The Christmas season is a good time to reflect on why Jesus came into the world. His coming is the reason for the season after all! This question is one that we can come back to each year because it has such a rich and varied answer. In fact, there’s not just one reason why Jesus came into the world. There are many. For example, he came to glorify his Father (Jn. 17:1-4). He came to save sinners (Matt. 1:21). He came to defeat the works of the devil (Heb. 2:14). He came to make a holy people (Tit. 2:11-12). He came to teach us humility (Phil. 2:5-8). And on and on the reasons go.
One of the reasons we often miss when we think about why Jesus came into the world, is that he came to fulfill the promises, patterns, and prophecies of the Old Testament. Paul says that “all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20). It’s often said that the Old Testament is the shadow and Jesus is the substance. In other words, Jesus helps us see clearly what we can only see dimly in the Old Testament. The entire Old Testament points to Jesus.
One place we see this is in Matthew’s birth narrative of Jesus. In Matthew 2:13-15, the Lord sends an angel to tell Joseph to take “the child and his mother” to Egypt because Herod is coming after the child to destroy him. Joseph obeyed and took his young family to Egypt. The Egyptian border was only ninety miles from Bethlehem and there were lots of Jews who lived in Egypt at this time, so it was a natural place for the angel to tell the family to go. They would be out of Herod’s jurisdiction and safe from Herod’s murderous rage.
But Matthew tells us that it was more than good planning that led the family to Egypt. Verse 15, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’” Matthew says that the Lord planned this escape route and hinted at it in the Old Testament hundreds of years before it happened.
The verse Matthew quotes is from Hosea chapter 11. The verse originally referred to the nation of Israel’s exodus from Egypt at the time of Moses. Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” God calls Israel his son and he shows his love for him by rescuing him from slavery in Egypt.
Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, takes this text from Hosea and applies it to Jesus. He sees the history of Israel being repeated in Jesus’ life. Just as Israel went into Egypt as a young nation, so Jesus went to Egypt as a child. And just as Israel was led by God out of Egypt, so also was Jesus.
Matthew is saying that Jesus came to lead a new exodus, to lead his people out of slavery to sin, Satan, and death. Jesus came to absorb God’s judgment toward sinners by dying on the cross. He came to lead a new Israel, a new people of God, into a land of promise, to restore them to their God and to one another.
Matthew’s application of Hosea 11:1 to a seemingly obscure event in Jesus’ life tells us that the authors of the New Testament saw Jesus as the new Israel. He is the new locus, or center, of God’s saving and redeeming activity in the world. He is the new nation that God chose out of love to bless the whole world.
As we reflect on Jesus’ entrance into the world during the Christmas season, may we grow in our understanding of the richness and fullness and depth of meaning that his coming has for us. Jesus did not come to just give us a nice holiday. He came to lead a new people of God out of slavery and into a land of promise.
Praying that You and Yours Have a Merry Christmas,
Pastor John