Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sermon preached on Matthew 1:17-2:21 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Christmas Eve Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/24/2024 in Petaluma, CA.
Sermon Manuscript
Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
As I considered what to preach on for this Christmas Eve, I kept coming back to comparing Jesus with Moses. Think about Moses with me for a moment. We recently completed a long sermon series through Genesis and then continued the story in our Wednesday Bible Study by starting on Exodus. That brought us to study the birth of Moses and I reflected how prominently portrayed his birth narrative was. Our Genesis sermon series had set the stage for Moses’ birth. God had given the patriarchs so many wonderful promises, but Genesis ends with God’s people afflicted in Egypt. They were supposed to be flourishing in the Promised Land of Israel, but they were stuck in Egypt. The situation begged for a savior, and that is when Moses was born to deliver God’s people out of such bondage and bring them into the blessings God had promised them. So, Moses’ birth was a big deal when it happened for God’s people! They needed such a savior to come!
So then, here we are this evening reflecting on an even greater birth. Jesus’s birth in Matthew is also prominently portrayed. He is also born to deliver God’s people out of bondage and into bring them into the ultimate promises of God for his people. And with attention to detail, we can recognize that themes around Moses’ birth find an echo in our passage today. Matthew’s gospel is inviting us to compare and contrast. Jesus is born for a new, greater Exodus as an even better Moses. I’ll walk us through so that we can rejoice afresh at God’s saving work in the birth of Jesus as we remember what it still means for us today.
I draw your attention first to verse 17. I want us to begin with how Matthew summarizes Jesus’ genealogy from Abraham. We notice that Matthew divides up that time into three periods. There is the Abraham to David time period. There is the David to deportation time period. And there is the Deportation to Christ period. That first period of Abraham to David really represents what I was just referring to with Genesis and Moses. That time from Abraham to David encompasses the initial covenant promises God made followed by that time of Egyptian bondage, but then God brought them out of Egypt by Moses and didn’t really fully establish them in the Promised Land in peace and blessedness until the coming of King David. So that first time period of Abraham to David encompassed a lot of waiting during a period of affliction that begged for a Savior. Moses, along with David, were key saviors in that time frame. Then you have the second time frame from David to the deportation of Babylon. That time frame represented Israel living as a free kingdom in the Promised Land. In other words, it’s the time where they finally were living the blessed life God promised. That is, until God’s people rejected God by sin upon sin and ultimately God cast them out of the Promised Land by having Babylon come and conquer them and deport them. So that second time period of David to the deportation encompassed a blessed period for the God’s people followed by their fall and exile. What you could say is that they essentially ended back up in another place of bondage like they were in Egypt. Deportation to Babylon was a new Egyptian house of slavery.
So then, the third time period is described as from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ. This explains that the time period of the Babylonian exile doesn’t really end until Jesus arrives. Now, on the one hand that makes a comparison of Jesus to King David, for Jesus ends the Babylonian exile by bringing in a new better kingdom, an eternal kingdom not of this world. But it is also begs us to see him as a Moses figure who brings God’s people out of bondage and slavery.
So then, our passage begins by setting the stage that the people are still under the bondage of exile that came when the Babylonians deported them. For most of the time since then, even though they have eventually been allowed to return to the Promised Land, they were still under the occupying authority of a foreign nation. The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians who were then conquered by the Greeks who were then conquered by the Romans, and it was then the Romans in control of God’s people there in Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth.
So then, let us see how the birth of Jesus is presented. We find Matthew’s gospel highlights the importance both of his birth and then afterwards how he is protected. Chapter 1, verses 18-25 record the miracle of the virgin birth through Mary. There, in verse 21, the angel foretells the future for this baby Jesus. That is where we are told he will be a savior. But notice what kind of savior. He will save God’s people from their sins. That is ultimately why Israel had ended back up in exile again, enslaved to the nations. Their sin led to that. In fact, their ultimate bondage was not to Babylonians or Romans but to their own sinful natures. Indeed, all humans have this core issue. We are enslaved to sin. If we were left to our sin, we deserve God’s wrath and curse to fall upon us. If we are not saved from our sin, we will ultimately receive the eternal punishment of hell. That is why God had the Babylonians conquer and deport his wayward people, to warn them that sin has grave consequences. The deportation to Babylon was a call for them to repent before something worse happens to them, that is, the fires of hell come upon them. So, this is why it is so important that God sent Jesus. God knew the ultimate need of his people. The kind of savior they need is one who can save them from their sins. That is the exodus this new, better Moses would bring them.
Yet, as this savior is born, there immediately becomes a threat to his mission. In a reprise of Egypt with Moses, there again is a king who wants to kill the savior when he is just a baby. In chapter 2, we see Herod like Pharoah threaten the young savior’s life. With Moses, his parents hid him at first, until they ultimately floated him on a little ark down the Nile River, when in God’s providence the Pharoah’s daughter rescues him and protects him. But with Jesus, God sends a warning to Joseph via an angel in a dream. Joseph is instructed to flee and hide in Egypt until it is safe to return. That of course, will literally setup a comparison between Moses and Jesus, as verse 15 highlights with the quote, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Jesus will relieve Israel’s experience even in his flight to Egypt and back. But let us not miss that the fact he had to flee to Egypt was because of another Gentile king wanting to kill him at his birth.
So then, as Exodus painted Moses’ birth and protection in a prominent way, Matthew’s gospel especially does as well. This clues us in to how significant it is that Jesus is coming in this world. He is a new better Moses that God here sends into the world and protects so that he can do his mission to save God’s people from their sins and deliver them into a freedom of blessed life.
I would like to then observe that when baby Jesus flees with his family to Egypt, that becomes the context for evil Herod to massacre all these baby boys in the area of Bethlehem. Again, here, we see a reprise of Moses’ story. Of course, there is some difference. When Moses was born, the Pharoah’s order was already in place to kill all the baby boys, and he had to be protected himself from that. But here, it is only after Jesus flees and can’t be found that Herod orders all the baby boys to be killed. So there is some difference between the infanticide during Moses’ time versus Jesus’ time here with Herod. But what is the same is that God’s people are being so terribly afflicted. That an evil, tyrant king would rule over you is bad enough, and that is what God’s people endured during both Moses’ and Jesus’ births. But that such a monster of a king would order for the slaughter of so many babies, that is even far worse. Think of the great joy a baby brings to a family, and such a ruthless king would cold-heartedly murder your priceless joy.
Just look at verse 18. This is a prophecy of Jeremiah that describes the suffering of Israel here. Weeping and loud lamentation. Refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. What terrible affliction. What great suffering to endure. It happened before under Pharoah, king of Egypt. And it happens again here under Herod, the Roman, King of the Jews.
My point is that Jesus came to save such a horribly afflicted people. Jesus was not the cause of this affliction. Yes, the birth of Jesus gave context for such an evil king to do such and evil thing. But, the core problem was there all along. God’s people were afflicted by sinful humans. Jesus came to save a people who were an afflicted people. Moses came to deliver a people out of great affliction. Jesus, all the more, came to deliver a people out of great affliction.
And, so I hope that this brief reflection on this Christmas passage has helped us to see Jesus as a greater Moses. Jesus is really a Moses and a David combined, even, and that is still only scratching the surface. For when God called Moses into service, Exodus described it as God coming down to earth there at the burning bush to call Moses into service. But now, God himself came in his Son to be become man, being born in baby Jesus, so that God himself would become our deliver and savior.
As Moses’s life was spared so he could grow up and do his ministry, so too, we’ve seen Jesus’s life spared so he could grow up and do his ministry. As we’ve reflected how afflicted God’s people were at the time, it would be significant for us to point out that Jesus’s work of deliverance at that time wasn’t focused on saving God’s people from their Romans oppressors. As much as this evil Roman governor Herod showed how afflicted God’s people were, that wasn’t what Jesus focused on in his first coming in terms of deliverance.
Why is that? The answer is simple. The biggest affliction to God’s people really was first and foremost their own sin. Jesus was coming to bring deliverance to sin. Furthermore, we see that Jesus would not come to deliver just Jews from their sin. In a wondrous expansion of God’s redemptive works, Jesus would extend salvation from sin to all the nations. That is how he begins to deal the wicked Gentiles, by first calling them to repent of their sins and turn to Jesus in faith. For all who do that, they find forgiveness of their sins and even salvation from the coming judgment of hell that is going to fall on this world. That’s called the gospel, the good news of salvation in Jesus by grace through faith in him. We as Christians today are those who have received such an offer by turning and trusting our lives to Christ Jesus. That is what God calls all the world to do before Jesus returns.
For when Jesus returns, he will put a final end to any yet at that time who persist in their evil and who continue to afflict God’s people. That will be the final part of his deliverance when he saves us out of this fallen world. He will pour out a final judgment upon this place even as he ushers us into an eternal promised land, a new land of Israel, where there is peace, righteousness, and blessing, without end.
And so we are now in a fourth and final time period, the time from Christ until the consummation. I wanted to bring this message today to encourage us while we still live in this world where God’s people find affliction. I thought about titling our sermon after verse 18’s language of “weeping and loud lament.” But you see, while Jesus came to such a situation, to a place of suffering, he came to deliver us out of that. He brings the final and ultimate exodus at the consummation, when he returns. He will bring us out of this fallen world and even away from our fallen selves. He will bring us into a place of everlasting blessedness, and he will wipe away our every tear. So, Jesus will deliver us from the weeping and lament of this life to the liberty and greatest joy of glory. This we continue to celebrate this evening as we remember the birth of Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.
Copyright © 2024 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
