Throughout this sermon series, I interacted heavily with The Great Christ Comet by Colin Nicholl.
“Matthew
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.”
Revelation
1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. ”
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light, next year all our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the yuletide gay, next year all our troubles will be miles away.
Once again as in olden days, happy golden days of yore, faithful friends who are dear to us, will be near to us once more.
Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow, so have yourself a merry little Christmas now.”
The world of those pictures is the world into which the Christ child was born. Yes, he was born into a world in which some parents love their children and consider it a privilege to tuck them in at night. Yes, he was born into a world in which some men do what they can to provide for their families. Yes, he was born into a world in which some women will make almost any sacrifice for what is good. This same world, however, is the one in which people commit awful atrocities against one another.
If your vision of Christmas doesn’t give hope in the midst of the worst of this world, then it isn’t Matthew’s view of Christmas. Matthew’s view of Christmas offers hope in the midst of the worst sins imaginable.
You might not want to see the pictures that were up on the screen, but this is the world to which God expressed love. He expressed His love in this way: He sent His one and only Son into this mess that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.
The typical understanding of Christmas gives no hope to that man standing behind that barbed war or the children by that tree. That means that the typical understanding of Christmas is woefully insufficient. This church must offer more than, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light, next year all our troubles will be out of sight,” if we are going to offer Christ to the world.
Christ in love entered the worst that humanity has to offer for the sake of humanity. That is the claim of this sermon: Christ in love entered the worst that humanity has to offer for the sake of humanity.
We will study this in two points. First: the dragon at Christmas. Second: weeping at Christmas. We see the dragon at Christmas in verse 16 and weeping at Christmas in verses 17-18.
First: the dragon at Christmas. The Son of God was born into a life-threatening situation. Some of us might know what it is like to have a child born into a life-threatening situation. Perhaps your baby was born with a congenital disease. Perhaps you were afraid to take your baby home because you knew that someone in your home posed a danger to that child. Babies are precious and, in so many ways, this world does not act in a way that is worthy of them.
The world was not kind to Jesus at his birth. John, in the book of Revelation, describes his birth in terrifying terms. If you are a woman who has given birth to a child or a husband who has been in the birthing room, put yourself back in that place as you hear John’s description; “the dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.” Jesus understands this world of atrocities.
John’s description of Satan as a dragon picks up on the description of him as a snake in Genesis 3. A dragon is, in many ways, simply a flying snake. If you didn’t fear dragons before, perhaps you do now.
This collision of this snake and this baby had been a long time coming. Shortly after Adam and Eve sinned, God informed Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Satan knew this Christ child was the promised one. Satan knew what was at stake. We are right to wonder at the beauty and the goodness of Christmas, but we are wrong to sentimentalize it. There was a good deal of satanic activity afoot. The dragon planned on killing that baby.
Satan worked through Herod. Now it is very likely Herod had no idea that he was being used, but few people who are used by Satan know they are being used. That is part of the devil’s craft.
Satan already had quite a grip on Herod. It is hard to deny that demonic is not at work in a man who can have three of his sons executed. A man who can kill his own family members and sleep at night will have no moral qualms about killing a few babies in a remote village. Satan can so blind a man like Herod that his conscience can become seared. Satan can so blind a person like you or I that our consciences can become seared.
As we saw last week, Herod had sent the Magi to find the Christ child and he had asked them when the star first appeared. If the Magi returned with information as to the whereabouts of this child, Herod could simply execute one baby. If the Magi were of no help, Herod could determine the age range of the children he would need to kill from the appearance of that star. Matthew tells us that, “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.”
Herod gave himself quite a margin for error both in terms of geography—Bethlehem and its vicinity—and time frame—he decided to kill all the boys two and under. In his attempt to murder one baby, which of course is bad enough, Herod had no reservations about taking a shotgun approach. Now there were perhaps 300 or more people living in Bethlehem at that time and there were maybe 6 or 7 or maybe a dozen boys within that age range. The numbers would rise a bit when you took the surrounding vicinity into account.
If you’ve had a baby boy born in the past two years consider Herod’s order. Consider living under a government which could inflict such atrocities upon you with no public repercussions. Infanticide and child abandonment were disturbingly common among the Gentiles. Such atrocities were outrageous to the Jews, but their outrage would have little effect on Herod. If you find the idea of the state invading homes and killing babies without repercussions to be strange, be thankful that you live in a democratic republic because it could have been otherwise for you. It is and has been for so many who have lived in this sad world. Such state invasions are a real threat for many who will celebrate Christmas.
There are many people as valuable as you who have endured such atrocities and worse. I remember speaking with an Anuak lady who asked for prayers for her family because her grandmother had been murdered in her bed by a rival tribe the night before.
Now you might wonder how such a young woman could believe in a loving God. Interestingly enough that is usually a question that people outside atrocities ask. God’s people inside atrocities are usually too busy depending on Him to question in His existence. He makes Himself more present with them as He promised He would, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Be appalled at this atrocity at Christmas. Be appalled at the order of Herod. Be appalled at Satan at Christmas, but don’t consider this any reason to question your faith. This is part of the history of the people of faith. When another king was executing Hebrew baby boys before the Exodus, we read of the people’s suffering. Moses wrote that, “God heard their groaning… God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.”
God knows the evil of this world. We humans commit horrific acts against one another. We humans suffer terrible injustices at the hands of one another. To pretend otherwise or that these could never happen to you is to ignore history.
When you take human evil seriously, you are left with a choice. You are left with a God who is too weak to do anything about it; that is not the answer that Scripture gives. You are left with a God who doesn’t care about these atrocities; that is not the answer that Scripture gives. Or you are left with a God who enters into this suffering with us. That is the answer of Christmas. “Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
God is truly with us at Christmas. “Christianity,” says Os Guinness, “is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil.” The Christ child wasn’t devoured by the dragon at birth, but, in the end, he was executed just like those babies.
The hostility of Satan to the Christ is clear. It was also clear in the night sky. We’ve seen that according to one very plausible theory, the star that led the Magi to Christ was a comet first seen in the constellation Virgo. This comet grew larger and larger as it neared earth; it appeared to grow in Virgo the virgin’s womb. We’ve seen that this comet appeared like a scepter in the sky in line with Balaam’s prophecy, “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel.”
This star appeared in Virgo’s womb and, in the night sky, Virgo the virgin was next to the dragon Hydra. Here is a slide of Hydra:
Now the ancients would have imagined Hydra a bit more this next slide:
Or perhaps this next one:
The hydra was usually portrayed with multiple heads; John does so when he describes it as having, “seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.” Here is a portrayal of this multi-headed beast:
Since we are considering the dragon devouring the child, a close up of its mouths would seem appropriate:
It is very plausible that it is of this night sky that John wrote, “Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon… the dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.”
John wrote of the child’s escape from the dragon as Matthew wrote of Christ’s escape from Herod. They wrote about this event using different lenses. For the most part, Revelation looks at the same realities as the rest of the Scripture, but through a very different lens. Revelation shows us the reality behind the reality. Revelation shows us the reality of which Paul wrote, saying that, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” John saw the birth of Jesus as a divine offensive in the war against the demonic, which is why after he wrote of this child and dragon he wrote, “Now war arose in heaven.”
Now we are not used to considering these realities. We are programmed against it from almost every angle to the point that our culture finds it quite easy to celebrate Christmas with no reference to Christ or God. We are not used to considering apocalyptic literature like Revelation. We are not used to considering the night sky like those Magi. We are not used to considering atrocities. All this means that in many ways we are not all that equipped to see the fulness of Christmas because Christmas provoked a demonic response which we almost totally ignore in all our renditions of this holiday. “The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born,” is never a part of any nativity scene and although there is some sense to that, we are also lacking because of it.
Christ came to love the world as it is. We are slow to love the world as it is. We tend to sentimentalize the world into what we wish it were. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light, next year all our troubles will be out of sight…”
Perhaps you would rather not know the atrocities of this life. Perhaps you would rather not know the darkness that takes so many forms here in Northwest Iowa just as it takes other forms elsewhere. Perhaps you would rather not acknowledge that, “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Perhaps you would rather not acknowledge that we live in a remarkably self-destructive culture that is destroying lives left and right. Perhaps you would rather not love this world as it is. In so many ways, I fear that the church has nothing to do with that world. In our desire to be comfortable we have disconnected ourselves to the world into which Christ came.
I see that pull in myself. I would prefer to think that everything really is quite fine. I would prefer to think that a few well-meaning pieces of advice are really all that is needed to fix this world in which I live. I would prefer not to think that we are really so bad off that a miracle is our only hope. I know the temptation of playing church. It is killing the church. It is ignoring the world God loved by sending His Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.
I know for myself that my view of Christmas is snug and safe and filled with presents; there is something beautiful about that view, but it is not all of Christmas. Christmas also includes a dragon standing in front of a woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. Christmas includes that baby’s escape, his growth, and his unjust death for sinners like us. There are any number of souls who have been enslaved by Satan who need to hear about that Christmas.
You cannot ignore the dragon at Christmas. Neither can you ignore the weeping at Christmas. That is our second point: the weeping at Christmas.
Perhaps you have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It is certainly worth experiencing and I use the word experience purposefully. The architecture of the museum is designed in such a way that you cannot look away from the atrocities. We want to look away from injustice. We want to look away from what is wrong. The architecture of the Holocaust museum does not allow that and neither does Matthew. Rather than rushing over this murder of the innocents, he pauses upon it and writes, ‘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.”’
Matthew quotes from Jeremiah who wrote those words about the exile to Babylon. Children would be ripped from their families. Jeremiah spoke of weeping and mourning in Ramah, which was a city on the way out of Jerusalem on the way towards Babylon. Most of the exiles who passed through Ramah on their way to Babylon would never come home again and so Rachel wept.
Jeremiah pictured Israel’s wife Rachel weeping for these poor souls. She is poetic representative of mothers who wept to see their children taken away never to be seen again. She is the symbol for fathers who stood powerless as they watched their sons and daughtered kidnapped; “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”’
Jeremiah did not minimize the anguish of the exile. Matthew did not minimize the anguish of the murder of these baby boys in Bethlehem. He used Rachel as an image, in part, because she was buried in Bethlehem. There was wailing in Bethlehem that night.
Please do not minimize anguish. Please don’t minimize the pain of others because it makes you uncomfortable. God doesn’t. He inspired the words, “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.” The Son of God wept angrily at the tomb of his friend. The Spirit calls us to weep with those who weep. There is abundant Scriptural warrant for Matthew’s focus upon weeping parents at Christmas.
Perhaps you need to ask yourself if you are as comfortable with weeping parents at Christmas. Perhaps you want others to have a holly, jolly Christmas more for your own sake than their own. “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” Let Rachel weep. Weep with those who weep. This life will give you plenty of opportunities for doing so and if you take them, they will be taken as tokens of love.
Hope is not found by ignoring atrocity and evil. Hope is not found by denying your tears. Hope is found as you look out through your tears. The same chapter in which Jeremiah spoke of Rachel weeping for her children he also gave his most hopeful prophecy; ‘“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”’ In the midst of everything falling apart, God promised to make all things new. In the midst of people falling apart, God promised to make people anew.
There was hope in the midst of tears in Bethlehem. That hope was Christ. Now the survival of the Christ from Herod’s hand doesn’t minimize the atrocity of the babies who did die. I don’t expect that any father who saw his toddler taken and slaughtered would have said, ‘well, at least the Messiah survived.’ I do, however, expect that if that father saw Jesus years later, he would see the situation anew. He would see that this Messiah, in fact, shared the fate of his own son. He too died an undeserved and bewildering death at the hand of the state. His mother stood weeping over his dead body too. If this father of one of those Bethlehem babies had eyes to see the Christ, he would see something about God. God doesn’t abandon people in their suffering. God doesn’t call His people to be joyful and brave while He smiles watching us from a distance. God joins us in suffering. It wasn’t merely Rachel weeping for those babies at Bethlehem. The Father Himself wept just as the Son wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
You might be wondering why Jesus chose to weep rather than preventing Lazarus’ death. You might be wondering why God wept over the murder of those innocents rather than simply putting Herod to death. Well, as we will see next week, He did put Herod to death years later, and there are realities to consider such as human responsibility, the nature of sin, the final judgment, and so many others, but at the end of the day, there isn’t a completely satisfying philosophical answer to why God allowed this sorrow. That, however doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer.
The sufficient answer is the cross. “I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries,” writes John Stott, “and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us… There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross.”
The Christ child entered this world of death to die so that others might live. He came to give hope beyond any atrocity that Herod could devise. He came to give hope beyond any atrocity that you fear.
Now you have no choice of whether you were born into a world as dark as ours. Those pictures from the beginning of the sermon are not mere stories; they are history but so is the birth of Christ. So is the cross of Christ. So is the resurrection.
Have eyes to see this world as it is. Have eyes to see yourself as you are. Have eyes to see the Christ as he is. He came into this sad world at Christmas because it is so very sad. He came into this sad world at Christmas because this world is far worse than most of us understand. He came into this sad world at Christmas to make all things new. He came into this sad world at Christmas to make you new.
It is possible that someone here does not know this Christ. I beg you for a moment to put yourself in the place of those people we saw at the beginning of the sermon. If Christmas would mean nothing to you behind that barbed wire, I urge you to consider if you grasp what Christmas really means. If Christ is not enough in the worst of life, he isn’t worth anything more than an add on in the best of life. If Christmas couldn’t give you hope if you were living what we saw in those pictures, you need to ask yourself what it is that you will be celebrating on December 25. You need to ask yourself where your hope is based if mere mortals can take your hope away from you.
It is possible that someone here does not know this Christ. You know about Jesus, but you don’t know this Christ that loves this sad world. You don’t know that he loves you in all your sin and sordidness. Christmas shows that he does. The cross shows that he does. I beg you to come to him to see that he does. Amen.