Sermon Tone Analysis

When you are FORCED out of your comfort zone - God is teaching you!

The book of Matthew tells us that Jesus spent part of his childhood in Egypt.

Matthew doesn't go into much detail about these years, but he tells us enough to help us understand how God was at work in Jesus' life, and how he can be at work in our life too.

*• ABOUT KING HEROD *

This is the story: When the wise men left Bethlehem without returning to Herod as they had been told to, Herod became furious.

He realized he had been outwitted.

Since he didn't know specifically which child they had visited, he decided to kill all the children in Bethlehem under two years of age.

He didn't care about taking innocent lives; his only concern was to eliminate a perceived threat to his throne.

This is the kind of man that Herod was.

Human life was cheap to him.

He didn't hesitate to kill anyone who stood in his way.

When he first became king, he killed all the members of the Sanhedrin, which was the "supreme court" of the Jews.

He later killed 300 officers of his court.

He also murdered his wife, his mother-in-law, and three of his own sons.

In fact, the Emperor Augustus once said sarcastically that it was safer to be Herod's pig than his son.

Killing helpless children meant nothing to Herod.

Based on the size of the population of Bethlehem, there were probably 15-20 (perhaps as many 30) children who were brutally slaughtered in this massacre.

Shortly before Herod's soldiers stormed the town of Bethlehem in search of children, an angel of God appeared to Joseph and told him to take his family out of Bethlehem and escape to Egypt.

Next, the Bible says...

*(v.

14-15) So he [Joseph] got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.

And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son." *

*• UNDERSTANDING OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES *

Several times throughout the gospel of Matthew, he refers to an event in the life of Jesus as being the fulfillment of prophecy.

I want to take a closer look at Matthew's tendency to do this, because it confused me when I first began studying the Bible.

When you look at the original prophecy that Matthew points to in the Old Testament, it sometimes seems to be taken out of context, and doesn't appear to be referring to Jesus at all.

For example, this verse that Matthew cites—"out of Egypt I called my son"—is taken from Hosea 11:1, and is actually referring to how God delivered the nation of Israel from bondage and slavery in Egypt, during the days of Moses.

Does that mean that Matthew is misusing the Old Testament by trying to get it to say something it doesn't really say?

No, not at all.

But you have to understand how first century Jews interpreted the Old Testament, and how Old Testament prophecies work.

Many Old Testament prophecies have a dual application, one that applies to an Old Testament event, and one that applies to a New Testament event.

The story may be about something else, but there are verses in the story that apply to the life of Christ.

It's like Matthew was saying, "The Old Testament says that God called his spiritual son, Israel, out of Egypt, and isn't it interesting that God called his only begotten son, Jesus, out of Egypt as well."

Here's an example from modern times that might help make sense of the way Old Testament prophecies were interpreted.

The Bob Dylan song, "It's All Right Ma" contains a line that says...

/Even the president of the United States sometimes must stand naked.

/

The song was written in 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson was president.

However, in 1973, when Bob Dylan sang these words at Madison Square Garden, the crowd stood on their feet and cheered.

In the light of the Watergate scandal, they had become especially meaningful.

When Dylan wrote the song, he wasn't predicting Watergate, but his words became prophetic because they applied in a unique way to Watergate.

The same could be said about the former Clinton administration.

And, in fact, Dylan's words could be interpreted more literally.

(This doesn't mean that Bob Dylan is a prophet; it's only an illustration.)

In the same way, when Matthew makes reference to the fulfillment of prophecy, he's not attempting to distort the meaning of the original verse; he's saying "There's a dual application for this verse.

See how the events in this Old Testament story apply also to the events in the life of Jesus."

*• LIVING IN EGYPT *

So, Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived in Egypt until the death of Herod—a period of probably 3-4 years.

This means that Jesus spent the formative years of his childhood in a foreign country.

There were a number of Jewish colonies in Egypt at that time.

Jews frequently found themselves under persecution, and it was common for them to seek refuge in Egypt.

This means that Jesus would have grown up in a dual culture.

In his neighborhood he would have associated with other Jewish people; in the community at large he would have interacted with Egyptians.

Some of his playmates could have been Egyptian children.

Joseph probably did carpentry work for Egyptian customers.

As the family shopped in the marketplace, they would have done business with Egyptian merchants.

In his childhood years Jesus gained a perspective on life that wasn't limited to what he would have seen if he had lived exclusively in a tiny Judean village.

When King Herod died, God appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to bring his family back to Israel.

Since Herod's son (the one that survived Herod's madness) was reigning in Judea, Joseph took his family to Galilee and they made their home in a town called Nazareth.

I doubt seriously that Joseph's first choice would have been to move his family to Egypt.

I'm sure he would have preferred to raise his son in his hometown of Bethlehem, where his citizenship resided, with family and friends close by.

But it wasn't to be.

God had other plans.

Joseph and his family were forced out of their comfort zone, and for a number of years they lived life on the run, so to speak.

They journeyed approximately 125 miles from Bethlehem to Egypt, where they stayed for a few years, then they left Egypt and moved 200 miles north to live in Nazareth—again, not Joseph's first choice (2:21).

*• THE SHAPING OF JESUS' CHARACTER  *

These events shaped the character of Jesus.

They helped make him into the man God wanted him to be.

The Bible says that as Jesus was growing up...

*[He] grew in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and man.

(Luke 2:52) *

The book of Hebrews says...*...he learned obedience from what he suffered.

(Hebrews 5:8)*

He *learned *obedience.

He *grew *in wisdom.

For some people, it's hard to imagine Jesus learning, because he was perfect.

He was sinless.

He was God in the flesh.

That's true, and it's also true that he was a man.

He came into the world to live as a man.

He learned as we learn—how to be a carpenter, how to clean his room, how to read the Scriptures, and on and on.

God used the events of the early years of Jesus' life to prepare him for the work he had called him to do.

He led Mary and Joseph to move beyond their comfort zone, to be uprooted from their home for a period of time, because he knew these events would shape the life of Jesus, and would help him grow in wisdom, and would help him learn obedience, and would prepare him for the work he had come to earth to do.

It works the same way for us.

When you find yourself forced out of your comfort zone, you can be sure God is preparing you for something.

You might not be able to see it immediately, but he can see it, and he knows where he's leading you.

You might take a new job, and it doesn't go the way you thought it would.

Or you might move to a new community, and you don't fit in like you expected to.

Or the children start school, or move away to college, and you don't know what to do with your time.

Or you may find yourself suddenly and unexpectedly single again, due to a death or divorce, and it isn't clear what God has in store for you.

There are times in life when we're forced out of our comfort zone, and we find ourselves fleeing to Egypt in the middle of the night, facing challenges we're not prepared for.

God uses these times to teach you three things.

First of all...

*1.

**God leads you outside your comfort zone to stretch your boundaries.

*

Jesus spent some of the formative years of his childhood living in a foreign country.

Their skin was different, their language was different, their customs were different.

He and his family were in the minority.

Jesus saw, from an early age, that the world is not a tiny place where everyone looks alike and thinks alike and acts alike and talks alike.

As he began his ministry, he understood that he had come to the world to bring everyone to God—not just the Jews.

Those years in Egypt helped Jesus see the world from God's perspective.

That's what God wants to do with you.