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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends. This weekend I imagine many of you are traveling to spend Christmas week with family or friends. As you travel… I invite you to think of how ‘travel’ fits into the Christmas story:
* Zechariah traveling back home from his week of service in the Temple, where he had encountered Gabriel with the shocking news he and Elizabeth would have a son in their old age… John! Unable to speak, Zechariah walked home those many miles overwhelmed, and wondering how he could possibly explain it to his wife! (Luke 1:23-25)
* Mary traveling to spend 3 months with Zechariah & Elizabeth, the only two people she knew who might help her understand understand Gabriel’s shocking message that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and bear the Son of God! (Luke 1:39-45). You dear women reading this, how do you suppose she felt?
* Joseph and Mary’s travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register for the taxation census, knowing the miraculous child in Mary’s womb would be born there… but where? (Luke 2:1-8)
* Shepherds traveling into town, Bethlehem, wondering what they would find, and where, that would fulfill the promise of the angels who announced to them, the birth of a Savior. (Luke 2:8-20)
* Magi, traveling from a distant eastern land, following ‘his star’, assuming a King would be born of course in Jerusalem, but then the final few miles of their journey heading toward Bethlehem, wondering what royal setting could possibly receive a King in little Bethlehem? (Matt. 2:1-11).
* Magi, traveling the long journey back to their homeland, but by a different route, having been warned in a dream that disaster would be their experience if they returned to Herod. What was their journey home like? What did they tell those who received them back home? How did they explain what they had experienced? (Matt. 2:12)
I often ask you to step with me into the story, and I’m so glad many of you, my friends, help me find wonderful resources to help us to just that. Jimmie Stewart has always been one of my favorite actors of years gone by, how about you? Mr. Stewart helps us step into the Christmas story in this brief video that I received from one of you dear friends… I invite you… let’s step into the story with Mr. Stewart for a few moments:
My friends, in the white space in your Bible, between Matthew 2:12 & 13 there is time. We don’t know how much time. Perhaps a day or two, maybe a week. In that time, what do you suppose Joseph and Mary were doing as they tried to begin making a life for their little family in Bethlehem, now with three gifts and the memory of the visit from the Magi? How did they answer the questions of Bethlehem people who had seen the Magi traveling caravan come to their door? What would you have done?
And suddenly Matthew records for us another angelic visit for Joseph in vs. 13. The message is clear and frightening! “Get up, take the child and His mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you for Herod is going to search for the child to kill Him.” (Matt. 2:13) In the moments after Joseph awoke, rubbed his eyes and began making a plan of action… before he awoke Mary to tell her, what do you suppose Joseph thought, and maybe prayed? Read the angel’s words again… could any news have been more troubling to young Joseph who was just beginning to make a home for his little family in Bethlehem?
While not familiar Nazareth, at least it was Israel, and they were surrounded by Jewish people like themselves… but Egypt! What could possibly await them there? I imagine instantly into Joseph’s mind came the story of Moses, slaves, Pharaoh’s anger, bondage, the slave-masters whip, the plagues of flies and frogs, the angel of death, the Red Sea. . .oh my. I imagine Joseph, pacing the floor, wringing his hands, wiping sweat off his brow, when Mary notices he’s not in bed, sees him and quickly her peaceful sleep turns to worry. What could be wrong with Joseph? Men reading this… how have you broken hard news to your wife when you have something difficult to tell her and you don’t want to trouble her or frighten her or break her heart?
Whatever Joseph said, they didn’t have much time… how long, an hour or two perhaps, and they were on the road, traveling south from Bethlehem, to a future that probably looked to them as black as the night into which they walked! Neither of them had ever been across the border out of Israel in any direction. I doubt we can imagine their fear! No map, no GPS, no road signs… just a lonely road in the night, heading to a place they’d never been before.
I wonder if into their minds came an old Testament story. Joshua and nearly 2 million Hebrews were standing at the Jordan river getting ready to cross into the Promised land which they’d heard about since they were babies, but had never seen. They were leaving behind 40 years of wilderness wandering. Joshua sent word among the people… “When you see the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD your God and the priests who are Levites carrying it, you are to move out and follow it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before…” (Joshua 3) And you may recall what happened… as the Levites carrying the Ark reached the flooded Jordan river and stepped into the river, it stopped flowing, and all the people crossed the dry Jordan riverbed into the Promised Land, and began their new life in the land God had promised to Abraham nearly 500 years before!
Or maybe Joseph remembered the Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, wondering which direction to go and God provided a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night to guide them on their way… for 40 years! (Exodus 13:21,22)
As they walked, how often did Mary ask “Joseph, where are we going? How long will it take us to get there? How will you know when we have arrived? What are the people like there? How will we find a place to stay… to live? How long will we be there? Will you be able to find work? How will we feed ourselves and care for baby Jesus? All fair questions, I’m sure you’d agree. Perhaps you’ve asked them as you’ve moved. And then this question, which Joseph must have heard many times in the years of young Jesus’ life. . .“Joseph, can you help me understand…what is God doing? Why is this happening to us? What are we supposed to learn in this?
Matthew doesn’t give us any answers. Not even a paragraph break of white space in his telling us the story. Not even a sentence break. Look…
“So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.” (Mat. 2:14) Wow… do you feel as though Matthew has done us a disservice by leaving out so many details? Remember, Matthew wrote, as did all the Bible authors, as the Holy Spirit moved him to write (2 Peter 1:20,21). So that means we have all the information God wanted us to have about this dramatic time of transition for Joseph & Mary and the infant Jesus. But it sure leaves us with lots of opportunity for making movies in our minds, doesn’t it?
Do you notice Matthew does provide his Jewish readers with two quotes from Old Testament prophets. He’s proving that all this was happening according to God’s Sovereignty, and that God had given to prophets, glimpses of these events, more than 600 years before, which they wrote down.
Hosea 11:1 says “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son…” Through the prophet Hosea, God was painting a picture of His love for the people of Israel, but their consistent resistance and often rebellion against Him. This verse has a double meaning. The first is a back-ward look to the day the Hebrew slaves were rescued out of Egypt by God and led by Moses (Exodus 14). The second is a forward look to the day God would bring His Son, Jesus, out of Egypt. (Matt. 2:19-21)The same Egypt, to which Joseph and Mary were walking that night, where the Hebrew slaves had lived more than 300 years. I wonder if Joseph was asking God silently… “..and how long will we live as exiles in Egypt, O God?” In both pictures, God led those He rescued from Egypt to His land of Promise and provision… Israel, and God began a new era of God at work in our world, with both events.
Matthew 2:16-18 are two of the most painful, bloody verses in the Bible. Herod the Great was paranoid. Petrified that anyone would seek to remove him from his throne, and his only answer was death… to anyone he suspected, regardless of age. None of us can imagine the horrific scene in Bethlehem in that day of slaughter! Sadly it has happened many times since, hasn’t it? It’s the Hitler death camps, and the Pol Pot killing fields in Cambodia, and the Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS vicious attacks in the middle east and Africa in recent years.
The prophet Jeremiah was often called ‘the weeping prophet’, both because of what he saw in the destruction of Jerusalem and in what he was led of God to write. His messages were usually warnings to God’s people that God’s judgment was coming, and most often they refused to hear him, even as disaster came! But Jeremiah 31 is one of those chapters where God promised there would eventually be joy again in Israel, after the judgment had run it’s course. Right in the middle of that chapter is this verse quoted in Matthew 2:18 “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Rachel, of course, was Jacob’s favorite wife, and the mother of both Joseph and Benjamin. She was buried along the road near Bethlehem after giving birth to Benjamin, as Jacob and his large family traveled. (Gen. 35:16-19) Her grave marker had been revered and protected for centuries. I’ve actually seen it. Sadly it is one of those places that was at least partially destroyed by ISIS a few years ago. Those verses of her death and burial are the first mention of Bethlehem in the Bible.
Ramah, you may recall, was the home of Hannah, Elkanah and their miracle son Samuel, not far from Bethlehem. Samuel, came to Bethlehem to anoint young shepherd boy David to be king of Israel, remember? (1 Samuel 16). While it was a joyful day, it was also a sad day for the people had rejected God’s leadership and asked for a human king so they could be like all the other nations (1 Samuel 8). Saul, the first king, failed God miserably and thus Samuel came to Bethlehem to anoint a new king… David, into whose royal line was born both Mary and Joseph, and then Jesus.
For today, let’s just stand by the roadside and watch Joseph and Mary, perhaps with a donkey loaded with all their earthly belonging, walk by us, going down the dusty road toward Egypt… and disappearing into the dark night, led only by the dim moonlight, to a future they could not imagine.
But God. . . God was watching over them, as He is watching over you and me, my friends, this weekend before Christmas. Where is your path taking you? Where have you been in 2019, what is ahead for you in 2020? Let’s take this weekend and reflect with Jesus, on the journey we’ve been walking… make some notes as you reflect, and take some time to meet with Jesus, praying over your journey. Give God thanks, and ask Him to help you understand what He’s been trying to teach you in the journey.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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