12.28.25 Matthew 2:13–18
13 After the Wise Men were gone, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to Joseph in a dream. He said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, because Herod will search for the child in order to kill him.”
14 Joseph got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt. 15 He stayed there until the death of Herod. This happened to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Wise Men, he was furious. He issued orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding countryside, from two years old and under. This was in keeping with the exact time he had learned from the Wise Men. 17 Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: 18 A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children,
and she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.
How much of Christmas is a facade? Don’t get me wrong. We have real moments of peace and joy as we contemplate the Incarnation, how the Son of God took on flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. The Christmas story of Jesus’ birth shines out in our hearts as we sing the songs of Jesus, songs like Silent Night by candlelight. We set the stage well with Christmas trees and lights. There’s great joy in seeing your children and grandchildren open their presents.
But there’s stress and pain involved in it all too. Classic movies like “Jingle All the Way” and “Christmas Vacation” have reflected the pressure that can come with wanting to get the right gift and have the “perfect Christmas.” Arnold Schwarzenegger just can’t find the Turbo Man doll, and Clark depends on a Christmas bonus to get a swimming pool. The turkey is burnt to a crisp. There’s some reality behind the humor of the movies. Preparing the music for the services. Credit card bills. The Cousin Eddie of the family. An empty chair at the table this year. It’s not as peaceful as it might appear.
Silent Night, Violent Night
So in today’s text, as the peace and light of humanity comes into our world, darkness raises its ugly head through King Herod. If God is going to come into the world to save the world and be as weak as an infant, you can best bet that evil isn’t going to go quietly into the night. Satan isn’t going to hold back just because Jesus was a weak little baby. He doesn’t want to give up his sinful slaves any more than Pharaoh wanted to let go of the Israelites with their slave labor. You won’t hear the children recite this part of the story. Linus didn’t include it in Charlie Brown’s Christmas. It’s evil personified in the person of Herod. Jesus may have been anywhere for 6 to 18 months at this time. But just to be “safe,” he calls for the slaughter of all boys two years old and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding region. If Bethlehem had about 600 people in it, this would have probably been about 20-25 boys. He orders them all dead. The birth of Jesus brought the death of these baby boys. This was prophesied about 600 years beforehand by the prophet Jeremiah.
A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.
Rachel was said to have been buried near Bethlehem. Ramah was the place the Israelites were transported to as they awaited the Babylonian Captivity in 586 B.C. Just as the children of tribes like Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin were carried into captivity at that time, causing their mothers to weep, so these mothers would weep at the death of their children. Some theologians have referred to these babies as true martyrs, dying in the place of Jesus.
This portion of the story gives you a realistic picture of how wicked our world really is. Herod was so paranoid and jealous of his power that he didn’t want any Israelites thinking that he was going to be usurped from his throne. And remember that he was an Edomite. He wasn’t even Jewish. He bought and politicked his way into his position of power, and he wasn’t going to let it up for nobody, even a baby who was prophesied to be the One. If God Himself stood in His way, and even if this God was going to save the world, well then he was going to kill God, baby or not, salvation or not.
God knew the world He was entering into, how evil it was and how evil it is. Dangerous as it might have been, Jesus knew what He was getting into. He had to attack evil from the inside, as one of us, living in our skin. It wasn’t going to be an easy mission. Think, for instance, about what is going on in Nigeria right now. Christians are being kidnapped and murdered by the Muslim group Boko Haram. American Christians are banging the door of the government to do something about it. But you realize what this means as a SOLDIER. YOU might have to go in there and fight. It’s a dangerous business. But when God comes into this world, He’s not coming in with guns blazing, using all His powers. He’s coming in as a baby, and that’s dangerous business. Satan is a dirty fighter. He doesn’t have an age limit on those he attacks. He was more than willing to use evil kings such as Herod to do his dirty work.
And we can’t lose sight of this either. The worst attacks are happening on children and the elderly who are being murdered through abortion and assisted suicide, with the assistance and backing of the government. The devil uses clever and deceptive terms. He calls it “choice” and “freedom” and “bodily autonomy.” In the first six months of 2025, we have murdered a total of about 592,000 babies. Average this out to the entire year, and that equals about 1 million 200 thousand babies. And that’s only in the United States. What is this done for? It’s not for rape and incest. It’s not. That’s only .33 percent of all abortions. 4,000. Most women actually report having an abortion because they can’t afford it, or it’s not the right time in their life, or because it interferes with their education or career goals. How is that any different than Herod?
So there’s at least 20 baby boys who had a death sentence put on them by Herod, and God KNEW it. And what did He do? He warned Joseph in a dream. Told him to get out of there. Run away. But what about those 20 moms who lost their baby boys? Why didn’t they get warned? What did their baby boys do to deserve this? Absolutely nothing. Yet they were martyred. And you can’t help but ask, “Why not just kill Herod?” But God doesn’t do this. He lets Herod be evil and do his evil king stuff that he does. He allows those babies to die. He allows those moms to lose their baby boys. And God’s Son? He is carried away in the dead of night to Egypt. Joseph faithfully left immediately, unlike Lot who was warned to leave Sodom and Gomorrah. From all appearances it looks like God is afraid of Herod. He has the power to do something, but instead He does nothing but run. It doesn’t seem very divine. It seems weak.
Yet hidden behind it all, God’s Word was being fulfilled which said, “Out of Egypt I called my Son.” (Hosea 11:1) Even though this was referring to the Israelites as a nation, it was all a precursor to what would happen to Jesus as the ULTIMATE Israelite, who enter back into Israel to live the perfect life as God’s true Son. So even though it appeared God was running from Herod, in His own way God was using the situation to fulfill the Scriptures.
This is how God works in this world. He allows Satan to influence people. He allows evil people to do evil things. And sometimes He even pushes their buttons even more! Look at what He does with the Pharaoh, knowing how hard headed he is. He lets mothers kill their babies. He allows people to commit adultery and spread sexual disease. He lets evil be evil. If He didn’t, how many of those moms would live to repent? How many more would end up in hell? We have to think about that. In the end, look at how God was glorified when He finally rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The more Pharaoh dug in his heels, the more glorious God proved to be through the plagues. But there were no plagues stopping Herod. Those babies died sad and painful deaths at the hands of Herod’s soldiers. Ultimately, this calls for faith to believe that God does know what He’s doing. It takes faith to believe that God is in charge when evil has its day. Many times we won’t know what God was thinking or doing until Judgment Day.
It might be easy to think that God spared Jesus and Mary from an early death. But it wasn’t about sparing Jesus from death. If He wanted, Jesus could have stayed in Egypt for the rest of His life. But He didn’t. We went back to Israel and to Jerusalem, in order to die. And what an awful death it was! He ended up being crucified to a cross. God had a much more painful death planned for Him at the hands of other evil men who also wanted to hold on to their positions of power. And worse yet? While hanging on that cross He was also abandoned by His own Father, blamed for the sins of the world. Baby Jesus was spared so that adult Jesus could die a much worse death, a much more meaningful death, for those very babies who died at the hand of Pharaoh, and for every baby and every person who lives and dies in this world. God didn’t save His Son from an infant death out of selfishness or fear. He did it with purpose and grace, in order to save the world. Mary had to witness all of this as well.
And if you think that this God was afraid of evil? Think again. When they came to arrest Jesus, He got up and said, “Rise, let’s go. Here comes my betrayer.” He knew what was coming, and He walked right into it. Jesus had to be preserved so He could be properly sacrificed at the right place and time in order to conquer the devil and death and sin once and for all. He bravely faced it all, for us.
All of this being said, I can’t help but go back to those poor mothers of those baby boys. What could be done to console them? There’s no way they would ever understand why this happened. How would they ever forget seeing the soldiers coming into their homes, ripping their baby boys from them, and murdering them? They wouldn’t, not on this side of heaven. Mourning would be a way of life for them for the rest of their lives. There are times in life where such evil happens that you can’t help but just cry.
How do we respond? In Romans 12:15 Paul tells us to “Mourn with those who mourn.” This is an evil world where evil things happen, and you can’t get around it. It was evil what happened to those children. It is evil what happens to our children. It makes us cry. It is sad. It’s only proper to cry. But we are also called to do more than that, to PRAY for them, and to also try to talk to them about how God has chosen to deal with this evil, through the death of His own Son. So God knows what it is like to see a child die as well. He can sympathize with you. And don’t forget what happens at the end of the story, when God Himself dies. He rises from the dead as the victorious King! And He promises us, “Because I live, you too will live!” Don’t just live in sadness, but also live in HOPE! Death is not the end. And the devil and his demons will end up in hell.
Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31 as a prophecy of what would happen to the mothers of Bethlehem. We see that the prophecy doesn’t end in sadness, but hope. This is what the Lord says: “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” declares the Lord. “They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your descendants,” declares the Lord.“Your children will return to their own land. It would take 70 years, but they would come back to the land, alive, able to resettle. And most importantly? The Messiah would come. It would just take time. The LORD would work it out. They just needed to trust. Despite the tears, God says, the exiles will return; and now Matthew, referring to Jeremiah 31:15, likewise says that, despite the tears of the Bethlehem mothers, there is hope because Messiah has escaped Herod and will ultimately reign.
Just as God rescued the Israelites from slavery and brought them into the Promised Land, so Jesus would come out of Egypt to rescue us from slavery and bring us to the Promised Land of heaven. And this God has given us a place to hide from evil Herod as well. We hide from death within death, the death of His Son on the cross. He has given us a place to hide, not in a dream from an angel, but in the word of our Lord, in the suffering and death of Jesus. We are baptized into His death, and we eat of the body and blood shed for us. It enters us. We sing of it so beautifully in the song “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. May the water and the blood, from thy riven side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power.” We have a real place to flee from evil, a real place to find refuge - in the blood of Christ, at the cross. It is an ugly place and yet a beautiful place, the only place to hide. When all is said and done, we come forth alive, and enter into the Promised Land, through faith in Jesus.
Did you have a peaceful Christmas? A joyous one? Or was there a lot of stress and sadness for you? Was it a blue Christmas? More like Chevy Chase’s or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s? If you found yourself stressed out this Christmas, or alone this Christmas, in a dark place of loneliness and darkness, facing death and heartache, then remember this story. Christmas was never meant to mean that there wouldn’t be any sadness or heartache in this world. Christmas brought very tragic death and sadness. It is the world Jesus was born into and came to willingly. When the sadness of fear of death and darkness comes upon you like the forces of evil from Herod, then be like Joseph and flee to your own Egypt, your own safe place with Jesus. As long as He is with you, you’re not alone. Remember, He’s not a baby any more. You don’t have to carry Him anywhere in order to save Him. Let Him carry you to Himself, with all of His grace and mercy, in order to save you, and give you hope and peace and joy once again, even in the midst of your tears. Amen.
