Episode 172: A Wicked King and a Promise-Keeping God | +Quigg Lawrence

So we're gonna look at an unusual passage today. It's the story of an angel telling Joseph to take Mary and the baby Jesus from where they live in Bethlehem to Egypt. And then at some time in the future, after Herod dies, the angel tells him to come back.

What I realized is a great story. It's only found in Matthew's gospel, but I know how the evil one works. And as much as we proclaim there is no condemnation for those in Christ, I know that a lot of times when we preach on hard things, all you can hear is "there is no hope for me. I am worthless. God's love is great for everyone else, but it doesn't apply to me."

So I'm going to ask you to allow the Lord to take every thought captive, and that instead of hiding under a bush and trying to ignore a certain sin that will come forward, that you would actually stand under a fountain of grace and believe what the Lord says and not your feelings.

Let me lighten it up a little bit. How many of you have ever had a dog or a cat or a hamster or gerbil? Perfect. How many of you have had a pet that you actually adored? Like you love this animal with all your life?

I remember when I was little, a kid kicked my dog as hard as he could in the ribs. It was a little beagle—was my buddy, my best friend in the whole world—and I flew across the street and administered justice at 4.2 speed. I'm not proud of the fact that I whooped him, but he needed a whooping. Don't ever kick my dog.

If you've had a dog or cat that you love, I know what it is to love a dog. I also know what it is to lose a dog. I remember my very first memory in life was when we lost our first dog, Scruggs—Scruggs, as in Earl Scruggs. He died, and the next day John Kennedy was assassinated. So it's really hard not to remember those days. I just remember being so sad.

And then after that, Scruggs died, we got a new dog, and his name was Thomas Dog. Very creative naming, right? Thomas Dog. I loved that dog so much. When I'd go to my friend Tommy Rollins' house and play for four or five hours, I'd come out and he'd still be on the step. He was faithful. He slept with me every night. I let him lick me in the face. I loved this dog. When he died, it was the saddest day of my life. Even with some hard things that have happened since then, I still tell you it's in the top three saddest days of my life. I loved that dog with all my heart.

Then there was Hambone. We got him from the pound. He was awesome, but he had this thing about postal workers and UPS workers. He just went ballistic. We had this little metal mail slot in our door, and whenever that thing made its noise, like a demon would come into this dog. He would go crazy, and he bit several postal workers and UPS workers and FedEx workers. There's all these threats like, "this dog does it anymore, we're going to take him away and euthanize him." Sadly for Hambone, a UPS truck hit him and killed him. Tough stuff. Dog gone.

But if you've had a dog or cat that you love, you know how hard it is and devastating to lose them.

You know Michael Vick? The guy who made Tech a great university? But Michael Vick—a lot of people still hate his guts. He's one of the most hated men in the United States because he was party to, or actually killed a dog himself. And that makes me sick. But I also wonder why so many people would never show one ounce of grace to a man like him who has repented of a grievous sin.

Tony Dungy worked with Michael Vick and dealt with underlying root issues. And yet some people would still condemn him. There's no mercy, no grace. It's the unforgivable sin.

What I find really odd is so many of those same people have no problem terminating the life of a child. Our governor—and I pray for him—he said, "Well, yeah, if a baby's born alive, we could just make it comfortable out of the womb, make it comfortable. And then the mother and father can talk and see what they want to do." It's grievous to the Lord. It's grievous to the Lord.

I know some of you have lost children. I can look at some of you. Some of us have lost grandchildren. How grievous? How painful? There's nothing to describe it, is there? You can't even tell somebody about that.

So today, as we go to the story where King Herod kills untold numbers of young Jewish boys in an attempt to take out Jesus as Messiah, we can hear. We can place ourselves on the edge of Bethlehem, and we can hear the crying of mothers and fathers and siblings who refuse to be comforted because their kids are no more.

God in his mercy warned Joseph to escape to Egypt so that for your sake, in spite of our wickedness and the things we've done, that we would have a Messiah who would bear our sin.

Statistically, if we were full, which we are not in this service, but statistically, we've had at least 50 women and 50 men take part in abortion. And what I'm going to say to you today is do not allow the evil one to make you go into hiding or to lock it off because you can't. I'm going to invite you to stand under a fountain of mercy.

And such were some of you, but God washed you. — 1 Corinthians 6

So we can come boldly to God's throne of grace, not excusing our sin, but standing in his mercy to have the courage to be freed from the bondage of sin.

The Angel's Warning to Joseph

Now let's go to the actual text. We're in Matthew 2:13.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Rise, Joseph. Take the child Jesus 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. — Matthew 2:13-14

Herod was a wicked man. Do you know this? I read about him. There's so many Herods, it's hard to get them all straight. But this Herod actually killed two of his own children. He was so fearful, so paranoid, such a liar. He killed two of his own children. He killed his most favorite wife. He was afraid that when he died, nobody would mourn his death. So at the end of his reign, he had all the Jewish leaders gathered and taken into an amphitheater. He had every Jewish leader there so that right before his death, they would all be killed. So all of Israel would be crying and mourning—actually, they'd be crying and mourning for their leaders, but people would think they were crying and mourning for this wicked man, Herod.

And so the Lord, through an angel, warns Joseph. What I get from this, friends, is that our God is a God who speaks. He's not like an idol made of wood or stone, strangely made with human hands. Who would pray to a God like that? Wouldn't it be pathetic if the only help you had in your time of need or your time of sin, when you need forgiving and cleansing, is something you made with your hands—who is deaf and mute and has no life and can't respond to you, much less forgive you?

How God Speaks to Us

But we know that God speaks to us in many ways. Yes, he speaks through angels, and we see him speaking to Hagar and Lot, Abram and Jacob and Moses through angels.

We see that God speaks through his creation. Romans 1 basically says, when you see the handiwork of God—Niagara Falls, the stars, crazy looking animals and fish in the deep of the sea—when you see those things, you're without excuse, the Bible says. Because when you see those, you see the fingerprints of Almighty God. You're aware that there is a creator and you are not that creator, and you were meant, in fact, to worship the creator.

God speaks through his creation. He speaks through dreams. Twelve times in the Old Testament, we see him speaking to Abimelech and Joseph and Daniel and Jacob and Laban, King Solomon. I've had some freaky dreams, I don't know about you. Have you had weird dreams? But especially before Scripture came, the Lord often would speak to his people through dreams, and it has to be tested.

Ultimately, how does he speak to us? The most trustworthy way. Because I appreciate angels, but it could be like an angel of light. He speaks to us through his Word.

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for correction and teaching and reproof. — 2 Timothy 3:16

God's Word is a light and a lamp, and so he reveals his will. He's not trying to hide from us. And so God spoke and revealed his will to Joseph for your sake.

Joseph's Obedience

Verse 14 says:

And Joseph rose and he took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. — Matthew 2:14-15

It's interesting how the order goes. He arose and he took the child and his mother. Because see, why the Lord was speaking to him was to protect the Savior of the world, right? He didn't want Satan taking them out as promised that he would try to in Genesis. He wanted to protect the Savior so wicked people like me and you could be washed and forgiven. He rose, he took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod.

And this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet Hosea. When Hosea says in Hosea 11:

Out of Egypt, I have called my son. — Hosea 11:1

It was an insane ask. I mean, that'd be like God telling you right now, "Hey, I know you got a house. I know you got a job. I know you got this and that. You go right now. Go to another country. Leave everything behind. Trust me." And all that happened in a dream. And Joseph, strangely enough, did what? He obeyed.

Now it's a little confusing. Hosea was prophesying around seven hundred fifty years before Jesus. He says, "Out of Egypt, I have called my son." Hosea, of course, is pointing back to the Exodus. When God freed his son, Israel, got him out of his bondage and slavery in Egypt, took him through the wilderness to the promised land. That's what Hosea was pointing back to.

I think maybe Hosea didn't even really realize that God was also speaking something else through the same words. You know, parents sometimes we've got little ears around. You might have code language or say something in a way that your kids hear it but don't understand it, but your spouse or your older friend does. And so here, Hosea is talking about the exodus and God getting his son, Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, but he's also maybe intimating or giving a foreshadowing that the Messiah would come out of Egypt. "Out of Egypt, I have called my son"—with a capital S.

The Massacre and the Gospel

Now let's go to verse 16. And this is where it gets a little challenging. It says:

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, by the Magi, he became furious and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. — Matthew 2:16

Friend, the main part of this lesson is not about abortion. It isn't. It's about a God who reveals his will and a God who would protect the savior for people like us that missed the mark in every way possible. But I would be an unfaithful shepherd if I dodged what is so clearly implied in the text.

I remember twenty-five years ago, I went to Doctor Fuller, a big church downtown at First Baptist. I'm like, "Doctor Fuller, I hate preaching on tithing." He goes, "Don't worry. I never preach on tithing. I never get on a soapbox and say, this is tithing Sunday, or this is abortion Sunday, or this is sexual purity Sunday." He goes, "I never do that. Because people realize like you're on a soapbox and you're kind of doing this." He goes, "What I do is I just preach the text of the Bible as it is. All this stuff is in there over and over and over again. So just preach the Bible. People realize you're not on your soapbox. You're not pointing a finger. You're just fairly handling the word of God."

And I want to say again, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. There is no condemnation. What I know is somebody who has been under condemnation. When you have it, it's like you can't get it off yourself. And you go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know there's no condemnation for y'all in Christ Jesus. But Satan gets in my head and he goes, 'But there is for you. What you've done is a step too far. There is no forgiveness for you.'" And friends, that is a lie. That is a lie.

And so we don't dodge these hard texts. But I got to tell you that child sacrifice is an evil thing to the Lord over and over in the Old Testament. Over and over again, we see not just the pagans, but God's people sacrificing their children to some foreign deity. Leviticus 18 says this:

You shall not give any of your children to the god Molech. — Leviticus 18:21

Deuteronomy 12 says this:

God hates what they have done for their gods, for they burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. — Deuteronomy 12:31

Jeremiah 7 says this:

They have built high places to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, which I did not command nor did anything so wicked come into my mind. — Jeremiah 7:31

Basically, the Lord says, "You guys have invented new ways of sinning, grievous, outrageous ways to sin, that you would burn your own child to incur the favor of a deity that's in fact nothing but a rock or a piece of wood." That's insanity.

Bernard Nathanson, the man who did 60,000 abortions and then stopped, he said, "It's an eclipse of reason."

Whatever you've done in the past is in the past. In the old church, in the Pentecostal church, they'd say, "It's under the blood." If you've committed murder and you've confessed it and agreed with Christ, it's under the blood. If you're a thief, if you're an addict, if you've divorced, if you've done terrible things, it can be under the blood. And the way it gets under the blood is you have to agree with God. You have to say, "This is sin. I'm not going to hide under the bush anymore. I can't stand it. In fact, I can never shake it off of me."

I will choose by faith to stand under the fountain of the Lord's grace because I realize that's all God has to work with—people that are sinners. And such were some of you, but you were washed.

Herod killed a lot of infant boys. We don't know the exact number. Scripture doesn't tell us, but I know Bethlehem's not that big. I know because I've been there. The commentators and the historians say Bethlehem was about 1,000 to 1,500 people, and they do the math and the algorithm. They say it was about 25 boys. You're like, "Oh, wow. That's not that many. I was thinking like thousands, tens of thousands." Only 25 or 30.

Let me give you some perspective. You go home this afternoon and your neighbor has got 25 puppies. Not humans made in the image of God, but puppies. He buries them halfway in the ground and runs over them with a lawnmower. Now, I know that's grievous, right? You don't want to hear that. How much more grievous it is that Herod killed 25 or 30 of the Lord's boys. Do you see it? Can you hear the cries from Bethlehem?

A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted because her children were no more. — Jeremiah (quoted in Matthew 2:17)

Rachel wasn't there on this day. She's long gone. But Jeremiah was prophesying that Rachel, who married Israel, who married Jacob, and was the mother of Joseph and the patriarchs—she wept as the bad guys took their children away to slavery. Some were in chains, but others they just killed. And she wept and she wept and she wept. She refused to be comforted because her kids were no more.

On Abortion and Healing

My seminary classmate got really famous. She was made head of a seminary. I'd just say head of a cemetery. Catherine Ragsdale, Google her. She said in 2007, you'll find it online, six or seven times in one paper, she said, "Abortion is a blessing of God."

See, that's really interesting because our church has a lot of folks who've had abortions, and we have a lot of men that while they didn't have it, were absolutely part of it. When we actually want to minister and bring healing—real healing—to these men and women, what we find out is they say, "Pastor, don't dodge these hard things. We can't hide it. We can't get it off us. We need cleansing. Yes, we need mercy. Yes, we need no condemnation, but we need you to tell the truth."

I saw women particularly who for thirty, even thirty-five, forty years were in drugs, multiple marriages, broken. They said, "Every time the day anniversary of the day I terminated the life of my child, I'm in grief. Every time at Christmas, every time at Thanksgiving, every time I see another child, I'm in grief."

And what I want to say to you is the Lord doesn't want his kids living in a jail like that. He wants to give forgiveness to you. And today, I would say would be a wonderful day to not depend on your feelings or your ability to hide under a bush, but to stand and say, "God, would you free me from the weight of sin, which is crushing me?"

The Promise and the Return

Herod died. And then the angel of the Lord again appeared in a dream to Joseph. He says to Joseph, "Get up. Take the child Jesus and his mother and go back to the land of Israel for those who sought the child's life are dead." — Matthew 2:19-20

It's interesting that it says those who sought the child's life. It wasn't just Herod. It was Herod and the religious leaders. They didn't want any Messiah or savior. They wanted to have power and money.

Joseph obeyed. He arose. He took the child and his mother and he went to the land of Israel. — Matthew 2:21

When he heard that Archelaus, that's Herod's son, when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there and being warned in a dream, Joseph withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and he lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled—that he would be called a Nazarene. — Matthew 2:22-23

Four Takeaways

Alright. Quick. Land the plane. Do you ever speak publicly? Everybody goes, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I'm up there. I'm flying. How did I land this plane? I don't know. How do you land a sermon? I got four takeaways real quick.

One. People of the earth are wicked. Truth is, I'm wicked. I have done wicked things—things that prove I need a savior. There's no bush I can hide under. Only a fountain of grace if I choose to stand under it. People on earth are wicked. So wicked that God says we invent ways of sinning that didn't even enter his mind.

Number two. Satan, through wicked men like Herod, seems especially pleased to kill children.

His primary target, of course, is not children in general, but the child, the holy child, the Messiah, the savior, the one who was completely righteous but gave his life for us who are wicked, that he might wash us.

Number three, because God actually loves us. He really does. He intervened in this case with Herod and the baby Jesus. He intervened. He spoke. He warned. He delivered.

Last point is this. Revelation 21 verse four paints a picture of what is to come.

I will wipe away every tear from your eyes. There will be no more death or mourning, crying, or pain. — Revelation 21:4

On that glorious day when the Lord makes all things right, Rachel and all those who weep will finally be comforted.

If you have sinned sexually, if you have sinned in abortion, I beg you on behalf of Jesus to stand under his mercy. I have seen men and women in Rachel's Vineyard retreats, after thirty-five years of being crushed by the weight of their sin, experience unbelievable freedom that is not make believe—it is real.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.