Matthew 2:13-18 Rachel’s Sorrow
12/15/02 D. Marion Clark
Introduction
I do like our Live Nativity we put on at our church. We show the manger scene; we have a full inn, a market square retail booth, angels singing to shepherds, and a tax collector at his booth. We even have the three wise men traveling to find the “king of the Jews.” We have added scenes over the years. There is one scene we will never add – soldiers killing infants and toddlers.
“There is a dark side to the Christmas story,” as Philip Ryken has noted in referring to this scene. The birth of Jesus is a beautiful story, as long as we end it with the wise men’s visit. What takes place soon afterwards, however, is a horrible nightmare.
Text
13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”
I said last week I would get to Herod. Let’s consider who this infamous king was. He was called Herod the Great, no doubt his public relations department helping to popularize this nickname. In light of the standards of the Roman and ancient world, he fit the title fairly well. He was acclaimed as an architect and builder. He built the town of Caesarea on the model of a Roman city, equipped with a hippodrome for chariot races. His great achievement for that coastal city was to build the largest man-made harbor in the Mediterranean. It is an achievement of great proportions. For the Jews, his greatest work was the new temple, built on a magnitude far beyond the previous temples.
Herod ruled as king of the Jews for 33 years, which in itself was a noteworthy achievement, similar to that of his contemporary Caesar Augustus. To survive as king anywhere in the empire was no mean accomplishment, and especially in Palestine. Herod had to first outwit and outfight rivals and rulers ahead of him. He then had to contend with enemies and rivals seeking his overthrow. Being under the rule of Rome, he had to play the deadly political games of keeping in good stead with the emperor. Twice he had to appear before the Roman emperor not knowing if the outcome would be his execution. (He made arrangements, by the way, that he did not return home alive his wife would also be killed.)
We’ve noted this reality while reading through the Psalms. It seems that David is always worrying about enemies out to get him. Well, they were out to get him! Enemies were also out to get Herod as well. The Pharisees and the common people despised him because he was not a half-Jew and friendly with the Romans. The Sadducees had sided with a rival in Herod’s bid for the throne. In return, he executed forty-five of them and confiscated their property to pay tribute to Mark Antony. Even Cleopatra intrigued against him.
His most bitter enemies were the Hasmonean family. This is the family descended from the Maccabees, the family that led a successful Jewish revolution for independence. For generations they had been the recognized ruling and priestly family of the Jews. Herod married into this family, but far from creating good will, it only produced the fruit of bitterness and revenge in his relations and children. Throughout his reign, Herod would defend his position, but often through the tried and true method of ancient politics – murder. His wife’s grandfather, her brother, her (and his) two sons, another son, and eventually she came under his death stroke. These were not the actions merely of a crazy man obsessed with violence. They are those of a shrewd man who knew, and was ready to play, the game of obtaining and keeping power. Herod survived because he trusted so little, and because he was willing to crush resistance.
Near the end of his life, when he was thought to be weak, two rabbis incited a crowd to tear down the Roman eagle insignia posted on the temple gate. Herod had the offenders burned alive. Realizing his own death was not long coming, he had notable Jews locked in a hippodrome to be slaughtered when he died in order to assure there would be mourning at his death. That final wish was not carried out, thank goodness, but as Matthew lets us know, others were not so fortunate.
Do you understand, then, why Herod would be troubled by the news of the wise men that they had come to worship the new king of the Jews? By this time, Herod has been reigning thirty years. He is no novice to conspiracy theories, nor is he naïve about how to deal with such conspiracies, real or imaginary. We can also understand the concerns of the populace. Will there be yet another uprising or another reprisal by Herod? Yes, there will be another reprisal and the worse one of all.
Herod’s first intention was to quietly take care of this new pretender to the throne. He secretly ascertains the approximate age of the child and attempts to trick the wise men into serving as his innocent spies. Herod did not keep his power merely by bullying. He had to keep on the good side of his Roman superiors and learned to avoid unnecessary trouble. He really did not have a bloody track record beyond what many of the Roman and ancient authorities had. He acted discreetly whenever possible. Only occasionally did his temper lead to unbridled rage as was about to take place.
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
Don’t trick a powerful, ruthless king! It appears that Herod is more incensed by feeling tricked than the rival still being alive. You may wonder how he could have gotten away with such a slaughter. Wouldn’t there have been an uprising? Wouldn’t the Roman authorities have reacted? Neither scenario is necessary. First, the number of people in Bethlehem and the surrounding region was probably no more than a thousand, possibly less. It is quite probable that less than twenty children were killed. That’s enough, to be sure, but it is not a massive number. If Herod kept his wits about him, he also would have had the killings done in as stealth a manner as possible. The families were located in a small rural town and the countryside. The murders most likely did not take place by rounding the children up in one place. Deaths in individual homes, some far away from each other, the lack of public news, the fear of Herod – all these things would naturally suppress an uprising. As for Roman authorities, after thirty years of managing relations with them, Herod would know what to do.
Herod is a formidable opponent. He knew how to play his cards. He knew who to strike, when to strike, and how to strike. And he had yet to lose, not until the wise men came along with their news of the king of the Jews. He was out-tricked by them and by a peasant carpenter named Joseph. Neither by scheme nor by massacre could he get rid of this infant king.
What he did accomplish was terrible suffering.
17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
Next week we are going to examine these two prophecies of our text as well as a third, and try to get a handle on how Matthew and his fellow apostles and writers learned to read the Old Testament Scriptures through the lens of Jesus Christ. For now, though, we are concerned with the present tragedy.
Matthew doesn’t leave us with the touching, peaceful scene of an infant sleeping in a manger. He leaves us with dead bodies of infants and toddlers. Why? Is Matthew the Stephen King of the gospel writers who likes to toss in a gruesome scene when possible? Why, Matthew? Why couldn’t you leave this alone?
Because it is real. Because you must know the world into which our Lord was born, the same world in which you live. The nativity is not a fairy tale. It is not a sentimental romance to make you feel cozy. The nativity was, and is, a matter of life and death.
Jesus came because the world is evil, because life is ruthless. He came because we made it evil. The world groans because we subjected it to decay by our sins. Let’s understand this. No doubt we all identify with the wise men. They are our brothers who worship the Lord as we surely would have done. Well, we cannot understand the purpose of Christmas until we understand that Herod is our brother. We possess the same flesh and blood of him, as we do of the magi, and depending upon circumstance, we may follow the example of either. The magi did not possess better hearts than Herod. Their fortune was to be touched by the grace of God.
Evil is real. It is not the mere by-product of poor parenting or genetic imbalance. Good parenting, a favorable environment, and perhaps proper medication can temper evil, can keep it in a state of remission, but our hearts have already been infected. The damage is done. The image of God has been marred irreparably. The fate of Camelot is the fate of the world. From time to time there can be a “brief shining moment,” but it will and must collapse, because even in that shining moment there is the infection of evil that seeks to destroy whatever is good.
Satan is real. The Fall did happen, and it did happen through the evil ploy of Satan. As Jesus said, he was a murderer from the beginning and since the beginning of the human race, he has sought to murder the soul of every member. He succeeded with the corruption of Adam and Eve, but then came the promise of a seed from Eve who would crush Satan’s head. Then his goal was to kill that seed. I am indebted to Reverend Larry Veinott for this insight.
Revelation 12 describes a scene that depicts this obsession of Satan to destroy man’s Redeemer: And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God…(12:1-5).
However one wishes to interpret this passage, it demonstrates well Satan’s battle against Eve’s holy seed. She bore Cain and Abel. Satan incited Cain to murder his godly brother. She bore Seth who produces a godly line. Satan corrupts the godly line with the evil so that all mankind is destroyed in a flood, all but Noah who found favor with God. The Seed is not destroyed. It passed on through Abraham and Sarah though a miracle was required for her to bear a child, as also for Isaac and Rebekah. The rejected son plots to kill the chosen son but Jacob flees for refuge. His family faces starvation but through divine intervention Joseph is able to bring them to Egypt. Moses is raised up to deliver them from oppression in Egypt after his own escape. The people face extinction through the army of Pharaoh and are delivered through the Red Sea. They sin by making a golden idol, and yet are spared after Moses’ intercession. David is raised up to be king and escapes the efforts of Saul to kill him. From him comes the line of the Messiah.
Despite all these efforts of Satan, God carried out his will just as he planned. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4,5).
However crafty, however ruthless Herod might have been, he could be no more successful than his evil superior Satan. The Redeemer would come just as was planned, would live just as planned, and would die just as planned.
Some people reflect bitterly that Mary’s child was saved but at the cost of other mothers’ grief. Many innocent children died for the sake of one. Mary may have been spared a mother’s worse anguish then, but the words spoken to her by the old man Simeon would come true – “a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” For her child had been spared that he, in true innocence, might die for those who have suffered not merely by Herod’s anger, but throughout the ages. His final battle against evil would be upon a cross. And precisely because he never gave in to sin, precisely because he would succumb to death, he defeated evil and death.
And we now have life because of the death of the true Innocent, Jesus Christ. Even so, he told us that while we are in this life, the battle with evil will continue. Peace on earth? Here is what our Lord told us he would bring.
Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Luke 12:51-53).
Yes, Jesus did bring peace. He brought peace with God. He brought peace between enemies who became kindred in Christ. He even brought peace that his followers may have with their enemies. But the Enemy and those under his sway will never have peace with the followers of Christ. The Enemy knows that choosing or rejecting Christ is a matter of life and death. He failed to defeat the Redeemer, but he will not rest from murdering the souls of men and women. Only the protection of Emmanuel – God who is with us – can save us from so great an adversary. May each of us turn to this Emmanuel, this Redeemer for our salvation.
