(Preached at First Baptist Church, Angleton, TX, December 29, 2024.)

I hope that you are among those who had a Merry Christmas — but honestly I know that not everyone did. Our lives are often very difficult, and maybe you’ve noticed, that problems don’t usually take off for the holidays! Just a few years ago my mom & step dad were facing a lot of problems that December. He had just finished his treatments for bone cancer, and he was doing ok with it right then — but his son was engaged with a difficult struggle with cancer — and then just before the holiday they were given the news that his daughter had a serious brain tumor. One of my sisters told my mom that she was planning to come to their house for Christmas, but Mom told her that if she came up she was going to have to bring Christmas with her, because there wasn’t much Christmas at their house that year.

And that’s the world in which we live, right? There is pain, there are hardships, and sickness, and death — as YES that is true even for Christians too. We aren’t somehow exempt from suffering just because we follow the Lord — in fact, to be honest, sometimes God’s people have even MORE difficulties because we belong to the Lord! But it’s important for us as we face these things, to keep our eyes on the Lord, and to trust & obey Him. Our passage for today is very fitting for this time of year; it is a followup from scriptures that we often associate with the Christmas season: the visit of the magi to the young Christ after His birth, and the gifts they brought Him. Here in Matthew 2:13-23 we find in the aftermath of that sweet visit a tragedy the likes of which many of us may never see — but we also see that even in these tragic times, God is still working in His Providence. So we learn here that we need to trust and obey God as we walk through sometimes very difficult times in our fallen world.

 

I. Our Fallen World
This scripture passage makes it very obvious that we do live in a very sinful, fallen world. We see a jealous king Herod who is enraged when the magi don’t respond to his insincere desire to supposedly “worship” Jesus, and he sends his men and kills all the male children around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, because he didn’t want any “competition” for his throne. This Christ he was seeking to kill was not much more than a baby — a 2 year old — about the age of our grand daughter Sophie. This was an unspeakably wicked and evil act. And it’s a reminder of the kind of fallen world we live in.

Sometimes people romanticize our world — it’s easy to do that at Christmas time, when we have songs about “peace on earth, good will towards men,” and we construct picture-perfect manger scenes of how we think the nativity of Christ should have been, complete with shepherds who are looking over sheep who have been placed in just the right position, and 3 (and no more than 3) magi who are positioned just right: one bowing, one kneeling, and one standing, so they have just the right visual effect. We romanticize the birth and childhood of Christ, when in reality, as we read here in Matthew, there was a lot of hardship and danger that accompanied it: there was no place for Him to stay, so he was born in a “manger” — French for “to eat” — He had been placed in box the animals ate out of; and now here was Herod trying to kill Him — and He DID kill at least several young ones in the area around Bethlehem, Matthew 2 tells us.

Many people try to romanticize the world of creation in the same way: they write poetically about the beauty and peace of nature — when in actuality nature is very wild and bloodthirsty. As a hunting friend and a very godly man we know in Louisiana used to say: “For something to live, something else has to die.” Take some time to think about that some this afternoon: there’s a lot of truth in it: “For something to live, something else has to die.” And you sure see that in creation.

A couple of years ago Cheryl was having her morning Bible reading and prayer time in her chair in our living room, and she had enjoyed looking out each day, and seeing a bird making its nest bit by bit. Then one day it had eggs, and finally some little baby birds appeared. You can imagine it was just such a peaceful and serene scene for her to have her prayer time in — until one morning while she was admiring the birds and the little nest, all of the sudden a big hawk swooped in, grabbed one of the baby birds, and carried it away! She said it was so quick, so violent, and so unexpected in such a peaceful scene — it just shook her out of that peaceful state.

These kinds of experiences serve to remind us that not only mankind, but our whole creation has been corrupted by sin. Romans 8:19-22 says: “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.”

The Bible teaches us there that when man disobeyed God and brought sin into the world, he dragged all of creation down into the degradation and consequences of sin as well. This whole earth has been corrupted by our sin. This is why so many bad things happen in our world — it is a result of our sin. There are wicked men, like Herod, who do evil things like kill children — and we also have a creation that has been corrupted, so that all kinds of bad things happen to us, not only as a direct result of our own sin, but also because we live in a world that has been tainted by sin. So because our world has corrupted by sin, we have what we call “natural disasters”, and rampant illnesses that strike many of us — and on and on. Some of the bad things we experience we can chalk up directly to a bad decision we made on our part. But other things that happen to us aren’t necessarily a direct consequence of any particular decision or action we made, but happened just because we live in a world that has been corrupted in general by man’s sin.

It isn’t difficult to catalogue the problems of our world; we hear about them in the media every day:
— There are wars going on — and rumors of more to come!
— There are terrorists bombing and shooting and driving cars into crowds in cities all over the world
— We see disease running rampant 
— The news just reported that over 1200 people have been shot just in the city of Chicago, Illinois, this year so far!
— Just about every day we wake up hearing the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles, right here in Angleton — every day!
Who among us lives a life or has a family that has not been touched and harmed in some way by this fallen world? We all have!

We need to realize this is the kind of depraved world we live in. Don’t romanticize it; it will lead you to make a lot of mistakes. Don’t think that people are all basically good. Don’t think that permanent “peace and safety” is to found here in this world. This isn’t heaven. This isn’t the place where everything is just and right. That comes later, in glory with the Lord. Through Jesus Christ, God the Son, whose coming to earth we celebrated at Christmas, God sent us a Savior from the sin and corruption of this world. One day, those who trust Him as their Lord & Savior will get to leave this place, and live in a perfect world with Him — a new heavens and a new earth, as Isaiah 65 tells us, where the wolf WILL lie down with the lamb and graze together, and they shall do no harm in His holy mountain — that WILL all happen one day, but until then, we need to realize that THIS IS NOT THAT PLACE! Don’t idealize or romanticize this world, or think that we can apply naive solutions to it because you think this world and the people in it are basically good. It’s not. They’re not! We live in a world that has been corrupted by sin, and every single person in it has a sin nature — and the only hope for us all is in Jesus Christ and the world to come. This episode in Matthew 2 reminds us of that.
 


II. Our Sovereign God’s Providence
But although we live in a corrupted, depraved world, we are not without hope. There is a God of Providence who is overseeing everything that happens, and who, despite the consistent and continuous choices of mankind to sin, He is steering the world in the ultimate direction that HE has planned for it.

We see THAT here in Matthew 2 as well. Here was Herod, committing this horrible atrocity, but even his evil fit into the ultimate plan of God:
— Verses 14-15 tell us that when Herod tried to kill the young Jesus, Joseph obeyed God and took his family to Egypt, and :15 says that this fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy that God would bring His Son out of Egypt.
— Verse 17 says that when Jesus’ family had left for Egypt, and Herod killed the babies, it fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah the prophet (Jer. 31:15) about Rachel (the matriarch of the children of Israel) weeping for her children.
— And then :23 says that when Joseph didn’t go back to Judea because Herod’s son was ruling there, the family settled in Nazareth, “to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’”

So at every step along the way, even when there was an evil man like Herod doing all these wicked things, God was still using even this evil man to accomplish His ultimate will: fulfilling His word, and directing the Holy Family to just where they needed to be to fulfill scripture and to accomplish His purposes for them.

This demonstrates to us that the God of the Bible is both a Sovereign God, and a God of Providence. “Sovereign” means that He rules. A king is called a “sovereign” because he rules his kingdom. A “sovereign” nation is a nation that is independent of the control of others; they rule their own country as they wish. So when we say that our God is a “sovereign” God, we mean that HE RULES on the throne of the universe, and He is subject to nothing and no one else. God is in charge. As Psalm 103:19 says: “YHWH has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all.” His sovereignty rules over “ALL” — God is the uncontested, sovereign King of the universe.

And in His sovereignty, God is also a God of Providence: “providence” means that God coordinates everything He has made, for the use and purpose for which He created it. Ephesians 1:11 says He “works all things after the counsel of His will.” Romans 8:28 says that “God causes all things to work together” because He CREATED everything as Sovereign God — and as the God of Providence, He USES everything for His own providential plans and purposes.

Many of us as Christians need to understand this concept of “providence,” and use it in conversation more than we do. When we good things happen in our lives, we are often quick to call them a “miracle” — and make no mistake, God IS a miracle-working God, and you & I as His children SHOULD be quick to give Him credit when He does work a miracle. But we also would do better in many cases not to call something a “miracle” that’s not technically a miracle, because we don’t want to exaggerate a situation, and discredit ourselves in the eyes of a watching world. A “miracle” as such, is a case in which God suspends the normal laws of the universe for His glory: like Jesus walking on water, or multiplying two fish to feed 5000 people, or removing a cancer from a diagnosed person’s body with no medical treatment. God does those things. He works “miracles.” But He also performs what we should call “acts of Providence” — cases where no “laws of nature” are suspended, but God plans and carries out actions that bless and provide for His people in unusual ways. It’s not a “miracle” per se, but an act of His “providence” which He planned and carried out for us.

For example: right after Cheryl & I had graduated from seminary, we experienced some financial hardships. We were still waiting to be called to our first full-time church, but we’d just had our first baby, and I only had a part-time job, so things were really tight. Well, one month we had just paid the electric bill, and we had only something like $20 left in the bank — and the rent was going to be due in just a few days. We didn’t know what we would do. But one day that week, we received a check in the mail from one of Cheryl’s friends, which was exactly the amount of our rent for that month. Now that was not technically a “miracle” — no laws of science were overturned by that action; no money was miraculously created or anything like that — there was a person who had money in the bank, who wrote a check in the same way that people always write checks, and sent it through the mail service that everyone typically uses, and we deposited it in the bank and used it for our bills like people do with checks. In a real sense, there was nothing “miraculous” about it — but I think we would agree that this was definitely the work of God, right? It wasn’t a “miracle” per se, but it was definitely God’s “providence.” God caused people and circumstances to come together to achieve His purposes. That is His Providence.

And God’s providences are all around us:
— You don’t just “accidentally” happen to get money in the mail at the just right time like we did. That’s God’s providence!
— You didn’t just “happen” to meet that person who gave you the lead to get that job you needed. That’s God’s providence.
— You’re not just “lucky” that you came across just the right thing at just the right time. It is the Providence of God.

We need to learn to recognize God’s providences more than we do; we need to give God more credit than we typically do for our blessings. The Puritans and the other saints of old used to speak all the time of God’s “providences” — and we need to get back to that perspective and that language. God’s providences are abundant and they are all around us, and one of our responsibilities as God’s people is to point out His providences to the watching world around us as witness to the Lord, and to praise and thank Him for all that He works together for us and provides for us, in His providence.

Matthew 2 reminds us that although this world is a fallen world of depravity and corruption, that our God is the Sovereign God of Providence.
 


(III.) CONCLUSION/LIFE LESSON: “TRUST & OBEY”
So what do we do? What LIFE LESSON do we take away today? “Trust & Obey”!

The world into which Jesus was born, was a depraved, corrupted world, with evil men like King Herod making decisions. But Matthew 2 reminds us that men like Herod are never ultimately in charge. God is sovereign over them. Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever He wishes.” God uses even wicked kings and their decisions to bring about His purposes in the world. This IS a corrupt and depraved world — but it’s all heading towards God’s ultimate purpose. HE is sovereign; HE is in charge.

I love the picture that A.W. Tozer gives us of this in his book “The Knowledge of the Holy.” Tozer is writing about how God is a sovereign God, and he gives an illustration, saying that when an ocean liner leaves New York for Liverpool, England, its course has already been set. Now on board are all kinds of people, with all their activities: they eat, sleep, play, do whatever they want to do — but no matter what they do on board, that ocean liner is still going to that predetermined point. Nothing they do in going to change that. Now, as in all illustrations, that’s an imperfect picture of reality, but it at least somewhat pictures for us the sovereignty of God. People in this world make all their little decisions — but as Tozer says, “the mighty (ocean) liner of God’s sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history … towards the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began.” And truthfully, unlike in Tozer’s illustration, even the “little decisions” which we make, somehow fit into God’s overall Providential design. “He works all things after the counsel of His will.” (Ephesians 1:11)

So as we look at Matthew 2, our job is to realize this. We need to realize that we are living in a fallen world — but that God is in charge, and He is working everything together for His purposes. And we need TRUST Him, and OBEY Him, even when we are experiencing all the difficulties we encounter in this corrupted world.

Joseph had to trust & obey God repeatedly in this chapter. He had to TRUST the revelation and the direction that God gave him — and he had to OBEY it — or his life, and the life of his family, could have been lost.

This is the lesson we need to take out of this text: in this difficult world in which WE live: trust & obey God. If you haven’t already, one day you are going to have circumstances in your life that appear to be so bad — and you won’t know why God would allow them — but you have to trust: there IS a reason for it. Sometimes that reason is our own sin; sometimes is not our personal sin, but just a result of the sin-tainted world in which we live. But whatever the cause, we are to believe that even while we are in the midst of these difficult circumstances, there is a God who is Sovereign, who is ruling on His throne, and who is causing all things — even these painful things — to work together for His purposes. We have to trust Him.

And you have to be committed to OBEY Him. God will probably not speak to you in a dream, like He did to Joseph. He speaks to us in His word, the Bible. That’s why you need to spend time in the Bible every day, so you can hear what God has to say to you. This world is going to tell you that this book is NOT the word of God, and that what it says, doesn’t make sense in our “modern world”. But you have to trust that it IS God’s word; and commit yourself to OBEY it — just like Joseph did. And if you will, then one day you will be able to look back and see how God fit everything together — even all the hard things; even all the bad things — and He fit them all together into a plan that glorified Him and shaped you in a way that would have never happened otherwise. But in order for you to be able to see that one day, you have to follow in the steps of Joseph right now: in this fallen world, TRUST and OBEY the Sovereign God of Providence!

INVITATION:
— Maybe you’ve been hurt, or disappointed by something in this world. Realize this is a world that has been tainted by our sin. Bad things WILL happen to us here; not only as a result of our own sin, but also just because this is a fallen world, and it’s full of sin and hurt.
— But trust also what you see here in Matthew 2: that God is Sovereign. And that despite our sin, He still loves us — that’s what Christmas is all about. If you never have, trust His love. Trust Jesus as your Lord & Savior, and know that you will have all eternity in heaven of glory and love, which will cause us to forget all about the brief hardships of this world.
— And if Jesus is your Lord & Savior, then TRUST HIM; OBEY Him, right now — even in those hard times in your life. In Matthew 2, Mary and Joseph couldn’t know why God told them to do all that He did — but the obeyed Him, and He blessed that. He’ll do that for YOU too, IF you will trust and obey Him. Get into His word, find what He’s telling you to do, and trust and obey the God of Providence who loves you, and wants the best for you.