Matthew 2:13-23

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 2 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 2, we're going to look at verses 13 through 23.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

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.

Matthew 2:13–23

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,

Hosea 11:1

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

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

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

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

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

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.

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.

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

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