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Introduction
How have the last few weeks been for you? It’s been pretty full-on here for many. 30th anniversary celebration, Christmas market, record numbers in the furniture scheme, a super busy time for the foodbank and running around getting everything ready for Christmas at King’s…
And that’s on top of everything else that always presses in at this time of year. Christmas cards to write, cakes to bake, parties to go to, presents to choose, buy and wrap, decorations to put up and - oh, good news; the number of shopping days till Christmas is fast dwindling away like sand in an egg timer.
Some of us will be asking ourselves, “How am I going to manage my already crowded diary? Who’s coming home for Christmas and when? How am I going to fit everyone in? How am I going to afford everything?”
For Joseph and Mary too, the events of Matthew 1 and 2 describe a very eventful and stressful few months. A traumatic and unexpected pregnancy, severe relationship strain, a series of disturbing dreams, a long and tiring journey, the worst possible time to go into labour, a not ideal location for childbirth, unexpected visitors, weird presents...
I mean most people buy things like rattles and fluffy toys for babies. What’s a new-born going to do with gold? And myrrh is an embalming spice to stop dead bodies smelling. Who invited that guy?
I can imagine Joseph and Mary looking at each other after all that and saying, “Well, that was a bit of a roller coaster, wasn’t it? But now, at last, we can adjust to becoming a family and maybe settle back to normality.”
But in the next part of the story, things are going to be anything but normal. Let’s read what happens next; Matthew 2.13-23.
When they [that’s the Magi] 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. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“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.”
After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 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.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 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, [this is the 5th dream in two short chapters] he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 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.
The Dark Side
So once these mysterious visitors, the Magi, have returned home, v13, an angel - a messenger from God - appears to Joseph in a dream.
The prophet Joel had said that with the coming of the Messiah, in the last days, he would pour out his Spirit on men and women alike.
Men would see visions and dream dreams. There would be new revelation and signs and wonders.
God would begin to move in exciting ways. Matthew is telling us here that a new era is upon us; God is initiating something unprecedented and significant.
“Get up,” he says... “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 [your child] to kill him.”
Matthew calls this a dream. I think Joseph might have called it a nightmare.
Herod is determined to kill Jesus, and this is just the first of five assassination attempts in Jesus’ life as recorded in the Gospels.
After this one, Satan goads him to plunge to his death from a high roof (Matthew 4), then locals in Nazareth attempt to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4), then Pharisees pick up stones to stone him at the Feast of Tabernacles (John 8) and after that, Judeans seize him to try and murder him at the Feast of Dedication (John 10).
And that’s not counting six other references to plots or schemes to kill him.
In all the uncertainties of their life, Mary and Joseph must feel real anxiety. Where will we go? How will we get there? What is Herod so angry about? What will become of us? What is going to happen to our baby?
But God has spoken. And when God speaks, you've got to respond. Verse 14; “So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night [that shows you the sense of urgency] and left for Egypt.”
They run away as fugitives to a foreign land and towards the great unknown.
In v20, this is probably about a year or 18 months later, God says, “Get up!” again; this time to leave Egypt. Where will they go to? The dream just says, “to the land of Israel.”
It’s a big country. Joseph and Mary both have family in Judea in the south. Maybe there then? But v22 says, “When Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.”
So they head for Nazareth further north, which is Mary’s home town. It must have felt like their homelessness, rootlessness and the feeling of being vulnerable would never end.
Do you get that feeling sometimes, that it’s just one thing after another, that the stress you live under is relentless?
If you’re a Christian, never forget that you are a follower of the one who slept as a baby in someone else’s manger, crossed Lake Galilee in someone else’s boat, fed crowds with someone else’s food, rode into Jerusalem on someone else’s donkey, ate the last supper in someone else’s upper room, was buried in someone else’s tomb and lived in constant danger in someone else’s country.
There are two angles to the story of Jesus’ birth. In Luke’s gospel, it’s full of wonder and angels and joy and friendly farm animals and quaking shepherds. It has a warm glow to it. That’s the side of the story that dominates school nativity plays and Christmas cards.
But Matthew paints a much darker picture. And both aspects are true.
But in Matthew the emphasis is on: the crisis in Joseph and Mary’s relationship that brings them to the brink of divorce, and five strange and disturbing dreams, and an anxious family fleeing for dear life, and the evil villain Herod, who doesn’t feature at all in Luke, but who dominates the narrative in Matthew and, of course, this appalling bloodbath of innocent children in v16-18
On the screen is a painting depicting a terrified mother holding her young child, as another woman runs away from danger with her little ones in the background. It was painted in 1824 by the French artist Léon Cogniet and it is about this passage of Scripture.
Look at her hand covering his mouth in a desperate but probably futile attempt to stop the noise of his crying. She’s trying to hide but she’s hopelessly exposed. She’s cornered. Trapped. Her child seems doomed.
As we focus in on the woman’s face in Cogniet’s painting, notice her eyes wide with fear, with alarm… there’s a look of shock on her face. How can this be happening?
She could be an Israeli mother on October 7 this year as Hamas terrorists storm her kibbutz. Or a Palestinian mother as the Israeli army bring their response to the Gaza Strip.
Bethlehem had an estimated population of 2,000 people in those days. It really was the little town of Bethlehem. If the demographics were typical, there would have been maybe 25 boys aged 2 and under at that time, and Herod saw them as a challenge to his authority.
Each child would have a mother who would weep for the rest of her days for her little boy bringing grim fulfilment to Jeremiah’s prophecy that this would happen.
Such were Herod’s vanity and paranoia that he thought nothing of committing atrocities like this, to protect his power base.
We know from historical sources outside of the Bible that he was obsessively jealous, and he routinely had people executed (including his wife and three of his sons) if he suspected they were a threat to his throne.
Herod is grim reminder of what the Bible everywhere asserts; that evil is real. It’s why Jesus said to pray that God will deliver us from it.
Scripture says that many antichrists will come into the world.
Herod the Great was one of the first. In the last 100 years we’ve seen some of the worst; Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot.
Alive today, there are others like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. Sadly, we probably haven’t seen the last of them.
Fearful Times
The book of Revelation teaches, using highly symbolic language, that much of what we see physically on earth has an unseen spiritual reality behind it.
There is, and always has been, an evil assault on life itself, even from the womb, on the family, on the gospel, on truth itself - and there is something of the demonic about Herod.
The Bible doesn’t sugar coat the Christmas story, or any other story; it tells us the truth; and it tells the whole truth.
And it’s a truth that affects us, as followers of Jesus, disproportionately. The Independent newspaper carried an article a few years ago with the headline: Christians: the world’s most persecuted people.
According to the International Society for Human Rights, which is a secular organisation, 80% of all religious discrimination in the world today is directed at Christians.
International Christian Concern (ICC) released its annual report on the persecution of Christians last month. In Nigeria, ICC cites numerous “horrific atrocities” committed against Christians by Islamist terrorists. Between March and July this year, some 550 Christians were killed – and that’s just those reported to ICC. They accuse the Nigerian government of turning a blind eye or worse.
In North Korea, there are an estimated 400,000 Christians but they are forced to practise their faith in secret or else risk imprisonment, torture or execution.
In just one incident there, ICC claims that earlier this year a two-year-old toddler and his parents were given a life sentence after a Bible was found in their home.
In India, home to 26 million Christians, a surge in radical religious nationalism poses a grave threat to Christians, and violent incidents against them are escalating.
This year, in Manipur (northeast India) for example, Christians have been targeted with virtual impunity, leaving dozens dead and hundreds of churches destroyed.
Why there is so little outrage or protest on their behalf?
And it’s not just far away. There has been an increase in the number of anti-Christian hate crimes across Europe, with particular concern raised about the treatment of Christians in the UK.
According to a report this year by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, there was a 44 per cent increase in anti-Christian hate crimes between 2021 and 2022. Arson attacks on churches saw a rise of 75 per cent.
At the same time, the stigmatisation and criminalisation of Christians for voicing mainstream biblical Christian teaching on controversial issues is on the rise.
There’s a Christian teacher in Ireland who was sacked and imprisoned for 100 days last year for refusing to address a student by his preferred, but factually incorrect, pronouns.
George Orwell was right when he said, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
The Bible says that “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
In Acts 28, even in the context of the dramatic advance of the gospel in the first century, the remark is made, "people everywhere are talking against this sect."
Jesus himself said, “Everyone will hate you because of me.”
But he also said this: “Happy are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”
Do I believe that? Does my reward in heaven for being faithful to Christ outweigh my desire to be popular and accepted? Does it for you? These are the choices we face increasingly in our generation.
Matters of Life and Death
Between 1899 and 1901 there was a great anti-Christian uprising in China called the Yihetuan Movement. It was a sudden national mood swing that brought severe persecution.
188 missionaries and 32,000 Chinese Christians were bound in public. Their noses and ears were cut off and eyes gouged out before they were beheaded.
Lizzie Atwater was an American missionary to China at that time. She was 22 years old and pregnant with her first child.
She wrote to her family on 3 August 1900. And this is what she wrote in her letter.
Dear Ones, I long for a sight of your dear faces, but I fear we shall not meet on earth… I am preparing for the end very quietly and calmly.
The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will not fail me. I was very restless and excited while there seemed a chance of life, but God has taken away that feeling, and now I just pray for grace to meet the terrible end bravely. The pain will soon be over, and oh the sweetness of the welcome above!
My little baby will go with me. I think God will give him to me in Heaven, and my dear mother will be so glad to see us.
I cannot imagine the Savior’s welcome. Oh, that will compensate for all of these days of suspense.
Dear ones, live near to God and cling less closely to earth. There is no other way by which we can receive that peace from God which passes understanding…. I must keep calm and still these hours.
I do not regret coming to China but am sorry I have done so little. My married life, two precious years, have been so very full of happiness. We will die together, my dear husband and I.
I used to dread separation. If we escape now, it will be a miracle. I send my love to all of you, and the dear friends who remember me.
Twelve days later, Lizzie, her husband, their unborn baby and six other missionaries were hacked to death and their bodies were thrown into a pit.
Afterwards, when Lizzie’s parents in Ohio heard the dreadful news of the death of their daughter, son-in-law, and unborn grandchild, they said, through tears, “We bear no grudge – we gave them to that needy land; China will yet believe the truth.”
Why did Satan single out China? Perhaps because of the extraordinary potential of the church in that land. In our own lifetimes, there has been an unprecedented revival in that country; some estimates put the number of Christians there now at 100 million.
Lizzy’s blood, that of her husband and their unborn child, will be avenged by God alone. The Bible speaks of the terrible consequences for those who “did not choose to fear the Lord,” like Herod.
Biblical scholar Christopher Wright describes what awaits those who die in rebellion against God as literally a fate worse than death.
“On the judgement day of God,” he says, “all the wrongs will be exposed. There will be no longer any hiding place. No secret accounts to conceal the fruits of exploitation. No more tight security, bulletproof, cars, or safe houses. No more excuses for ourselves or for others. No more skilled lawyers, pleading, technicalities. No more sentimental allowance for old age and infirmity. No more recourse, even to the oblivion of suicide. No more escape at all, by any means, anyplace, ever. The day of judgement will reveal everything, assess everything, and deal with everything. All unrepented, persistent wickedness will be met with the verdict of God’s perfect justice. And that define verdict will be public, validated by the evidence, indisputably, vindicated, beyond complaint, or appeal, irreversible, and inescapable.”
But the sweetness of the gospel is this: no matter how hard a human heart becomes, even as hard as Herod’s, or more obstinate still, it is never too hard to be unable to turn to God and be cleansed and made new!
None of us are anywhere near Herod’s league, but the Bible is clear that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Why be separated from God and his blessings forever if you don't have to? God loves you.
If you had been the only person on earth needing salvation, Jesus Christ would still have come as a baby, grown as a boy, lived as a man, and gone to the cross and laid down his life for you. He loves you that much!
It may be that for some here today, right now, God is speaking and giving you a fresh chance to turn to Christ. You haven’t ever done that before. Don’t put it off to tomorrow! The Bible says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.”
That is why Jesus came, to seek and save those who are lost.
Ending
You and I do not know what tomorrow holds, but as someone once said, we do know the one who holds our tomorrows.
And he says again to each of us, in this world of constant wickedness what he said to Joseph; “Get up! The time to act is now.”
Let’s pray...
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 10 December 2023
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