Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 12 – December 1981

 

The Royal Refugee

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on Matthew 2:13-15

Scripture Reading: Psalm 91; Matthew 2:1-15

Psalter Hymnal: No. 408:1,2; 474; 336:1; 176; 316

 

They are arriving in the free world – including Australia! – by the boat-loads. At first, when there were only a few, everybody was helpful and full of compassion. Poor souls! Welcome in the Free World! But now they keep coming, by the hundreds and the thousands, many drowning in the attempt, some dying on the way through sickness and hunger, now we are no longer nice to them. Now we set the dogs on them and drive them off our beaches, and our immigration ministers sit together in worried international conferences: what to do with them all?

Like after the second world war, we have trouble with them, the DISPLACED PERSONS… the REFUGEES. Nobody wants to be responsible for them. There is no country they can call their home. They have no joy or hope left, no ideals or illusions. We sit in our arm chairs and see their forlorn faces on T.V., but how could we ever imagine what these people go through? What do we know of their misery? One there is, who knows quite well. He became a ranger away from His Home, to bring lost strangers back to His Father. And He, as a little child, literally became a refugee, having to leave the homeland he had on earth, to save His life.

He who bore our bitternesses, carried this sorrow, too. And for Jesus’ sake, his young parents had to carry this sorrow with Him… as they carried HIM to safety. It is the strange anti-climax after the heady visit of the Wise Men – all the way from – possibly what is now the trouble spot of Iran. The wise men, who came as another glorious proof to this young man and woman that the child they had to look after, was the Promised One.

He was the Mighty One of whom Psalm 72 sang that kings of Seba and Sheba were to come and bring Him incense, and the gold of the earth. And then suddenly the plunge back into bitterness: the warning of the angel: Get up and hurry: the very life of your Child is in mortal danger!

I preach to you tonight the Word of God on THE ROYAL REFUGEE – Three points:

1. LOOK there’s callouses on the Hands of God!

2. LOOK there’s safety – again! – in Egypt!

3. LOOK how the Scriptures sparkle!

You see, the Son has come to suffer and to die, but He did not die before His time. And He did not die by a sword, either. God’s Word had spoken quite differently in Psalm 91. There is God’s warning, and that particular safe-keeping that we find written in Psalm 91, a psalm we love on New Year’s Eve. Yes, rightly so as long as we do not make it into a tame lion. This Psalm was also in the Bible of the Mothers of Bethlehem whose children WERE going to die, but it is not yet God’s time to sacrifice His Son. And so God’s hands carry this child into safety. That’s what Psalm 91 says: GOD does the safekeeping; they are GOD’S hands that guard and shelter His child, His children.

But look at those hands of God. They have callouses on them; they are rough carpenter’s hands. They are the hands of Joseph. Thus says the Lord to Joseph: “Take the child and his mother…!” You see that, by the way, here again. Joseph is not by a long shot the third-rate actor in the drama, the unimportant prop, that many old paintings make of him?

Joseph is not the Father (because the Holy One born was to be the SON OF GOD, GOD Himself alone could get sinners and a sin spoilt earth back on the tracks of glory) – that Joseph is not the father does NOT mean he is not the responsible Head of this unique Covenant family! In fact God treats him more as the head of this Covenant family than quite a few REAL fathers that I know. They live for making money, and leave the care for the children just about completely to Mum. But that is obviously not God’s way. Joseph was told to take the Child and his mother…! Just as it was Joseph in Luke 2:4. He went up from Nazareth to Judea, taking along his betrothed wife who then was pregnant. Joseph had to make sure then that Micah’s prophecy came true.

Now he has to look after another prophecy, this time one of Hosea. They are GOD’S doings, to fulfill His Word. But God uses human Words more often than not. God’s hands fulfill the promise of Psalm 91 for His Son. God WOULD keep the feet of His Son lest they be dashed against a stone. He didn’t have to jump from a temple to prove that! God did keep those little feet – so they could be pierced later on – pierced after having walked miles and miles as the bringers of the Good Tidings! God kept His Son… and the hands he did it with were Joseph’s. God works in the world and makes Psalm 91 come true by people who bear responsibility. They experience the truth of Psalm 91, but they also help make it true for others as they obey the Voice of the Lord.

That’s how it goes when God has a covenant with you, when God is – for that’s what that word means – IN PARTNERSHIP WITH HIS PEOPLE.

The world is still full of Refugees, the children of men without a home. We have them here, too. Think of the people under the slavery of drugs. The youngsters among those for whom God in His electing grace wants to make Psalm 91 come true? Does God want to call them into the Refugee company of His Son? Then it is likely that the hands that lead such people home are hands with callouses on them. Hands that do what our covenant God calls them to. They get busy bringing threatened children of men out of danger, into a new lease of life.

No, nobody can do everything at once. Nobody can take the whole world on his neck. God does not call His covenant partners to become Atlases. But He calls them to be like Joseph: “Come, take the child and His mother..!” Come fathers, be responsible for your families, that they may know God’s caring hand that way. And come Christians, covenant partners of God, carry the stranger until he is safe. God chose calloused hands, human hands, to be the ones caring for Jesus. When you care for the least of His brothers He says you have cared for Him. For Joseph it had extra meaning. The Hope of the world, the very hope of your and my salvation, lay in his hands. In his ability now not to panic as Herod’s soldiers were on their doom-filled way. Come Joseph: the Lord now lays it upon you. Get on with the job… and get out with the Child. Carry to his safety the one destined to bear your cross. Carry to his task …the Royal Refugee!

2- LOOK THERE IS SAFETY… and AGAIN in Egypt…!

Israel…. and Egypt. They are in the news again these days aren’t they? Egypt, you know, was not only the land of Israel’s SLAVERY, it wasn’t just the house of bondage. Time and again in sacred history it was the Refuge for God’s Covenant people when things were getting too hot for them in Canaan. I wonder do the Egyptian and Israeli leaders realize this today?

Abraham had to seek and to find… safety and bread in Egypt. Joseph had to go there later, to find a haven for all of Jacob’s house. A haven they were to have for 3 1⁄2 centuries. God’s quarrel was with that stiff-necked Pharaoh later on. But throughout the Law and the Prophets there is the ring of gratitude on God’s part for the Egyptian, also His Son! – who looked after the Holy line, who were the keepers of those from whom the Saviour would be born.. Now the Egyptians may look after the Saviour Himself!

The world is the world of God, that is what comes through here, loud and clear. Egypt is His, too. Our Redeemer without Whom you or I or anyone would have NO HOPE, had asylum there. Does that not mean that we should have a soft spot in our heart for that place, too?

Today the world around us looks dark and restless. Things shake and creak on all sides. The “Free world” as we call it, is breaking off at the edges. Maybe there are whole parts of the world we have written of as “dark”, as parts and nations that God cannot do much with, either! Traditional foes, age-old embittered enemies are territories we might give up: what good can come from there? But God does not do that as quickly as we do. Just about the only overseas trip Jesus ever made – and that to find shelter and safety – was into the land of slavery, what used to be indeed – the house of bondage. Now our Freedom was sheltered there. Yes indeed, from Egypt God called His Son. So as you look around you – which God’s child must do also in the new year to come – then look out for the surprises of God! His is the world… and He does not give up as easy as we do at times. We may still see a great Missionary task for China. And there may still be new life in the secularised West. What curtain can stop Him?

Indeed, out of EGYPT He did call His Son, and that gets me to the last point. We saw:

1. LOOK There’s callouses on the hands of God!

2. LOOK! There’s safety again!… in Egypt!

….and now:

3. LOOK HOW THE SCRIPTURES SCINTILLATE AND SPARKLE!

Yes, then God calls His Son-from Egypt. “LOOK!” says Matthew to his Jewish readers, it’s all in Hosea! Didn’t God put it into His Bible long ago? Well, so to see what’s in Hosea 11 is something entirely DIFFERENT: “When Israel was a child I loved him” – God there says to His faithless nation – “and out of Egypt I called my son!” “But the more I called them, the more they went from Me… they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to the idols!” Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk! I took him up in my arms! I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of caring love…..!”

Yes, but now read on…!

God speaks of punishment… of banishment! But then see how it goes on in verse 8: “How can I give you up O Ephraim? How can I hand you over O Israel; How can I make you like the cities destroyed with Sodom and Gomorah!?” My heart recoiled within Me and My compassion grows warm and tender! I will not destroy forever… for I am GOD and not man! the Holy One in your midst!”

If you

No, we might not have dared do what the Holy Spirit made Matthew do: quote this text for the calling of Jesus out of Egypt…. but how else, except by Him, could God bring salvation also to the faithless Israel?

How else could salvation come but by keeping little Jesus from the sword, so HE COULD GO ON THE CROSS. Not even Hosea saw it that way, but GOD saw it. He made this prophet speak this pregnant word, as so often God makes His prophets say things they themselves see not yet in all their scintillating, sparkling glory. God called His Son out of Egypt. To bring a world full of refugees home, God called His son out of Egypt. Then REALLY it was going to be the Way of Sorrows, the VIA DOLOROSA, not just the sweet kind of “away in a manger” kind of figure. The Shepherd for the Homeless was to bring them back to the Father’s house, both from Israel.. and from all the nations. It is as if I hear Isaiah say in wonder: “then the Lord will say: Egypt, my first-born son – and Assyria, the work of My Hands!”

God does surprising things. He did them also this year, and also among us. Sometimes he used people to do them, but that was no less His work. But the point is, whether we have seen and trusted Him whom I call you again to see and to trust. Have you seen Him who became the Refugee, so that you might become PILGRIMS on the way, not to a strange country, but to the Father’s house.

The point is that you see Jesus. He had to thank Egypt for asylum and shelter. He sees the world as God’s world. He sees His pierced hands, His cross as the ONLY WAY of salvation which is to be preached to all nations. His pierced hands were to be stretched out over all those lands as He went to the throne.

The point is, if you read the Scriptures that only can make you wise unto salvation, with eyes opened for God’s surprise that sparkle and scintillate all through its books: and everywhere you look, you see Him. The Royal Refugee, who now is on the throne. Whose was the past, and whose will also be the future. Our defence is sure when we trust in Him alone. Blessed are they, who put their trust in Him.

Amen.