The Great Adventure
Text: Matt. 2:13-23
Introduction
1. Illustration: The following ad once appeared in a London newspaper: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful." The ad was signed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer. Amazingly, the ad drew thousands of respondents, eager to sacrifice everything for the prospect of meaningful adventure.
2. There is no more meaningful adventure than the Christian life. Jesus promised His followers:
a. Persecution
b. Rejection
c. Difficulty
d. Joy
e. Power
f. Life
3. Illustration: Started out this morning in the usual way
Chasing thoughts inside my head of all I had to do today
Another time around the circle try to make it better than the last
I opened up the Bible and I read about me
Said I’d been a prisoner and God’s grace had set me free
And somewhere between the pages it hit me like a lightning bolt
I saw a big frontier in front of me and I heard somebody say "let’s go"!
CHORUS:
Saddle up your horses we’ve got a trail to blaze
Through the wild blue yonder of God’s amazing grace
Let’s follow our leader into the glorious unknown
This is a life like no other - this is The Great Adventure
Come on get ready for the ride of your life
Gonna leave long faced religion in a cloud of dust behind
And discover all the new horizons just waiting to be explored
This is what we were created for (From the song "The Great Adventure," by Steven Curtis Chapman)
4. In this great adventure:
• God calls us to step out in faith
• God promises to protect us along the way
• God will brings us to our destination
Proposition: In the great adventure, God does not promise us that there will not be problems along the way, but He does promise to be with every step.
Transition: First, we see that...
I. God Calls Us to Step Out in Faith (13-15)
A. The Lord Appeared to Joseph
1. After the wise men left, "an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him."
2. Now try to put yourself in Joseph’s shoes.
a. "Okay, Lord, you asked me to take Mary as my wife, even though she was pregnant with a child that isn’t mine."
b. "Then you want me to go all the way to Bethlehem and stay in a cave with all of the cows, horses, and chickens."
c. "Now you want me to go to Egypt, because the Herod wants to kill the child."
d. "What next?"
3. There were some problems with going to Egypt.
a. The first problem was they were wanted. Herod had people everywhere looking for them, so it was hazardous.
b. The second problem was the journey itself. It was a seventy-five mile trip to Egypt, with a young baby and a woman.
c. The Nile made travel easy within Egypt, but the coastal road to Egypt from Palestine was not the finest, and Egypt would be even harder to reach from Bethlehem without traveling northward to Jerusalem (one would have to take the poorer route southward to Hebron—Bible Background Commentary
4. However, going to Egypt was a wise move.
a. A very large Jewish community lived in Egypt in this period. Perhaps one-third of Alexandria, located in northern Egypt, was Jewish; with a population estimated at about one million, it was one of the empire’s largest cities.—Bible Background Commentary
b. Egypt was a Roman province, but outside Herod’s jurisdiction.
5. We need to notice that Joseph didn’t hesitate, but trusted God. "When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt."
a. He didn’t even wait until morning.
b. Joseph and Mary demonstrated great faith, great trust in God. They acted and obeyed without question.
c. They knew that God had been with them this far.
d. They knew that God had never let them down before, and wasn’t going to start now!
B. Journey of Faith
1. Illustration: “I prayed for faith and thought that some day it would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith didn’t seem to come. One day I read in Romans that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” I had up to this time, closed my Bible and prayed for faith. Now I opened my Bible and began to study and faith has been growing ever since.” D.L. Moody
2. If the Bible says:
a. "I will never leave you or forsake you..."
b. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age..."
c. "If God is for us, then who can be against us..."
d. Then why should it bother us to step out in faith?
3. If the promises of God are true, and God cannot lie, then why do we hesitate to step out in faith?
4. Sometimes God asks us to step out on faith when it doesn’t make sense to us, but it makes perfect sense to God.
a. His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
b. He knows what we do not yet know, and He sees what we cannot yet see.
5. When God calls you to step out in faith, don’t hesitate.
a. If God calls you do go somewhere or do something, do anything else would be foolish.
b. It is easier to obey God now, than to wish you had later.
Transition: Why can we step out in faith? Because we know that...
II. God Protects Us Along the Way (16-18)
A. Death to All Male Children
1. Matthew tells us that "Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry..."
a. When this king became infuriated, his anger knew no bounds. History documents the terrible acts of this evil man.
b. A young but popular competitor, a high priest, had a “drowning accident” in a pool that was only a few feet deep.
c. Enraged at his favorite wife, Herod had her strangled; he was deceived into having two innocent sons executed; and on his own deathbed Herod had another son executed (admittedly a guilty one).—Bible Background Commentary
2. At this point, all Herod knew was that a future king, still a child, lived in Bethlehem.
a. After the wise men explained that the star first appeared to them about two years earlier (2:7), Herod deduced that the child would not be more than two years old.
b. So he sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under.
3. Matthew saw that the grieving of the mothers in Bethlehem fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:15.
a. Rachel was one of the wives of Jacob, one of the great men of God in the Old Testament.
b. Rachel was the symbolic mother of the nation; she had been buried near Bethlehem.
4. The Jeremiah passage describes Rachel, the "mother" of the nation, weeping and mourning unrestrained . . . refusing to be comforted because her children had been taken away into captivity.
a. The mothers in Bethlehem also wept and mourned for the little boys killed by the soldiers.
b. Matthew compared the grief of the mothers at the time of the Exile to the grief of the mothers of the slaughtered children.
c. If Joseph and Mary had not obeyed, they would have mourned too.
5. However, because they did obey, and because they did step out in faith, God protected them from the wrath of Herod.
a. We can be certain that Herod would have killed Jesus, and he then would have killed Joseph and Mary also.
b. There obedient faith saved not only themselves, but it saved us too!
B. God’s Protection
1. Illustration: Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her, regarding the attacks on Sept.11, "How could God let something like this happen?" Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
2. If we obey God and step out in faith, nothing will harm us, but if we disobey and do not step out in faith, we are only asking for trouble.
3. Ps. 91:1-7 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust." Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler And from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, Nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you.
4. Someone gave me a plaque once that said "The will of God will never call you, where the grace of God cannot keep you."
5. If we obey God’s voice we will receive God’s protection, but if we ignore His voice we are saying "God I don’t need you!"
Transition: If we step out in faith in the great adventure, we can trust that...
III. God Will Brings Us to Our Destination (19-23)
A. He Shall Be Called A Nazarene
1. In this text, we continually see how sensitive Joseph was to the voice of the Lord.
2. An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and said "Arise, take the young Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead."
a. The angel of the Lord had promised that Joseph would be told when it would be safe for him and his family to return to Israel (2:13).
b. So Joseph returned immediately to Israel with Jesus and his mother.
c. How long they had been in Egypt is unknown. But when the angel commanded them to return to Israel, Joseph did not hesitate.
3. Then we see Joseph again being sensitive to the voice of the Lord. Verse 22 says, "when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee."
a. When Herod died, his kingdom was divided between his three sons.
b. Archelaus, who ruled over Judea where Bethlehem was, and he was about as bad as his father.
c. Archelaus, a violent man, began his reign by slaughtering three thousand influential people.
d. He proved to be such a poor ruler that he was deposed in A.D. 6.
4. Once again, God guided Joseph, warning him in a dream not to go into the region of this evil ruler, but to go to Galilee.
5. Look where they ended up: "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, "He shall be called a Nazarene."
a. It just so happened that they ended up in Nazareth.
b. It just so happened that Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene.
c. Can’t you see the hand of God in all of this?
d. Joseph obeyed, stepped out in faith, and God brought Joseph, Mary and Jesus safely to their destination.
B. Our Destination
1. Illustration: Missionary statesman Hudson Taylor had complete trust in God’s faithfulness. In his journal he wrote: Our heavenly Father is a very experienced One. He knows very well that His children wake up with a good appetite every morning...He sustained 3 million Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years. We do not expect He will send 3 million missionaries to China; but if He did, He would have ample means to sustain them all...Depend on it, God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.
2. If we obey, God will provide for our every need.
3. If we obey, God will make a way through the wilderness.
4. If we obey, God will get us to where He needs us to be.
5. It doesn’t matter:
a. How many obstacles there may be
b. How rough the road may be
c. All that matters is that God is able!
Conclusion
1. God has called us to this great adventure. In this adventure He:
a. He calls to step out in faith
b. He promises to protect us
c. He will get us to our destination
2. What great adventure is God calling you to?
a. Will you step out in faith?
b. Will you trust Him to protect you?
c. Will you trust Him to get you where you are going?
3. Saddle up your horses we’ve got a trail to blaze
Through the wild blue yonder of God’s amazing grace
Let’s follow our leader into the glorious unknown
This is a life like no other - this is The Great Adventure
