OUR LORD WAS A POLITICAL REFUGEE

Continuing from yesterday's discussion, the three men from the east, having given their gifts of gold, frankinscence and myrrh, returned to their home country  by another route so as not to let King Herod know the whereabouts of the child Jesus.

They knew that if Herod learned where Jesus was,  he would have sought to destroy Him as a potential rival to the throne of Israel.

Despite the evasive measures of the three wise men, Herod went on a warpath to find the child to kill Him and so an angel came to Joseph in a dream to warn him to take his family to Egypt to escape the hand of Herod. The passage in Mathew 2 verse 13 - 16 reads this way;

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.”

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

Jesus, having been smuggled to earth under cover of a Roman administrative census that mandated the movement of the people of Israel around their country to get registered, it now became necessary to flee to Egypt to escape the murderous rage of King Herod.

In the care of His family in Egypt, Jesus was safe for two years and when reports came that Herod had died, His father Joseph was visited by an angel  in a dream and told that He could return his family to Israel. 

Thus did Jesus live as a refugee in Egypt for two years while fulfilling the words of the prophet, "Out of Egypt I called my Son".

Bless the Lord our God.

Amen.