Hosea 11:1
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son. (NIV)
Today’s Reading: Hosea 11:1-7 and Matthew 2:13-23
I’m reminded in today’s prophecy of God’s providential hand on all of history and in particular on the lives of His chosen people of Israel. Looking back on Israel’s history, we can see a recurring pattern of events that reveal to us that God is orchestrating the redemption of the world through His people. I marvel at the idea that God arranged for generations of Israelites to go through events in their lives as a metaphor or a symbol of something greater that He is doing.
We learned about a simple example of this just yesterday as we were introduced to Hosea. God had Hosea marry a prostitute and raise a family with her so that Hosea’s life with his wife would stand as a representation of God’s relationship to Israel. Israel would time and time again chase after other gods in the same way that Hosea’s wife would chase after other men. But God loves His people and He would always take them back when they returned to Him. So God made Hosea take his prostitute wife back time and again and love her unconditionally.
Another example of God’s providence is the history between Israel and Egypt. A great famine came on the land of Israel and Jacob and his eleven sons fled to Egypt to find refuge and escape death. Jacob’s twelfth son Joseph was already in Egypt preparing the land for the famine. The nation of Israel would grow up in Egypt and then God would lead them out of Egypt back to the Promised Land after they had matured. God would then use this Exodus to establish the Old Covenant with His people.
What are the odds that God would lead the Messiah into and out of Egypt in the exact same way? Matthew records this time in Jesus’s life for us:
“ When they had gone, 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’” (Matt 2:13-15).
Joseph took Jesus to Egypt to find refuge and escape death just as Jacob took his sons. Jesus would grow up in Egypt and return to the land of Israel once he had matured just as the nation of Israel did. God would establish a New Covenant through Jesus just as He established the Old Covenant with the generation of Israelites that left Egypt. God rescued His people from physical slavery in Egypt through Moses just as He rescued us from slavery to sin through Jesus.
Jesus would retrace the nation of Israel’s steps in numerous ways throughout his life. For instance, immediately after his baptism Jesus went into the desert to be tempted for 40 days similar to Israel spending 40 years wandering in the desert before entering the Promised Land. Even Jesus’s baptism is a parallel to the Israelites escaping Egypt through the Red Sea.
For me, it’s humbling to recognize God’s providence throughout history. Not because of His awesome power although that is certainly very humbling. It’s humbling to me because every time I see a parallel between a historical event and a particular event in the life of Jesus, I realize that God orchestrated that event to point me to Jesus. God did all of that work to arrange all those events in time so that I would see Jesus more clearly. He did it all to bring me to salvation so that I could be with Him for eternity.
“God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan” (Eph 1:9-11, NLT).
I’m thankful that all of God’s plans lead to Jesus.
Christ in the Old Testament 
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