November 29th - Out of Egypt

Apparently there are approximately 300 prophecies in the OT about Jesus.  What are the chances of one man fulfilling 300 different and specific promises written by dozens of different people over hundreds of years?  Remote?  Improbable?  Impossible?
Well, according to a maths guy who worked it out, the chance of Jesus  fulfilling just EIGHT of those prophecies is...... wait for it...... 10¹⁷    😄   I love stuff like that.  It bends my brain.

SO today's prophecy is this

Prophecy:   "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 11:1).

Fulfillment:    "So he [Joseph] 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'" (Matthew 2:14–15).

We know the practical reasons why the infant Jesus was taken to Egypt by His parents in the first place - to escape the mad tyranny of Herod.  But there is a deeper reason as well.  Right from the start, the life of Jesus was always about God re-writing the story of man on earth.  In every way that Adam and Eve fell, Jesus restored.  In every way that Israel rebelled, Jesus submitted.  In every way that God's people wandered off, and fell and were tempted and forgot and grew cold, Jesus was steadfast, righteous, focused and passionate.

The life of Jesus is an undoing of all that has gone before.  And part of what had gone before in the life of God's people was a long and tragic captivity in Egypt.   (Even today that period of the history of God's people is massively significant to the Jews.)   Just as God in ancient history had released His people from slavery and brought them to a promised land, so Jesus was to embody another, far deeper, eternal release from slavery and into promise.    The words' Out of Egypt I called my son'  seem so insignificant in the whole sweep of scripture.  But they speak volumes.   Egypt represents all that is worldly and sinful and corrupt and anti-God.   And this time Jesus - God Himself - has been there.  Not just His representative Aaron.  Not just a great leader Moses.  But God Himself has come to a world that is corrupt and evil and which has made slaves out of children and used people as capital.   As He comes out from that world and come into the promised land of Israel as a small boy He is doing what God originally intended for the people of Israel to do all those generations before.   He is beginning a journey of radical obedience to, and love of, God.    And this time, in this man, it would work.