When you see the word “XMAS”, what do you notice to be missing? Obviously the word “Christ” is missing. For some, this is more than an oversight. There are some in our society who prefer to leave Christ out of Christmas.
Jeremiah Films has done a compilation of news stories concerning this subject. Consider a few of the articles they referenced on their web site.
“Christmas Music Outlawed In Jersey School District”
“Goldman Sachs Cancels Christmas”
“Dundee Council drops Christmas”
“Ohio City’s Christmas Parade Canceled Amid Legal Concerns, Protests”
“AFA is calling for a limited two-month boycott of Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic, the three stores owned by San Francisco-based Gap Inc., over the company’s censorship of the word "Christmas."
“Out with Jesus, in with ’Frosty the Snowman’ Federal court upholds school district’s ban on tunes about Christ”
(Taken from www.jeremiahfilms.com)
This is just a few of the news stories that have been printed in recent years concerning the controversy of removing Christ from Christmas.
It is easy for us to throw stones at those who would remove Christ from Christmas and accuse them of being liberal or cruel. There are three groups that leave Christ out of Christ. There are the liberals or those who feel animosity toward Christ. There are also those who neglect him. Finally, there are those who do not make time for Him. That shoe may fit many of us. You and I may be like the lady who went Christmas shopping and left Christ out. This mother was running furiously from store to store. Suddenly she became aware that the pudgy little hand of her three year old son was no longer clutched in hers. In a panic she retraced her steps and found him standing with his little nose pressed flatly against a frosty window. He was gazing at a manger scene. Hearing his mother’s near hysterical call, he turned and shouted with innocent glee: "look mommy! it’s baby Jesus in the hay". With obvious indifference to his joy and wonder, she impatiently jerked him away saying, "we don’t have time for that!" SOURCE: From "THE WONDER OF CHRISTMAS" by Glenn Pease. http://www.intohisword.net/luke/luke17. shtml
(Contributed to Sermon Central by SermonCentral PRO)
With these thoughts in mind I want to move to our text. For a text we are going to examine Mt. 2:1-15 for the next three weeks. There are three primary character groups in this text. There was Herod. There were the wise men. There were Jesus’ parents. Herod wanted to keep Christ from growing into manhood. Had he had his way the memory of Christ would have been removed from history. The wise men, Joseph and Mary sought to protect and preserve the baby Jesus. They kept Him at the forefront of their lives.
Herod was the original Scrooge. He had a hum-bug attitude. He wanted to abolish Christ. Before we get to our text I want to make a few distinctions regarding the name Herod. Herod was not the name of just one man. It was not a first name. Herod was a family name. As such you find the name Herod used on several occasions in the gospels. In fact, there are four Herod’s mentioned in the gospels. The first Herod we meet in the gospels is Herod the Great. He is the Herod of our text and the father of the other three Herod’s. A second Herod is mentioned in Mt. 2:22. This is Herod Archaelaus. He reigned over ½ of his father’s kingdom. A third Herod is Herod Antipas. This is the Herod that Jesus called the fox and the man who beheaded John the Baptist. He is mentioned more than any of the Herod’s in the gospels. A fourth Herod is Herod Philip, tetrarch of Iturea. He was the better of the four Herod’s. Whenever you read the gospels and run across the name Herod, remember there were four of them.
Now, to our text. “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” 3When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: 6‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, Are not the least among the rulers of Judah; For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’’’ 7Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. 8And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.” 9When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. 10When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.” (Mt. 2:1-12)
I want to do a three part series from this text entitled “Keeping Christ in Christmas.” You may quickly skip over this text with the thought that it does not apply to you. It applies to everyone in this room. I want to consider the spirit that caused Herod to desire to exclude Christ from Christmas. What was the spirit?
I. Some people exlude Christ because they are threatened by Him. Notice in verse 2, when the wise men inquired “where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” Herod saw Jesus as a threat. Herod had become king by force and his own cunning. Herod was concerned with Herod and no one else. Herod accomplished many great things during his reign but he always had an ulterior motive behind his actions. For example, he reconstructed the temple in Jerusalem in order to pacify the Jews. He is also credited with having erected a monument over the royal tombs at Jerusalem, after having attempted to rob the dead of their sacred treasures. He was crafty but he was also cruel. One of Herod’s cruelest schemes occurred while he was on his death bed. He ordered that the principal men of the entire Jewish nation should come into his presence, whom he then shut up in the hippodrome and surrounded them with soldiers, and ordered that immediately after his own death, they should all be killed, that it might seemingly afford an honorable mourning at his funeral.
A. Herod was involved in a struggle for supremacy. That struggle lurks within each of our hearts.
Joke: A Sunday School was putting on a Christmas pageant which included the story of Mary and Joseph coming to the inn. One boy wanted so very much to be Joseph, but when the parts were handed out, a boy he didn’t like was given that part, and he was assigned to be the inn-keeper instead. He was pretty upset about this but he didn’t say anything to the director. During all the rehearsals he thought what he might do the night of the performance to get even with this rival who got to be Joseph. Finally, the night of the performance, Mary and Joseph came walking across the stage. They knocked on the door of the inn, and the inn-keeper opened the door and asked them gruffly what they wanted. Joseph answered, "We’d like to have a room for the night." Suddenly the inn-keeper threw the door open wide and said, "Great, come on in and I’ll give you the best room in the house!" For a few seconds poor little Joseph didn’t know what to do. Thinking quickly on his feet, he looked inside the door past the inn-keeper then said, "No wife of mine is going to stay in a dump like this. Come on, Mary, let’s go to the barn." And once again the play was back on track! The struggle for supremacy.
(Contributed to Sermon Central by Robert Leroe)
Jesus Christ wants to be the Lord of your life. That leads to a struggle. Our sinful nature wants to be in charge. But the spirit of Christ also wants to be in charge. Jesus said “no man can serve two masters.”
B. Herod perceived Jesus to be a threat. Herod thought Jesus was born to be king of the Jewish nation. It was a perceived threat.
Illustration: I have shared the story of the 103 year old lady who I once knew. I asked her if she could remember the first time she saw a car and what she did when she saw it. She told me she ran and hid behind the house. She saw the car as a threat. Do you perceive Jesus to be a threat?
Herod was afraid of Jesus and wanted to destroy Him. This was Herod the Great, called king by the Roman senate. Herod was a cruel and crafty man who permitted no one, not even his own family, to interfere with his rule or prevent the satisfying of his evil desires. A ruthless murderer, he had his wife and two of her brothers slain because he suspected them of treason. He was married at least nine times in order to fulfill his lusts and strengthen his political ties. It is no surprise that Herod tried to kill Jesus, for Herod alone wanted to bear the title “King of the Jews.” But there was another reason. Herod was not a full-blooded Jew; he was actually an Idumaean, a descendant of Esau. This is a picture of the old struggle between Esau and Jacob that began even before the boys were born (Gen. 25:19-34). It is the spiritual versus the carnal, the godly versus the worldly.
Herod’s anger was evidence of his pride; he could not permit anyone to get the best of him! This led him to kill the boy babies two years of age and under who were still in Bethlehem.
The struggle to be on top is a part of life. This is reflected in the fanaticism with which we approach sports. Last night Alabama defeated Florida to win the SEC championship. The desire to be on top is a part of human nature. We are thrilled that the New Orleans Saints are finally having a great season and are on top of the league.
We see this in the Bible. Adam and Eve were not content with being submissive and compliant in the garden of Eden. They wanted to be like God.
Someone once wrote and asked Emily Post, the etiquette expert of another generation, “What is the correct procedure when one is invited to the White House but has a previous engagement?”
Replied Post, “An invitation to dine at the White House is a command, and it automatically cancels any other engagement.”(Today In The Word, November, 1989, p. 7) Just ask Tareq and Michaele Salahi. They went to the White House without an invitation.
C. Jesus was sent to help us, not to harm us. If we struggle with His supremacy or see Him as a threat we will struggle to see Him as our friend.
Bruce Larson, popular Christian writer, in his book “Believe and Belong” tells how he helped people struggling to surrender their lives to Christ.
“For many years I worked in New York City and counseled at my office any number of people who were wrestling with this yes-or-no decision. Often I would suggest they walk with me from my office down to the RCA Building on Fifth Avenue. In the entrance of that building is a gigantic statue of Atlas, a beautifully proportioned man who, with all his muscles straining, is holding the worl upon his shoulders. There he is, the most powerful man in the world, and he can barely stand up under this burden. ‘Now that’s one way to live,’ I would point out to my companion, ‘trying to carry the world on your shoulders. But now come across the street with me. (SOURCE: Bruce Larson, Believe and Belong. Contributed by Sermon Central Pro.)
“On the other side of Fifth Avenue is Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and there behind the high altar is a little shrine of the boy Jesus, perhaps eight or nine years old, and with no effort he is holding the world in one hand. My point was illustrated graphically.
“We have a choice. We can carry the world on our shoulders, or we can say, ‘I give up, Lord; here’s my life. I give you my world, the whole world.” Jesus wants to walk with you.
II. Herod’s struggle was a struggle for supremacy. It was also a struggle with faith issues.
A. Faith requires that we walk by faith and not by sight. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Cor. 2:14
B. The reason we have faith issues is because we have an unreliable heart. Herod had a heart problem. Herod did the cruel and crafty things he did because he had a bad heart.
The Bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? Jer. 16:9,21
The Bible says “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.” Mk. 7:21
The reason why we lust, covet, lie, cheat, steal, gossip, and all sorts of other things is because we have a wicked heart. The Bible calls this sin. Sin is reflected by the way you treat other people. Sin is reflected in your behavior. A person is not bad because of his character or his conduct. A person is bad because he has a bad heart. All of us need a new heart. Jesus can give a new heart. The sad part of this story is that Jesus could have changed Herod’s life but he wanted to eliminate him.
This past week there has been much attention given to the problems of Tiger Woods. I am not here to pass judgment on him or to belabor an issue that has already gotten too much publicity. However, in one press release a quote from Tiger referenced “personal sins” and he said “I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves.” Woods was correct; all of us need to be a better person. That is because we all need a heart transplant. Jesus Christ can accomplish that goal.
C. God is gracious. Even a person like Herod can change. Even a person like Herod can ask God’s forgiveness. Before that can happen we must make room for Jesus in our lives.
