinal problems.
It seems that the tyrant died without changing his ways. It is probable that he felt no compunction about slaughtering those baby boys a few years earlier. As we’ve seen, on his own deathbed he ordered the execution of one of his own sons.
Now Herod couldn’t avoid death. He couldn’t avoid the judgment seat of God. Herod refused to go to make his peace with God by way of the child of Bethlehem. May none of us follow his example.
God told Joseph that Herod was dead and that he was free to return to the Promised Land. It seems that Joseph again immediately obeyed. When he heard that Herod’s son Archelaus was now on the throne God spoke to him again in a dream and Joseph moved the family away from Judea and into Galilee.
This account makes clear that it was God’s plan for Christ to grow up in obscurity in Galilee. Nazareth was quite a small town. Some scholars believe there were as few as 500 people in it when Jesus lived there.
Some were embarrassed by Jesus’ background. Nathanael dismissed Jesus at first blush asking, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The religious leaders dismissed Jesus as a backwater phenomenon. They scorned him for his upbringing, but it was the plan of God. He wanted His Son to grow up in the safety of anonymity. We know very little about Jesus for a few decades other than that he worked with his father as a carpenter.
There is a beauty to this obscurity and anonymity. God was at work quietly, which is how He often prefers to do His work. Those who had eyes to see would come to recognize Jesus for who he was background and all and that has always been the case. If you need Jesus to be something more than he is for you to believe, you will never believe. If you are unimpressed by God in the flesh, you will remain unimpressed throughout eternity. Please don’t do that. Don’t let your preconceived notions blind you to the glory of God.
What God does and says need not live up to my expectations or yours. Salvation took the form of a man who remained anonymous for decades. Salvation takes the form of this man dying on an implement of torture and execution. Salvation takes the form of confessing that he lived the life you should have and he died the death you should have.
God spoke to Joseph to take Jesus into this anonymity. Now this is the last we hear of Joseph in the gospels. Scholars generally assume that he died before Jesus began preaching and teaching. It seems that Joseph saw the Messiah in action at home and in the carpenter’s shop. There must have been any number of nights when Joseph wondered what those long years of living as a refugee in Egypt were all about. There must have been any number of days when as he worked with his son in his shop, he wondered just exactly what this boy would do to save humanity.
I trust that you know what that boy would do to save humanity. I trust that you know what Joseph didn’t live to see. You know a good deal about Jesus’ life that was closed to his earthly father. Joseph doubtlessly knew Jesus’ favorite food. He knew how Jesus would behave when he began to get sleepy. He knew what made Jesus laugh and he knew what made Jesus cry. He didn’t know the specifics of how his son would die at the hands of the Romans. He didn’t know the specifics of how that death would atone for sin. You do. The question is whether or not you believe those specifics with the sort of sincerity Joseph would have had he known.
We’ve seen God communicate through the stars. We’ve seen Him communicate through dreams. Now we see that these communications were for the sake of His most profound communication, which is, of course, His Son. Nothing and no one communicates God more clearly than Jesus, which is one of the reasons that Christmas says something in such a unique manner about God. God speaks through Jesus – through his birth, through his life, through his death, and through his resurrection. You don’t need comets. You don’t need dreams. You have Jesus. God speaks through Jesus. That is our third point.
It was no accident that God sent Joseph and the family to Egypt. God sent Joseph and the family to Egypt to tell us something about Jesus as you see in verse 15, and ‘so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”’
The prophet Hosea spoke those words first not about Jesus but about Israel leaving Egypt in the Exodus. God spoke of this son Israel in affectionate terms. “It was I who taught [my child] to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.”
Israel was the child whom God called out of Egypt; “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Now God does the same with His only begotten Son. He sent Jesus to Egypt because He patterned Jesus’ life after Israel’s to make clear that His Son was living the life Israel should have lived. God brought Israel into the wilderness for forty years to test them and they grumbled. God brought Jesus into the wilderness for forty days to test him and he trusted. When you look at Jesus, you see what God’s people should have been.
When you look at Jesus you see what you should have been. Christmas communicates what humanity should have been. When you identify yourself with Jesus, you will come to terms with what God intends you to be. Now I imagine that you are quick to compare yourself with others. I imagine that is the case because it is an impulse within me. You tend to critique those who act in a way that you believe you would never act. When you find someone who acts more virtuously than you, you look for ways to excuse your shortcomings. I have the same bent. We are so quick to compare ourselves with one another when we should, in fact, be comparing ourselves with the child of Christmas.
Now this comparison with Jesus can be either humiliating or humbling. You can try to best Jesus and wind up humiliated or you can acknowledge that you have encountered your better and wind up humbled. Jesus never set out to humiliate anyone, which is quite remarkable for a man who is perfect. You come to recognize his perfection by being humbled.
Jesus didn’t identify himself with us to humiliate us. He identified himself with us out of solidarity with us. God had him spend years as a refugee in Egypt to make clear that he would identify with his people who were slaves in Egypt. God had him suffer to make clear that he could identify with us who suffer. God had him die to make clear that he could identify with us who are dying. Jesus truly is God with us. This flight to Egypt was just one of the earliest displays of this solidarity.
Christmas makes God’s solidarity with humanity obvious. He became one of us. He expressed His solidarity with us. I hope that you have expressed your solidarity with Him.
It might make little difference to you that Christ lived for years as a refugee in Egypt to identify himself with his people because you have no plan on identifying yourself with him. His solidarity with you means nothing to you because you don’t find any solidarity with him. If this is the case, please recognize that refusing solidarity with Christ leaves you with precious little good with which to find solidarity. What is left to identify with if you won’t identify with God?
Refusing Christ leaves you without God. If you continue refusing Christ, nothing good is going to speak to you by way of dreams as happened with Joseph. Nothing good is going to speak to you by way of the stars as happened with the Magi. The goodness which spoke by way of the stars and dreams spoke Christ. If you are refusing Christ, there is nothing God will say to you other than to repeat Christ. Perhaps that is why God has you here this morning. You’ve tried to find meaning elsewhere and God is repeating Christ to you yet again.
Christ is the most necessary communication not only at Christmas but always. He makes clear what God is like. He makes clear what you should have been like and what you can still be like. He makes clear God’s wrath upon sin on the cross. He makes clear God’s mercy upon sinners on the cross. He makes God clear. You don’t need dreams to make the meaning of life clear. You don’t need the stars to make the meaning of life clear. You need Christ. You know that if you have him. He is worth the stars themselves pointing out. He is worth as much as God Himself. Amen.