Title: What Christmas Did Not Do
Text: Matthew 2:13-23
Truth: Christmas did not eliminate evil and suffering, but it gives us the hope that one day God will eliminate evil and suffering.
Aim: hope and encouragement
(Outline: lifeway.com, Jeff Griffis)
INTRODUCTION
Christmas Sunday the pastor planned to visit the preschool Sunday School class. The teacher, wanting to impress the pastor had each child draw a picture of some part of the Christmas story. The teacher put the art work on the wall and the preacher came. He was impressed as he identified each drawing’s meaning. There was one with a barn and a man and a woman—Joseph, Mary, Jesus, and the manger. Another picture had sheep, men, and angels in the sky—the shepherd scene. One picture was a caravan of camels and a star in the sky—the wise men. But there was one picture that puzzled him. The child drew an airplane with three figures in the back and one up front. He thought and thought but finally had to ask what it meant. The preschool artist spoke up and said, “It’s Jesus’ flight to Egypt!” “OK,” said the pastor, “but who is that up front?” “Oh,” said the artist, “that’s Pontius the pilot.”
Matthew 1 and 2 tell us about the birth of Jesus Christ. We’re familiar with the story of God announcing His entrance into the world through His Son. We’re familiar with the angel’s announcement to the shepherds and the wise men bringing their gifts. But this next scene in Matthew is not so often portrayed in our Christmas dramas.
We celebrate and recall the angel’s announcement, “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” We rejoice in the angel’s disclosure that this child is Immanuel, “God with us.” But it’s too disturbing to think of Herod’s order to kill all the boys in Bethlehem that are two years of age and younger. Can you think of a Christmas hymn that recall the words of scripture “Rachel weeping for her children?” Maybe our neglect of this passage has deprived us of the hope God wants us to have when life is difficult.
When our nation experiences a profound act of evil like the murder of the adults and children in the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, we ask why. Maybe one answer is found in a passage like this. The answer may be unsettling. There are some things that Christmas did not do. Let’s talk about what Christmas did not do and then what Christmas did do.
Matthew is proving that Jesus is the legitimate Messiah of Israel. He fulfills the prophecies of Scripture. But the world’s response to their Messiah is hostility. This opposition to Jesus wasn’t just at the end of his life, but it was expressed at the beginning of his life. Even at His birth there was this horrendous clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.
Matthew’s book is a gospel tract to convince us that our Savior is Jesus, but it is also an encouraging word to the followers of Jesus. Don’t be discouraged if it is difficult being a Christian. Jesus didn’t get a free pass from hardship even though he was the Son of God. There are some things that Christmas did not do and some things it did do.
I. WHAT CHRISTMAS DID NOT DO
Christmas did not eliminate evil. Until recently it would have been hard for us to imagine someone so evil that they would murder innocent children. Herod was such a man. He was no different than Assad in Syria that has killed 30,000 of his own people. He was as self-absorbed as the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, that could have fed his starving nation with the money he has spent on his space program. Herod conspired to drown his brother-in-law because he became too popular as High Priest. He murdered two sons because he thought they were conspiring against him, he murdered his mother-in-law, and in a fit of jealousy killed his wife. It led Augusta Caesar to say, “It is better to be Herod’s dog than Herod’s son.” Scholars estimate that 20-30 babies died that day in Bethlehem and the surrounding area. The birth of the Son of God did not eliminate evil.
Someone said that the most provable doctrine of the Christian faith is the total depravity of man. The doctrine of total depravity doesn’t mean that we are as bad as we could be, but that every part of our humanity is stained by sin: our emotions, our reason, our spirit, and our body. Fundamentally, we are rebels before God. We resist His will in our lives. Yes, the image of God within us, though marred, results in people being amazingly good and loving at times. You see that in the adults sacrificing their lives to save the children at the Sandy Hook school, but there is another side to human beings.
The human heart is capable of great evil. Historian Eric Hobsbawm has described the twentieth century as the century of “megadeath.” He lists name like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Charles Manson. Those people in a sense carried out their evil at a distance, but what is so haunting about this 20-year-old man in Newtown is the personal nature of his assault on such innocence. This Christmas is like the first Christmas: innocence and evil side-by-side.
When we tell this story the emphasis often falls on the wise men tricking Herod and leaving town without reporting back to him. We celebrate and marvel at God’s rescue of Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus as they travel to safety in Egypt. But we don’t dwell so long on the dark and unimaginable sorrow that fell on Bethlehem that day. Matthew didn’t forget it. He quotes the prophet Jeremiah:
"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."
This quote from Jeremiah 31 refers to the people of Judah being taken into captivity by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. Bethlehem is where the Babylonians gathered the people for the long march back to Babylon. Traditionally it was believed this is the area where Rachel was buried. She was the second wife of the patriarch Jacob. It was a poetic way of referring to the mothers of Israel having their sons taken from them and never returning. But the overall note of the chapter is one of hope. Yes, Rachel’s children were going off into captivity but one day God would rescue them and bring them back. The murder of these innocent boys began a great conflict that would one day result in Jesus weeping over Israel’s refusal of Him--but through the Son of God many would return to God. Maybe that is also in Matthew’s mind when he quotes this passage.
Karl Marx pictured Christianity as a kind of drug that anesthetizes people to the evil and suffering in the world. Sigmund Freud taught that belief in God was a sign of immaturity that helped us to evade the pain and helplessness that we feel and see around us. They obviously didn’t think very deeply about the Christmas story. Christmas is not a denial of the reality of evil. In fact, Christmas did not eliminate evil.
There’s something else that Christmas did not do.
Christmas did not eliminate suffering. Can you think of a picture sadder and more descriptive of than the phrase, “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more”? Christmas did not make the world a safe place. It did not eliminate suffering.
Christmas music is everywhere. In the stores while you’re shopping, on the radio, and even when you’ve been put on hold on the phone there is Christmas music. Over and over, I’ve lost count how many times, I’ve heard Andy Williams sing:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you
Be of good cheer
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
And the song does its job. You can’t help but feel uplifted.
But for some that song is a contradiction of their memories and emotions for this time of the year. The families who lost loved ones Christmas shopping at the mall in Portland, Oregon and the families in Newtown, Connecticut feel an emptiness and grief like an undertow that drags them out to a sea of sadness. For others an empty chair at Christmas is a painful reminder of a death or a loved one’s assignment on the other side of the world. Some will have a very different Christmas from times past because of underemployment or broken relationships. Instead of Christmas being the most wonderful time of the year, for some it brings into sharper focus their suffering.
It’s into this kind of world that the Savior arrives. And the wondrous thing is He doesn’t eliminate our suffering, He makes a home with us in our pain and suffering. God actually shares our suffering. He weeps as we weep over rejection. He knows loneliness and abandonment and even experiences death. The song misses the real reason for this being the most wonderful time of the year. It’s not because Christmas is the celebration of families gathering and giving gifts. Christmas is the testimony that even though Christmas did not eliminate evil and suffering, in the bleak winter of suffering and evil, God came alongside to share in our suffering.
Though Christmas did not eliminate evil or suffering, Christmas did do some things.
II. WHAT CHRISTMAS DID DO
Christmas gives us hope that one day God will do away with evil and suffering. Even though the birth of Jesus did not destroy evil or remove suffering from our lives, Jesus was born so evil and suffering will one day be destroyed. It didn’t happen on that day, and it still hasn’t happened in our day, but one day evil and suffering will be destroyed.
The History Channel has been showing a series I’ve enjoyed called “Mankind: The Story of All of Us.” I was watching an episode that was telling about the rise of science and reason called The Age of Enlightenment. It covers the 17th and 18th centuries. The secular historian describes that age as a time when people turned away from religion for an explanation of this world. What they mean by religion is superstition, and specifically Christianity. Instead man turned to evidence and proof. Hear the putdown? The Bible opens itself to any honest investigation. It has a mountain of evidence and proof for its reliability.
The episode contrasted how science and reason brought helpful solutions to man’s problems. Religion, or Christianity, was pictured as an impediment that kept people bound in superstition and ignorance. There was no mention that the great scientists of that day were Christians. They didn’t point out that it was the Christian doctrine of creation that motivated these men to subdue the world and solve its difficulties. Either the writers of the episode were ignorant of these things or they intentionally ignored a comprehensive presentation of history.
But the other thing that struck me was the worldview they presented was a Christian worldview. Science and reason would one day eliminate suffering and evil. It was stunning. I’m confident that they didn’t intend to do that. I’m convinced that they thought they were being consistent with their belief of the hope that science and reason will one day eventually lead humanity to create a utopia. That’s a belief system just like Christianity and they adopted Christianity’s hope for the future.
Atheists aren’t any more consistent. Listen to what an atheist wrote about his hope of the future as atheism grows in influence:
“For most of human history, people have lived in the darkness of ignorance and tradition, driven by fear, believing in superstitions. Priest and Lords preyed on such ignorance, and life was wearisome and short. Ever so gradually, however, and often at great cost, inventive men have endeavored better to understand the natural world around them. Centuries of such enquiry eventually led to a marvelous Scientific Revolution that radically transformed our methods of understanding nature. What we know now as a result is based on objective observation, empirical fact, and rational analysis. With each passing decade, science reveals increasingly more about the earth, our bodies, our minds. We have come to possess the power to transform nature and ourselves. We can fortify health, relieve suffering, and prolong life. Science is close to understanding the secret of life and maybe eternal life itself. Of course, forces of ignorance, fear, irrationality and blind faith still threaten the progress of science. But they must be resisted at all costs. For unfettered science is our only hope for true Enlightenment and happiness.” (C. Smith, Moral Believing Animals, p.69)
This atheist writer adopts a Christian world view! Look at how it actually reproduces what Christians believe God will do. There is a period of darkness followed by redemption. There are threats to this new world but eventually it wins. What hypocrisy! Atheists can’t claim that something is good or bad. What’s their basis?
Christianity has worn such a deep groove into the thinking of mankind that even its enemies can’t tell their story without telling the story of Christianity. One day this world of suffering and evil will be eliminated and replaced with a world where there is no more suffering and evil. That’s a Christian worldview!
When you look out upon this world at Christmas time and you see and feel the evil and suffering people are experiencing, the appropriate question is not “Why?” but “When?” When, Lord, will you bring to pass what You began in Jesus—eliminating the evil and suffering of this world?
Do you know what God can do? He can take the most evil act of mankind, killing the only innocent, righteous man to ever live, a monstrous sin, and use it to be the very act that abolishes sin and provides salvation and forgiveness to the guilty ones. Christmas gives us the hope that one day God will eliminate evil and suffering.
CONCLUSION
Roy Smith was a preacher of a past generation. In his book Tales I’ve Told Twice he tells about being at a dress rehearsal for the school play. He was a freshman at the little junior college in the town where his family always lived. He didn’t know how but somehow his father had scraped together enough money to buy him a new pair of shoes. His parents bought him this new pair of shoes because he had the lead in the school play. Roy was on stage rehearsing his part when someone burst into the auditorium and excitedly said, “Roy come quickly. Your daddy has been hurt at the mill.” Roy ran as fast as he could but his father was dead by the time he arrived.
Roy, his mother, and brother took his father’s body and laid it to rest on one of the windswept hills of Kansas. Afterwards he and his brother went back to the mill to retrieve his father’s things. The men at the mill had gathered his tools and put them his dad’s wooden toolbox. They’d respectfully folded his coveralls stained with blood and put them in the toolbox. They took his brogan work shoes and placed them with soles facing up.
Roy said when he opened that toolbox lid the first thing he saw was the soles of those shoes. They had holes that stretched from one side to the other. On the day that his father died he had been standing nearly barefooted on the cold steel floor of that mill, but his son had new shoes. Roy Smith said when he understood the enormity of his father’s sacrifice for him he got a numbness around his heart that stayed with him throughout his life. He meant a tenderness, a sensitivity, about what it cost the Father to provide us salvation.
I picked this awful passage for Christmas Sunday to tell you that Christmas did not eliminate evil and suffering, but one day it will. When we see the whole story of Christmas we will not lose sight of the enormous price God paid for us to one day live with Him in a world that has eliminated evil and suffering. This is the hope Christmas brings.
