The relationship between Israel and Christ reveals God’s unfolding purpose of redemption. Israel, once called God’s son and brought out of Egypt, foreshadowed the true and eternal Son, Jesus Christ, who also came out of Egypt to fulfil God’s promise. Through the incarnation, God became one of us – Emmanuel: “God with us” so that humanity might be rescued and restored to fellowship with the Father. The message of Christmas is therefore not only about a child born in history, but about God’s call for every person to come out of their own Egypt and become His sons and daughters through faith in Christ.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] I don’t know whether you’ve ever gone through a time of wondering about the Bible and the fact that we Christians speak about being folk who go by the Bible, but why has this Bible got a whole story and a tracing of a race of people called the Old Testament? And then it has a New Testament and we’re looking for the connection between the two, but whereas the Old Testament is about Israel and the New Testament is clearly about Christ, so we’re looking for a connection between Israel and Christ. I wonder what it is. Let’s turn to the book of Genesis for a start in chapter 12 and verses 3 you’ll see up on the screen. Now the Lord God said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred, your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I’ll make of you a great nation

[00:01:05] and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonours you will I curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. If we follow that up, not only in that verse but go further and see something about the way the Old Testament speaks in Zechariah chapter 2 verse 8 For thus saith the Lord God of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye He who touches you touches the apple of his eye Now we notice that this is speaking about Israel in the first instance and when speaking about Israel in the Old Testament times God addresses them to say that they belong to him and anybody who touches you I will deal with them. There are some verses in the Old Testament

[00:02:16] which occur and are referenced to in the New as well and there’s one which is in Hosea Hosea 11 verse 1 and in Hosea 11 verse 1 here talking about the fact of in Egypt there was the people that God loved the people he called his child when Israel was a child I loved him we who are parents understand this that you start really loving your little kids right at the earliest of age and you carry that through even when they’re grown ups and other people might tell you that they’ve made a guff your kids have or something but you know you love them you’ve loved them since they were children you haven’t stopped and here God is speaking about Israel and says out of Egypt I have called my son this is the Old Testament book of Hosea and gives us a window in on how God sees Israel he calls Israel his son

[00:03:33] and this verse is quoted in the New Testament too but the place that is quoted is in Matthew chapter 2 I think it is verses 13 to 15 and it’s picking up the storyline I’m not telling you the whole Christmas storyline I’m leaving some for tonight the whole storyline with the wise men coming from the east and they’re going to see Herod and Herod they ask where is he who is born King of the Jews and they give the reason for them asking that because they said we’ve seen his star in the east and have come to worship him I’m going to talk about that tonight but when Herod showed himself a bit false and God saw he was going to try and kill the little child God warned the wise men in a dream and they left another way and this tells us that when they had departed that’s the wise men

[00:04:42] an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream this is the father of the family into which Jesus is to be born now has been born rise, take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt remain there until I tell you for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him and he, that’s Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt I have called my son. Now that’s Hosea 11.1 we just referenced. It’s backed up in other verses in the Old Testament as well that God looked as Israel as his son. He looked at them as a little son or a young son cultured in the persecutions of Egypt. And out of Egypt God called his son the people of Israel.

[00:05:53] And yet here now in reference to the taking care of baby Jesus in the original Christmas storyline God quotes the verse and says to them out of Egypt. I’m not sure whether the quote is the Bible writer or God speaking but he says as the Lord has already spoken by the prophet out of Egypt I called my son. And suddenly we see something in God’s mind. He loved Israel as his son. A preliminary son to love because Israel was not born by a virgin birth. Israel was the name of one of the early forebears of the children of Israel. He wasn’t born by a virgin birth. But he was a picture of what was to be the son, the greater son who was to come. Jesus. And Jesus gets the same statement out of Egypt. And that happened because the angel came to Joseph in the dream

[00:07:04] and says get up and take the child because the one trying to destroy him, that was Herod, is now dead. Now this interesting connection of God calling Israel his son and the comparison of it and the quoting of verses about it to be directed as the explanation of Jesus being the son and called by God to come out of Egypt when Joseph gets the message he’s to make it happen. Links those two. And if you study that, if you think about that, you’ll see the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament. For the Old Testament is all about the son, but it’s the nation who is God’s son. And the New Testament is about a step taken further, a son in a far more real way because it’s Jesus who is the one who was conceived in Mary’s womb but he didn’t get begun there because he was the eternal son.

[00:08:09] The member of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and this son was brought by the Holy Spirit into the womb of Mary that the child born was then the Son of God and away no one ever before had ever been more or less. They were very much often blessed before but Jesus, the one who was the eternal Son, came to earth and became one of us and was born becoming human. So he had a birth as it were. No, he didn’t. He had a proper birth. And his birth made him one of us because he took on humanity. The Bible, as I preached on earlier weeks, that in Jesus, the whole Godhead of the body dwelt bodily. The whole Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of the Trinity of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Jesus. He wasn’t just a third of the Trinity, Jesus. Jesus was the indwelling of all that God was,

[00:09:14] including it was the Son that brought all that God was. Now, listen to me. When someone becomes a Christian, they never become a part of the Trinity in that sense of being Father, Son and Holy Spirit and you and me. No, not quite like that. But we do become welcomed into the fellowship of the Beloved, the Bible says. We’re welcomed into the fellowship of the Beloved. When you come to Jesus, who is the Son, the Son who’s become one of us, that he might be available to us, that he might be the object of our faith, that he might be brought to us when we come and know him as Saviour and Lord it’s the Holy Spirit who comes into us and brings to us the indwelling of Jesus. There’s mystery in this. I don’t know that I can speak in such a way as to eliminate the mystery.

[00:10:14] If I thought I could, you better not listen anymore. I can’t eliminate the mystery of it but the eternal son, the one who’s always been son, the one that the father loved us so much that he gave this son to us, not just to die upon the cross but to be one of us, that he might represent us and even sought some more that he might be able to go and pay for us. and take on the penalty of our sin and die on the cross for our sin to reconcile us to God and bring us back into opportunity of fellowship with God and when we respond to this doing of God through Jesus when we come and put our faith in Him when we trust Him as our personal Lord and Saviour in that moment God makes us one of His sons not equal to Jesus but through Jesus to be Son of God someone for whom he cares and loves that’s why the message of Christmas

[00:11:20] is such a beautiful message of offered love actions taken to make that love available to us that’s what Christmas is all about and here we see that God equates Jesus of the New Testament to be like Israel of the Old Testament and out of Egypt he called his son this is a very beautiful verse please if you get a chance memorize it Matthew 2 verse 15 out of Egypt I called my son or you can learn it also from Hosea 11 verse 1 where the old and the new are together that’s why we don’t have two religions an Old Testament one and the New Testament one there’s people who’ve only caught up on the Old Testament but no it’s the one religion about the son now there is there are some people in society who get angry at us evangelicals who believe the gospel about the son and they say that we’re making a mistake here

[00:12:30] because it’s just the Jewish people in the Old Testament and the New Testament isn’t you know it’s less quite disconnected it’s not the same thing that’s in the face of how God thinks because he’s the one that said in both cases out of Egypt I have called my son and so we have here a beautiful truth that I’m trying to get across this morning that there’s something about the sonship of Jesus that we are called to in the first instance to recognize that he became one of us humans for God so loved the world that he gave his only son I know you’re used to John 3.16 to apply the Jesus given to die for our sins that’s not wrong that’s quite right that’s not the totality of it for God so loved the world that he gave to us the human race his son to become one of us which if you look at the Christmas passages

[00:13:40] there’s two things I keep bringing out two things I keep noticing is one that when Jesus came he came to die for us and whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life you know John’s gospel so saying but it’s also that when he gave his son he gave him to the race the human race that had lost its way that had fallen that was kicked out of the garden that was permanently lost and heading for a judgment and why salvation is that which every human being now living or living since the fall needs to have to become yours if you’ve never had a moment when you became saved, delivered from the fall, rescued from being fallen and forgiven for being a sinner. Then the gift that God gave for the race of us, for everyone, it was a rescue, it was a salvation for the entire human race

[00:14:42] and for every individual in it. There isn’t anybody sitting here this morning for whom Jesus didn’t come as a gift of God to us as a part of the human race. He, Jesus, might qualify to be the one who died for our sins and took our place on the cross. He couldn’t have been the saviour who represented us and take our punishment if he hadn’t have been given first to the human race. Do you see what Christmas is all about? How God gave Jesus to be one of us and so on one of those passages, I don’t think I listed the verse, but it says about how when Jesus came, when he came and he came to be one of us, it says the meaning of it all is Emmanuel. You might have heard that word, it says Emmanuel College. We use the word Emmanuel in our culture to represent something godly and it’s a good word.

[00:15:39] But Emmanuel literally means God with us and Christmas is God coming to be with us, not the way that he’s always with us because he’s God and you can’t get away from God. If you go down to hell, he’ll still be there. You can’t get away from God and the Old Testament screams that out. You can’t get away from his presence. Jonah had to find it out in the bottom of a big fish and get vomited onto an island and then commissioned to go and tell people the real meaning of God wanting to help them. God with us is what the incarnation, the Christmas story is all about. Emmanuel. That though we are a human race that has sin affected, though we are a human race about whom the devil thrown out of hell is trying to make a terrible time for us and cause those events that recently we saw happen in our own Bondi Beach.

[00:16:39] There is a devil. Don’t be such an idiot as to think that that’s silly talk for babies or just as for someone being immature. I want to tell you that we the nation better wake up that we have an enemy to our nation, that we have an ally who is God with us. God with us. Christmas is God has not deserted the lost human race. He did the greatest rescue, the greatest Bondi, if you like, that could ever be done in history when he came to be there on the beach for us. And the way that he had to do that, not only having taken on human, being a human and being God with us, bringing to the human race God himself to be here with us, but then to go and to rescue us. And that rescue is what the whole idea, and I love the fact that we have got quite a number of agencies and a number of ministries

[00:17:41] and the people who work on the beach and for various aspects in which people need rescuing, like the lifesavers who go swimming out when some poor person is getting sucked down. That’s the same rescuing that Jesus did by being with us, one of us, and by him coming and taking on our humanity that he might then bear our sins and have us forgiven. And the face of God who was against the human race and had kicked them out of the Garden of Eden is turned around to be the God who seeks the lost through his Son, this beautiful one. And this beautiful one started as a baby. And just as God spoke about Israel and he saw young Israel stuck in Egypt like a young son who needed to be rescued by dad, that’s why God said about Israel, when he was young, I loved him. And he came and rescued him out of Egypt, out of Egypt

[00:18:48] have I called my son. And just so, in the bigger sense of the human race that Christmas is all about, God with us and with us to rescue us and to call us out because of his love, because you’re wanted. to be his son. If that call has never registered on you, if it’s never broken in on you, I pray to God that his Holy Spirit would do this Christmas season that waking up, that God is calling you out of your Egypt, calling you to be his son. Will you answer that call this Easter coming, this day, if you get and understand if it lands on you, that Christmas is about God wanting to call you his son. And the way he did it was by sending his own very son to take on our humanity that he might then bear our sacrifice and be the bridge to bring us over to the Father. You know, the Old Testament and the New are so vitally connected.

[00:20:21] I cannot say that this is faith of the Old Testament and that’s the faith of the New Testament. Anything that someone calls that, what they’re meaning is that they’ve only got the Old Testament part of it. They haven’t seen the connection with the new. They haven’t understood that the law was to show us our sin, but it’s the Spirit who can fill us, control us, and help us overcome it. And God does that with you because his Spirit is given to live in you. I think the Gospel’s a fantastic thing. It’s probably why I sort of can’t preach on very much else. But to tell you of what God has done in order that he might bring you to himself, wrap his arms around you and say, out of Egypt, this is one of my sons I’ve called. If that’s getting through to you, be sure to answer that to God that you’re happy to be his son.

[00:21:26] Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Christmas story. Thank you for the richness of it. There’s lots of little elements. We can go through little bits of it every time we speak in this Christmas season. But Lord, we pray that there may be in our community people on whom this real depth of understanding Christmas lands. Bless our meeting tonight as we have carols. And though much of that is us celebrating our love of Christmas, may there be some who understand, maybe for the first time, that Christmas isn’t only about a beginning back in history. It’s about a beginning knocking on their door today. Oh, Lord, I pray that you’ll be with our church too and the other things that happen in this time. Bless us as we enter a new year. And as we think of ourselves, we think about your people

[00:22:29] that you call your son, who is the Jewish people. And some of them are your people and yet they don’t know it either. They need you to let them understand that that business of calling the Jewish nation out of Egypt has a parallel to calling us into being the sons of the living God in that converted way. Bless the Jewish nation and be with those ones who are in our country, who are feeling uneasy and unsafe. And Lord, would you give our politics enough kicks to wake up to how they’re responsible for some of that lack of safety and that they may not just give us a name or they’re those silly Christians who somehow, you know, are thinking that it’s all about looking after Isfah. Well, it is, but not necessarily in a way that they’ve understood yet.

[00:23:37] And we pray, Father, that your spirit will work on our politicians and help them to understand where they stand in terms of leading a nation that has Jewish people in it. We pray that in Jesus’ name. Amen.