Matthew 2
Amen, you can be seated. Turn
in your copy of God’s word to Matthew chapter two. Today, we
look at another Christmas character, maybe not one that we would pick,
but nevertheless, one that’s important, and that’s Herod.
Herod, the king over the region of the promised land, the region
of God’s people. There’s a handful of Herods.
This would have been one of the first Herods. Reigned for about
40 years. In our study of the book of Acts,
we looked at one of the Herods who would be this Herod’s grandson.
Remember, he gave the speech after he put on all his royal
robes, he gave the speech about how wonderful he was. He fell
ill and worms ate him. And so we remember, as we very
often say in our salutation from Christ early in the service,
Jesus Christ is the firstborn from among the dead, and he is
the ruler of all the kings of the earth. And so we may have
heavy minds and heavy hearts as we look at our own nation
or nations around us where wicked may rule. And we’ve got to remember
Jesus is king and he holds the hearts, even the lives of every
king in his hands. And so we wanna read together
from Matthew chapter two. This tells us of Herod and his
activity in the nativity of the Lord Jesus. Before we read, let’s
ask for God’s help, pray with me. Lord, our minds are often
distracted and even today they pop all over the place. We think
of grocery list and tomorrow’s to-do list. We think of this
and that that are in front of us. Our attention spans need
help though, Lord. We want to hear from you and
we want to give our attention to what you have to say. We believe
your words are true. They are eternal. and they have
great value for our lives, so help us to think and to listen
and to receive, but most of all, to put into practice what you
have to say to us this day. We ask for your help and grace
now, and we pray for it in Jesus’ name, amen. This is God’s Word,
Matthew chapter two. Now, after Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, wise
men from the East came to Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been
born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose
and have come to worship him. When Herod the King heard this,
he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and assembling all the
chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them
where the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of
Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, O Bethlehem,
in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers
of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise
men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star
had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem
saying, go and search diligently for the child. And when you have
found him, bring me word. that I too may come and worship
him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold,
the star that they had seen when it rose, went before them until
it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they
saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into
the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they
fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures,
they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. and
being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed
to their own country by another way. Now, when they had departed,
behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream
and said, rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt
and remain there until I tell you for Herod is about to search
for the child to destroy him. He rose and took the child and
his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until
the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the
Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt, I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that
he had been tricked by the wise men, he became furious. He sent
and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that
region who were two years old or under. according to the time
that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled
what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in
Ramah, weeping in loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children.
She refused to be comforted because they are no more. But when Herod
died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph
in Egypt saying, rise, take the child and his mother and go to
the land of Israel. For those who sought the child’s
life are dead. And he rose and took the child
and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard
that Archelios was reigning over Judea in the place of his father
Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned in a dream,
he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived
in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets
might be fulfilled. He shall be called a Nazarene. Amen. This is God’s word for
us, his children. I think we would all, if we could
experience it, like to look behind the curtain. We’d like to look
behind the curtain of the stage of redemption. and see the inner
workings of God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy
Spirit. We have our Bible. We have our Bible stories. We
have our own life experiences walking with the Lord. But we
would just love to take a peek behind the scenes. And occasionally,
we have a Bible story like this, where we see the forces of evil
against the forces of Almighty God. There are some peaks behind
the curtain that the scripture gives us. In fact, if you think
back through your Bible reading, you read of the fall of Satan. Satan was an angel. He served
God’s bidding in heaven. He knew the plan of redemption
and whatever God commanded he and the other angels would do
as servants of God. We looked at in the last week
or two, the faithfulness of Gabriel in the Christmas story. We looked
at the faithfulness of the angels to serve as they announced the
birth of Christ. We’ve seen the work of angels
in all kinds of places in the Bible, but there are fallen angels. The book of Jude tells us of
them. Peter speaks of them, but we
know that Satan was chief among them and that somewhere before
the creation of the world, Satan decided I’d rather serve in hell
than serve the God of heaven. And so he rebelled against God
and he became the arch enemy of God Almighty. Now, of course,
we know of God’s power, his sovereignty, his strength. And we know that
Satan is no match for him. We understand from our Bible
reading the stories we do get that God is always at war with
Satan. Then you pop on to the end of
the Bible and you see that in the end, Satan loses, Jesus wins. Satan is banished to hell forever,
along with those who have died without faith. And Jesus, the
glorious victor, sits on his throne with all his beloved worshiping
and fellowshipping with him into eternity. Well, we get a picture
of this story as it begins in the book of Genesis. God makes
Adam and Eve. He makes the world and everything
in it. He puts them in the garden to work and to keep it, to be
fruitful, to multiply and to fill the earth. And he gives
them one command. Well, he probably gives them
lots of commands, but the one we know of is, of all the trees
of the garden, you shall not eat, or you shall eat, you may
eat freely, but do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. And then chapter three comes. The serpent was
more crafty than all the beast of the field. And you walk through
that story. You understand that Eve was tempted. She took the fruit and ate it,
gave some to Adam who was with her and they had their eyes open.
They knew they had sinned. They were naked. They were ashamed.
They, they tried to cover their nakedness and their shame by
sewing fig leaves together. God came looking for them and
said, this won’t do. He sacrifices an animal. He sheds blood and he covers
their shame with the clothing, the skins of animals, which foreshadowed
the coming of Jesus. and that he would exchange his
righteous robes for our filthy rags, as we so confessed a few
moments ago in the Ligonier Statement on Christology. And so we have
these glimpses of stories in the Bible where Satan enters
and sin takes over. Well, when God lines up Adam
and Eve and Satan to tell them of their curses and their punishments,
He says to Eve, you will bear a child. You will wear a child
and that child will be at war with this serpent. And so we
have there told to us in plain language, Jesus and Satan will
have this perpetual battle until the last. And we sing at Easter,
that wonderful hymn, sing choirs of New Jerusalem. And we sing
of Jesus crushing the serpents That’s the great victory that
we have. If you’ve read through the book
of Romans and you’re kind of zipping along a little theology,
a little practical living, you get to the end where Paul is
saying hello and goodbye to people. And he just sort of blurts out
this interesting statement. He says, soon, Jesus will crush
Satan underfoot. And if you’re not careful, you’ll
just zip by that and read the names and the people and the
hellos and the goodbyes, and you’ll miss that. But that’s
one of the most important things that we need to learn from the
scripture. Jesus wins. Satan may nip at the heels of
God’s people. He may strike at the heels of
God’s people. We need to wear snake chaps,
right? We need to wear those knee boots
that keep the snake bites from penetrating our skin and killing
us, poisoning us. But until Jesus’ final victory
over Satan, the serpent will nip at the heels of God’s people.
But one day, Jesus will strike him that fatal blow. But until
then, we live in this cosmic battle between the seed of the
woman and the seed of the serpent. And we see this perpetual battle
all through the scriptures. We’re definitely gonna see it
in our passage today between Jesus and Herod. But think of
Moses in the bulrushes and how God rescued this child through
the faithfulness of his sister and his mother and the kindness
of the princess of Egypt. Moses was spared, but had he
not been spared, who would God have used to shepherd Israel
out of Egypt through the wilderness and into the promised land? Oh,
he could have come up with somebody, no doubt in our minds. But Moses
was that deliverer and God spared him from the strike, from the
death, from the frustration of the plan of redemption that Satan
had so wickedly planned. Think of Joseph, Joseph sold
into slavery by his brothers, given to the Midianites, carried
off into Egypt. And then the wickedness of the,
of Potiphar’s wife to accuse him. He could have been put to
death. Thankfully, he was put into prison. And then we remember
the forgetfulness of the cupbearer or the baker, I forget which
it was, the forgetfulness. And he languished there in prison.
But when God was ready for him, God preserved him and made him
steward over all Egypt. And he saved the entire world
by storing up grain during those seven years. And we can list
others in the scriptures. We can think of David and others
that God used. God spared David from the sword
of Saul, from the sword of Goliath, from the javelin of Saul and
his anger. God spared him and made him his
own son who would rule over Israel. And so in God’s plan to bring
about a savior, in God’s plan to bring about salvation to God’s
people, we see over and over and over the enemy, the hatred
of Satan seeking to thwart God’s plan of redemption, all kinds
of obstacles. Oh, we can think of Ahab and
think of Jezebel. We can think of the barrenness
that we have read of in Sarah’s life. or Hannah’s life or Ruth’s
life or even Zechariah’s wife who would give birth to John
the baptizer. God overcomes these obstacles. There will be a redeemer. Jesus
will come to this earth and he will live and rule and reign
and die for his people. Well, as we walk through this
passage and think through the life of King Herod, we see the
serpent and the connection of the serpent, the ancient serpent
to Herod. We see the plan of redemption,
the coming of the savior and the hatred of the serpent, soon
the hatred of Herod to overcome that. But we first have to think
about the wise men, the sages. We’ll think of them more in detail
on the first Sunday of the new year, but at least know of their
place in this story. These mysterious men from the
East, They follow the star, they read their books, they look for
this Christ child. And they made the mistake of
inquiring of Herod. Makes sense if you’re going to
stop and ask directions. Stop at the place that probably
knows the info. Why not stop at the palace? And
so they inquired of Herod. We are looking for the king of
the Jews. Oh, that wasn’t good. You know
how it is when you’re trying to be careful around somebody.
you know, don’t, don’t say things that trigger them and you mistakenly
blurt it out. And as the words come out, you
think, Oh, I shouldn’t have said that probably to them. The wise
men didn’t know, but what’s going on in Herod’s mind, King of the
Jews, that’s me, King of the Jews. There can’t be a new one.
If there’s a new one, that’s a threat to my throne, a threat
to my ego, a threat to my pride, a threat to everything my heart
desires. And so think of Herod, this sovereign
who ruled over the land of Israel. Many of you remember your Shakespeare,
maybe Mark Antony, friends, Romans, countrymen, lemme your ears.
He was the Caesar. He was the leader who appointed
Herod over Israel. Herod would have 10 wives. Boy,
beat that. 15 children. That’s pretty good.
But he killed two of the wives and three of the children. He
was, well, what we might look for when we read the news of
a despot across the pond who executes their uncles and kills
anyone around them, including ones in their inner circle that
may be a threat to their sovereignty. That’s Herod, that’s this Herod
the Great, the king. He was, well, he was a maniac. He was a man of a big ego. He was appointed by Mark Antony
king over the Jews. And one of the things he did
to win their affection was he rebuilt the temple and he spent
decades rebuilding the temple. So today, if you go to Israel
and you see the remnant ruins of the temple, the Western wall
and other holy sites there, what you’re seeing is the remnant
of what Herod the great. did for Israel in rebuilding,
well, sprucing up, adding on to the temple that was rebuilt
after the exile from Babylon. And the reason he did that is
any good politician knows you throw money at what people want.
And so what did the Jews want? Well, they weren’t interested
in food stamps or college debt being forgiven. That’s a joke. They were interested in their
temple. And they didn’t want some little one story temple
that only had one set of bathrooms and one set of water fountains.
They wanted Solomon’s temple and Herod gave it to them. The
temple that was built in Herod’s day, it had to be completed after
his death, the work went on so long, was grand. The most modern
technology and architecture and feats of strength and moving
these massive stones that would outsize most of our modern SUVs,
they were employed to build this great temple. Lots of gold, lots
of shiny things. This wicked king won over the
hearts of the Israelites by building them a great temple. Other than
that, they hated him. He was a nasty man. He was a
wicked man. He was a murderous man. If he
thought even his own wife or children were against him, he
would have them put to death. This is how nuts he is. At his
own death, when it was coming, he knew he was dying. He knew
no one would mourn for him. And so he issued this edict.
I want you to kill every prominent Jewish person you can so that
when I die, there will be mourning in Egypt or in Israel, in Jerusalem. Now, of course, no one carried
out that edict. Thank goodness. But what did
this man do? He issued the edict for a genocide. I can’t find this Christ child.
The wise men have tricked me. They did not return and tell
me the GPS coordinates. the cradle and the manger. They
did not come back and tell me where I could go find this, this
fake king of the Jews. They didn’t tell me where I could
find this Christ child and go worship. I mean, kill him, right? That’s what he wanted. You see
the connection between Herod and the seed of the serpent.
Herod just like wicked Ahab, wicked Jezebel, wicked Pharaoh
who enslaved Egypt, all of these people throughout the history
of redemption, obstacles, redemption hanging in the balance, but these
folks aren’t as sovereign as they think. Herod would die. God still rules and sits on his
throne. The Lord reigns, the Lord omnipotent,
the Lord almighty. He is Yahweh of host. He is without
beginning and without end. And no one can say, stay your
hand. And so this slaughter over the
babies of Bethlehem, what a, what a terrible event that Herod
issues that he decrees. Now, most will say that it was
probably a dozen or so children. That’s a dozen too many. And
you’ll notice in our passage what this significance of this
event is. This was to fulfill the prophet
Jeremiah, a voice was heard in Ramah. Rachel weeping for her
children. I know some of you have read
your Bibles through and you know about Rachel, the favorite wife
of Jacob. Remember he worked for Uncle
Laban and he got Leah. Had to work seven more years
and get Rachel. Rachel was barren. Rachel finally had children,
but Rachel passed away and was buried maybe somewhere in this
vicinity. And then you fast forward from
the events of Jacob and Rachel and her death up to the Babylonian
captivity of Israel. Remember Babylon came as punishment. God had warned Israel, you’re
being unfaithful. You’re being unfaithful. He saw how I exiled
the Northern tribes a hundred years ago by the Assyrians. And
that was a big nasty event. Those Assyrians weren’t kind
to your countrymen. So now the Babylonians come in.
They haul off all the Israelites out of Judah and Jerusalem. And
supposedly there’s this little encampment around Bethlehem,
maybe the staging area for hauling off the exiles, uh, on the way
to Babylon. And so the image is given Rachel
there in her grave, weeping for the destruction of Jerusalem,
the destruction of the Israelites as they, as a nation are no longer
going to be in Jerusalem and in the temple, but hauled off
to a foreign land where they will be forced to sing the songs
of Zion with heavy hearts only to return some years later and
partially so. Now, fast forward to this passage
today. Rachel weeping for the loss of
these boys. Herod can’t have any competition.
He gets rid of wives. He gets rid of children. He gets
rid of those who are in his way and there will not be a little
baby to come rule in his place. And so if I can’t find the child,
I’ll just wipe out everyone his age. What a wicked serpent. What a wicked servant of Satan. Now, I don’t have to tell you,
you read the news, you look around, this is a rotten world full of
sin, full of wicked people. You see mugshots on your news
feeds. There’s some messed up people
in this world. You read the headlines. How do
humans do what they do to other humans? You look at the wars
that we have witnessed this year, the indiscriminate bombings.
You look at the sickness that’s ravaged your body or your loved
one’s bodies, and you get a quick dose of the reality of sin. And you understand why Satan
doesn’t want it stopped. Satan deals in chaos. He deals in broken relationships.
He deals in sin and sinful lifestyles and behaviors. He loves our country. He loves our all the wickedness
that so many take pride in. He loves all those things and
he does not want Jesus to come in the world and make all things
new. He does not want Jesus to come fix what’s broken. No, he
wants more brokenness, more chaos, more destruction, more devastation. He wants families broken. And
so you wonder why this will get it down to brass tacks. Why do
we have our worst fusses on the way to church? Why, if you were married, is
it hard? Why, if you’re trying to faithfully
raise children, is it difficult? Why, if you’re trying to live
a godly, quiet life, are people after you? It’s because Satan
is nipping at the heels of God’s people. But one of the things
we must never forget is Jesus has come and at the cross, God
spared his son from the slaughter of Herod. But a few decades later,
he did not spare him from the slaughter of his own people,
his own countrymen. No, he went to the cross, beaten
and bruised and crucified, dead and put in a grave. But when
Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, it guarantees
the victory over Satan. And so we need not fear Herod’s.
However many of them there are, he had children and grandchildren
and they went on to rule and to ravage Israel and God’s people. And those kinds of things will
happen in our time. God has not promised everything
to be rosy, but we remember Romans chapter eight. We remember that
life is hard, it’s full of difficulties. There’s a broken world that we
live in. Yes, we have all these struggles and hardships, these
aches and pains and losses and crosses, but God has promised
nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ, not
Satan, not evil, not any power or principality in the unseen
world behind the curtain or in the world that we do see can
separate us from the love of God in Christ. And the promise
is if God did not spare his own son, he won’t withhold anything
from us, his children. So my dear brothers and sisters
do not lose heart in this weary world. Christ is coming. and
he will put that death blow to Satan and all his evil. Let’s
go to God in prayer. Lord, we thank you that you have
brought joy to the world and that you are making your blessings
known as far as the curse is found. Lord, we long with all
our heart for you to come quickly and make all things new, but
until then, sustain us. Help us to have perspective when
There are people and leaders and things and ideas and frustrations
and problems that cause us so much trouble in life. Help us
to remember that you are above all these things. You’re working
out your plan. Everything is for our good, for your glory.
So let us not lose heart. Help us to press on and keep
the faith. We pray in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.