Very good morning. It's a real pleasure to be with you, to worship together and to preach
God's word with that. If you have a Bible with you, won't you turn to Matthew chapter
2 verse 1. We're going to read through this text that follows the account of what's known
as the infancy narrative as we consider and ask the question, where is the king? Where
is the king? Matthew chapter 2 and verse 1. Oh God, would you be with us now as we
sit under your word, read and preach, illuminate the eyes of our soul, that we will be conformed
more and more into the likeness of your Son. Our Lord Jesus Christ, our man. Now after Jesus was
born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold wise men from the east came to
Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose
and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem
with him and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where
the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written by the prophet
and you, oh Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, up by no means least among the rulers of Judah,
for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men
secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem
saying, go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I
too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way, behold the star
that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the
child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the
house, they saw the child with Mary his mother. They fell down and worshiped him, then opening
their treasures. They offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh being warned in a dream not
to return to Herod. They departed to their own country by another way. Now when they 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. He rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt,
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 he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and 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 Rehmer,
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. Being warned in a dream, he withdrew to
the district of Galilee. He went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by
the prophets might be fulfilled that he would be a Nazarene. This is the word of the Lord.
You know Christmas is such a remarkable time of year and yet how quickly it can fade into the
background as we turn the page and move to the next stop in the calendar, New Year's Day.
Matthew, the author of our text says not so fast. The celebration of Christ's birth, his advent
into the world is not just another day, another holiday to be checked off before moving on to
the next commercial event as we are so prone to do in America. Let's remember what has happened.
Let's pause. Jesus is none other than Emmanuel, meaning God with us. He is the incarnate of
the incarnate son of God, clothed with our humanity. God has written himself into the story
of redemption. He has entered into his creation, now marred with Adam's sin to make all things new.
In other words, God is going to remake this fallen world from within by becoming one of us,
the infinite being clothed with a finite. God would become men. The word made flesh.
My friends, this is mind boggling. This is the nature of the gospel. His birth was for our
rebirth, a recreation that would extend not only to our personal hearts, minds and bodies,
but a recreation that would extend to a restoration of the entire universe, which as Paul tells us
is currently groaning together in the pains of childbirth until that day when Christ will make
all things new again. In short, what God had first promised to Adam and to Eve in their sin,
all the way back in Genesis chapter three, while they are still in the garden about to be cast out
of the garden, that first announcement of the gospel where the seed of the woman would be born
and would crush the head of the serpent in Christ is now beginning to be realized.
Thousands of years have passed since God spoke that word of hope into a world of hopelessness.
Light has entered the darkness. Bread and wine are an offer to the hungry and the thirsty.
Liberty is at hand for the oppressed, for the captive, making way for reconciliation between us
and God and us and one another, those who have been estranged and resurrection life for the dead.
Matthew tells us that the events that follow the infancy narrative, what we find in
chapter one are not unimportant. He doesn't simply jump from lying in a manger to Christ
being baptized by John the Baptist at the age of 30 in the Jordan River for two full chapters.
Matthew sketches an account of Jesus beginning with a detailed genealogy of Jesus,
the events surrounding his birth and then as we find in out text today, the whereabouts of the king.
The first years of Jesus' life both in Egypt as he flees from Herod's tyrannical and imperial
ways all the way up to Nazareth in Galilee up north away from the gaze of Herod's son,
Archelaus, who would rule over Judea in the southern part of Israel.
None of this is insignificant. None of us is merely a kind of historical documentation,
nice for us to know but really doesn't move the soul.
Because Jesus' story is the culmination of what God began under Moses.
Moses was the servant in God's house who pointed forward to the Son in God's house being Christ.
Moses liberated God's people from the captivity under Pharaoh in the first Exodus from this
oppressive enslaving rule of Pharaoh, a story that would point forward to a second and greater
Exodus under Christ and Matthew doesn't want you and I to miss this.
This morning as we find in our text we are going to go along a journey together,
a kind of road trip of sorts post Christmas from Jerusalem to Bethlehem down to Egypt
and up to Nazareth asking the question, where is the king?
And so as our text begins we find ourselves in Jerusalem and this follows the previous
chapter, chapter one in Matthew where we find details of Christ's birth in Bethlehem are
outlined for us and very quickly we find that all is not well in Bethlehem.
Jesus' parents Joseph and Mary have traveled about 90 miles south, there was no Uber back then,
there was no car, this is a woman who is almost nine months pregnant traveling 90 miles south from
Nazareth to Bethlehem because of a decree by Caesar Augustus the first Roman emperor who had
issued this decree that everyone was to register for a census in their ancestral towns.
This is what is happening when we find ourselves in Bethlehem the city of David and so with no
room available in the inn or the guest quarters what we find is that Mary lays Jesus down to
sleep in a manger which sounds like a very nice kind of nativity story only when you realize
that a manger is nothing other than a feeding trough for animals where this grain and hay are
stored this is where the Christ child was laid to sleep but sometime later Jesus' humble entrance
into the world doesn't go unnoticed wise men from the east likely from Persia follow a star in the
night sky that would lead them towards this newborn king they themselves are not kings they are magi
wise at interpreting stars it's not uncommon for the time that these kinds of wise men would find a
correlation or connection between stars and political events or to see how the stars in fact
signal the birth of a figure that is destined for greatness these are the magi we don't know much
more about them apart from what we find in chapter 2 except that they saw his star when it arose and
they followed it for the purpose of worshiping this great new king what's interesting is that
they don't end up in Bethlehem which is where Christ is born they end up in Jerusalem about
seven miles north of where Jesus was laid to rest and sleep in that manger what seems to have happened
is that the magi kind of started out following the star only to end up following their intuitions
since they arrive in Jerusalem and not Bethlehem which certainly seems to be an obvious place to
look for Jewish royalty or so their thoughts remember Jerusalem is the city of God but they
couldn't find the newborn king there and so they began to ask around where is the one born king of
the Jews well word spreads quickly and soon Herod catches wing a wind of the news most likely he
heard about it through an informant informants were employed by the Roman Empire at the day
to squish dissent among the people that they oppressed Herod's reaction we see is very different to
the magi Herod's disturbed he is feeling threatened so he begins to scheme why we might ask well
Herod the great is also called Herod the king and he has been clad with the royal regal title
king of the Jews a title that was granted to him by the Roman Senate a title that he wore with a
kind of iron grip you see despite his lofty position as king of the Jews Herod was not Roman
he was an Edomites he was a descendant of Esau who is the estranged twin of Jacob you might
remember the story but Jacob or but Herod is a stranger to the Jewish faith to its history
even despite that he was nonetheless appointed by Rome to be a client king which is a kind of puppet
monarch whose strings are pulled by the imperial power up high that reigned over him and over Judea
and so for three decades Herod rules the region of Judah Judah with an iron fist and he balances
the Roman interests with his own aspirations for political power and what we find is that Herod's
reign is actually something of a paradox on the one hand it's the reign of ruthless pragmatism
marked by political shrewdness as he eliminates any kind of threat without hesitation even
his own wife who he has executed on the other hand he is celebrated he's a celebrated king
his as a visionary builder he is a patron of grand architectural promises projects in the land
and that leave an indelible mark in the region most notably his ambitious achievement was the
renovation of the second temple in Jerusalem transforming this humble temple into the most
magnificent or one of the most magnificent structures in all of the ancient world that was
the temple that was originally built rebuilt undeserobbable five centuries before as the
people of god come out of Babylonial exile but belief this facade of monumental achievement
Herod's legacy is tainted by cruelty by selfish ambition and an insatiable thirst for power
Herod is troubled by the news of one born within Judea within his region that has been given the
same title that he owes king of the Jews was not bestowed upon Jesus by Roman senate but by
God himself and attested to by all kinds of divine signposts of miracles and wonders in the sky
not only is Herod troubled by the news but what we see in the text Matthew tells us is that all
of Jerusalem is likewise troubled which seems odd since this is none other than the long expected
Jesus as we sang earlier the consolation of Israel this is the deliverer leader who god had
promised this is the seed of the woman whom god had promised to adam and eve whom Israel had longed
for all those years and when they should have rejoiced instead they're disturbed they frightened
like king Herod who goes on the rampage which is really nothing other than a mentality quite
typical of the roman empire whenever they were threatened and so here's how the events played
out in Jerusalem when Herod is first informed by this news of another one called the king of the
Jews he consults his magi the magi in the city not the wise men from the east but the his magi being
the chief priests and the scribes of Israel the scribes and of of Israel and the chief priests
they don't have stars to look at but what they do have is they've got the scriptures which
detail the place of the coming christ where he would be born which is found in mica chapter five
and verse two and it's this that matthew cites where he says but oh you oh Bethlehem in the land
of Judah or by no means least among the rulers of Judah for from you shall come a ruler who will
shepherd my people Israel and so armed with these words of Micah's prophecy and beginning to see
the store once again the magi heads south to our next destination to Bethlehem from from Jerusalem
after worshiping him in Jerusalem we find them falling down before the christ offering him their
gifts out of their treasures frankincense and myrrh and others what's interesting is that
we find in verse 12 there's a kind of a turning point within the narrative the magi are warned in
a dream not to go back to Herod they are warned in a dream to go to their country by another way
and here at this turning point there's an escalation of tension in verse 13 where Jesus and his family
are warned by God to flee south to Egypt to leave Bethlehem and to flee south to Egypt as refugees
remember friends let's take the tinsel and the christmas lights off the narrative story this is a
poor young olive skin family on the margins of society have been displaced by a government
census away from their home and they are likely carrying no more than a bag or two of their possessions
but God's watching over them he has not forgotten them no matter the bdi of Herod who is plotting
who is plotting and scheming a way to kill the christ you see in the night god speaks to joseph in a
dream where an angel of the lord appears to him and exhorts him as we find in verse 13 to rise
take the child and his mother and to flee to Egypt and to remain there until i tell you
for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him once again who Jesus is and what Jesus
has come to do are brought into sharp focus within just a very brief paragraph within verses
13 through 15 matthew gives us a window into the exodus story which itself points us forward to a
new and second exodus where Jesus is the true and greater moses who will bring about a final exodus
as god's son and so from the get-go in matthew's text there is a parallel between the first days of
moses' life and the first days of jesus' life so a little bit of history as we go back into the
old testament we see in exodus chapter one we are told that a new king has arisen in
egypt one who did not know about joseph and his brothers and the way in which god had favored
joseph and egypt during the time of the famine and so this new king that arose not only did not
know joseph but was not favorably disposed any longer to israel and much like how Herod feared
jesus the egyptians lived in dread of the israelites fearing that they might grow too strong for them
and thus escape egypt and so it's into this context of fear that the pharaoh gives the following
commandment that we find in exodus chapter one every son that is born to the hebrus shall be cast into
the nile but every daughter shall live can you imagine this takes place around the birth of
moses his mother fearing for his life the life of her son hides him for the first three months
and after concealing him and feeling like she can't conceal him any longer she makes a basket
a basket of bull russell bull rushes with some bichman and pitch and she places his in the reeds
right by the river bank what's fascinating is that the basket the hebrou word is a loan word
meaning coffin or chest it's only used twice in the entire old testament one here the story of
moses and the other was a reference to noah's ark you see just as moses was placed in a vessel that
was to be saved through the waters noah's ark as god's ordained vessel ushered in new creation
realities saved through the flood waters and we find this echoed in second peter chapter three where
where peter tells us that the world that then existed the pre-flood world was deluge with water
and perished it's as if that world no longer existed and noah steps out of that then existing
world into a new world cleansed by the waters of judgment in other words when we look at
moses's watery trial at his birth where he emerges from an arc like basket is a picture of god's
deliverance from death to life from pharaoh's condemning judgment and the death that awaits him
in denial moses is saved from these very waters by pharaoh's own daughter and it's actually an event
that foreshadows the exodus to come when god's people are liberated through moses's leadership
from their oppressive captivity in egypt they led through the red sea on dry ground a baptism
as paul tells us while pharaoh's armies pursue them only to drown in the judgment borders of the sea
one commentator notes and he he says of moses that moses's role encompasses every conceivable
office of redemption moses is a savior figure he is a forerunner of israel's deliverance he mediates
god's covenants on behalf of god and israel between the two he acts as an intercessor on behalf of israel
unto god each of these function as a precursor as a pointer not to himself but one to come
to the seed of the woman to christ the consummate savior mediator and high priest
the inverse 15 matthew signals not only the next destination in our text that being a journey north
up to nazareth but more importantly what matthew does in verse 15 is he highlights the role
of christ in redemption and what he does with an emphasis on jewish history is he points and uses
another prophecy this time a prophecy from joseph and he says out of egypt i called my son
israel friends was known as the firstborn son of god as a nation as a people israel's exodus from
egypt as god's son foreshadows jesus's return from egypt as god's eternal son and in other words if
you and i are in the sun as the people of god the exodus story is our story and testimony
as pharaoh sought to end the life of moses who was the servant in the house of god herod
seeks to kill the son in god's house christ but herod's murderous intentions and actions
in fact they foreshadow a day when pilots would sentence jesus to death on a cross
the place of the second exodus of god's people not through the waters of the red sea but this time
through the waters of the side of christ that signifies death and make way for new life
you see what's what's remarkable about this is the same jerusalem that was so troubled by the news of
the king of the jews born in bethlehem is the very same city over which jesus would later weep
as he rides into jerusalem on a donkey just days before they would reject him
the people of jerusalem became so agitated in a disdain for christ that they lift up their voice in
rage to do exactly what king herod had wanted to do all those years before this time it's not herod
but the jerusalem describes and the chief priests doing the scheming petitioning pilots and the roman
empire crying out over and over again as they shout crucify him
now matthew records a little detail that is certainly not a throwaway detail towards the end
of his account of the gospel as he tells us about a sign a notice of sort that is placed over jesus'
head as he hangs on the cross it's the charge against jesus and it reads as follows this
this is jesus king of the jews the second temple in jerusalem majestically and magnificently beautified
by herod the king counted for very little in the end destroyed a few years later in 80 70 and
has never since been rebuilt because what really mattered was the body of christ the temple of god
as christ referred to himself where is the king we might ask when we've seen from bethlehem to
egypt's out of egypt's up north to nazareth later on to golgotha and then into the tomb
where the angel tells us why do you seek the living among the dead he is not here but has risen
see friends this is the storyline of the bible of how god is remaking the world again
marred in sin see if you are in christ you have come out of egypt out of the world and you have
been brought into the wilderness period this period between christ's first coming and his
second coming a place of trials a place of testing that's the world in which you and i live in we
have not yet fully entered into that promised land though we have come out of egypt the promised
land is where we are headed that promised land of consummate Sabbath rest where we will behold
god face to face in the new heavens and the new earth for all eternity this is what the king of
the jews came to do to make way for people from all nations to be restored to god and to dwell
with him free from sin friends what is egypt all the roman empire have in comparison nothing
nothing at all and yet you and i are so often tempted by wilderness like by empire like thought
structures by the appetites of the immediate at the cost of what's to come i mean this is
certainly what the Israelites endured and faced and how they lived many of them scoffing at the
manner that god had provided in the wilderness in that land of testing hankering after as we read
for what cucumbers melons leaks onions and garlic back where in Egypt and in the end they died in
the wilderness in unbelief may i say to each one of us rather be marginalized with chasers
than seek to dine in the courts of Pharaoh rather identify with the sufferings of christ
and take up your cross daily all your life let his pattern of life be your pattern of life
let his manner of love be your manner of love where we love god with our all and our neighbor
as ourselves since we know the love of god in christ in the very depths of our soul
this community the community of saints are to be quite like any other community on the planet
we are to love like none other because we have been loved extravagantly and yet our testimony
at times betrays that let the overarching story of redemption be your story a story much grander
and all encompassing than any other narrative that exists a narrative that exists only for today
you see the pattern of sin is very simple sin separates it segregates it corrupts it oppresses
it enslaves and it is marked with suffering sorrow and death but in christ let's rather
do all things as we go into the new year unto the glory of god and for the common good of all
from now until the day the lord takes you home and until that day as we ask the question where is
the king let us remember he is making intercession for his own having begun a work in his first coming
only to bring it about to a completion in his second a new and second exodus as we are brought
out of the world into a renewed world made new by christ and through christ this is what god is
doing today let us live in the light of it let's pray