God Calls His Son

Hosea 11.1, then Matthew 2, 13-15.

Hosea 11.1, when Israel was a child, I loved him,! Out of Egypt I called my son.

Matthew 2, 13-15. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you.

For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet out of Egypt. I called my son. May God add a blessing to the reading of his word.

Would you please be seated? In the past, and just recently in our present, it has been suggested by prominent Christian teachers that the Old Testament is irrelevant to our times and should be either thrown out completely or ignored by modern Christians today.

Back in the 1920s and 30s, a man by the name of Harry Emerson Fosdick was a well-known pastor and preacher, and he gained notoriety for a series of sermons or lectures that he preached at Yale University, believe it or not.

And in those lectures, he called for a new and a more modern understanding of the Bible. To the young preachers who had gathered to hear him lecture, this is what he said, The Old Testament exhibits many attributes indulged in by men and ascribed to God which represent early stages in a great development.

And it is alike intellectually ruinous and morally debilitating to endeavor to harmonize those early ideas with the revelations of the great prophets in the gospel.

So basically what he's saying is, it ain't any good anymore. It doesn't apply to what's going on now. We've come a long way. We've progressed as humans and it's no longer relevant to read and to dig through.

That was back then. More recently, in early 2018, I believe it was, Andy Stanley, who is the pastor of New Point Community Church, a church that has 38,000 members, suggested that the church today needs to unhitch itself from the Old Testament, his reasoning being the same.

As Fosdick's was back in the 20s and 30s. However, I believe that the church should never unhitch itself from the Old Testament.

Because in doing so, that would eventually lead us to unhitching ourselves from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Speaking of the Old Testament, this is what Jesus had to say.

He said in John 8, 39, of the Old Testament Scriptures, it is they that bear witness to me. And they do.

The Old Testament saw paradise lost for Adam. The New Testament shows how paradise is regained through the second Adam, who is Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament declares that man was separated from God as a result of their sin. And the New Testament declares that man can be restored in his relationship to God.

The Old Testament predicted the Messiah's life. The gospel records the Messiah's life. And the epistles interpret his life and how we are to respond to what he has done for us, both in his life and in his death and in his resurrection.

The Old Testament lays the foundation for the coming of the Messiah who would sacrifice himself for the sins of the world. The New Testament records the ministry of Jesus Christ.

And it looks back on what he did and how we are to respond. That's what we are to do now. And both testaments to us reveal the same holy, merciful, and righteous God who condemns sin, but who desires to save sinners through the atoning sacrifice of his Son.

Both testaments, in both testaments, God reveals himself to us. And he shows us how we are to come to him through faith.

So, no, we should not seek to unhinge ourselves from the Old Testament, nor should we treat it as being less or with less regard than we do the New Testament.

Because all of the Bible, old and new, is God's revelation to us. In many ways, the New Testament also serves as a commentary of the Old Testament passages.

And I believe that as we look at the New Testament passage, as we've read today, the old and the new, that we will see that God has something very awesome to tell us about himself and about his Son, Jesus Christ.

So that's where we're at here today. And in order for us to best understand what God has to say to us through these two passages, we have to go back to the beginning of Hosea and work our way up to chapter 11 and verse 1 and then see how Matthew chapter 2 verses 13 and 15 drive home this very important message for God's people today.

If you'll remember, the message of Hosea is one of failure. It's about Israel's failure to obey God.

If you recall, God has chosen them. God has called them. God has blessed them. But time after time, Israel would turn away from God to other gods, and so God rightly referred to them as spiritual adulteresses in this book.

And if you'll remember also, God called Hosea, his prophet, to dramatically illustrate Israel's adulterousness in a way that would show to him and to all the people what exactly they had done.

And so God tells Hosea to marry Gomer. And it's important for us to understand that God brought this woman, God brought this situation into Hosea's life.

He brought this most tragic personal experience into this man's life. But he had a plan. As he does by working all things together still for his people for the good.

And you remember, you've been here, many of you, for a long time as we've gone through this book, chapter, and verse, that Hosea married Gomer, and she was unfaithful to him.

She ran off after other lovers. She left Hosea to raise their children, who may or may not have been his biological children.

And she shattered this man's heart. And so a lot of times we read these stories, but we forget that these were people. This was Hosea's life.

Imagine if that was you. Imagine if you were in that same situation. She, Gomer, was a slave to her sinful desires.

But Hosea loved her anyway. And dear old Hosea, instead of rejecting her as she had rejected him, instead of walking away from her forever, he found her again at the apex of her shame.

A broke down, passed around, used and abused woman who is now up for sale on the auction block. And he seeks her.

And he finds her. And you remember, he purchases her. He brings her back to their home. And he restores her to the place of honor that she once had as his wife.

Not treating her as a slave, but treating her as the woman whom he loved and adorned her with his affection and his love once again. That was his personal experience.

But just as Hosea had married Gomer, God had become Israel's husband. Just as Hosea loved Gomer, God loved Israel. Just as Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, so Israel was unfaithful to God.

Just as Gomer was enslaved by her love, so was Israel enslaved by her idols. Gomer put her trust in lovers, and they made her a slave.

Israel put their trust in idols, and they made her a slave too. Just as Hosea's gracious love caused him to purchase his wife, so God's gracious love for his people causes him to do the same thing.

And that is the message of Hosea. Though we'll still go through chapter 11, 12, 13, 14. Hosea 11, 1 emphasizes the incredible love that God has for Israel.

From the time that Israel, he says, was just a child in Egypt, when they were under the power of Pharaoh, and they were in the bondage of slavery, it was then that God says that he redeemed them, and he set his people free.

And I believe that what Hosea is doing here in Hosea 11, 1, is that God is reminding his people of how they might be saved from their present hopeless condition.

Remember, they've sinned, and God says that they will pay as a result of their sin. But there's hope. And that's what the rest of this book will be about, the hope that they still have. And so he draws their attention back to the Exodus to remind them again of their inability to save themselves and to remind them that their only hope for salvation is him, not themselves, not anybody else, it's him.

In remembering their flight out of Egypt, they would hopefully recall that it was God who instructed Moses to not take the most direct path out of Egypt, but instead to make a wrong turn.

Remember, God tells Moses to do this to trick the Egyptians into thinking that the Israelites were confused so that they would pursue them. God purposely had them go another way, which would have been hard for the Israelites to understand.

You want us to go that way? That doesn't seem like the best course out of here, and we'd like to leave quickly. God says, nope, I want you to go this way, and he had a purpose in doing that.

But they would have been struggling to understand it, especially when they got to the Red Sea, when they saw that God's course had led them to this great obstacle, but God hadn't left them completely in the dark.

Remember, he had called Moses to act as their mediator between himself and between the Israelites to lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, and God had revealed this plan to Moses.

He said to him, before this happened, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. He will pursue them and understand, I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.

Now, he hadn't gone into great detail, but he'd given Moses reason to have faith and to trust in his provision once they came to the Red Sea when it looked like all hope was lost.

And that's where I want to pick it up. Let's read that encounter again in Exodus chapter 14, 10 through 18. When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly.

And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, It is because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done in bringing us out of Egypt?

Is not this what we said to you in Egypt? Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.

And Moses said to the people, Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today.

Which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you.

And you have only to be silent. You have only to do nothing and watch it happen. The Lord said to Moses, Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.

Lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry land. And again, understand, he says, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them and get this too and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts and all his chariots and his horsemen.

And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.

God has a purpose in all of this. God's purpose in doing this was to save his people. For what purpose? Well, he tells us, for his glory.

Their salvation, the Israelite salvation, brought him glory just as Pharaoh's defeat and the destruction of his army would bring him glory too.

There was no other option for Israel here. There was no other way that they could prevail in this circumstance. If they turned to fight, they would have been slaughtered. If they tried to swim across the sea, they would have drowned.

Their attempts to save themselves would have fallen way short. They would have failed. They couldn't do it. So God puts them in this hopeless position so that they would realize that he was the only one capable of saving them.

And so this is kind of a sermon within a sermon. Having the people go another way was the means by which God would get the greatest glory over Pharaoh. And so when things happen in our lives that we don't understand, or God calls us to do something that perplexes us, we as God's people can be sure that it will ultimately accomplish a greater good for us, but more importantly, ultimately, for God's glory.

Read Romans 8, 28. And if you don't like that, then you're not going to like what the rest of the Bible has to say. The vital lesson, though, and the one that I believe that God is directing the Israelites' attention to in Hosea 11, 1, is that salvation is from Him alone.

The Bible says that salvation is a gift completely from the Lord, from the beginning to the end. He accomplishes our redemption for us, and He gives us the faith to appropriate that redemption to ourselves.

It can be easy to forget this truth, but we must always be clear that it is His work alone that brings us salvation, that redeems us. This truth is what separates Christianity from all other religions.

They are based on works. This is what you must do to be saved, where Christianity says this is what was done for you, and now you're saved. This is what you must do.

So having understood that, hopefully, we can turn our attention to Matthew 2, verses 13 and 15. And there, we must ask ourselves, why does Matthew take this quote from Hosea and apply it to Christ?

And that's the main idea for this morning's sermon. In all the ways that Israel failed God, Christ succeeded. In all the ways that we have failed God, Christ has succeeded.

These two passages introduce us to the biblical concept of types. In Matthew 2, verses 13 and 15, Israel is presented to us as a type of Christ.

So what is a type? Well, types are like prophecies, but they differ in a very important way. A prophecy is a verbal prediction of a future event.

But a type is a nonverbal prediction. I'll explain even more. There are texts in the Old Testament that tell us explicitly that God is going to send a Savior who will suffer and die.

Isaiah 53, for example. And then there are other texts in the Old Testament that use pictures to communicate the same truths to us.

The sacrifices in the Old Testament, the sacrifice of the unblemished male lambs during the Passover were all a picture. Of whom? Christ. Types are nonverbal pictures of what He would ultimately be and do for us.

So in Matthew chapter 2 verses 13 through 15, Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, again, the Holy Spirit is the author of all of Scripture, reveals Israel as a picture, as a type of Christ.

Israel is God's child and God's firstborn and so is Christ. Israel is called out of Egypt and so is Christ.

Listen, just as Pharaoh was a cruel king who tried to destroy Israel, so another cruel king by the name of Herod was attempting to do the same by killing the Son of God.

just as God protected Israel in Egypt and delivered them, so God protected His Son in Egypt and delivered Him too. And though there are many similarities, there is one major and very important difference in all of this.

Old Testament Israel's history was marked by disobedience, failure, and unfaithfulness to God the Father. But such was not the case with Jesus.

In all the ways that those people failed, Christ succeeded. He was faithfully obedient all the way to the cross where He, the unblemished Lamb of God, was slain for our sins, for our failures, for our unfaithfulness, by God's grace, since we could not save ourselves, and ultimately for His great glory.

In these two passages, then, we learn two principles about God. First of all, that God sovereignly sets His unconditional love on His people.

Let me read verse 1 again. When Israel was a child, I loved Him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

So here, God reminds Israel of their exodus out of Egypt, and how as a young nation, He poured out His love and His compassion upon them, how He brought them out of their bondage to slavery, out from under the power of Pharaoh, and how He ultimately led them to the promised land.

And if you remember, Israel had done nothing to earn or to deserve the favor and the love that God showed them. Who was Israel that God should love them?

The gist of Deuteronomy 7, 7 and 8 is God saying this to Israel, basically this, I loved you because I loved you. it was not based on works, it was not based on merit, but because of His grace, according to His purpose.

And Paul tells Timothy that the same thing is true for his church. Read and listen carefully. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about your Lord, nor of me, His prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of His own purpose and grace which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

Just as God sovereignly chose to set His unconditional love upon Israel, a love again that was not based on their merit or their choosing, but based solely upon His grace and His purpose, so He has done the same for His church.

Let's read again, 1 Corinthians 1, 26-31. for consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards.

Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being may boast in the presence of God.

And because of Him, because of Him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

Now let me tell you, if we chose God, then we have reason to boast, wouldn't we? I did it, how come you didn't? But just like Israel, we failed to measure up to God's perfect standard.

The Bible says that all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and we are justified by what? By His grace as a gift. Just as God has set His unconditional love upon His people, so He too has set His unconditional love upon His Son.

Jesus Christ. God the Father gives testimony to that in a couple of different instances. One, at Jesus' baptism, when there He says, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Then later on, when Jesus had been transfigured before the eyes of Peter, James, and John, again the Father says of Him in that moment, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.

In Luke's gospel, he adds something else to what Jesus said in that moment. He said, of Jesus, God the Father said, He is my chosen one.

So we must ask ourselves now, chosen for what? Secondly, God delivers His people from their bondage.

bondage. Chosen for what? To deliver His people from their bondage. Once more, let's go back to the Exodus. The great prototype of salvation in the Old Testament is the act of God delivering Israel from their bondage of slavery to Egypt.

And what happened there was a foretaste of what Christ would come and do on a greater scale. Again, remember, Israel was powerless to save themselves and to remove their bonds of slavery.

It was God who drew them out by performing, remember, ten miraculous judgments against the Egyptians. The first nine took place and yet the nation could not escape.

But it was the last one. Remember, keep in mind, keep in mind that God could have obliterated the Egyptians in an instant if he wanted to.

If he would have said, you know what, I want to set my people free, they're in bondage, these are the enemies, poof, you're gone. Right? He could have rained down fire and sulfur from heaven like he did to Sodom and Gomorrah.

That was in God's playbook. He could have pulled out that play and he could have used that, but he didn't do that. The reason why he chose to set his people free and the way in which he did is significant because it was the tenth miracle, the battle over the firstborn sons, when God's judgment fell upon the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, but not on the firstborn sons of his people.

Why not? Well, they had been redeemed. Those sons had been spared, they had been saved.

Do you remember how that was? By the blood of the Lamb that each family shed, that each family then used that blood to apply to the doors of their houses.

And when the angel of death saw that blood, he passed over their houses. By God's grace, their firstborn sons were spared.

before the blood was shed, the nation could not get out of Egypt. But once that blood had been shed, they could no longer stay.

That blood of the Lamb, again, is a picture, a type of Christ. Just as Israel was drawn out of obscurity and bondage in Egypt in order to be brought to a promised land, to be a light to the nation, so Jesus grew up in obscurity, born in a manger in Bethlehem, a fugitive in Egypt, brought back and raised in the podunk town of Nazareth, baptized and then led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days where he was tempted by Satan.

So the Father had repeated in the Son what he had done for Israel, but again, with one major difference. Israel's history again tells us that they failed to be the light to the nations.

By the time of Christ's earthly ministry, they had become super religious people. They were preoccupied with developing and observing a system of religion that they thought could save them.

Let me tell you, even today we have leaders in our society and in our churches who suggest that what we need most is salvation from poverty, from greed, from corruption, from pollution and a host of other societal ills.

And while I don't mean to downplay the severity of those things and the desirability to be rescued from them, the real things we need salvation from are the powers of sin and death.

We are unable and powerless to free ourselves from those enemies. No matter how moralistic we encourage ourselves and others to be, no matter how much effort we put into making the world a better place, let me tell you, as we've seen, humanity will fail.

Time and time again, humanity fails. But where we fail, Jesus Christ has succeeded.

This is the good news of the gospel. That in this world we are not without hope. That Jesus has come. That Jesus has succeeded.

That our Lord is victorious over sin, extinguishing it upon His cross. That our Lord is victorious over death, having risen from the dead on the third day.

Like the Israelites in Egypt, we are hopeless and we are powerless to save ourselves. All we can do like them is to turn to God, to turn to Christ, to confess our failures, to receive the work that He has accomplished for us, and then to spend the rest of our lives giving Him the glory for it until He calls us to be with Him in His glorious kingdom forever.

Christians, take heart. Take heart. Your Lord, your Savior, has succeeded.

He is victorious. He is Lord of all, Lord of Lords, King of Kings. Jesus. By quoting Hosea, Matthew is saying that this time, the Son of God would be called out of Egypt and would be a far greater deliverer than Moses ever was.

The first Moses brought deliverance only to the people of Israel, but the second Moses, Jesus Christ, will bring deliverance to the entire world. Just as John the Baptist says in John 1 29, when he sees Jesus coming toward him, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

And when you come to the point where as a believer you identify with the struggles of the Apostle Paul in Romans 7 where he laments over the internal struggle that he has between his love for God and his desire to be obedient and do what is right and the sinful desires that remain in his flesh and he feels and he talks about feeling that war within his side of himself between these conflicting natures.

and he laments over the fact that he feels like a constant failure. But he says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

He's reminded, just as Hosea tried to remind the Israelites, just as Matthew reminds us in his gospel that though we fail, Christ has not.

His victory is our victory. And we can always turn to him and be hopeful and thankful in that all the ways that we fail, he has succeeded. So Paul concludes by saying, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Not me, not anybody else. No system of religion. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He's delivered me once for all time.

So I hope and I pray that this truth comes to you and it moves from your head into your heart. Salvation isn't of us.

Where we failed, Christ has not. His victory is our victory. And this good news of what Christ has done for us is to be shared with others.

We must share this great news. So I want to conclude by reading to you, we can read together 2 Corinthians 5, 17-21.

This is true for you as a believer of Christ and here you know what do we do with this? What do we do with this information? Let's see. therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this, all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

My friends, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you take heart in this world that your savior is victorious. He has done it for you once for all.

And you go and you share that good news with as many people as you can until he comes back or he takes you to be with himself. You with him. If you don't know that truth, I'm here to tell you today, speaking the truth in love, your good deeds will not get you eternal life.

You cannot save yourself from your sins. It is impossible. You might feel like you're good compared to other people. You might feel like you're good compared to Hitler, but you are not good compared to God.

And thank God that he has done something about it by sending his son Jesus Christ to live for us, being obedient to all that the law required without sin, dying then on the cross for our sins, being raised from the dead on the third day as proof that he was the son of God, as proof of his victory over sin and death.

And so when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you are clothed with his righteousness. And when God sees a believer, he sees somebody who's justified.

Not just seeing them as if they've never sinned, but seeing them as if they've always done what Jesus did. Seeing you as he sees Jesus Christ. Is that good news?

Man is great news. He is a man