The Light That Will Never Go Out
This is a special time. A time that we associate greatly with light.
We see it in our cultural practices. We put lights on our tree. Some of you have lights on your house. Erica and I got in our car the other night and drove around for hours just looking at lights.
But hanging over those that love this season and all that comes with it is the inevitable – the trees will go back into storage and the lights will be unplugged and turned off.
So, to not depress us, today we need to be reminded that as Christians, we should only look at the lights of this season in LIGHT of (pun intended) the Son of God, whom John 1 tells us is the light of Men, who spoke of Himself as the light of the world in John 12, who commanded us in Matthew 5 to let our light shine, and we know that our light is not of our own but a reflection of the light of the Son of God who is the light of the World.
That is who Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem is.
But if you remember, we are walking through the first two chapters of Matthew in this series called “The Arrival of the King,” and we are learning that Jesus is not only a light who shines but also a King who reigns!
He came first as a King to reign in the hearts of His followers, the Church. Ultimately, He will return and reign over the whole Earth when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
But last week, we learned that not everyone appreciates Jesus coming as a King. We can all get along with light until the light changes how we live. And that is what the light of Jesus does. It exposes how sinful we are and it calls us to walk in truth and love.
Because of that, Herod doesn’t want Jesus to be king. He wants to be king, so he is going to attack Jesus. Essentially, he is trying to put out the light.
So today we will begin in Matthew 2:12 as we look at whether the enemies of Jesus won or not. Were they successful? Did they put out the light?
And I’m going to give you a spoiler with my title. Today we are looking at “The Light That Will Never Go Out.”
Beginning in verse 12:
12 And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route
So after Jesus is born in Bethlehem and the wise men came and gave gold, frankincense, and myrhh, they are warned in a dream to avoid Herod. Now the last time Herod spoke, he said he wanted to worship Him.
But we knew better. He wanted to put out the light because he wanted to hold on to the throne.
Continuing in verses 13-14,
13 After they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Get up! Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt.
Now, if we stop right there, we are already seeing that by the providence of God, through an angel of the Lord, that the light will not go out. God is delivering Jesus by sending them to Egypt where they will be safe. This is good news already, but the next verse shows even deeper significance!
Matthew does what he has already done over and over again. He points us to the Old Testament to show how Jesus brings the ultimate fulfillment to what God had previously shown.
15 He stayed there until Herod’s death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I called my Son.
Matthew is helping us put two and two together. He says that Jesus is fulfilling what God spoke through Hosea about His Son being called out of Egypt.
But there is no doubt that Hosea and his readers would have first thought about Israel as God’s Son/Child being led out of bondage in Egypt. You may remember that story.
They were enslaved because the King of Egypt felt threatened by the nation of Israel. He said in the early chapters of Exodus that they were getting too many in number. He felt like his throne was threatened, so he attacked. He enslaved them. He oppressed them for hundreds of years. But then God, being faithful and powerful, led them out of slavery, defeated the enemy, and delivered them into the promised land.
So while that was the immediate application of Hosea’s words, Matthew is showing us that the Exodus is a picture pointing us to the greater “Son” of God, the true “Son of God” who was led into and out of Egypt. Herod, like Pharaoh, wanted to go toe-to-toe with the almighty, but God always wins, and that is why the light always shines! Further, we, like Israel, were enslaved to sin, and by having Jesus, we too are led into freedom and delivered from death.
So all of this points to this truth: God always wins. The light will not go out. The enemies of Jesus do not win. That is why His light should be on our minds this season.
But the text goes on and takes a dark turn…
16a Then Herod, when he realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage.
That is an uncontrollable anger. He flew into it. It is not something he sat and thought about…
16b He gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men.
So he is taking the timeline and trying to piece together when Jesus was born in an effort to put out the light and eliminate the threat of Jesus. Now, he doesn’t know that Jesus has already departed for Egypt. So he commits this terrible act.
To show how it is yet again foreshadowed in the Old Testament, Matthew quotes Jeremiah.
18 A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.
So he is referencing the pain of Israel in the past as a picture for the pain of the present, grieving for all of these children, these babies of Israel.
Now this is so dark, but this darkness is a reminder to us about how deep the contrast is between the light of Jesus and the darkness of sin. This wasn’t the first time that something so evil took place, nor was it the last.
There are still terrible acts of evil taking place all around the world today. Sure enough, some of them take place in the same geographical area as what we are reading about here from 2,000 years ago. But don’t be mistaken, there are atrocious acts of evil that take place where we live too. There are babies lives being taken. The name of God is profaned left and right.
But all of this reminds us of why Jesus is so necessary, why His light is so important, why we cannot live without Him. Friend, if you are walking in darkness, do you see which side you are living on? Get on God’s side, get in the light, confess your sin, because you never know when you can fly into a rage or fall into temptation and the darkness pulls you in farther than you ever wanted to go!
It’s a reminder of why we need the light.
Then the next movement of our text shows us yet again that God delivers and that darkness doesn’t win. Listen to this.
19 After Herod died,
Now those three words alone are so meaningful! Herod is not the eternal king. His days were numbered.
19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,
20 saying, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, because those who intended to kill the child are dead.”
21 So he got up, took the child and his mother, and entered the land of Israel.
22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the region of Galilee.
23 Then he went and settled in a town called Nazareth to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.
Again, this text shows us that God is speaking through dreams, letting Joseph know, placing Jesus exactly where He should be for His purposes.
And all of this points us to the fact that “God wins.” God is in charge of those who are in charge. In this passage we see God’s protection of Jesus and fulfillment of His promises.
Here is what is fascinating to me: in what we have read today, we see the light of Jesus and the deliverance of Jesus. But we also see the darkness of sin and death and destruction. What I find fascinating is that these two, darkness and light, death and life, are not only at work at the beginning of Jesus’ life. They also go to war at the end of Jesus’ time on Earth.
You know, part of the reason it was so important that Herod didn’t win at the beginning was because of what Jesus would accomplish at the end. It is the darkness of sin vs. the light of the savior. It is death vs. life.
But there is a difference between the beginning and the end. In the beginning Jesus escaped death. In the end, Jesus faced death. In the beginning, Jesus was delivered among a multitude that died, but in the end, Jesus died so that the multitudes could have life! That Jesus was killed shows the darkness of sin, that the Romans and the Jews would want to kill Him. It shows the darkness of sin that it took His death to pay for our sin.
But it also shows the power of His light and life in that He defeated death, He was raised to life, and His light shines. Not like lights that we look at and say ooh and aah until it’s time to put them away again. Instead, it is a lasting light that has led us to an eternal relationship with God.
That is the ultimate light which will never be put out.
Let me ask, do you have the light? If you do not have the light and life of Jesus in you, there is no better day to give your life to Him than today. Don’t let the darkness of sin win. Surrender to Him today.
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