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Matthew 2:13ff
Liam Neeson, Gods Son, and Christmas peace
X When Pastor Jace gets violent
I am not an overly violent kind of guy.
I never got in fight at school . . . although it might be mentioned that this had little to do with my
temperament and a lot to do with my size. Don’t get me wrong. I could have beaten75% of the
students at my school but it would have been all the girls, and pretty much the elementary school
girls at that.
But put that out of your mind for now (forever please) and concentrate on my lack of aggression
in general.
In college, I did some martial arts and I used to beat a punching bag till my knuckles bled, but I
have never hit anyone. Or knifed or shot or tomahawked or ran over with my car, or forced
bamboo pieces under anyone’s fingernails. I am just a generally nicer guy than that.
I don’t know what my breaking point would be before violence would erupt, but if you decided
to rob my house, I would likely let you go. (please don’t and who knows, a surge of Godempowered Sampson like power might come on me and you don’t want to mess with that).
I have a few guns and not just the red rider one. I have a .22 and a shotgun. I even have bullets
for the shotgun. Two of them. Somewhere. Someone gave me the shotgun for protection when I
lived in a bad area of town (then he moved and I don’t know where, so I still have the gun)
Of course, I have never loaded it or shot it and honestly, probably never will.
I just think we should all give peace a chance.
And maybe I am a bit of a coward to actually pull a gun on someone.
Now I say all that to say this. I am pretty confident that all this X peace and love talk could
change quite quickly. If someone were to take one of my sons, well, X you could hear me on
the phone with the kidnapper:
X “I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. X If you are looking for
ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. X But what I do have are a very particular
set of skills -- X skills I have acquired over a very long career (of OT scholarship??).
X Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. X If you let my [son] go
now, that'll be the end of it. X I will not look for you, I will not pursue you.
X But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
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I would become X Liam Neeson all over their butt and track them to Asia or the middle of
the desert and nothing could stand in my way.
Because there are few relationships
X like that of a dad and his son.
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Do you remember when your son was born? Truth be told, I wasn’t that dad who was
sentimental and cried and wrote everything in a journal and saw into the future when we would
embrace after he ran the winning touchdown. It wasn’t for a few years before a bond was built.
But now, I watch any movie about a dad and a son and I cry.
I cried in X Armageddon and Ben Affleck wasn’t even his actual son.
I cried in X Frequency, when Quaid and Caviezel speak through the time warp.
I cried in X The Field of Dreams where Costner is reunited with his dad and he says
X “Hey Dad, wanna have a catch?
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I even cried in Finding Nemo, poor little gimp finned fish who lost his dad
X and finally finds him after almost missing him because he pretended to be dead. Tear
jerker.
My point,
X sons are something special.
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There is a love between father and son that has no parallel. I have three of them, I know.
Now I am not dissing on spousal love or love of a man and his daughter or mom and son or
anything else. I am just saying there is an intimacy between father and son.
God has a very messed up son
X And God has a son.
X fade slowly to black
This son had kind of a rocky start.
Not the way I would care for my son if I had the means. And God has the means. He could lavish
all the love he wanted on him, he could spoil him rotten. He could give him assistants that
would jump at his every word.
But things weren’t all peaches and cream for this son.
Sometimes he obeyed, sometimes he didn’t.
Sometimes he was safe at home and at other times bullies would beat him up.
Sometimes he had enough food to eat, but other times he almost starved.
At one point severe damage is done to his son by snake bites,
another time he is almost destroyed by plague,
He is made a slave for a really long time and treated really poorly,
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More than once this son picked up some nasty diseases by sleeping around,
at one point, God even kicks his son out of his house. A little tough love you might say.
I don’t know if any of you have had a son or daughter like this. One who just doesn’t seem to
learn? You promise them a pretty good life if they will just be wise, but they ignore you and do
what they want so often and finally you have to be tough.
It’s not that you don’t love that kid. You do. You cry at night over that kid but you can’t let him
back in the house. You have other kids and they need to be protected from this one kid you love
so much. So for their sake and for your beloved son’s sake, you let him go. He can’t come home
right now. He has to learn.
X This was God’s son.
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A huge stinking mess, and God loved him.
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God goes all Liam Neeson on his enemies
So much so that God goes all Liam Neeson on those who turned his son into a slave. He is nice
about it at first.
He sends a delegate in his place who announces the words clearly and succinctly:
X “Israel is my firstborn son,”
And he follows this up with
X “let my son go, so he may worship me.”
X And if the enemy refuses to let him go, then God threatens to kill his enemies’ first-born son.
(Exo 4:22-23 NIV)
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God isn’t messing around. You have his son and there is a bond there that means you may have
just unleashed the avenger of death.
And let’s not forget, in a sense that is exactly what happens. God wreaks havoc on Egypt with
plague after plague and eventually Egypt’s firstborn son is taken from them, as they had tried to
take God’s.
God’s son doesn’t get any better really
Hosea the prophet emphasizing the poor choices of God’s son, remembers God’s love for him all
the same:
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When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
(Hos 11:1 KJV)
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This was a pivotal moment in the life of God’s son. It’s a moment that he will always look back
on. It’s when God, with his overwhelming hesed (covenantal love and faithfulness), saves them.
And so Hosea remembers it and remembers how God’s son acts once he is free from his slavery.
Time continues and God’s son still fails to mature and so God locks him out of the house.
He again goes to Egypt for a warm bed. (just as he did in Genesis for grain)
And he goes to Babylon under the tortured eye of God.
But eventually, God again frees them from their exile and they return to his presence. But it’s
never quite the same.
Until Persians/Babylonians travel from afar to investigate a new creation – a new son of God.
They travel for weeks to see how God’s son has changed and with no help from Herod they find
a baby. A child. A son.
They worship and they leave without telling Herod where the baby is.
And our story picks up there. All that was background so we could get to this text in Matthew
2:13ff. I want you to listen to the actual text. Those of you X who have trouble understanding
the Bible and zone out when it is read, I want you to try extra hard right now. I think this story is
pretty easy:
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When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he
said, "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."
X
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So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,
X
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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."
X
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When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he
gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and
under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
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Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
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"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."
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After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt
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and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those
who were trying to take the child's life are dead."
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So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.
(Mat 2:13-21 NIV)
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Back in Egypt again
So look back again at verse 13. Where do they escape to?
X Egypt.
The significance of this in history is not lost on Matthew.
When they were starving in Israel they escaped to Egypt.
When they were being beaten down by Assyria, they escaped to Egypt.
Egypt had been a refuge for God’s son two other times in history. Significant times.
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The babies killed again
And Now Jesus escapes to Egypt out of X fear of Herod. And with good cause, right?
Herod is ticked. He was tricked by the wise men and now he is ticked. He will take no chances.
All boys under two will be destroyed.
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This seems eerily familiar.
Isn’t this pretty much what happened when they were in Egypt last time? A king who was
worried about a usurper taking his throne decided to kill every male under two years old. A king
who was played the fool just moments before.
Here, by the wise men, X back in Exodus 1, by the midwives. Herod and Pharaoh are
the same character. Both pretty foolish, both threatened by the son of God, both in a position
where they can do whatever it takes to destroy that son.
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The narrative is a little strange in that it jumps a head and then back again. Or we have a
parenthetical phrase.
X So read verse 14 and 15a and then jump to 16
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So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,
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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."
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X
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When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he
gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and
under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
X
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Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
X
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"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."
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So they decided to stay in Egypt.
Meanwhile, X Herod goes on a rampage. Kills everyone in the region. That might just mean
village and so maybe only a couple of dozen kids.
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Only.
Like a couple of dozen isn’t a horrendous tragedy.
Herod takes Israel’s children. To protect his throne. His rights. His independence.
Can’t help making a little practical application of what is happening in America today.
X We kill our children to protect our independence, our rights, our throne.
X We abort not dozens of children in a mass spree but a dozen every 5 minutes in the
United States.
And those of us who don’t do that, still sacrifice our children X to our status, our
wealth, our convenience. They need a X bigger TV for their room, they need
X Hulu plus, they need that X cute new top, they need X a new car and so we
work our butt off to give it to them and we lose them in the process.
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The Children are no more?
But this is not the point of Matthew. His point is that you see Herod as Pharaoh, but the
connection is even more vivid and important that we must see. Notice he doesn’t quote from
Exodus for this passage. He did already do that, so its there in all its horrible glory, but now he
adds in another: Jeremiah.
X
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"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."
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To what is this referring?
Jeremiah is speaking about the death of Israel (God’ son). But not their literal death, their exile.
Their removal from the land. All throughout the bible this is referred to as death.
Ramah is six miles north of Jerusalem( about the same distance Bethlehem is from Jerusalem),
and invaders would march their captives into exile through this town. So Rachel, the mother of
the tribes of Israel, is crying that her sons have been taken captive and moved from the land.
They are no more. It’s a metaphor.
So Matthew is wrapping the Pharaoh killing the children under 2 years old with the destruction
of Israel in the exile into one grand story of a King who would stop at nothing to make sure that
a new king did not rise in Israel.
The Son of God (Israel) was killed horribly in the early parts of Exodus by an anti-God
Pharaoh.
The son of God was killed horribly in the exile by an anti-God king of Babylon.
And now a new anti-God figure would try to kill a new Son of God.
X What about the end of the story?
What’s fascinating to me is the ending of each of these stories.
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In the exodus story we have the Pharaoh who has enslaved the son of God in a far off land and
God has sent him a message. Liam Neeson style. I will end you. Let my son go and you may
escape with your life.
But Pharaoh doesn’t (you can hear the other end of the phone line “good luck”) and God steps in
with a heap of horrible plagues and eventually, as Pharaoh has done to God, God now takes
Pharaoh’s first born son. And eventually he breaks the back of the Egyptian people and destroys
their army in a sea.
In the Babylonian story, Nebuchadnezzar has enslaved the son of God in a far off land and the
prophets cry out against this slavery warning all those who hurt the son of God. Ezekiel was full
of these woes as we have recently seen—woe on Edom, Ammon, Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Seir,
Tyre.
Isaiah says X “'Babylon has fallen, has fallen! All the images of its gods lie shattered on the
ground!'" (Isa 21:9 NIV)
Jeremiah says X the Lord will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, from the
neck of all the nations (Jeremiah 28:11)
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God deals with those who hurt his son.
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Which is why this story is so amazing in Matthew.
If we follow the same line of thinking as we have seen throughout the Old Testament, then when
the son of God is threatened or hurt, God kicks some serious butt. He goes on warpath and
people pay…big time.
So that is what I am expecting here. I am expecting X
you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
Liam Neeson,
X “I will look for
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I am expecting God to jump off a bridge and pound his way through the enemy and walk boldly
into a room full of thugs and take them all out. I am expecting insane violence because this is the
son.
This is what I want to do. You hurt my boy and I am coming after you.
But something has changed.
God doesn’t react in violence.
In fact, God hides his son in Egypt and brings people from Babylon (wise men) to worship him.
That just seems strange considering the past of Egypt and Babylon.
And while God thwarts Herod’s plans to kill the child he does not take vengeance on Herod. In
fact, it seems they simply wait for Herod to die before returning.
X
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After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt
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and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those
who were trying to take the child's life are dead."
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And when they find the son of Herod has taken over they are told in a dream to avoid him.
Avoid him? No, kick his butt God! They don’t mess with your son!
But the stories from which Matthew quotes are so completely opposite.
God is acting completely different.
And then this child grows. His son grows in favor with God and man. He matures, he
understands his mission, he follows what seems to be a ridiculous path. A path that I can’t
comprehend. A path where, not the enemy, . . . but the son must die.
God has come to Mary to explain, he came to Joseph to give him reason to stick around, he
comes to them again to warn them against Herod. He has done everything to keep this child alive
and now, this grown child walks the path to Jerusalem where they will capture him, beat him
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with a club, whip him with leather straps designed to open his back to the bone, put a crown of
thorns on his head, put nails in his hands and feet and lift him up on a cross.
That’s what is supposed to happen to the enemy. Put the chief priests up there, put Pontius Pilate
up there, put Caesar Augustus up there. Put everyone up there who yells out in hostility against
the son of God.
And Jesus cries out, X “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?”
And the world goes black.
X black
And the family of the Caesar gains access to the throne of God
And the families in Egypt gain access to the grace of God
And the Babylonian oppressors can now understand the love of God.
Because the sins of Rome, Israel, Egypt and Babylon were taken on the Son of God.
X Christmas is about the incarnation, certainly. But the incarnation is relevant because this son
of God did everything the past son of God was to do and died for it, in the place of the enemy.
So what does this mean for you this Christmas?
It means that even if you are justified in X telling that person off, you let grace win.
Even if you are justified in X punching that mother in law in the mouth, you let mercy reign.
Even if you are fully justified in X attacking me, or my son, or some other son, or daughter,
or whoever it is, you are called to first and foremost be a person of peace and grace and love.
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If God, who is fully righteous, has the right and power to punish these nations for how they
treated his son, and he lets his son die, so that they will finally understand how great is the love
of God, how dare we do anything else!
X Are you ready X to show the love of Jesus to the world?
Are you ready X to remove violence as justified?
Are you ready X to live a life of sacrifice instead of entitlement?
Are you ready X to follow a path that means you don’t win, it means that other people get the
upper hand over you, it means that you will suffer, it means that you probably wont be rich, it
means that people will think you are weak and wrong and maybe hate you.
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Friends we aren’t meant to triumph here. We aren’t meant to make sure everything works out for
us. We aren’t meant to have everyone on our side. We are meant to show the love of Christ in all
we do. No matter what. No matter what.
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X We are sons of God. Daughters of God. Walking in the footsteps of Jesus.
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Take home this call to live like him, but take this to heart as well. He came for you. He didn’t
have to die, he allowed himself to be killed to take your heartache and pain and loss and bad
treatment on himself. Yes, you will have to take some of it in this life and we are to be ready, but
ultimately he says joy will be ours. We will live with praise on our lips because of the
incarnation of the King of Kings.
END
Now if you have been a Christian for a long time you know very well how the trinity works.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Jesus calls God father, and God the Father calls Jesus Son. And we know what a Father and a
son are so we do have a clue about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.
And the church fathers spent several centuries trying to work this out and the debate is far from
over.
The Nicean formulation is clear
1. Jesus Christ is said to be "begotten, not made", asserting that he was not a mere creature,
brought into being out of nothing, but the true Son of God, brought into being 'from the
substance of the Father'.
2. He is said to be "of one being with The Father". Eusebius of Caesarea ascribes the
term homoousios, or consubstantial, i.e., "of the same substance" (of the Father).
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Orthodox theology tells us that the essence of the Son always existed, but that the body was
made at a particular point in time.
The debate still rages over whether the idea of sonship means the voluntary submission to which
Christ condescended at his incarnation (that is, he became the “Son” when he took on flesh) or
whether the title son of God always speaks of his essential deity and absolute equality with God.
Did he become the son or was he always the son. (Both views believe he always existed and is
completely God) Macarthur in his commentary on Hebrews 1:5 insists that it has to do with his
voluntary submission, but 25 years later he reversed his view in favor of the eternal sonship of
Christ.
My point in bringing this stuff up is fourfold
1. Some people like systematic theology. I am a biblical theology guy and thought someone
might like systematics if only for a minute
2. I want to make clear that the question surrounding the “Son” of God is a big one, full of
controversy and real people getting burned at stakes
3. I want you to see the difference between ontology (beingness) and that which the bible
concentrates on—almost never ontology.
4. I want to use this as a springboard to show you how Matthew 2 speaks of the sonship of
Jesus.
Because Matthew 2 doesn’t get ensconced in controversies of ontology or eternality or divinity.
Rather, it is trying to make a very specific literary connection to the Old Testament Son of God.
Yes, there is a Son of God in the Old Testament and it’s not Jesus.
See there is controversy in biblical theology too.
At the end of the creed came a list of anathemas, designed to repudiate explicitly the Arians'
stated claims.
The view that 'there was once that when he was not' was rejected to maintain the coeternity of the Son with the Father.
2. The view that he was 'mutable or subject to change' was rejected to maintain that the Son
just like the Father was beyond any form of weakness or corruptibility, and most
importantly that he could not fall away from absolute moral perfection.
1.
It is this intimacy that I want to look at this morning from exodus.
Because its in Exodus that God first speaks these words through Moses:
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Water will flow from their buckets; their seed will have abundant water. "Their king will be greater than
Agag; their kingdom will be exalted.
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"God brought them out of Egypt; they have the strength of a wild ox. They devour hostile nations and
break their bones in pieces; with their arrows they pierce them.
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Like a lion they crouch and lie down, like a lioness--who dares to rouse them? "May those who bless
you be blessed and those who curse you be cursed!"
(Num 24:7-9 NIV)
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He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be
higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.
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God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the
nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.
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He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion: who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that
blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.
(Num 24:6-9 KJV)
Balaams oracle employs the lion as a symbol of the inexorable rise of Israel echoing Jacobs deathbed
metaphor, Judah is a lions whelp. (Gen 49:9)
Jesus cannot be God's son
To some Muslims, the term "Son of God" brings up images of a sort of divine being with a goddess wife who
together have somehow produced a child. So when Christians use the term in reference to Jesus, they immediately
assume that the Christians are committing blasphemy by stating that God has participated in some sort of sexual
union with another god - a goddess wife.
They say: "the most gracious has betaken a son!" Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous! At it in the skies
are about to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin, that they attributed a son to
the Most Gracious, for it is not consonant with the majesty of the Most Gracious that he should beget a son. (The
Qur'an, 5:88-92).
This is naturally a ridiculous scenario and is a false assumption. No where in the Bible does it say that God had
relations with anyone to produce a literal son, nor has Christianity taught that God produced a son through any
physical act whatsoever. Such a thing is heretical. Nevertheless, the Bible in numerous places calls Jesus the Son of
God. But, it does not mean that Jesus is the literal offspring of God.
The Muslims need to ask what does that term mean, in its historic and biblical context. Instead of imposing upon the
biblical term a meaning that is foreign to it, the Muslim should learn what the Bible means by the term and think of
it in the context as revealed in the Scriptures where it is used. To not do that would be the same as me taking a term
out of the Qur'an, remove it from its Qur'anic context, and applying another meaning to it and then saying what the
Qur'an teaches is false. The term 'Son of God' is used in different senses in the Bible. But, never does it mean that
God has a wife and produces offspring.
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Old Testament usage of the term Son of God
The term "son of God" is used in two main ways in the Old Testament. Neither way denotes any physical relation to
God. Rather, the references deal with those who are under divine obedience to the call of God. It is used of Israel as
a nation through the Exodus. Hosea 11:1 says, "When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My
son."1 It is also used in reference to angels. Job 1:6 says, "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to
present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them." Also, in Job 38:7 it says, "When the
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" These are in reference to angels who are
created beings and in no way implies literal dependency from God.
New Testament usage of the term Son of God
The Term "Son of God" occurs 47 times in the King James New Testament. In reference to Jesus, it is a title as the
heavenly, eternal Son who is equal to God the Father (John 5:18-24). It is Jesus who fully reveals the Father (Matt.
11:27). He is the exact representation of the Father (Heb. 1:1-3), He possesses all authority in heaven and earth
(Matt. 28:18), and Jesus had glory with the Father before the world was made (John 17:5).
The Muslim is taught from the Qur'an and therefore cannot accept the fact that Jesus is divine. To the Muslim, that
is shirk, blasphemy of the worst kind. But believing it doesn't make it so. To the Christian, and according to the
Bible, Jesus is the one who alone saves us from our sins. We cannot earn our way to heaven, perform enough good
works to please God, or ever be "sincere enough" in repentance to somehow obtain forgiveness from God. Instead,
Christianity is a faith in God's great love and sacrifice for His creation. Jesus, the Son of God, is the divine one who
fulfilled prophecies, walked on water, healed the sick, and rose from the dead. Only the Son of God can do these
things.
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