Our scripture reading this morning is from Matthew 2, a story that is often called the flight into Egypt, and it takes place just after the wise men have visited Herod in Jerusalem and learning that the king of the Jews was to be born in Bethlehem. they went to Bethlehem to worship Jesus and to give him gifts, and then being warned in a dream not to go back and report to Herod, they depart for their own country. And we then take up the reading, Matthew chapter 2 at verse 13. This is God's own word. Now when 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 have called my son. Then Herod, when he saw he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he 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. And 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 shall be called a Nazarene. So far the reading of God's Word. Well, we are after Christmas, and we probably have different feelings about that. Some of us are probably sorry to see it over. Others of us are possibly glad to see it over. Some of us may have mixed feelings, pros and cons. But there's always a kind of letdown in one way or another after Christmas. And the preacher has to figure out, what do you preach after Christmas? So I thought maybe we'd preach an after Christmas story. It's pretty clear that the wise men did not come to worship Jesus on Christmas Day. They came later. We're not sure exactly how much later. Joseph and Mary and Jesus were still in Bethlehem, so it probably wasn't a lot later, but it was somewhat later. For the purposes of this Sunday, we could say it was two days later. We don't know that. And the wise men then are an after-Christmas story. And after the wise men, we have the flight into Egypt and the slaughter of the innocents, as these events are called, also as part of the after-Christmas story. And, of course, whenever we come to the Bible, the question we want to ask ourselves is, what is God teaching us through these stories, through these events, through these happenings? What is his purpose? What is he communicating to us? We ask that at Christmas. What is he communicating at Christmas? We ask that about events before Christmas and events after Christmas. And when we step back a minute and look at the way Matthew has begun his gospel, we find that he has several episodes, all apparently with the same purpose, to tell us something about who Jesus is. What is the identity of Jesus? Who is God declaring this baby who has been born to be? And so we see in Matthew, first of all, that we have this genealogy, and the conclusion of the genealogy is that this baby born to all these generations of Israelites is the Christ. That's the identity of Jesus that the first part of Matthew wants to communicate to us. And then we have the event of the angel coming to Joseph to encourage him to take the baby that has been conceived in the womb of Mary as his own. And the angel says to Joseph, you will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. And so, that story is teaching us that Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is Christ. Jesus is the Savior. Then we have the wise men coming. And what do they say? They say, we've come to find him who was born King of the Jews. King. So, Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is the King. And then we come to this fourth episode. This fourth episode about the flight into Egypt. And I would like to suggest that what Matthew is really teaching us here is that Jesus is God's son. Jesus is God's son. That's what we read there in verse 15 of chapter 2 of Matthew. The family remained in Egypt until the death of Herod. this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, namely the prophet Hosea, chapter 11, verse 1, Out of Egypt I called my son. My son. In this episode of Matthew, Jesus is not just the Christ and the Savior and the King. Jesus is the Son. But you know, as we think about that prophecy in Hosea and what Hosea was talking about, what Matthew is talking about in quoting Hosea about the Son, we see he's looking at the Sonship of Jesus in a slightly different way than we normally do. When we talk about Jesus as Son, usually we immediately think of Jesus as the Son of God, right? That's true. That's one of the great themes of the New Testament. But I don't think that's exactly what's being talked about here. Jesus is God's son. But that is not, I think, the focus here. Then often we say, well, he's the son of David. He's descended from David. That's why he's king. And again, in the New Testament, over and over, we're told that Jesus is the son of David. And that's true. But I don't think that's the focus here either. When Matthew is quoting Hosea out of Egypt, I have called my son. He's really using son in reference to the nation of Israel. That's the son that Hosea has in mind. And that reminds us, of course, of Exodus 4, verse 22, when God was sending Moses to Pharaoh and God said to Moses, you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son. And that's what Hosea was talking about. Out of Egypt I have called my firstborn son Israel. And so God is saying to us through Matthew that an essential part of the identity of Jesus for us is that he is the Son of God as the true Israel. That's the point being made here. And you may say, well, is that really an important point? Well, God thinks it's an important point. It's the point God is making here, and it really is very important for us. Because what Matthew is helping us to see in these opening chapters is that Jesus really is the fulfillment of all the preparatory work God had done through the centuries in Israel to bring it to the point where this Son could be born. This Christ could be received. This Savior could accomplish His work. this king could come to shepherd his people. And an important part of that work, an important part of that character is that Jesus is the true son, the true Israel. He's the true people of God in his life. He's the true people of God as the fulfillment of all those generations that Matthew talks about in the opening of his gospel. He's the fulfillment of all those prophecies that Matthew has appealed to. Matthew quotes several prophets in these two chapters. He quotes Isaiah. He quotes Micah. He quotes Jeremiah. And he quotes generally the prophets, he says. Jesus is the fulfillment of the generations of Israel. He's the fulfillment of the prophecies of Israel. He's the fulfillment of the institutions of Israel. Why did God establish a king in Israel? To lead us to think forward to the king of kings, the fulfillment of kings, the true king. And of course, we know that he's the fulfillment of the other institutions of Israel. He's the true prophet. He's the true priest. He's the fulfillment of what Israel was established to be. And this part of the gospel, I think, this flight into Egypt is reminding us that in a profound sense, he's the history, he's the fulfillment of all of Israel's history. All that Israel had supposed to be, Jesus will now actually be. Israel was called to live as God's son, but Israel really never accomplished that, never really fulfilled that. Israel was constantly failing to be the son that God had called it to be. And now God provides his own son, his true son. His, to be sure, divine son. His, to be sure, David's son. But even more than that, he is the people of God himself. He's the fulfillment of all of that history so that he could be what Israel never really was. He could do what Israel had failed to do. Now we might ask, why does that matter to us? It matters to us because it means that Jesus not only died for us, but Jesus lived for us. Jesus not only carried away our sin, but Jesus lived the life of righteousness and faithfulness that could be credited to us as we are in him. And that is captured, isn't it, wonderfully in our catechism, in the Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 60, we are told about how critical it is that Jesus lived for us. Question and answer 60 say, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner and as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. Isn't that amazing? When Christ saves you from your sin, He doesn't just take your sin away and leave you as a zero. Nothing on the debit side but also nothing on the credit side. When Christ saves us, He not only takes away our sin, but He brings to us His righteousness. So that when God looks at us as we are in Christ, He sees not just a sinful people and not just a forgiven people, but he sees a fully, perfectly righteous people because of the life Christ led, because of the gift Christ gave. And I think Matthew is talking about that here in Matthew chapter 2 in what otherwise is a slightly peculiar story that he includes. Why does he want us to know about the flight into Egypt? It's because we should see here, right at the beginning, how Jesus is living over again the life of Israel. Now, in faithfulness. Think about how often Egypt comes up in the Old Testament. That's why we sign Psalm 80. about a vine taken out of Egypt. All right, it wasn't a great success. But the idea was good. The motive of my heart was good. Why is Egypt so important in the Old Testament? Well, because it functions in so many ways in the Old Testament. Egypt is sometimes the place of safety that God's people flee away to. Abraham went to Egypt during a famine to be safe. Joseph ended up in Egypt safe from his brothers. Jacob and the whole family went to Egypt to be safe from the famine. Egypt can be a place of safety. That's what it is for Jesus, isn't it? He enters into that experience of Israel carried to Egypt as a place of safety from the wrath of Herod. But Egypt is also, isn't it, the place of suffering and the place of enslavement. Egypt is the place where Pharaoh tries to destroy the children of Israel and kills the male children to keep Israel from growing. And what Matthew is very intentionally doing is presenting Herod as a new Pharaoh Who's killing Israel's children now? Not Egypt, but Herod, who claims to be king of the Jews. So Egypt reminds Israel of all of its history of bondage and suffering, and how through the centuries Egypt remained often a source of threat to the nation of Israel. And Israel is the place from which, Egypt is the place from which the children of God are rescued. When we read the Ten Commandments, the Lord is the one who brought us out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. It's the place from which we are rescued. And so Jesus is rescued from Egypt. He's brought back to the land of Israel. Matthew says that twice. Back to the land of Israel. Land of Israel is used in the New Testament only these two times in Matthew. It's stressing how it's coming back to the land of promise. It's coming back to the land that God gave to his people. It's the land of the people. And Jesus, as the people, is being brought back. He's beginning already his life of service. Identifying with the history of Israel, fulfilling the history of Israel for us. So that his righteousness could be ours. So there's a wonderful picture here of how God is giving us a new sonship. All of us are included in the sonship of Jesus. who is doing what God called him to do. And as Jesus is proclaimed the Son, so also he's protected as the Son. Here he is, a helpless baby. And God is protecting him from the hatred of the world. Right from the beginning of his life, he was hated. He was despised and rejected. He was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. We don't know exactly how much grief he experienced as a baby, but any of you who have traveled with babies know that traveling with babies is not easy. Babies don't like traveling. Presumably, going from Bethlehem to Egypt, there was not a time change, so they were at least spared that. but already this suffering comes into his life. This suffering of disruption, this suffering of being hunted, he and his family, and how horrible this hatred was. Herod so bent on destruction that he calculates exactly how many babies he has to murder to try to destroy the one who would challenge his kingship. Bear in mind that this is Herod the Great, one of the most brutal rulers in all of history. He was a great builder. That's why he came to be known as Herod the Great. But he was also a great murderer, murdering half the members of his own family. but it's also worth noting that he's probably within months or maybe a year or two of his own death he's an old man he's near death and yet still so consumed by his own selfishness that he wants to destroy any challenge to him. If he's a year or two from death, how much challenge is a baby going to pose to him in his kingship? But that doesn't matter. In his fury, he will destroy anyone who might challenge him. And so he issues this order that all the babies are to be killed, All the male babies are to be killed in Bethlehem and in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. Anyone two years old or younger. And we see that this isn't to say Jesus is already two years old. This is to say he's not taking any chances. He's not just killing the babies in Bethlehem, but in the region. In case the baby was just outside of Bethlehem. He's not just killing the newborn babies, but anyone up to two. Just in case, this is an awful, brutal, wicked man who symbolizes the wickedness of this world and the opposition of this world to Jesus. And we have this sad lament quoted from Jeremiah 31, verse 15. 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. Now this is not the historic Rachel. We don't have a record of the historic Rachel mourning in this way. This is Rachel as a symbol for all the mothers in Israel. This is Rachel as a symbol of Mother Israel looking at her children and seeing them destroyed. Destroyed in Egypt. Destroyed in wars. Destroyed in famine. Destroyed from diseases. The horror of loss, and particularly the horror of loss of the young generation, That's what Rachel is weeping as she looks at the whole history of Israel. And now this prophecy, in a sense, fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. There's still opposition, there's still hatred, there's still the will to destruction. And the prophets had foreseen it and now it is fulfilled again. And it should fill all of our hearts, shouldn't it, with compassion for the suffering of children and should bring home to us the depths of the wickedness of the human heart that can look on the suffering of children with indifference, whether it's the sufferings of concentration camps or the suffering of abortion clinics. that human beings can harden their hearts against children in this way is a testimony to the depth of human depravity and the desperate need of salvation. And in all of this suffering, in all of this revelation of wickedness, God has protected his son to accomplish his purpose. He has sent Jesus away into Egypt to be safe. until this monster is dead and he can return. He kept Jesus safe in the travel. Newborn baby can so easily get sick, but Jesus is kept safe. He's preserved in Egypt. He's brought safely back to the land of promise. God is the protector of his people to accomplish his purpose. That's what's being said here. And that was true for Jesus. And that should be a great encouragement to us. God protects us as his people to accomplish his purpose. Now, in this time when, more than usual, we're thinking about disease and dying and how we ought to live and what we ought to do and whom we ought to obey, I remember someone saying to me not so long ago, well, I'm not really worried about this virus because we can't add or detract a day from our lives. It's all planned by God. And that's true as far as it goes. But it's also true that God has called us to be responsible. Responsible agents to seek to serve him faithfully and thoughtfully. It is absolutely true, not one of us will die until God has accomplished his purpose in us and through us. But that is not a reason for us to go jump off a cliff. God wants us to be responsible, and as much as it is in us, to preserve our lives. So we should be careful. I'm thankful that this congregation, without resistance, has worn masks for singing. It's not pleasant. It's not what we'd most like to do, but it's what the government has reasonably asked us to do. It's what the elders have asked us to do, and it's the right thing to do. It doesn't really hurt anybody, and it may help. So God will protect us as he protected Jesus. We can have that assurance. We can have that comfort. I think one of the great things that Jesus said in his life is that of his people, he protects us. Remember, in his great high priestly prayer, he said, I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost. What a promise. This is God's promise to you as he promised it to Jesus. I have guarded you, and not one of you will be lost. So we see Jesus as the Son. We see Jesus being protected as the Son. And then we see God's preparation of him as the Son for his future service. Jesus had to learn to be the Son as the faithful Israel. He had to grow up in studying the Word and knowing the Word. As he was fully human, he had to develop in the word. And we see that here. And we should note that Joseph is presented as a wonderful model to Jesus. Joseph is constantly faithful, constantly seeking what God would have him do. Over and over again, God comes to Joseph and tells him things. And Joseph immediately responds in faith and in action. What a beautiful example in his earthly father Jesus had. And this should cause all of us who are fathers to pause and reflect on the great responsibility that is ours to be faithful as Joseph was faithful. Joseph heard the Word of God and Joseph followed the Word of God. That was the direction of his life. And that helped prepare Jesus for the life that he was to live. Jesus' family had significance for who he was and how he lived. And he grew up too, listening to God and fulfilling God's Word, even following the will of God to the cross. And here we see, I think, already in Matthew 2, this anticipation of the cross, the suffering, the death, the destruction, the hatred that Jesus would endure that we might be saved. And even when he comes back from Egypt, it's not safe for him to stay in Judea. Maybe Joseph thought to himself, Well, when we finally come back from Egypt and Herod is finally dead, it will be safe to settle in Judea. After all, my son is to be king. We should be in the capital. We should be in the center of things. When Joseph comes back, he's warned that it's still not safe. That the son of Herod is not much better than his father. And they'd better go to Nazareth in Galilee and live there. Nazareth in Galilee. It's like living in Blythe. Sorry to anyone who really likes Blythe. It's the middle of nowhere. It's the middle of nowhere. If you live in Jerusalem, you have nothing but pity for people who live in Galilee. It's like people in Amsterdam thinking about... All right, I won't say it. That's the point that's being made here. Jesus, the eternal Son of God. Jesus, the royal Son of David. Jesus, the true Israel Son of God, must hide in obscurity and grow up in obscurity. In Nazareth. No place. the outback. It's all part of his humiliation. It's all part of his suffering. It's all part of his learning that he was despised and we esteemed him not. But it's also all part of where he will live in righteousness for his people. This is a wonderful picture of Jesus beginning his life of righteousness, a life of righteousness that would become ours when we're united to him by faith. And so he calls us after Christmas to remember who he is, to remember what he's done, to rejoice in him, and to find our life in him. He is our righteousness. He holds history. He fulfills history. And he will hold us. And that's the great message that Matthew wanted us to consider. He is the righteousness of God for us. And he will preserve us as his people to everlasting life. Praise God for such a great gift of his son. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, how we do thank you for Jesus being for us what we could not be for ourselves and how we thank you that Jesus has given to us what we could never have accomplished for ourselves, that he is our righteousness, that he is our perfection before you, that he is our hope and our strength. O Lord, fill us with hope in believing, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.