SPEAKER_00: Uh it is our last men's luncheon basically for the year because we're not meeting next week or the week after.
SPEAKER_00: Next time we meet will be in January.
SPEAKER_00: And in thinking about what to bring to you guys, I thought I would talk about Christmas, talk about the story of the birth of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, when we talk about the birth of Christ in Christmas time, uh we end up talking about several characters and know the image on the screen behind me is not Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, this is King Herod, also known as Herod the Great.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk a little bit about Herod today because when we get to Matthew chapter 2, which is where we'll be in the scriptures in a little bit, Herod plays a very large role in that.
SPEAKER_00: And when we understand the history of this man, Herod, we better understand some of the bad decisions that he made when the wise men came to visit with him.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a little bit of a historical deep dive on Herod in a few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, let's go to the Lord in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you for the gentlemen here in this room.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for the meal that we have enjoyed.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for those who have worked to prepare it, for those who have provided to this your church to make that possible.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, ultimately we know that every good thing comes from you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we thank you for what we've enjoyed in meal and in fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: As we go into a time of reading and studying your word, we thank you that we know that you have protected your word down through the ages.
SPEAKER_00: You have inspired your word through the power of your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, for all of us who have been saved, we have that same Holy Spirit dwelling within us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we know that as we approach your word, you share things with us that someone who is not saved will not be able to understand.
SPEAKER_00: And we give you thanks and praise and glory for that.
SPEAKER_00: We pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And God's men said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So, King Herod, we don't know if this is what Herod actually looked like, like a lot of pictures of historical figures.
SPEAKER_00: People draw these several hundred years after the people actually lived.
SPEAKER_00: But this is sort of a picture that's been around for a long time of Herod.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice around Herod's brow, he has the laurel leaves that were significant with being a friend of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: So the artist who did this little drawing knew that Herod wanted to be in favor with Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And when we look at the life of Herod, Rome plays a very big part of his story.
SPEAKER_00: Herod's father was a man by the name of Antipater, and Antipater was more or less a man who seized control of the area of Judea and Galilee some 40 plus years before Christ was born.
SPEAKER_00: He was a self-appointed governor who was then recognized by the Roman Empire as being the governor over Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: But he only held power for a short time.
SPEAKER_00: We figure that in about four or five years after he seized power, he died.
SPEAKER_00: Before he died, he had appointed his son, Herod, the man we're talking about today, to be the governor of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And when Antipater died, what Herod did was he basically just took over the family business of being the governor over Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they say that possession is nine-tenths of the law.
SPEAKER_00: And Herod sort of practiced that.
SPEAKER_00: When his father died, he just sort of took over the family business.
SPEAKER_00: But the difference was Herod, as a younger man, had spent a lot of time in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And he had become personal friends with a significant figure in Roman politics by the name of Mark Antony.
SPEAKER_00: Now you remember Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar and all of that sort of stuff that we studied a hundred years ago in school.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Herod and Mark Antony were friends, and not only were they friends, they were political allies to one another.
SPEAKER_00: So when Herod took over in Judea and Galilee, Rome really didn't have anything negative to say about it.
SPEAKER_00: However, at this particular time in Roman history, there are a lot of political civil wars going on.
SPEAKER_00: And those of you that remember your Julius Caesar, remember that after Caesar was assassinated, there was a struggle for power in terms of who would be the ruler over the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: So Herod had all of his chips in with Mark Antony.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to support Mark Antony, and in return, he was hoping Mark Antony would support his rule over Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Herod was formally, finally formally recognized as the governor of Judea and Galilee in 42 BC.
SPEAKER_00: But things weren't swimming, they didn't go along swimmingly well.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, Herod's reign was a series of up and downs, some major downs, as a matter of fact.
SPEAKER_00: A rival by the name of Antigonus, who was a very popular prince of the Jewish people by genetics.
SPEAKER_00: He was from a group called the Hasmoneans.
SPEAKER_00: Antigonus, or Antonigus, depending upon how you want to pronounce it, you know, you go back in time and find out, then let me know.
SPEAKER_00: But he was a very popular Jewish prince.
SPEAKER_00: He was not happy with Herod's rule.
SPEAKER_00: And so what he did is he went to a rival empire called the Parthian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: They were Rome's rivals at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to the Parthian Empire, give me an army so I can kick Herod out, and then I can become the ruler over Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And the Parthians, always ready to pick a fight with Rome, said, that's a great idea.
SPEAKER_00: And so they gave Antonagus an army and they kicked Herod out.
SPEAKER_00: Herod had to flee the area.
SPEAKER_00: And for two years, Herod is living in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And the whole time he's in Rome, he's lobbying the Roman Senate and the Roman officials.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, give me an army so I can go back and take over Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And if you do that, I'll make sure that Judea and Galilee is always loyal to Rome and the Roman Senate.
SPEAKER_00: Now you need to remember, he's already friends with Mark Antony.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a lot of connections there in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: The Roman Senate hears this idea and always ready to pick a fight with the Parthian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: They said, yes, we will go ahead and give you an army, take our army, go back to Judea and Galilee, conquer it, and conquer it for the glory of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what he does.
SPEAKER_00: In 37 A.D., he goes with this Roman army, kicks out Antonigus, has him brutally massacred and killed and tortured.
SPEAKER_00: And then Herod puts himself on the throne, and the Roman Senate says, Not only are you going to be the governor over Judea and Galilee, we are going to give you a promotion.
SPEAKER_00: We are going to say that Herod is not just the governor, he is the king of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the formal title that the Roman Senate gives to Herod when he regains control there in 37 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Rome has more civil wars.
SPEAKER_00: People come in and out of power in Rome in the years that follow.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually even Mark Antony falls out and is killed at a battle.
SPEAKER_00: And Herod's hold on the throne of Judea, Galilee, becomes more and more tenuous.
SPEAKER_00: And so what he decides to do is he decides that he needs to become more popular both with Rome and with the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_00: Up to this point, Herod had been married to a woman by the name of Doris.
SPEAKER_00: Not an exactly elaborate name, is it?
SPEAKER_00: Herod and Doris.
SPEAKER_00: Herod divorces his wife Doris.
SPEAKER_00: He makes Doris take their children away and exiles them from the area of Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And Herod has his eye on a very attractive teenage girl by the name of Miriam.
SPEAKER_00: And he likes Miriam because she's beautiful by all accounts, apparently in history, this Miriam was just a beautiful teenage girl.
SPEAKER_00: But also she is connected to a royal Jewish family.
SPEAKER_00: And so he marries Miriam, which causes the Jewish people to think, oh, look, he's trying to restore the power and the influence of the Jewish royal families.
SPEAKER_00: He marries her, and then he takes her brother and makes him high priest over all the people in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's trying to capture both the hearts of the Jewish people and he's trying to capture the political, religious control of the Jewish people by making his assignments with family members.
SPEAKER_00: While he's doing that, the Roman situation gets so bad that Herod thinks that he's going to lose control, that Rome is going to knock him to the side and put somebody else in power.
SPEAKER_00: So he has a meeting with the new Roman leaders and he says, I know I was friends with Mark Antony, but what you need to realize is I'm here to rule on behalf of Rome, regardless of who's in power.
SPEAKER_00: And he pulls it off.
SPEAKER_00: Rome says, Okay, you're loyal.
SPEAKER_00: You're loyal to Rome.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to keep you as the king of the Jews over there in Judea and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Even though we're not happy that you were in league with Mark Antony, we're going to keep you there because we think we've got our thumb on you and you're playing ball with us.
SPEAKER_00: So time marches on, and the uh Herod becomes more and more paranoid in his behavior.
SPEAKER_00: We see that in time, uh Herod takes a lot of tax money from the Jews and the people living in Judea and Galilee, and he creates all these elaborate building projects.
SPEAKER_00: He starts building aqueducts and theaters and buildings.
SPEAKER_00: And every time he has an elaborate building project, he dedicates it to the honor and glory of different Roman leaders.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's trying to curry favor with Rome by spending a lot of money on these building projects.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the people living in Judea and Galilee, they see their tax money going to building these elaborate things to honor Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And you start to see in the story of Herod, before we even get to the birth of Christ, you start to see where the unrest is being created in the life of the average Jewish person.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many of us would be up for spending a whole bunch of tax dollars on projects that were honoring leaders of some other country?
SPEAKER_00: I got some nods there that I wasn't getting on the other stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what was happening in Judea and Galilee during the days of King Herod.
SPEAKER_00: So Herod looks at what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to curry favor with Rome.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to curry favor with the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, his brother-in-law that he made the high priest, Aristobulus, he is getting real, real popular.
SPEAKER_00: Herod says he's becoming too popular.
SPEAKER_00: And so Herod arranges for his brother-in-law to have a swimming accident.
SPEAKER_00: Herod's brother-in-law is at a party, and they have some pools of water nearby, and Herod's brother-in-law drowns in water that's less than two feet deep.
SPEAKER_00: And every historian will tell you that they believe that Herod arranged for the assassination of his own brother-in-law because his brother-in-law as high priest was becoming just a little too popular with the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_00: That happens in 35 BC.
SPEAKER_00: Throughout Herod's reign, there's lots of little revolts going on.
SPEAKER_00: Different tribal people groups will mount insurrections and they don't come to much.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most notable, Herod's father, was not Jewish in the strictest sense.
SPEAKER_00: He was an Edomite.
SPEAKER_00: Those of you that know your Old Testament know about the Edomites.
SPEAKER_00: The Edomites more or less surrendered to the Israelites some 200 years before Herod comes on the scene.
SPEAKER_00: But since he's not a pure-blood Israelite, the whole time that he is king of the Jews because of the Romans, the Jews aren't happy about the situation.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we see with Herod is he becomes more and more paranoid over time.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, he's so paranoid that he takes that beautiful teenage girl that he married and he accuses her of infidelity.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were the queen and you had infidelity against the king, that was considered an act of treason punishable by death.
SPEAKER_00: And so Miriam, this beautiful girl of the Jews, is condemned to death by her husband Herod.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard about the historian Josephus in the room?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Josephus talks about the execution of Miriam in his writings.
SPEAKER_00: And apparently, when this woman faced her death for infidelity, she conducted herself with such grace and with such reserve and such calm and peacefulness that her death became a source of pride for all the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an interesting fact.
SPEAKER_00: In the records that survive from antiquity, there is apparently a bump in the number of female children that are given the name Mariam or Mary in the years that followed the execution of Mariam at the hands of Herod.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that the Virgin Mary necessarily got her name from this, but it's a possibility that needs to be thought about.
SPEAKER_00: So he has her executed in 29 B.C.
SPEAKER_00: And through the rest of Herod's reign, we see that he is more than willing to put down people who work for him.
SPEAKER_00: He's willing to put down family members.
SPEAKER_00: As recently tied to the birth of Christ as 4 B.C., Herod had one of his sons put to death because he suspected that his son was trying to overthrow him and take the throne.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we see in Herod?
SPEAKER_00: We see a man whose claim to the throne was basically carried out by his own will, by force, and by his political connections to the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: He had already been tossed off the throne once, and he had had to fight with an army to regain the throne.
SPEAKER_00: And when he got back on the throne, he was willing to execute anybody and everybody that he thought was more popular than him or had the potential to create an uprising to toss him off the throne.
SPEAKER_00: And it's with that understanding of Herod that we approach the events of Matthew chapter 2, when we see Herod encountering the wise men.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're going to be focused on our reading today.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have your Bibles, don't worry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have the verses up here on the screen for you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be reading from the Christian standard.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: It just happens to be the one that was on my desk when I was putting this together.
SPEAKER_00: I will say that in comparing the Christian standard to the New King James, there are some things in the Christian standard that I think were just a little more powerful in the way that certain things were translated.
SPEAKER_00: But let's go ahead and begin reading.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?
SPEAKER_00: For we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him.
SPEAKER_00: When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
SPEAKER_00: Stop right here.
SPEAKER_00: See how the dots become connected.
SPEAKER_00: We have, after Jesus is born, we know the story of the Christmas star in the sky, which really doesn't qualify much as a star because it moves through the sky and it stops in certain places.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly there's something supernatural going on there.
SPEAKER_00: But the wise men come and they say to King Herod, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Herod was not born strictly Hebrew or Israelite.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, Herod was born as an Edomite or an Idemean, which was sort of an offshoot stepchild, not of the pure blood, of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So their very first question creates a problem in the mind of Herod.
SPEAKER_00: Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?
SPEAKER_00: We saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him.
SPEAKER_00: Make no mistake, what the wise men are saying in this sentence is a divine figure has been born king of the Jews, and we are here to worship him, so-called King Herod.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Herod hears this in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: He was deeply disturbed and all Jerusalem with him.
SPEAKER_00: Why was all Jerusalem deeply disturbed with Herod?
SPEAKER_00: Because they thought, they thought, uh-oh, we're in for another civil war, we're in for another attack from an enemy army to throw Herod off the throne and put somebody else in there.
SPEAKER_00: You know what happens when one army attacks another army?
SPEAKER_00: Collateral damage happens.
SPEAKER_00: And so all the people of Jerusalem are worried at the arrival of these men.
SPEAKER_00: How many wise men were there?
SPEAKER_00: Well, traditionally we always say three, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we have the gold and the frankincense and the myrrh.
SPEAKER_00: We have the three gifts.
SPEAKER_00: And so all too often we think there were three wise men.
SPEAKER_00: But there's nothing in the Bible that says that there were only three wise men.
SPEAKER_00: And as a matter of fact, if you were coming from the East, you were coming from the Parthian Empire that was a rival to the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were coming from that empire, you were going to travel either with a really, really small group or a very, very large group so that you could defend yourselves from anybody that would try to attack you.
SPEAKER_00: Given the fact that they're traveling with great quantities of gold, valuable frankincense, and valuable myrrh, it seems to make sense that this would have been a large group with a good security detail around it, not limited to three.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we see presentations of the wise men at Christmas time, we always see that one of them's a white Caucasian, the other's a black African, and then the third is this sort of mix of Asiatic and Hispanic.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we always see that.
SPEAKER_00: And down through the years, we've even decided to give these men names that are not in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the names are very Persian in the way that they are given to them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, all of that, while well-intentioned, and while the idea is that the three different races of the wise men represent the predominant races of the world, once again, that's not in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: That has more to do with artists and paintings than it does the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: These wise men came, they had this question, these two questions for Herod, and then we see that Herod and all Jerusalem become deeply disappointed.
SPEAKER_00: Let's move to verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Herod assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Messiah would be born.
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Herod knows what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: A divine figure that's going to be born, king of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Even though Herod himself was not a Bible scholar, he understood the teachings and the traditions of the Jewish people enough to know that what was being discussed here was not just the birth of a Parthian king.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he understood that this was the Messiah, the long-awaited, long-prophesied ruler of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, the scribes and the teachers of the people said in verse 5, In Bethlehem of Judea, they told him, because this is what was written by the prophet, and you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Stop here.
SPEAKER_00: Going to the Old Testament, they're able to determine that the birth of the Messiah would take place in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7, Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time the star appeared.
SPEAKER_00: He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child.
SPEAKER_00: When you find him, report back to me, so that I too can go and worship him.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So notice here in verse 7, he has a meeting with the wise men, but it's in secret.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want anyone else to know that he's investigating the situation.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many secret meetings happen in Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_00: Secret meeting.
SPEAKER_00: And he's asking for the exact time the star appeared.
SPEAKER_00: And now, how do these wise men know about the star?
SPEAKER_00: How do they have any connection that the star in the sky was connected to the coming Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Where does all this come from?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the best understanding that we can have of this is that if these men came from the Parthian Empire, the Parthian Empire was made up of many different nations, but they were led in many ways by the remnants of the old Persian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: And when we read about the different empires in that part of the world, we realize that Daniel and his friends, not only were they in that part of the world, but they went ahead and attained significant positions of power.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel at one point is the third man in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: For a short period, he's made the second man in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And then towards the end of his life, when he's a much, much older man, he's one of the key advisors to the king.
SPEAKER_00: And he's one of the three governors over all of the satrap governor officials of the area.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that Daniel saw visions.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel received words from God.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel prophesied in many ways.
SPEAKER_00: We have the book of Daniel in our Bibles that has a lot of this.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get the impression that Daniel had among the people that were following him or were working with him, his three friends were there with him as well.
SPEAKER_00: They wrote things about what to look for when the Messiah would be born in Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, rather.
SPEAKER_00: And so when they saw the star in the sky, those wise men, perhaps having the writings of Daniel at their disposal, the stories that Daniel and his friends had told down through the ages, they understood that is the star that signifies the birth of the Messiah for the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And they were so convinced of this that they decided to leave the security of the Parthian Empire and to bring these valuable gifts into a Roman Empire-controlled area and to seek out its king and to have the discussion that we've been reading for the past several verses.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, to reread this, Herod sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child.
SPEAKER_00: When you find him, report back to me so that I too can go and worship him.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we know that's not what he wanted to do.
SPEAKER_00: We know that exactly that's not what he wanted to do.
SPEAKER_00: But notice that Herod is willing to tell an overt lie related to the worship of the Messiah in order to accomplish what he has in mind.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep reading.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: After hearing the king, the wise men went on their way, and there it was, the star they had seen at its rising.
SPEAKER_00: It led them until it came and stopped above the place where the child was.
SPEAKER_00: Stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this isn't acting like a regular star.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you follow astronomy, not astrology, but astronomy, the study of the sun, the planets, the moons, and all that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: There's been this thing in astronomy that's gotten a lot of attention over the last several months called the three-eye atlas comet.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard about this?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of funny because you read about it first as just an as an astronomical phenomenon, and it's just this comet that acts really weird compared to other comets because it comes from outside of our solar system.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have these people in the year 2025 that are saying that this comet is actually not a comet, it's a spaceship disguised as a comet.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the aliens are coming and, you know, all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And but the thing is, the people are fascinated by this three-eye Atlas comet because it doesn't act like a regular comet does.
SPEAKER_00: It puts off some different reflective colors than the standard comet does, and it has a, it emits gases in a different direction than a regular comet does, and all this sort of thing, and they're fascinated by it.
SPEAKER_00: How much more fascinating is this star?
SPEAKER_00: How much more fascinating is this star that stops in the sky, reveals itself again when the wise men are there, and then leads the wise men to the place where the child is.
SPEAKER_00: Now, many times when we're putting our Christmas set together and we put our nativity scene or our cresh together, you know what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've got the stable and we put the donkey over here and the cow over here, and Mary and Joseph in the middle, and the manger scene right in the middle, and then we take the wise men and we stick them in the manger.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing to suggest that the wise men visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph at the moment of Christ's birth.
SPEAKER_00: It just simply says that they went to the house where the child and his mother were.
SPEAKER_00: And so what I started doing years ago is around Christmas time, you know, my wife will set up the nativity set, and I take the wise men and I put them over on the credenza near the TV.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: And I, oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Good night, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: I know I put them over by the TV.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I put them by the TV because biblically, biblically, the wise men are not there at the manger.
SPEAKER_00: They come on the scene later.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that all said, my daughter will take the wise men and she'll move them back to the manger setup.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't make, I'll tell her why I put them over there.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's sunk in yet.
SPEAKER_00: But it's one of those things where sometimes the imagery that goes with the holiday doesn't line up with the scripture that is the historical record of the events as they took place.
SPEAKER_00: So they come to the place where the child was.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: When they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy.
SPEAKER_00: Entering the house, not the barn, entering the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother.
SPEAKER_00: Falling to their knees, they worshipped him.
SPEAKER_00: They opened their treasures and presented him with gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
SPEAKER_00: Something to notice here.
SPEAKER_00: The wise men understood who it was they were coming to see.
SPEAKER_00: They may not have understood all the intricacies of the Israelite religion in the Old Testament, but they understood that the child that they were coming to see was not just some earthly ruler, but was instead divine.
SPEAKER_00: They worshiped him.
SPEAKER_00: Much has been said in sermons by much more intelligent and talented men than me that show that the gold recognizes his royalty, the frankincense recognizes his priestly role, and the myrrh is given in recognition of the death that he would suffer for the salvation of mankind.
SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to look that up and read it.
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very good material.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I could stop there, but what I want to do now is jump forward a few verses to verse 16, still in chapter 2 of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16, then Herod, when he realized he'd been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the one area where I think the Christian standard does a really good job because we have here the description of just how upset Herod is.
SPEAKER_00: We have the word rage, which the other translations are just as valid.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that they're invalid at all.
SPEAKER_00: But Herod wasn't just angry.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't just upset, he wasn't just irritated, he flew into a rage.
SPEAKER_00: He was when you see a person who's in a rage, um, you know, we use the term road rage quite a bit, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: And I spend quite a bit of time going back and forth on I-40 during the holidays to visit my mom and my sister in Memphis.
SPEAKER_00: And I see these guys in road rage.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever been, if you've ever suffered road rage yourself, don't raise your hand.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to hear a testimony about it.
SPEAKER_00: But what's common with road rage is that people stopped acting rationally, right?
SPEAKER_00: They start acting like they've lost control of their senses.
SPEAKER_00: They are driving in ways where their own personal safety is no longer a part of their thought process.
SPEAKER_00: Herod flew into a rage.
SPEAKER_00: No one was going to go up to Herod and say, hey, you know, it's not that big a deal.
SPEAKER_00: He is furious.
SPEAKER_00: He's angry.
SPEAKER_00: He gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men.
SPEAKER_00: I want to pause here for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Some of my reading related to this, you know, one of the things that kind of you get these questions when you go over scriptural material again and again and again.
SPEAKER_00: I've always thought, why two years?
SPEAKER_00: Why two years?
SPEAKER_00: It could be that the wise men's visit was significantly later than the events of Jesus' birth.
SPEAKER_00: But somehow lately I've been thinking that maybe, and this is just a theory, guys, this is just a theory, I think Herod may have thought that not only would he get Jesus, but he would get the one who was going to proclaim the Messiah, John the Baptist as well.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he thought he'd get both of them.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he thought he would get the harbinger of the Messiah as well as the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Just think that over.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something you have to believe.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a personal theory that I've kind of got going around in the noodle here.
SPEAKER_00: In keeping with what he had learned from the wise men, and that's interestingly enough, when we look for historical understanding of that, that's one of those areas of history that just doesn't come out outside of the history that we have in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll just take an opportunity to say this: history never proves Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: We don't look for historical support of Scripture in order to prove Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: If you have to have historical support in order to prove Scripture, you're going to be lost.
SPEAKER_00: When we approach Scripture, what we in history, what we look for is history that shows that the historians have discovered what the Bible has already said is true.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is history.
SPEAKER_00: This is our history book.
SPEAKER_00: And if history has yet to discover the slaughter of the innocents, then the historian's archaeological spade just needs to uncover a little more dirt and they'll find it because it did happen.
SPEAKER_00: So, does this catch God by surprise?
SPEAKER_00: No, because in verse 17 we're told this was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: A voice was heard in Ramah weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, as she refused to be consoled because they are no more.
SPEAKER_00: God's Old Testament prophecy through the prophet Jeremiah predicted, knowing that this was going to occur.
SPEAKER_00: God knew that the slaughter of the innocents would occur.
SPEAKER_00: So when we read this passage and we look at the life of Herod and the things that he went through, the things that he endured to secure his throne and to keep his throne, now his willingness to massacre young boys in a city doesn't come across as surprising at all, does it?
SPEAKER_00: This is a man, after all, who executed his own brother-in-law because his brother-in-law was getting a little more popular than he was.
SPEAKER_00: This was a man who arranged for the execution of his wife because he was paranoid that his wife had somehow committed infidelity against him.
SPEAKER_00: This is a man who killed his own son within the same time period of the events that we're reading about today because he was worried that his son was somehow going to take the throne.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Herod killing the innocents is not something that should cause us to go, oh, did that really happen?
SPEAKER_00: Did that guy really do that?
SPEAKER_00: If anything, we should say, well, yeah, that's totally in keeping with what we understand of the man based upon the historical record that's been available to us all this time.
SPEAKER_00: All that stuff that I was reading to you about Herod, by the way, you can find in pretty much any encyclopedia.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know people don't use encyclopedias anymore, but you can go online to Britannica.com and you can find all of those things that I was telling you about Herod.
SPEAKER_00: It's very much a matter of public record for a long, long, long time now.
SPEAKER_00: So when we read this story, I got a few takeaways for you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to respect your time.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a few takeaways I want you to think in relation to this story.
SPEAKER_00: First off, who was the legitimate king of the Jews?
SPEAKER_00: Herod or Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Herod wasn't even of Jewish descent.
SPEAKER_00: Herod's father was an Arab, basically, who took control of the area, had that recognized by Rome, and then Herod just kind of inherited it when his father passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Jesus is born King of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the Gospel of Matthew, you look at the Gospel of Luke, and the birth line that leads to Jesus is tracked in both of those Gospels, and it runs through King David, and God had said the line of David would endure forever.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, it goes through David, it goes through Judah, it goes through Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that from the very beginning, God's chosen people are part of the Jesus story.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Herod was just an opportunist who was in the right place at the right time and was able to take over the family business of running Judah and Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing I want you to notice: Herod killed innocents, he killed those innocent babies in order to keep his throne.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was willing to die, even though he was innocent, in order to build his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Third thing I want you to notice.
SPEAKER_00: Herod did enough research that he was able to understand that Jesus' birth was the birth of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: But Herod's research only led him to the conclusion that he wanted to overthrow this Messiah and keep the throne for himself.
SPEAKER_00: Gentlemen, there are people all over our country and all over the world today who do just enough research on Jesus to know that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and that he died on a cross in order to rescue mankind from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: But in their own minds and in their own hearts, they've decided that they're going to be on the throne of their lives.
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to surrender to the reign of King Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say that those men have more in common with Herod than they do with Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: That's the ultimate question is who is Jesus in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Is he the King?
SPEAKER_00: Is he the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Is he the Messiah that you will bend the knee to?
SPEAKER_00: Or is he an obstacle that has to be overcome, regardless as to who has to pay the price, so that you can be in charge of your life rather than letting him be in charge of your life?
SPEAKER_00: Question was the same 2,000 years ago with this wicked man who had become king of the region.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the most difficult thing, I'm not the first to say this, it's more difficult to lead a rich and powerful man to Jesus Christ than it is a poor man with no power whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: Because the rich and the powerful man thinks he has things that he has to protect, and he's not going to surrender those things to the leadership of another man.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the poor man has nothing to protect and is willing to give all of it to the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When you talk to a rich man about Jesus, and they say, Well, I get what you're saying, but I've got a lot of things in my life that keep me busy.
SPEAKER_00: They're refusing to bend the knee to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Like Herod, they see Jesus as an obstacle to them running and being the king on the throne of their own life.
SPEAKER_00: So when the news of the birth of the Messiah came to Herod, he saw it as an obstacle.
SPEAKER_00: The wise men, on the other hand, the wise men saw the news of the birth of the Messiah, and they were willing to travel even into dangerous territory in order to worship him and honor him with gifts of thanksgiving and praise.
SPEAKER_00: One would think, well, though they believed in the birth of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't God make it easier for them to come into town?
SPEAKER_00: Why'd they have to deal with that evil, wicked ruler, King Herod?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you follow Jesus Christ, God will take you into some pretty interesting environments.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll have you interact with some pretty interesting characters.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that God protected the wise men ultimately.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of coming back to Herod, God said, no, you don't go back to Herod.
SPEAKER_00: You go home by another route.
SPEAKER_00: You take some other way to get home.
SPEAKER_00: If we think that God is calling us into dangerous environments, we need to trust that God will protect us the same way that he protected those wise men that came from another place.
SPEAKER_00: And so finally, the last question today, we'll close on this.
SPEAKER_00: Which king is the focus of your life today?
SPEAKER_00: Is it on an earthly king or is it on the heavenly king?
SPEAKER_00: You know, Herod's kind of an interesting character in that he achieved the highest office of the land, then he was removed from the highest office of the land for a while, and then he came back to the highest office of the land.
SPEAKER_00: I'll just let you think about that on your own a little bit there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to make comparisons, honestly.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: But it is rather interesting that we can look at the story of Herod and we can see how this sort of thing can happen.
SPEAKER_00: We can see that men get installed into positions of power, they leave, and they can be reinstalled into positions of power.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: Don't take it any further than that.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But when we look at who's in charge of our lives, are we focused, are we focused on political leaders or are we focused on the king of kings and the lord of lords who reigns for all eternity?
SPEAKER_00: If we're focused on so much on the news of the day, if we're focused so much on who holds power in the different governments in the world in which we live, if we're focused so much on that that we're not paying attention to Jesus, then at Christmas time we basically miss the opportunity to celebrate the birth of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Let's not be that way this Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's close in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we love you.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you so much for the gift of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you that you saw us trapped, lost in our sin, unable to save ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And rather than leave us in that situation, you decided to suffer.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't charge someone else to save us.
SPEAKER_00: You came and you were born of the Virgin Mary.
SPEAKER_00: You suffered and you died for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And we praise you, Lord, that you rose again.
SPEAKER_00: This Christmas, Lord, I would pray that every man in here and their families would celebrate the holiday in a way that gives you honor, credit, and glory.
SPEAKER_00: And may that be pleasing to you in your sight.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And God's men said, Amen.