"...And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'"
Matthew 2:15
These words were originally spoken of Israel in Hosea 11:1 where it says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." But God's words to Israel don't end there. He continues, "But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me..." The physical bondage that Israel found themselves in during their years in Egypt mirrors their spiritual bondage and ours. We all like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way. There was nothing Israel could do to free herself, and there is nothing we can do either. We, like the Israelites in Egypt so long ago, are born into slavery and desperately need a liberator. We who are lost, hopeless and helpless in our sin, need a Savior to free us from its power, its effects, and its consequences. God's love compelled him to deliver Israel from physical slavery, and this same love drove him to provide a way for mankind's spiritual liberation. God, as he did with Israel, is calling to us. He is calling us out of our Egypt, out of the bondage of sin and death into the freedom of his Son.
Israel was God's wayward child, Jesus is God's obedient son. It is Christ and his faithful obedience to his father - first in coming to earth, then living a perfect life, and finally submitting to the most horrible of deaths that has provided a way for us to be set free. Jesus entered into our bondage, he wrapped around himself the chains of sin and death that bound us, and then broke them by the power of the cross. It was through Christ's death and his life that God brought us freedom, for God determined that Christ would not just come to die, but that his obedient life would physically and spiritually take the place of ours. As a child, fleeing from Herod, Jesus went down to Egypt and returned, as did Israel, to the Promised Land. As a man, anointed by the Spirit, he entered the wilderness where he was tempted for 40 days, but unlike Israel, came out victorious. Jesus, the perfect Son of God, traveled the same path as Israel, but with a different outcome.
Israel is a picture of all who are born into slavery, and of him who came to set us free. In Jesus we find both substitute and fulfillment. "Out of Egypt I called my son." This is the gospel in a nutshell. It speaks to our bondage and to the One who bought our freedom with his blood. It proclaims our desperate need and our eternal provision. It declares our hopeless enslavement and the source of our liberation. It testifies to our failure and His triumph. We are loved, and because of this great love we have been set free.