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.
Matthew chapter 2, we're going to look at verses 13 through 23.
As we're turning there, let me pray for us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, friend, this morning, as we're sort of huddled here together,
are you there yet?
How do you gauge your condition before God?
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.
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.
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.
You're both dead in the water.
And until we see that,
we never really understand Christianity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And Jeremiah is expressing in this verse
the bitter sorrow of that period.
Rachel here is, as you know,
one of Jacob's wives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
His indestructible life,
his mercy,
and his grace,
those are the final
and the ultimate realities
for the Christian
against which nothing will stand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
No, I'm just kidding.
Friends,
the point is this,
Jesus grew up
in obscurity
in a despised
and forgotten place.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Whereas Jesus shows us
humility is the way in
and sacrificial service
is the way up.
So friends,
which priorities
are running your life?
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
God, we ask
all this
and pray all this
in Christ's name.
Amen.
We're going to sing
a closing song together
that wraps together
some of these themes
that we find in Matthew 2.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Amen friends
thanks for coming
this morning