The Child Brings Newness

                                     The Child Bring New

Matthew 2:13-23

Greeting to you my friends and brethren. Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Praise be to God in the highest and goodwill to men. It is so good to see you and be with you. We have so much to thank God for. I thank God for you and your families. We are on a journey that God is preparing us to travel. We must help each other reach our destination. We must remember the enemy is lurking around and is just waiting for us to let down our guard. Be careful, if you see something say something. Amen.

This is a very joyful time of year, Christmas. To some people, Christmas is very a depressing time of year. It is said that between Christmas and New Years”’ the suicide rate dramatically increases. This seems very odd. Why are people down at Christmas? By the second and third Christmas the clouds gathered. The text is filled with innocent babies being killed, the displacement of a young couple out of their own escapes in the middle of the night from Bethlehem butchers. We think or some of us thought that Christmas is supposed to be a time of perpetual Joy. The song says “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes” This may be true however several others did. Matthews tells us about the aftermath of the magi’s visit. with a focus around three old testament text. His readers heard their own story of the dark cloud that came over them. but if they listened closely they heard that out of the dark cloud God can bring newness. Amen!

The Child Brings new Sonship:(13-15) 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.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 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.” (Hosea 11:1)Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’”(Exodus 4:22, 23). Israel was God’s son. God taught Israel to walk.  Egypt represents a place of bondage and slavery. The New Testament connection is that Jesus is the new Israel. He gives new meaning to what it means to be a son of God. Jesus is called a child ( He is that, not an infant, by the time magi visit. As a child he is vulnerable, but as such he teaches us to trust the Father to work everything out. Amen.  Egypt for Jesus was a place of refuge. In Jesus God was saying to the world ” Okay world I’m going to run it by you one more time.” The Child brings new Sonship:

The Child Brings a New Covenant ( 16-18).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. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“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.” (Jeremiah 31:15). The people of God had been idolatrous, and God would punish them in Babylon. The mothers of Israel wept as their children passed Rachels’s tomb on the way to captivity. The new testament connection is, in Jesus  God makes a new way by which people can be right with Him. History is repeating itself and it is not pretty. The establishment of the new way is painful but in the end, it will blaze a trail to heaven. innocent children would die, just maybe as a symbol of the ugliness of man, but out of that would come the rescue of the one who would establish a new way to get Home. Amen The Child brings a New Covenant: Hebrews 8

The Child Brings New ministry ( 19-23) After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 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.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots, a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD (Isa 11:1-3)

With Jesus, all things become New this is the new testament connection with the old testament. Galilee was in Nazareth, It is said can anything good come out of Nazareth, This was a poor nowhere place no one even bothers with. A very insignificant place. And yet Galilee would have the chance to look at the light first. It is at Galilee that Jesus gave His great commission at the end of Matthew’s book.

I heard someone say Jesus didn’t come to make us better he came to make us new. When He came home to Galilee with his parents he inspired a new fresh start to life. If anyone is in Christ he is a new creature, old is gone, the new is here. Christ brings newness. Sometimes newness brings pain and disruptions, sometimes newness brings surprises that’s how it was on the first Christmas, and that’s how it is now.  All of this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s sin against them. He committed us to the message of reconciliation. W are Christ’s ambassadors as if God was making an appeal through us. Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin, to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. (2Cor 5:17-21) Jesus the Child brings new sonship, Jesus the Child brings a new Covenant, The child Jesus Brings new ministry. The Child Jesus brings Reconciliation, The Child Jesus brings eternal life. Amen. This is how you make your Christmas merry.  If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, You will be saved, Anyone who calls on the Lord will be saved ( Rom 10:9,13)

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