SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/21/2019
10:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Escape to Egypt”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
2:13-15
Message of the verses: “13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel
of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise and take the
Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for
Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him." 14 And he arose
and took the Child and His mother by night, and departed for Egypt; 15 and was
there until the death of Herod, that what was spoken by the Lord through the
prophet might be fulfilled, saying, "OUT OF EGYPT DID I CALL MY SON."
I
believe I mentioned that we would talk about how long it is believed that Joseph,
Mary, and Jesus were in Egypt. One thing
we have discussed is that Herod was fairly old when the magi came to Jerusalem,
and so with that in mind we can pretty much determine that they were not in
Egypt too long, perhaps only a few months.
Another thing I want to mention is that it was prophesied that Jesus
would go to Egypt. Matthew has many
prophetic quotes in his gospel because he is writing mainly to the Jews, and
also is writing that Jesus is the King.
John
MacArthur speaks about these prophecies:
“The Old Testament writes were the Lord’s spokesmen. Just as they had no way of knowing, apart
from divine revelation, that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, they had
no other way of knowing that He would live awhile in Egypt. The flight to Egypt was one more piece of
divine evidence that Jesus was God’s Son, the promised Messiah.”
Let
us look at this prophecy from the book of Hosea who wrote this 700 years before
this event: “When Israel was a
youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.”
In
John MacArthur’s commentary he spends almost a whole page on explaining about
this prophecy written in Hosea, but all I want to do is quote one more
paragraph and then we will end our comments on calling Jesus out of Egypt and
then, Lord willing, will move onto “The Slaughter at Ramah” in our next SD.
“Seven
centuries earlier God had told Hosea that ‘out of Egypt I called My son’ (Hos.
11:1). Herod’s threat was no surprise to
the Lord, who, long before Herod was born, had made plans to foil that wicked
king’s plans against the true King. The
reference to “My son’ in the book of Hosea is to the nation Israel. It was a historical statement about what God
had done in delivering His people from bondage under Pharaoh, calling them out
from Egypt under the leadership of Moses.
Why, then, did Matthew interpret as a predictive an event that occurred perhaps
seven hundred years before Hosea and an additional seven hundred years before
Matthew quote Hosea?”
I
don’t want to leave anyone hanging about the question that MacArthur purposes
and so I will attempt to give a shortened answer that I find in his
commentary. I have written extensively
on the book of Hosea and so what that book is about can be seen on my blog, but
I just want to say that the book of Hosea, and the life of Hosea was a picture
of how unfaithful Israel was to the Lord.
I
am afraid that the answer will not be as short as I intended it to be, but will
take another quote from John MacArthur on the usages of types, something that I
have heard of in the past, but not completely understood. He writes “When the New Testament uses
something in the Old as a prefigurement of something that has occurred or will
occur later, we can safely refer to the Old Testament something as a type.
Ignoring such limits results in the freedom to allegorize, spiritualize, and
typify the Old Testament by whimsy. Because types are veiled revelation, divine
testimony to their identity must be given by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament
text. Therefore, because of the specific
association that Matthew gives here, we know that the Exodus of Israel from
Egypt is a type of Jesus’ return from Egypt as a young child.
“In
a still deeper sense Jesus came out of Egypt with Israel under Moses. As Matthew has already shown, Jesus descended
from Abraham and from the royal line of David.
Had Israel perished in Egypt, or in the wilderness, or in any other way,
the Messiah could not Himself have come out of Egypt or even have been born.”
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action” comes from 1
Corinthians 15:57 and 58.
But thanks be to God, who gives us victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast,
immovable,
always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing
that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
12/21/2019 12:02 PM
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