Seeking Jesus This Christmas- Day 19: Dec 19 | God's Divine Protection

Read: Matthew 2:13-23
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Key Verse: “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.”’ (Matthew 2:13)

​An angel appears to Joseph, again in a dream, letting him know his family was in danger and he needed to get out of town. ​Joseph’s response was what we’ve come to expect from this humble man of God – he obeyed, immediately. Scripture tells us he took Mary and Jesus in the middle of the night to Egypt and stayed there until Herod died. Don’t read over that passage too quickly – he didn’t wait until the next day; he woke his family up in the middle of the night and left right away.

The story of the Wise Men in Matthew 2 is part of a larger sequence that involves danger for the newborn child and his parents. When King Herod hears about the child, “King of the Jews,” as a potential rival for his power, he seeks to have Jesus killed. As a result the family flees to Egypt, while Herod orders the execution of all boys under two years old in the area of Bethlehem. Only after Herod’s death does the family return to the Land of Israel, though to Nazareth rather than Bethlehem. At each point in their itinerary, the family is guided by dreams and texts from the Jewish Scriptures.

Why was all that necessary? Scripture tells us in the rest of the story – don’t skip over these familiar passages, they are filled with meaning and significance. Three times Matthew refers back to prophecies about the Messiah that were fulfilled in these parts of Jesus’ life:
1. He would come from Egypt – “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Hosea 11:1)
2. There would be weeping over the loss of life – “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to
be comforted, because they are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15)
3. He would be called a Nazarene – a branch from the root of Jesse.

Pray: Father God, thank you for Your divine protection. Give us Joseph’s heart to obey immediately when warned of danger.