Day 2306 – Characters of Christmas-8 Herod, The Monster of Christmas

Welcome to Day 2306 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
The Characters of Christmas-8  Herod, The Monster of Christmas – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 12/17/2023

The Characters of Christmas – Herod, the Monster of Christmas

Last week, we went on a two-year expedition as we traveled with a caravan of visitors from the east in a message titled,  Seeking and Finding: The Wise Men

This week, we will look at the dark side of Christmas Characters as we analyze,  Herod, the Monster of Christmas.

Let’s read Matthew 2:13-23, starting on page 1498, in your Pew Bibles.

The Escape to Egypt

13 When the wise men 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.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 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.”[c]

16 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. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”[d]

The Return to Nazareth

19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Every year at this time, our family, as many do, likes to gather around the TV

and watch our favorite Christmas movies. Perhaps our favorite is It’s a Wonderful Life, followed closely by A Muppets Christmas Carol, but I also enjoy several other versions of it.  A Christmas Carol is like several Christmas stories...

Welcome to Day 2306 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
The Characters of Christmas-8  Herod, The Monster of Christmas – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 12/17/2023

The Characters of Christmas – Herod, the Monster of Christmas

Last week, we went on a two-year expedition as we traveled with a caravan of visitors from the east in a message titled,  Seeking and Finding: The Wise Men

This week, we will look at the dark side of Christmas Characters as we analyze,  Herod, the Monster of Christmas.

Let’s read Matthew 2:13-23, starting on page 1498, in your Pew Bibles.

The Escape to Egypt

13 When the wise men 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.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 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.”[c]

16 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. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”[d]

The Return to Nazareth

19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Every year at this time, our family, as many do, likes to gather around the TV

and watch our favorite Christmas movies. Perhaps our favorite is It’s a Wonderful Life, followed closely by A Muppets Christmas Carol, but I also enjoy several other versions of it.  A Christmas Carol is like several Christmas stories in that it features a villain whose chief goal is to make Christmas miserable or nonexistent for everyone. Dickens gives us Scrooge (pre-transformation), but he's not unique. If you could find one theme in almost every holiday film, it's that there is a protagonist and an antagonist:

It's a Wonderful Life has Mr. Potter
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas has, well, the Grinch
Home Alone has Harry and Marv, the bumbling burglars
Every Hallmark Movie has plots that are similar to The Christmas Carol.


I think you understand what I mean.

 

The original Christmas story also has its monster, though his cruelties are far from cute. Herod is a legitimate villain, which is why he's not usually included in many Christmas stories. I don't think any nativity sets include this guy.

 

But Herod figures very prominently in the Christmas story and the Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah. To ignore him is to not only ignore the world into which Jesus was born, but to miss an essential thread in God's grand plan of redemption. Underneath the warm glow of our Christmases is a dark thread of violence, signs of a cosmic war against all that is good.

 

Back to the Garden (Bulletin Insert)

 

The characters in this story of Christmas are merely pawns in a more significant spiritual battle. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12:

For we[a] are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

 

At the heart of the incarnation, the story of God leaving heaven to become flesh, is the cosmic struggle between God and Satan. Ever since Lucifer, God's angel and the leader of the chorus of heaven, fell from glory (Isa. 14:12-14), he and his band of cohorts have had one singular mission: to thwart God's plans for humanity.

 

That's why the Christmas story doesn't begin in 5 BC or Matthew's gospel, but centuries earlier, in a garden. The Tempter’s first salvo comes in the opening pages of Scripture after God created humans and placed them in the beauty and perfection of Eden. The Tempter seduces the very first humans into disobeying their Father. Their disobedience stained the innocence into which they were created, injecting corruption into the cosmos and every human heart (Rom. 5:12).

 

But Satan's attack didn't catch the Godhead by surprise. Before creation, God had already initiated a plan to rescue His imagers and renew the world. We see this in His words to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:14-15:

Then the Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike[a] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

Christmas, then, began long before that starry night in Bethlehem. It started in eternity past, in the counsels of the Trinity and God’s divine counsel of heavenly beings created before humans. With God’s foreknowledge of what would happen, God planned to redeem the world from sin. This would involve a long and bloody struggle between the offspring of The Satan and the seed of the woman. We see this played out on the pages of the Old Testament, where, page after page, we find seemingly parallel tracks of good and evil:

Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, the nations of Egypt and Israel, King Saul and King David, other wicked Kings in Israel, and the Prophets of God.

 

So now you know that when we read Matthew's account of the birth of Christ, and it says in Matthew 2:1 that Jesus was born /in the days of Herod,/ you know he is writing this narrative as a continuation of what had come before. For Jesus to be born in these days of Herod might have been the worst possible time for a new king of Israel to be born. But Matthew is framing his book not as a tidy biography>of Jesus but as the clash of two kingdoms.

 

Who Is Herod?

So, who exactly is King Herod? He is the Roman-appointed governor of Judea, who took office in around 40 BC. He is known as Herod the Great because he was a builder, constructing impressive water systems known as aqueducts and rebuilding Solomon's Temple.

 

Herod's architectural achievements are impressive, and some still exist today. I have seen pictures of the aqueducts and have portions of the temple that still stand today in Israel. But Herod was also ruthless and paranoid. All of Israel knew he was not a legitimate king of Israel, having descended from Esau, not Jacob. So, he ruled by fear. Here is just a short list of some of his violent acts:

Herod killed the final members of the Hasmonean ruling family.
Herod had many of the members of the Sanhedrin executed.
Herod slaughtered members of his own family: his wife Mariamne, his mother-in-law Alexandra, and three of his sons.
Herod even tried to have all the elite leaders in Jerusalem killed upon his death, arranging for them to be herded into the hippodrome and killed the moment he passed. This last decree of violence was ignored.


So imagine how bothered Herod might be when a noisy entourage of possibly a dozen wise men and all their supporting personnel arrives from the East asking, naively, about a new king of the Jews. Matthew 2:3 says, When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. The people were disturbed because the king was disturbed. And this was no mere annoyance. This was a culture of fear. Word got quickly back to Herod, who sprang into action. Not because he wanted,/ as he claimed, /to worship the infant Jesus./ In this baby, the evil king saw a threat to his power.

Herod gathered all of “the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law.” (4) These people knew the law backward and forward. And interestingly, they knew exactly what the prophets predicted. They even quoted Micah 5:2: “In Bethlehem in Judea” (5). So Herod summons the magi. He's clearly paranoid and is about to execute a plan to quash this insurrection, even if that threat was in diapers in Bethlehem.

Watch closely how Herod employs seemingly spiritual, benevolent language. He even uses the language of worship. “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” (8) It reminds us how easily influential people co-opt religious language to manipulate and destroy.

 

The Real King of Judah

Herod had his plan, but it turned out that he was not as powerful as he thought. Like every ruler who seeks to challenge God, his attempts to snuff out the life of the real King of Israel were thwarted by God. God warned the wise men not to report back to Herod, and He warned Joseph to travel with Mary and the infant Jesus to Egypt for safety. This is a reminder, in a world of evil and suffering, when it seems that Satan and his minions have the upper hand, that God is sovereign over all things. In Psalm 2:1-6, David described God's response to the nations and rulers who plot against the Almighty:

1 Why are the nations so angry?
Why do they waste their time with futile plans?
2 The kings of the earth prepare for battle;
the rulers plot together against the Lord
and against his anointed one.
3 “Let us break their chains,” they cry,
“and free ourselves from slavery to God.”

4 But the one who rules in heaven laughs.
The Lord scoffs at them.
5 Then in anger he rebukes them,
terrifying them with his fierce fury.
6 For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne
in Jerusalem,[a] on my holy mountain.”

 

This is the story of Matthew’s gospel, the story of Christmas: that God has determined to set upon His mountain His King, Jesus. The earth is full of the graves of kings who tried and failed to usurp the true King, from Eden on through the life of Jesus. Herod may have seemed powerful. He may have initiated a culture of fear in Israel. (politicians) But he was no match for the King of kings.

 

This is what we should take away from the life of Herod this Christmas: the people we think possess the most power, who put fear in our hearts, are really not that powerful. "God is not troubled by this cosmic rebellion. God laughs at such folly.”

Threatened by a Child

This infant child, innocent and pure, now threatened the power center of Judea. Just imagine how angry Herod must have been when he failed to hear back from the wise men. Ghosted by the Magi, he went into a rage and slaughtered every baby boy in Bethlehem under two years of age. In the most wicked kind of action, Herod saw children as a threat to his power, and with cruel math—making sure no living infant son in Bethlehem could one day grow up and take his throne—he brought the sorrow of his sword into Jewish families.

Let's pause and think of how much anguish this brought into the sleepy city of David. Families, having babies torn from their arms and taken by Herod's sword. As the father of five children, I can't even imagine watching one of my children dying, let alone like this.

 

And yet this is the way of tyrants, the way of people so consumed with power they cannot see the humanity of those in their way. It was the way of Pharaoh, who murdered Jewish boys. And it's the way of so many monstrous acts of murder today. We are not immune to horrendous violence today as we think about the school shootings in our own country over the past twenty years. So many innocent lives were destroyed.  As a father, every bit of anger wells up in me at those monsters that caused this pain.

 

There is something about children that threatens evil people. Commentator Russell Moore says:

Satan hates children because he hates Jesus. When evil destroys “the least of these” (Matt. 25:40, 45), the most vulnerable among us, it destroys a picture of Jesus himself, of the child delivered by the woman who crushes the head of the evil ones. (Gen. 3:15). The demonic powers know that the human race is saved, and they're defeated, by a child born of woman (Gal. 4:4; 1 Tim. 2:15). And so they hate the children who are His imagers...Those defeated satanic powers want the kingdoms of the universe, and a child uproots their reign.

 

The uprooting by this child, Jesus, would signal the end of something. Isaiah 9:6 For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. But this promise comes in the context of judgment against evil powers. You see, a child, this child, threatens Herod and everyone who aligns against the Holy One. The child born in the manger was a sign of judgment. He is peace to those who trust Him,/ but He is an enemy to those who wish to go their own way.

 

This judgment, though, is a sign of hope, of something new on the way. As Matthew narrates Herod’s violence against the innocents, he quotes Jeremiah 31. He echoes the weeping endured by a previous generation of Hebrew mothers and fathers, lamenting the loss of their land and the carrying of their children to a foreign land. D. A. Carson explains why Matthew’s inclusion of the passage is so crucial to our understanding:

Jeremiah 31:15 occurs in a setting of hope. Despite the tears, God says, the exiles will return; and now Matthew, referring to Jeremiah 31:15, likewise says that, despite the tears of the Bethlehem mothers, there is hope because Messiah has escaped Herod and will ultimately reign...Matthew has already made the Exile a turning point in his thought (1:11-12),/ for at that time, /the Davidic line was dethroned. /BUT…the tears of the Exile are now being “fulfilled”—i.e., the tears begun in Jeremiah’s day are climaxed and ended by the tears of the mothers of Bethlehem. The heir to David’s throne has come, the Exile is over, the true Son of God has arrived—and he will introduce the new covenant (26:28) promised by Jeremiah.

 

The heir to David's throne has come. The long cosmic struggle between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed has culminated in Christ. The Satan, /the father of lies,/ the author of bloodshed, /with murder on his heart, /will be defeated when this baby ascends to a bloody Roman cross, /endures the wrath of the Father, /and rises again in victory on the third day. /And the sin that has so gripped human hearts is being rolled back./ This, /Christmas reminds us,/ is the true kingdom. /Jesus' kingdom is not a kingdom that prizes power over the vulnerable,/ but is a kingdom of flourishing,/ where the last shall be first, /a kingdom made up of the weak and the lowly.

 

This doesn't make the suffering, the violence, and the bloodshed any less evil or hard to endure. Matthew is not giving us a fake Christmas, wrapped in bows of sentimentality. He's giving us something better: The Gift of Hope.

 

So, at Christmas, as we survey the brokenness of our world and the world Jesus entered, we should avoid two wrong approaches. While I am forever an optimist, I am also a realist. We should be tempted away from an overly optimistic, Pollyannaish disposition that refuses to acknowledge evil;/ but…we should never be in a despairing mindset that only sees violence and horror. In Jesus, we see Rachel crying for her children /and the promise that those tears are being wiped away in a new and lasting kingdom of God. We see a weeping heavenly Father/ and a triumphant Christ.

 

As if to punctuate this hope, Matthew includes this little note: “ After Herod died...” (2:19). Herod, the paranoid and powerful monarch, died. Moreover, his kingdom was divided up by Rome, and his sons shared some of the power. And not too many decades later, there would be no more Herods on the throne of Israel. But what about that