Dearly loved by God in Christ Jesus,
One of the saddest incidents in the New Testament record occurred shortly after Jesus’ birth. We know it as “the Slaughter of the Innocents.” King Herod ordered the deaths of an unidentified number of toddler boys in Bethlehem. St. Matthew’s account of that horrific event is the section omitted from our gospel lesson.
The verses that are here emphasis the Father’s deliverance of his son from that premature death at the hands of his enemies. They relate Jesus’ return with his family not to Bethlehem but to Nazareth in order to fulfill prophecy. It was his heavenly Father’s goodness and shelter in his protection that brought about Jesus’ deliverance. Jesus would rely on that goodness and protection throughout the years of his earthly ministry.
The Son of David would experience personally his ancestor’s confession in Psalm 31. David’s words are a good thought for us this Sunday after Christmas. They fit well as we approach, God willing, the beginning of a new year. Like Jesus, we have Our Unchanged Expectations from One Year to the Next. They are how great the Lord’s goodness is, and, he will hide us in the shelter of his presence.
The New Year often is portrayed as a diapered baby with a banner around his chest. This signifies, I suppose, the newness and the expectation of the days ahead. We see those also in the baby Jesus. As a baby, Jesus began to fulfill the expectations of his Father in heaven. Jesus had come to fulfill the expectations of God’s people for the coming of the Messiah. Think of the words one of the disciples spoke on the road to Emmaus the first Easter, “But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” [Luke 24:21]
The baby Jesus is the One who redeemed Israel and the entire world. He did so because the Lord’s goodness to him was so great. God delivered Jesus from Herod’s intrigues. He rescued him from Herod’s accusing tongue that bore false testimony that this child wanted to take away his throne. God sent Jesus and his family to Nazareth after he ended Herod’s life with a gruesome and painful death.
The heavenly Father poured out his goodness on Mary’s baby boy who is also his eternal Son so that Jesus would live his life under the law and die on the cross to pay for our sins. In his perfect obedience, Jesus feared the Lord and took refuge in him. It was Mary and Joseph, God’s representatives, who took care of their baby but it was the goodness of his Father in heaven that made it all happen. Jesus lived from one year to the next his entire life with unchanged expectations of how great the Lord’s goodness is.
We who fear the Lord and take refuge in him live with unchanged expectations of how great the Lord’s goodness is from one year to the next. We fully expect in God’s covenant of grace with us in Christ that our heavenly Father daily will set the banquet table with material and spiritual delicacies. His goodness provides our daily bread, our daily forgiveness of sins, and our daily protection from temptation and deliverance from evil.
David describes from personal experience although imperfect, how a king takes plunder from his enemies and distributes it to his loyal subjects. The king does not keep the treasure for himself but shares it generously and wisely with those who fear him and take refuge under his care.
The second part of David’s Psalm speaks more specifically about protection and deliverance. Our unchanged expectations from one year to the next, in this case from 2013 to 2014, are that the Lord will hide us in the shelter of his presence.
Jesus’ heavenly Father saved his son from death at Herod’s hands. We know why he saved Jesus. We do not know why he did not save the other little boys. We do know that the parents who loved God, obeyed his Word, and had their boys circumcised had comfort from God through this covenant even as no person could comfort them to remove the pain the loss of a child brings.
God delivered Jesus from evil. Jesus’ parents took him to Nazareth to fulfill Scripture although humanly speaking Archelaus was no prize as the new king in Judea. The Lord continued to take our Savior into the shelter of his presence to hide him from those who wanted to take his life. We recall early in his ministry how Jesus escaped the crowed who wanted to throw him down a cliff because of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah.
The Lord our God keeps us in the shelter of his presence and hides us. He does this in spite of our daily sin. We appreciate God’s goodness to us and his hiding us as wonderful acts of his mercy toward us who deserve no such consideration. We receive that consideration through Jesus Christ. No one, Paul writes, can bring any charge against us that condemns us because Christ hides us from accusation and prosecution. Our judge also is our advocate.
God uses his holy angels as his representatives to guard and protect us. He sends his angels to guard us in all our ways. This is our unchanged expectation. The Lord our God is not going to abandon us suddenly. He is not going to leave us to our own devises. We may not even know how and when the angels keep us safe in the shelter of God’s presence. We may never be aware of the intrigue and accusations that others might plan but which never materialize. David’s life as well as Jesus’ life gives strong testimony to the truth of this, a truth on which we rely daily.
I like to tell the story, you may have heard it, about a friend of mine who preached a New Year’s Eve sermon and said, “As we stand here on the threshold of 1985…” The only problem was it was the threshold of 1990. And yes, it was a friend, not what you are thinking.
Yet with our unchanged expectations from one year to the next, the actual year does not matter, does it? Whatever banner the New Year’s baby is wearing, all will be well with the Lord’s goodness and our place in the shelter of his presence. That is because the banner, the sash around the baby Herod did not kill reads “Faithfulness.” Amen. <SDG>