Monday December 19 – Samaria

It was an almost six-hour drive from the church I served in Arkansas back to see family and friends in Oklahoma. I got to the point where I could make that drive in my sleep, and a few times I attempted it! I remember one trip, to change things up, I determined to try a different route. However, rather than plan ahead, I decided to wing it on the road.

It was a terrible idea. This was in the days before GPS and smart phones. I got as lost as a ball in tall grass. There was no place to stop for a soda or tinkle break. As I saw the gas gauge sliding towards E for “EEEEEEdiot,” I began to realize that I had not planned this at all. There was no radio signal to catch up to and apparently no place to stop to get any bearings. Finally, I rolled into a town in which an old buddy lived and I called him from a pay phone! (A pay phone was an old push button telephone that used to be commonplace in public. You would put a coin in the slot and then be able to make a local call. More coins for longer distance calls.) I called my friend and told him where I was and where I needed to be. He redirected me and met with a map that was highlighted and had directions written on it.

I had driven two hours in the wrong direction and was exhausted. I got some gas and then a Zero candy bar and a Diet Code Red Mountain Dew and pushed back out again. And I learned that “wingin’ it” on road trips is not the best idea. A plan is always ideal.

Mapquesting In Samaria: The Messiah would be called out of Egypt.

Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

Hosea was one probably a contemporary of Isaiah, although Hosea was a northerner and preached to the northern kingdom of Israel from Samaria. He was God’s prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel before they went into Assyrian exile in 722BC.

Hosea preaches powerful images of Israel being radically separated from its land. It points to exile. Hosea refers to it as a return to the wilderness, which once lay between exodus and land, or even back to Egypt itself. This return to Egypt was not meant literally. It is a picture of the violent removal of Israel from its land as well as God’s condemnation of Israel’s rebellious attempt to get help from Egypt rather than God. At first Egypt and Assyria are involved in this despair that possesses Israel.

However, this is relieved by the remarkable promise of chapter 11. Despite the sense of loss, God will again speak to them in compassionate language. God will deliver and save them and restore them. In that spiritual sense, God will call Israel out of Egypt. We know that this calling comes ultimately in the form of the Messiah.

Which is also an interesting future fulfillment of Hosea 11:1. Jesus is called out of Egypt and in doing so, Matthew tells us this fulfills prophecy.

In what scholars believe was a visit that occurred a few years later, when Jesus was a toddler, magi from the east paid him a visit. At this point, Joseph and Mary took up residence in a home in Bethlehem rather than return to Nazareth. The magi followed a star that led them to Jesus. They first stopped by sitting King Herod the Great who was not excited about someone who was born to be king of the Jews, since Herod was not a Jew by birth. He was king by mandate from Rome and political alliances and networking that his father established with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.

You know the rest. The magi are warned in a dream to return via another, Herod-less route. Herod blows a gasket and determines to kill all baby boys who are up to age two. Scholars believe that anywhere from 35-50 little boys were killed in this atrocity. Joseph is warned in a dream to head down to Egypt. They do and then, after some time passes and things are safer, God calls them back to Nazareth out of Egypt. This fulfills the prophecy of Hosea.

Over seven centuries before it happened, God’s plan was to take this detour into a safer place in Egypt to avoid this maniac in Jerusalem. This also alludes to the fact that Jesus was preserved in Egypt just like Israel was preserved in Egypt. Remember the Joseph account in Genesis. Isn’t it interesting that two Josephs, one the son of Jacob/Israel, one the earthly father of the Messiah, would both find purpose in a difficult journey to Egypt. Both realize that what man intended for bad and to harm, God used as a part of his plan to preserve His people and then His Son.

Every day as we journey closer and closer to Christmas, you realize that God’s sovereignty, omniscience, and omnipotence was clearly evident. God has a plan, and I should trust His plan for my life. This entire Christmas story was predicted almost one thousand years before it happened. That kind of God is truly Almighty and deserving of our trust and devotion.

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.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt. 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 2:13-15

Father, thank you for the intricate plan you have for our lives. We see the detail and the planning that was evident in Jesus’s birth, and we know that we can trust all of our lives into your hands. In Jesus’s Name we pray, Amen.