New Life Church of the Nazarene
Decemeber 28, 2025
  • Angels We Have Heard on High

      • Isaiah 63:7–9NKJV

  • The Birthday Of A King

      • Hebrews 2:10–18NKJV

  • Joy to the World
  • Matthew 2:13–23 NKJV
    13 Now when they had departed, behold, 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.” 14 When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, 15 and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” 16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying: 18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more.” 19 Now when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20 saying, “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.” 21 Then he arose, took the young Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. 22 But 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. 23 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.”

    Christmas has a way of teaching us selective memory. We remember the soft parts—the glow of candlelight, the hush of familiar hymns, the fragile peace of a newborn child wrapped in borrowed cloth. We linger over angels and shepherds and the wonder of God drawing near. And none of that is wrong. But if we’re not careful, we begin to imagine that Emmanuel means calm, safety, and tidy endings. We begin to assume that if God is truly with us, then surely things will settle down.
    Matthew refuses to let us hold on to that illusion.
    Just a few verses after the Magi kneel, after gifts are opened and prophecies fulfilled, the story turns sharply. There is no gentle transition. No musical interlude. An angel appears—not to announce joy, but urgency. “Get up. Take the child and his mother. Flee.” The command is blunt because the danger is real. Christmas, according to Matthew, is immediately followed by flight.
    This is jarring for us because we like our holy moments contained. We prefer faith that stays safely inside sanctuaries and seasons. But Matthew insists that the incarnation enters a violent world as it actually is. The child we call Prince of Peace is born into a reign of terror. The Savior of the world becomes a target before He ever speaks a word. Emmanuel—God with us—does not arrive to a world ready to receive Him. He arrives to a world that will try to destroy Him.
    And here is the unsettling truth: the danger remains.
    Herod is not struck down. The soldiers are not turned away. The threat remains. What God provides instead is guidance and presence. A dream. A warning. A path forward. Emmanuel does not mean immunity from danger. It means God is with us as we face it.
    That matters more than we might realize, because many of us come into this Sunday carrying stories that don’t fit the postcard version of Christmas. For some, the season was marked not by rest, but by anxiety. Not by reunion, but by separation. Not by peace, but by decisions made under pressure—decisions no one wanted to make, but someone had to. There are families navigating instability. People living in between jobs, homes, diagnoses, relationships, or futures that feel suddenly uncertain. There are parents doing their best to protect what is fragile in a world that does not always cooperate.
    Matthew’s gospel meets us there.
    Joseph does not respond with speeches or strategies. He responds with obedience. He gets up in the night. He takes responsibility for a future he did not choose. He becomes a protector on the run. And Mary—often idealized into stillness—becomes a mother whose arms hold more fear than lullabies. Jesus’ earliest memories are not of safety, but of movement. Dusty roads. Foreign land. A life shaped by displacement before it is shaped by teaching.
    Matthew wants us to see something vital here. God-with-us is not a promise that life will be gentle. It is a promise that God will not abandon us when life is not.
    This passage also forces us to confront the cost of obedience. Joseph’s faithfulness does not lead him into comfort. It leads him into danger, exile, and uncertainty. Yet Matthew never presents this as failure. This is not God’s plan going wrong. This is God’s plan unfolding in the middle of a broken world. Emmanuel is not delayed by chaos. Emmanuel is revealed within it.
    And still, Matthew does not rush us past grief. The cries of the mothers are heard. Lament is allowed to stand without explanation. Scripture does not tidy the pain or soften the edges. God-with-us does not mean God explaining everything. It means God refusing to look away.
    So today, on the first Sunday after Christmas, the gospel invites us to come and see—not a serene tableau, but a faithful God on the move. A God who travels dangerous roads with ordinary people. A God who is present in fear, displacement, and hard obedience. A God who does not promise the absence of trouble, but the certainty of presence.
    This is the Emmanuel we meet today. Not only in the stable, but on the run.
    So Matthew wastes no time easing us into this. The angels have barely faded. The gifts are barely opened. And suddenly faith is no longer theoretical—it is urgent.
    Because the first thing Emmanuel does is not make life safe. The first thing God does is speak.
    And what God says next forces us to confront a hard truth about faith itself.

    God’s guidance does not always remove danger Matthew 2:13–15

    Matthew does something quietly devastating at the start of this passage. He places divine guidance and mortal danger in the same sentence. An angel speaks—and Herod still hunts. God warns—and the threat remains. This is where many of our assumptions about faith begin to unravel.
    We are conditioned to think that if God is truly with us, then things should get safer. Clearer. Easier. But the first instruction Joseph receives after Christmas is not rest—it is run. “Get up. Take the child and his mother. Flee.” The verb is sharp. Immediate. There is no buffer between revelation and response.
    And notice what God does not say.
    God does not say, “Stay. I’ll handle Herod.” God does not say, “This will blow over.” God does not say, “You won’t be afraid.”
    Instead, God gives direction.
    That matters because it reframes what faith looks like in real life. Faith is not God eliminating every threat. Faith is God speaking truth into the threat and calling us to move. Emmanuel does not cancel danger; Emmanuel accompanies obedience through it.
    Joseph does not wait until morning. He does not gather counsel. He does not ask for confirmation. He gets up in the night and entrusts the safety of his family to a word from God. This is not reckless faith—it is responsive faith. It is the kind of obedience that says, God’s presence is more reliable than my sense of control.
    For many of us, this is where faith becomes uncomfortable. We want God’s guidance to come with guarantees. We want obedience to feel reasonable. But Matthew presents a God who speaks into urgency, not convenience. God gives Joseph just enough light for the next step—and no more.
    This is important for us, because many people are stalled spiritually not because God is silent, but because the guidance they’ve received feels risky. We pray for peace, and God offers direction. We pray for safety, and God offers movement. We pray for certainty, and God says, Trust me.
    Come and see: Emmanuel is not absent when danger is present. In fact, God-with-us is often most active precisely when the threat has not yet passed.
    And here’s the deeper truth Matthew wants us to see—this is not a failure of God’s plan. This is God’s plan unfolding in a broken world. God does not wait for perfect conditions to act. God moves decisively in imperfect ones. Emmanuel enters a violent history and refuses to abandon it.
    Which means this point is not theoretical. It presses us toward honesty. Where have we confused God’s presence with comfort? Where have we delayed obedience because we hoped God would remove the risk first?
    Joseph shows us a different way. He trusts that God’s guidance is enough—even when danger is still real. He believes that obedience itself is an encounter with Emmanuel.
    And that prepares us for what comes next. Because once we accept that God’s guidance does not always remove danger, we are ready to see how Emmanuel remains present when obedience leads us into places we never planned to go.
    Once Joseph gets up and moves, the danger doesn’t magically disappear. Obedience does not end the story—it carries it forward.
    The road God leads them onto is longer than a single night’s escape. It becomes a season. A waiting. A life lived in between.
    And that raises the next question: What does Emmanuel look like when obedience leads not to relief—but to displacement and loss?

    Emmanuel is present in displacement and loss Matthew 2:15–18

    Matthew slows the story down here, and he does it on purpose. The danger that sent the family running does not disappear when they reach Egypt. The threat lingers. Time passes. The phrase is easy to skip over: “He stayed there until the death of Herod.” But that line carries weight. It means waiting. It means not knowing how long this season will last. It means living in between.
    Egypt is not home. It is survival.
    Jesus begins His life not surrounded by stability, but shaped by displacement. Before He ever teaches about welcoming the stranger, He becomes one. He grows up hearing stories of a homeland left behind and a danger that forced them to flee. Emmanuel does not merely sympathize with the displaced—He shares their story.
    And then Matthew does something that feels almost unbearable. He refuses to keep the camera focused only on the Holy Family. He widens the lens to show the cost. Herod’s rage spills into the streets. Children are killed. Mothers cry out. Rachel weeps—and Scripture does not rush to resolve it.
    This matters. Because sometimes we are tempted to rush past pain in the name of faith. But Matthew will not allow that. God-with-us does not mean God-explaining-everything. Emmanuel does not arrive to tidy the tragedy. The grief is named. The lament is real. The evil is not minimized.
    And yet—this is the holy tension—God is not absent.
    Emmanuel is present not only in the miracle of escape, but in the ache of loss. God-with-us does not mean God kept every child safe. It means God refused to abandon a world capable of such cruelty. God enters history fully aware of its violence and chooses to stay.
    This is where the text presses on our lives. Some of us know this kind of displacement—not geographically, but emotionally or spiritually. Life changed. A door closed. A diagnosis came. A relationship fractured. A plan collapsed. And now we are living in a place we never intended to be, asking how long this season will last.
    Matthew speaks into that place with quiet force: Emmanuel is not only with you when things make sense. He is with you when you are waiting, unsettled, and grieving something you cannot fix.
    Notice again what God does not do. God does not rush Joseph back home. God does not offer a timeline. God remains present. God stays faithful. God waits with them.
    And that may be the hardest kind of faith—trusting God not to end the season quickly, but to be with us through it.
    Come and see: Emmanuel is not repelled by sorrow. He does not avoid the places marked by loss. God-with-us stands in the middle of human pain and refuses to leave.
    This prepares us for the final turn of the story. Because if Emmanuel is present in danger and faithful in displacement, then we must be ready for what comes next—obedience that leads us not back to where we were, but forward into a future we did not expect.
    Matthew lets us sit in that grief. He refuses to rush the pain. But he also refuses to leave us there.
    Because God is still speaking. Still guiding. Still leading forward.
    And when the moment finally comes to move again, we discover that faith does not return us to the life we had—but carries us into a future we did not plan.

    Obedience Often Leads us to an Unexpected Future Matthew 2:19–23

    When the danger finally passes, we might expect the story to resolve cleanly. Herod is dead. The threat is gone. Surely now everything resets. Surely now God restores what was interrupted.
    But Matthew does not give us a neat return.
    Joseph hears from God again—another dream, another instruction. And even then, fear still matters. Discernment still matters. The family does not go back to where they started. They settle in Nazareth, a place with no prestige, no prophecy people were watching for, no obvious explanation except this: God was still leading.
    This is crucial. Faithful obedience does not always bring us back to the life we lost. Sometimes it carries us forward into a life we never imagined.
    Nazareth is not the fulfillment Joseph would have chosen. It is not Bethlehem’s promise or Jerusalem’s power. It is quiet, overlooked, ordinary. And yet this is where Jesus grows. This is where Emmanuel’s presence becomes woven into daily life—work, family, obscurity, routine. God-with-us is not only dramatic and urgent; He is also patient and ordinary.
    Matthew wants us to see that obedience is not a one-time decision. It is a way of living that requires continual listening. Joseph obeys again. And again. He does not cling to the past or demand clarity beyond what God provides. He follows.
    This is where the text presses hardest on us.
    Many of us are willing to obey God once. We will take the first step. We will respond in crisis. But what happens when obedience leads us somewhere smaller than we expected? Somewhere quieter? Somewhere that does not feel like a reward?
    Nazareth reminds us that faithfulness is not measured by visibility or comfort. It is measured by trust. Emmanuel is not only with us in escape and survival; He is with us in settling, rebuilding, and living forward.
    And here is the truth that brings the sermon full circle: Joseph never outruns God’s presence. Every move—Bethlehem to Egypt, Egypt to Nazareth—is guided by the same faithful God. Emmanuel is not tied to a location. He is tied to obedience.
    Which means the future does not have to be predictable for it to be faithful. It does not have to look impressive to be holy. It does not have to feel safe to be led by God.
    Come and see: Emmanuel does not promise us control over the journey. He promises Himself.
    And that is what prepares us for the final invitation—to stop standing still, stop waiting for certainty, and step into an encounter with the God who is already moving.
    By now, the pattern is unmistakable.
    God speaks. Joseph listens. The path changes. And Emmanuel never leaves.
    Which means this gospel is no longer just telling us what happened. It is asking us what we will do.

    So now the question is no longer what does this text mean? The question is what will we do with Emmanuel?
    Because if God’s guidance does not always remove danger, then faith cannot be postponed until life feels safe. Some of us have been waiting for the threat to disappear, waiting for certainty, waiting for conditions to improve—when God has already spoken. Emmanuel does not promise us safety before obedience. He promises His presence within it.
    And if Emmanuel is present in displacement and loss, then we must stop telling ourselves that God will meet us once we are settled again. Some of you are tired of living in between—between what was and what might be, between grief and hope, between fear and faith. But hear this clearly: Emmanuel is not waiting for you on the other side of this season. He is walking with you through it.
    And if obedience often leads us to an unexpected future, then we must release our grip on how we thought this story would go. Nazareth was not the dream. It was not impressive. It was not what Joseph imagined when the angel first spoke. But it was the place where Emmanuel remained faithful. God-with-us does not promise to restore the old life. He promises to stay with us as He shapes a new one.
    So this gospel does not call us to admiration. It calls us to encounter.
    Not a sentimental Jesus who stays safely in the manger. But Emmanuel—present, persistent, trustworthy. The God who speaks when danger is real. The God who stays when loss is heavy. The God who leads even when the road bends away from what we expected.
    Before we rush past that truth, let us be still for a moment.
    Not to fill the space. Not to fix anything. But to notice where Emmanuel is already present.
    As you sit in silence, bring to mind the place where life feels unsettled— the decision you’ve been avoiding, the road you didn’t plan to be on, the fear that still lingers.
    You don’t need to solve it. You don’t need the next ten steps. Just notice this: God is with you there.
    (Silence — 10 to 15 seconds)
    Emmanuel—God with us— meet us on the road.
    Come and see: Emmanuel is not waiting for you at the end of the journey. He is walking with you right now.
    Even when you are on the run.

      • Matthew 2:13–23NKJV

New Life Church of the Nazarene
boswellnazarene@gmail.com
814-703-0572
http://www.newlifenaz.org/
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