In this sermon, Dan Kent opens up the meaning of the prophesy from Hosea 11:1 about Jesus being called out of Egypt. Dan explains how this verse speaks to God’s delight for his people and applies this delight to us and how we experience God’s love.
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The Delight of the Lord
• Dan Kent
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Dan Kent explores the prophecy that concludes the focus scripture quoted above. It is a reference back to Hosea 11:1, which states, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my Son.” However, when Hosea was writing this, he was not thinking about the coming of Jesus. He was not predicting the future. He was describing the God who is faithful and had already come.
Matthew is saying something more than Jesus is the Messiah. He is practicing midrash, an interpretive approach that shows how an event fills out the meaning of a text. When Matthew found out how Jesus and his family fled to Egypt, and it was from there that Jesus began his mission, Matthew saw how this “filled out” Hosea 11:1. Just as God called Israel out of Egypt in the book of Exodus, so too God called Jesus. Jesus is ushering in a new Exodus, which would fulfill God’s hopes.
Hosea 11:1 also refers to God’s heart towards his people. He says that when Israel was a child, “I loved him.” God delighted in his children. This stance toward Israel is also God’s heart toward us. It is the delight of the Lord that fulfills us. This is a delight that simply takes joy in our being, seeing through our imperfections just as parents delight in their children.
Zephaniah 3:17 reads:
The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Dan offers three things for us to consider regarding God’s delight in us. First, we must focus our attention on the beauty of a God who delights. God delights in humanity so much that he became human. Second, make God’s delight your own. There are many theologies that downplay how God delights in us. They say that God only saves because he must. The reality is that God not only delights in us, he also wants to dwell with us. Third, delight in others. To love as the Lord loves, which is our call, means to delight in others as the Lord does.
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The MuseCast: December 9
Focus Scripture:
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Matthew 2:13-15
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
