[0:00] series in Advent this morning in the Gospel of Matthew. We're going to look at the second half of Matthew chapter 2. That's page 807 in the Pew Bible, if you want to turn there.
[0:10] Matthew chapter 2, we're going to look at verses 13 through 23. As we're turning there, let me pray for us.
[0:24] God, indeed, heaven and earth cannot contain you. And Lord Jesus, when you come to reign, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that you are Lord. And so now as we gather on this crisp morning around your word, we pray that our hearts would be warmed as your spirit takes his word.
[0:54] And it opens our hearts and our minds to the reality of who you are, God, and what you've done for us in your Son. Lord, make these things real to us so that we might go forth today as your people, as your servant people in the world, carrying forth the glad tidings of the Gospel of grace and peace into this world that you have made and that you love.
[1:18] Lord, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So Matthew chapter 2, verses 13 through 23. Let me read this for us. Now, when they, that is the wise men, 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.
[1:50] This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, out of Egypt, I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious and sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
[2:10] Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be comforted because they are no more. 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.
[2:42] But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the 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.
[3:05] So I don't know about you, but I think Christmas time is a time when it's easy to become sentimental, isn't it? It seems like Christmas is the one holiday that just by the force of it seems to be a very sentimental time. I know this is true for me, true confessions. One of the things that makes Christmas sentimental for me is that this was the time of year when Beth and I got engaged, actually. So, you know, Christmas is sort of swept up into my sort of story of, you know, being married and having a wife and loving her and all that good stuff. In fact, the first movie that we ever went to see in the movie theater was the movie Elf with Will Ferrell.
[3:47] So we just kind of put that one on constant loop this time of year. I'm sure our kids will grow up to hate that movie. So it's easy to be sentimental around Christmas, right? And yet, and yet, doesn't life at the same time just punch holes into our sentimentality this time of year?
[4:08] Just yesterday, celebrating the one-year anniversary of the tragedy at Newtown, sort of taking the sentimentality of this time and just poking it through with the harsh realities of living in a fallen world. Or maybe personally, for many of us, the holidays are a time when we actually grieve and are sad because of loved ones that we've lost. You know, as we gather around with family, we remember loved ones, family members that aren't here with us any longer.
[4:36] And I think what that means is, I mean that, I think that means that if Christmas is going to mean, really mean anything for us, it's got to mean something in those gritty realities of life. It can't just be this sort of sentimental escape, but it's got to mean something in the tears.
[4:58] And I think what's beautiful about our text today is that it shows us that there was nothing sentimental about the first Christmas. Jesus was born into a world spiritually at war, a world where the kingdoms of Herod were raging against the kingdom of God and his anointed one.
[5:20] N.T. Wright, an N.T. Scholar, says this about this passage. He says, before Jesus had learned to walk and talk, he was a homeless refugee with a price on his head. Herod wants him dead. Joseph and his family have to flee at night to escape. And they go to Egypt, which was probably over a week's journey to get there. They're political refugees from the very start. And the angel of the Lord tells him, don't take any chances, stay there until Herod dies, and then you can come back. And as Matthew continues to tell the story, Herod, in a rage, does what seems to us the unthinkable and is the unthinkable. Not knowing which child it is, he just says, kill them all. Two years old and under, just put them all to death. Which from the historical sources outside of the New Testament that we have, we know that that's completely fitting for Herod's character. This is the guy who actually killed some of his own sons and killed what was reputed to be his favorite wife because he suspected them of conspiring against him. Greg mentioned some of that last week too.
[6:32] So this is the world that Jesus is born into. A world of violence and fear. A world where even evil often seems to win. And a world where mothers weep for their lost children and find no comfort.
[6:47] A world just like ours. And yet against this bleak backdrop, Matthew wants us to see something critical. He wants us to see that at each step of the way in this sort of threefold narrative, in the midst of all this tension and fear and heartbreak, that scripture is being fulfilled.
[7:11] That God's purposes are not being thwarted no matter what Herod or anyone else might do. And that in itself brings comfort. And in the end, that's what this passage comes to be about.
[7:32] That Christmas brings us something infinitely better than sweet sentimentality or a denial of the world's problems. No, it actually brings us comfort in the midst of tears. And it brings us hope in the midst of sorrow.
[7:50] Now these three sections in their fulfillment verses build on one another, I think, in order to make kind of one cumulative point about this deep and lasting comfort that Christ has come to bring us and how he's come to bring it. So this morning with the time that we have, I want to just sort of move step by step through the passage and see how it builds along. So the first one we find in verse 15.
[8:14] Look at it there in verse 15. Joseph obeys the angel's command, flees to Egypt. And then Matthew says, this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
[8:27] Out of Egypt I called my son. Now that quotation, if you look in the footnotes of your Bible or if you're a very learned scholar of the prophets, is from Hosea chapter 11 verse 1. Now if you go back and you read that chapter of Hosea, you'll see something that is kind of surprising in light of what Matthew says here. In chapter 11, Hosea is clearly not looking ahead to the Messiah. He's clearly looking back to the Exodus.
[8:55] And the son that he's talking about there in Hosea 11 is actually a reference to the nation of Israel as a whole. And he's recounting in that chapter how God brought them out of Egypt to be his people and how despite their current rebellion and exile, he will one day roar like a lion and bring them home.
[9:14] So the question is, how can Jesus fulfill Hosea 11 1 when it doesn't look at all like something Hosea intended would be fulfilled? And the answer is this. When Matthew says that Jesus fulfills this text from Hosea, we have to understand that the idea of fulfillment for Matthew and for the rest of the biblical authors is a very rich and three-dimensional concept. You know, we often think about fulfillment in one way, right? Scripture predicts something and then God actually causes that thing to happen in the future. Now, don't get me wrong, that is certainly true. The Old Testament predicts lots of things that are fulfilled in Jesus. In fact, we saw last week how Micah 5 predicted that the birth of the Messiah would be in Bethlehem. And Jesus clearly fulfills that prediction. But there's another sort of fulfillment as well. You see, the Old Testament doesn't just predict what God will do. In many places, it also prefigures what God will do. Not just predicting, but prefiguring. And what I mean is that what we see as we read the pages of the Old Testament in light of the New is that there are persons or events or even objects in the history of God's, in the history of God's salvation that function as types, as signposts to a greater reality to come. Think about the Old Testament sacrifices. This is a sort of great example. They were actually signposts to a greater reality, a greater sacrifice that was coming that would deal with the people's sin. And so when Matthew talks about fulfillment, he can mean a prediction is coming true, or he can also mean that the greater reality has arrived.
[11:09] That once was just a pencil sketch is now being filled in with all of its true colors. And that is precisely the kind of fulfillment that Matthew has in mind here between Jesus and Hosea 11.1. You see, just as the Old Testament people of Israel went down to Egypt and God brought them out and called them his sons. So now Jesus, God's true son, goes down to Egypt in order to fulfill all that Israel was meant to be and do. Another way of saying this is that Matthew wants us to see Jesus as the true Israel. As their king, Jesus will repeat Israel's history in order to make things right.
[11:56] That where Israel had failed, where you and I had failed, Jesus is going to succeed. He comes to be our representative and he obeys and loves God perfectly and he obeys and loves his neighbor perfectly.
[12:14] And as our representative, whatever is true of him as the king, as the head, will be true of all those who are counted among his people who are united to him.
[12:29] Now we see a clear example of this a little later in Matthew, in Matthew chapter 4, when Jesus faces temptation in the wilderness. Remember in the history of Israel that the nation of Israel wandered in the desert. And while they were wandering, they succumbed to grumbling and stumbling and doubting and sin.
[12:48] And yet what happens in Matthew 4? Jesus goes into the wilderness and he replays that wilderness trial. He's tempted by Satan and yet he holds fast and doesn't give in. He succeeds.
[13:02] And the rest of Jesus' ministry will be a work of being and doing what you and I were always meant to be and do. And what we see here in Matthew 2, with this flight to Egypt, is that Jesus the Christ, our king and our savior, began to identify with his people from the very start.
[13:26] He had come to be our king and as our king to act on our behalf and to do for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. And this is the first point that Matthew wants to get as he's sort of laying the groundwork here, that Jesus has come as the king to identify with his people.
[13:46] Now consider that for a second. The thread that runs throughout the New Testament, friends, is this. That in order for us to be accepted before God, we need someone to represent us.
[14:03] Our state before God is such that we can't just dig ourselves out of the hole that we're in. Christianity is not a message for those who think they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
[14:18] After all, try literally pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It's kind of a funny image. I mean, you can tug as hard as you want to. Most of us are wearing boots this morning.
[14:29] It would be a good exercise. Most of us could actually tug as hard as we're able. And friend, you're not going to get off the ground. It just doesn't work. There was a London minister named Dick Lucas who's retired now.
[14:41] I think he's still living, actually. But he used to say that growing up in the church, he always got the impression that what we needed spiritually was just a little push. That we were basically good and with a little moral improvement, we could go ahead and make things right with God.
[14:57] We just needed a little push. And that's what church was all about. You come here, I give you a little push. You go on your way, and then God accepts you. But, Lucas says, once he started reading the Bible, he realized that we didn't just need a little push.
[15:17] That we needed a redeemer. That we needed to be rescued. That we needed someone to stand up and stand in for us and represent us to God.
[15:29] So, friend, this morning, as we're sort of huddled here together, are you there yet? How do you gauge your condition before God?
[15:43] Is your mindset such that you think you just need a little push? Just some moral improvement? I mean, sure, you might think you're better than the guy sitting next to you. I mean, look at him.
[15:55] Come on, you're thinking it, right? I'm not as bad as that guy. I'm at least not as bad as the guys at work. Or my classmates.
[16:07] Bunch of pagans. But think about it, friends. You know, if we were somehow demented and joined the polar bear club and jumped in the water on the shores of California and started swimming for Hawaii, you know, if the guy next to you swims five miles and you somehow miraculously swim 40, you still need a coast guard to come pick you up and take you the rest of the way.
[16:38] You're both dead in the water. And until we see that, we never really understand Christianity.
[16:48] Jesus is the king who's come to identify with his people and to do for them, to do for you and for me, what we cannot do for ourselves. And the only thing that we need to bring to the equation is nothing at all.
[17:09] But that's often the one thing that we don't have, isn't it? It's nothing. We want to bring everything that we've got and try to make a case. And yet God says, no.
[17:21] You need to come empty-handed or you can't come at all. But if we get to that place where we see our brokenness and our sin and we come empty-handed, then, according to Matthew, it's a great entryway into lasting comfort.
[17:44] In the second part of our passage, Matthew recounts probably one of the most gruesome episodes in all of the Gospels. Herod ordering this massacre of the male children in and around Bethlehem.
[17:56] And then he quotes Jeremiah 31, 15. Rachel weeping for her children. And if you go back and you read Jeremiah 31, you realize that this verse comes from the time of the exile, of the Babylonian exile.
[18:12] And Jeremiah is expressing in this verse the bitter sorrow of that period. Rachel here is, as you know, one of Jacob's wives.
[18:23] But, you know, here Jeremiah is speaking poetically that Rachel's sort of standing for all of Israel or even the mothers of Israel who are weeping as they watch their families and their children being hauled off to Babylon or even murdered on the spot.
[18:36] Rachel weeping for her children because they are no more. So this verse becomes a fitting one for Matthew as he tries to convey and express the heartbreak of the mothers of Bethlehem as they mourn for their sons.
[18:57] And yet, it's not just that. It's more than that. Because you see, Jeremiah 31, where Matthew's pulling this text from, that chapter is all about hope.
[19:15] It's all about God's new covenant. It's all about the return from exile. In fact, if you go back and read Jeremiah 31, the verse that he quotes here is the only one in the whole chapter that isn't just brimming with hope and good news.
[19:33] That isn't just exploding with the message of God's coming rescue. So Matthew ends up doing something here in verse 18 that is actually, I think, completely stunning from a literary perspective.
[19:46] You see, what he's able to do here is he's able to give full voice and full affirmation to the weeping and the tears of the mothers of Bethlehem. And at the same time, he's able to sound deep resonances of hope.
[20:06] Friends, you see, any Jewish reader of Matthew, and Matthew was probably written largely for a Jewish audience, any Jewish reader of Matthew would have recognized right away that he was quoting Jeremiah 31.
[20:17] And that means that they would have read verse 18 or heard him quoting verse 18 while hearing in the back of their minds the rest of that amazing passage that rescue is on the way, that God was preparing a new covenant that would never be broken and that would wipe our sins away and bring a nearness and an intimacy with God like none we had experienced before.
[20:43] So you see what Matthew's able to do here? Matthew's able to say, yes, grieve and mourn and weep for the evil that has been done.
[20:57] And at the same time, in your mourning, know that hope has come, that the exile is about to end and that death will not win and that sin and evil have been defeated.
[21:11] And Matthew can say all this because Jesus has come. Because Jesus is the king who puts that new covenant into effect, who in his own person and work ends the exile from God and establishes a new relationship between us and him.
[21:32] So you see the second section of our text is building on the first to say that in the midst of our sorrow, Jesus is the true son who comes to comfort his people.
[21:47] And as we think about this second part in particular, it reminds me of what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians about not wanting his brothers and sisters in Christ to grieve, he says, as others do who have no hope.
[21:59] You see, friends, believing in Jesus allows the Christian to do something that's very incredibly unique. That in the face of evil and of loss and of violence, on the one hand, Christians are free to grieve, to weep and to wail even.
[22:17] You see, friends, true Christianity is not a stoic resignation to life as it is. It's not a stiff upper lip. Because we believe that this is a fallen world and that sin isn't how it's supposed to be and that death is an enemy.
[22:38] And so we're enabled to genuinely grieve. But on the other hand, we're empowered to genuinely hope. As Paul says in 1 Thessalonians and as Matthew says in his own way here in chapter 2, we grieve as those who have real hope.
[22:57] That grief doesn't need to consume us or destroy us or end us because we know, like Jeremiah 31 15, that a greater background exists.
[23:08] And that makes all the difference. You see, for the Christian, the ultimate reality is the resurrected Christ who took on flesh and blood to deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery as Hebrews chapter 2 says that we've been looking at this fall.
[23:26] His indestructible life, his mercy, and his grace, those are the final and the ultimate realities for the Christian against which nothing will stand.
[23:40] And grief finds its place against that backdrop and will one day be swallowed up by it. But you see, if you inhabit a worldview without God and without Christ and without the gospel, it's just the opposite.
[24:01] That life and mercy and grace, these things are just temporary blips on the radar screen. And the background of everything, the terrible rumble beneath it all is loss and grief.
[24:19] But don't you see, friends, that in the gospel it's reversed. That grief is temporary and life is eternal. That's what Christ has come to do and to win for his people.
[24:34] You see, the privilege that we have in Christ and where Christmas ultimately takes us is to a place where we can grieve with hope, to be comforted even in our sorrows.
[24:46] And in the last section of our text, Matthew points us to where this comfort ultimately comes from. Let me read this last section for us. He says, When Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared and dreamed 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.
[25:03] 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, 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.
[25:26] Now, it's important that when Matthew, that Matthew mentions prophets in the plural here. He's telling it, he's telling us that this last fulfillment isn't of a particular verse or a single saying, but it's a fulfillment of an entire theme, an entire motif that runs through God's scripture.
[25:48] And in fact, if you go back and you look through the Old Testament, you will never find a verse that literally says he will be called a Nazarene. It's not there. Instead, Matthew is saying that this is a concept, is a thread that goes throughout it all.
[26:03] Of course, the question is, what exactly does that mean? What thread is Matthew pulling here? Well, to get to what Matthew has to say, we need to realize that the little town of Nazareth was of zero significance in Jesus' day.
[26:21] It had no religious significance. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament one time. There was nothing of note there. And it had no cultural and no political significance.
[26:32] In fact, some scholars think that the town of Nazareth had less than 500 people who lived in it. Do you realize that if we really packed in, we could fit almost 500 people in this sanctuary?
[26:44] That means we could have fit Jesus' entire hometown, his entire world growing up for 30 years into this single room. Friends, Nazareth was a backwater village where nothing important happened.
[27:00] In the Gospel of John, do you remember when Philip comes to Nathanael and says, come, see the one who's the Christ that Moses talked about, Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathanael looks at him and says, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
[27:15] It'd be like someone in New Haven saying, the Messiah born in Bridgeport? Give me a break. You have to be careful when you're not actually from an area saying what town, you know, anyway. Some of my best friends are from Bridgeport.
[27:29] No, I'm just kidding. Friends, the point is this, Jesus grew up in obscurity in a despised and forgotten place.
[27:42] And running through the prophets is a shocking theme that the one who was to come would not just be this triumphant son of David, but also the lowly and despised servant.
[27:59] Our reading earlier from Isaiah 53 is one of those places where this theme comes out to the fore. Remember what Isaiah says there, he had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him.
[28:15] He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Or as Matthew would put it to his contemporaries, he'd be called a Nazarene.
[28:29] Just think that Jesus' entire life, he would be known not as Jesus of Bethlehem with all those rich, royal, Davidic connotations that came with that, but he'd be known as Jesus of Nazareth.
[28:48] Obscure and despised. No significance, no reputation. And so you see, what Matthew wants us to see, what he wants to show us, putting all three pieces together, is that Jesus is the true Son of God who brings comfort to his people by giving up his comfort.
[29:12] That he will redeem our sorrows by bearing our sorrows. you see that when God spares his Son from Herod's rage and calls him forth into asylum in Egypt, he does that not so that Jesus can avoid suffering and shame and death, but so that he can go straight into it.
[29:41] so he can take all of our brokenness and suffering and shame into himself. You see, for Jesus, the road out of Egypt leads not to Bethlehem, not to Judea, not to a throne, but to Nazareth.
[29:58] And from Nazareth, it leads to the cross. And as Isaiah 53 goes on to say at the cross, Jesus bears not just our sorrow and our shame, but he bears our sin and our guilt and the condemnation that we deserve.
[30:17] You see, this representative king is our substitute. He's our substitute who takes the penalty of sin in our place. And in exchange for our sin, he gives us his perfect righteousness to everyone who believes.
[30:37] So friends, in the midst of our tears, where does comfort come from? It comes first from knowing that Christ understands our deepest sorrows, that he too was a man of sorrow, despised and rejected by men, that there is no hardship, no grief, no pain that he has not experienced alongside of you.
[31:01] comfort comes comfort comes from knowing that Jesus has gone to the depths of the cross to pay the penalty of sin for everyone who trusts in him.
[31:13] Comfort comes in knowing that our relationship with God has been restored and that our sins have been forgiven and that we can face suffering and death with confidence that it will not end us.
[31:32] You see, friends, there's nothing sentimental about Christmas, nothing sentimental but everything of comfort. Jesus has come to identify with his people in the midst of their sorrow to bring them this comfort and this passage tells us loud and clear that despite the tears, there's hope that the king is here and the herods of this world and the sorrows of this world will not reign forever, that their days are numbered and into the mess and the suffering and the violence and the evil and the jealousy and the envy and the cruelty of this world, he comes not to be immune from it but to identify with it on behalf of his people.
[32:20] And once we see that, once we see that this is what Christ has done for us, it begins to shape how we live in the world. Let me end with just a few applications real quickly.
[32:32] First, friends, if Jesus is the son of God and if he can choose to grow up in a town like Nazareth, then surely God can use us no matter what our background.
[32:46] God can use us in 1 Corinthians that God delights in taking the things that the world despises and making them trophies of his wisdom and his power and his glory.
[32:59] Paul says, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many of you were powerful, not many of you were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise and he chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong and God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
[33:25] Friends, if Jesus can choose Nazareth, then surely he can choose and use you no matter what your background is. But second, Jesus accomplished God's plan of redemption not in spite of his growing up in Nazareth, you see, but in and through growing up there.
[33:48] It wasn't in spite of his despised, rejected status, but it was in and through that. And you see, that means that life in the kingdom of God works utterly differently than life in the kingdom of this world.
[34:05] In the kingdoms of this world, what's the way up? The way up is power and wealth and prestige. How different that is from the kingdom of God.
[34:16] Whereas Jesus shows us humility is the way in and sacrificial service is the way up. So friends, which priorities are running your life?
[34:30] Which kingdom values are driving you? Herod lives his life by the world's values and he dies paranoid and alone. Jesus lives his life in obedience to God's kingdom and he dies to rise again.
[34:51] Humility is the way in. Service is the way up. Third and last, if Jesus came to love and to serve us by identifying with us and bearing our sorrows, then our love for one another and for our neighbors will take us on the same path.
[35:11] Friends, are we willing to be limited and to be humbled, to be despised even by the world's standards in our pursuit of loving and serving one another in our city?
[35:24] Are we willing to identify with those that might make us embarrassed in the eyes of some people? are we able to identify with those that the world kind of says not worth it?
[35:40] Are we willing to identify with Christ and with his church and with the broken and the despised and the sorrowful? You see, friends, when we look at all that Christ has done for us, how he identified with us when we were rejected and despised and shamed, then we realize that this costly work of love is the path to joy.
[36:11] What he has done for me surely will then flow out to others and as it flows out to others, I find that that's where life is to be had. That's where peace and blessing flow.
[36:23] George MacDonald once wrote that the Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
[36:42] You see what he's saying there? The Son of God suffered unto death, not that we might not suffer at all, but that in our sufferings we might become like him and actually be like him.
[36:58] That in our suffering, in our pouring out of our lives, we can actually bring hope and peace to others. You see, friends, in the face of our tears and sorrow, that's what Christ brings.
[37:11] Not sentimental distractions, but true comfort. The assurance that he's come down to us, stooped into our sorrow and sin and death in order that we might be reconciled to God, in order that our lives might be set on a path to love the same way that he did.
[37:31] Let's pray. Lord, it is humbling to think that you would come and enter into such a broken and evil world of suffering and tears.
[37:50] Lord, that you would make yourself of no reputation a man of sorrows. Lord, you would do that for us, for those who had rebelled against you, for those who had chosen to take our own path, for those, God like us, who had chosen the way of Herod, the way of power and control and autonomy.
[38:12] Lord, that you would come and you would suffer for us to forgive us and to bring us out. God, I pray this morning that you would do a work in our hearts.
[38:25] Lord, that you would begin to do a renewing, reforming work in our hearts. Help us, Lord, to see that the path of following our crucified and risen Messiah takes us along the path of humility and sacrifice.
[38:44] Lord, in service. Lord, and give us the hope in the midst of our suffering that you have overcome. And Lord, that we will participate with you in the resurrection on the last day.
[38:59] God, we ask all this and pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. We're going to sing a closing song together that wraps together some of these themes that we find in Matthew 2.
[39:18] So let's sing this last song as our prayer and as our response of worship to the great things that God has done for us in Christ. Amen. I cannot tell why Him whom angels worship should set His love upon the sons of men or why as shepherd He should seek the wonders to bring them back they know not how or when.
[40:25] But this I know that He was born of Mary when Bethlehem's manger was His only home and that He lived at Nazareth and labored and so the Savior, Savior of the world is gone.
[41:04] I cannot tell how silently He suffered as with His peace He graced this place of tears or how His heart upon the cross was broken to crown of pain to three and thirty years.
[41:40] But this I know He heals the brokenhearted and stays our sin and calms our lurking fear and lifts the burden from the heavy laden for yet the Savior Savior of the world is here.
[42:19] I cannot tell how He will win the nations how He will claim His earthly heritage how He will claim His earthly heritage how satisfied the needs and aspirations of east and west of sinners of sinners and of saints but this I know all flesh shall see His glory and He shall reap the harvest He has sown and some glad day
[43:21] His sun shall shine in splendor when He the Savior Savior of the world is known I cannot tell how all the lands shall worship when at His bidding every storm is filled or who can say how great the jubilation when all the hearts of men with love are filled but this I know the skies will thrill with rapture and myriad, myriad human voices sing and earth to heaven and head to earth will answer at last the Savior your Savior of the world is King
[44:53] Amen friends thanks for coming this morning