When Christmas Makes You Flee
12/27/09 | Tim Schaaf
Indebted to Tim Keller sermon “Christmas War” this morning.
This passage is a Christmas passage, but has very different emotional feel from other Christmas stories.
Traditional Christmas Story Words:
- Birth
- Wonder
- Angels
- Glory
- Treasure
- Worship
This story:
- Flee
- Destroy
- Furious
- Slaughter
- Weeping
Details of the Story
A. Herod was a bloodthirsty ruler
He told the Magi that he wanted to know where Jesus was so that he could “go and worship him too”
- Actually Herod wanted to murder this threat
* Someone else who might have claim to Herod’s throne
Herod’s throne had been threatened before.
Anthony & Cleopatra
- Cleopatra wanted Judea reunited with Egypt
- Not until Caesar Augustus took over was it secure in Rome.
Old Dynasty was still around
- Married Mariamne, granddaughter of the former high priest Hyrcanus II,
- Still killed the survivors or that line one-by-one, including his wife
-
ü He murdered his favorite wife, Mariamne,
ü He had her two sons strangled
- Alexander and Aristobulus
- Brought up in Rome and designated as heirs
ü As a last act of his long and violent career, had Antipater, another son, executed for promoting himself too precipitously as his heir.
ü Filled a room with attendants and servants as he was dying and had them slaughtered so that the whole country would morn his death.
- The slaughter of the young children would have been merely a minor offense for this great sinner. (Boice)
B. 20-30 boys were killed here
Bethlehem was a small town, from 300-1000 residents
A dozen, maybe 20-30 boys under age “2” in the town
- horrible, but not epic enough to land in the history books
C. This story parallels the Exodus
Pharaoh was killing young boys because the growing people of Israel were a threat.
Egypt oppressed Israel … God delivered them into the Promised Land.
With Jesus, he’s in the promised land.
- The threat drives him to Egypt
- Threat for Jesus is not the outside empires, but the internal threat of “God’s people.”
Through Jesus’ whole life he’ll see this.
It’s not the pagans that hate him, it’s the people who were in the Exodus.
Why study this story? What does it teach us?
- We see our Savior and his parents enduring threat, hardship and toil … yet God is with them every step of the way.
- My gut tells me that a few of us are enduring threats, hardship, unemployment, toil … you need to know that God is with you every step of the way.
1. Christianity is a Fight
Jesus Came to Bring Not Just Peace, but Strife
Principle: The Coming of Jesus doesn’t just solve problems, He creates problems as well.
Simeon’s Words to Mary:
“And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” ” (Luke 2:34–35, ESV)
Jesus’ Statement:
““Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ” (Matthew 10:34–39, ESV)
J.C. Ryle – The Fight
“True Christianity”—mind that word “true.” Let there be no mistake about my meaning. There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster; it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. It is not the real thing which was called Christianity eighteen hundred years ago. There are thousands of men and women who go to churches and chapels every Sunday, and call themselves Christians. Their names are in the baptismal register. They are reckoned Christians while they live. They are married with a Christian marriage-service. They are buried as Christians when they die. But you never see any “fight” about their religion! Of spiritual strife, and exertion, and conflict, and self-denial, and watching, and warring they know literally nothing at all. Such Christianity may satisfy man, and those who say anything against it may be thought very hard and uncharitable; but it certainly is not the Christianity of the Bible. It is not the religion which the Lord Jesus founded, and His Apostles preached. True Christianity is “a fight.”
… the child of God has two great marks about him, and of these two you have one. HE MAY BE KNOWN BY HIS INWARD WARFARE, AS WELL AS BY HIS INWARD PEACE. (http://www.biblebb.com/files/ryle/are_you_fighting.htm)
New Peace Escorts New Fighting
New peace where you had war before
- Conscience
- Money
- Relationships / Rejection
New war where you had peace before
- Places you ignored because of your own issues, denial or fears
- Really giving yourself to others …
2. The Reason Christianity Is a Fight Is Because It Declares a New King
The wise men were not looking for a personal savior.
- Not a solution to their personal problems
- Not relief from guilt
They were looking for a KING
Herod saw this king as a threat.
Every ruler in your life will see Jesus as a threat too.
ILL – young couple, she goes to church & meets Jesus. Let’s stop having sex
Him … you should stop going to church!
What little kings will Jesus threaten?
- Friends?
- Family?
- Self (addictions, work-a-holism, pride)
3. Our Pains and Struggles In Life Can Be Seen With This Fight As The Main Interpretative Key
Jesus
- Trip was paid for by the Wise Men’s Gifts
- God secured safety for them
They Wanted to Settle in Israel, but Were forced to the humble, backwater town of Nazareth
- God, as a rule, uses the humble, broken, despised and unimportant to do His work.
Are you humiliated?
This path from Bethlehem to Egypt had been walked before
Rachel died giving birth and was buried in Bethlehem.
Jeremiah’s statement given as Israel marched out into exile.
Concluding Story
The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn , arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.
T hey worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished.
O n December 19 a terrible tempest - a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.
O n the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.
T he pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.
On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity, so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
B y this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.
She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.
T hen he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?"
The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.
T he woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten "The Tablecloth". The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria .
When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and she never saw her husband or her home again.
T he pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church.
The pastor insisted on driving her home. That was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
W hat a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return.
One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving.
The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike?
H e told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested andput in a prison. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years between.
T he pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.
H e helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.