The Danger of Misconceptions
Matthew 2:13-18
January 4, 2004
Introduction
This morning we take a look at one of the more gruesome episodes in the Bible.
In the midst of the Christmas miracle, the visit of the magi, the shepherds, the manger, and all that, we come to this portion of Matthew that tells us of the murderous paranoia of an earthly ruler.
This story on the surface is about a despot not unlike many that are still around today. But it goes much deeper than that.
It¡¦s also the story of the sovereignty of God in protecting the Messiah, not allowing human affairs to interfere with His plan to redeem you and me
But there¡¦s still more to it than even that, as if that wasn¡¦t enough, and it is.
But before we get there, I want us to read this passage, which forms the basis for our time this morning.
Please turn to Matthew 2:13-18. If you¡¦re using the Bibles in the seats, this is on page 682.
13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 "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 morning I want us to look at something else about this story, and it¡¦s this: the world operates on some misconceptions about Jesus.
In the case of Herod, it had a devastating impact on the town of Bethlehem. And these misconceptions are the basis of why many people reject Christ today.
I want us to look at a couple facts about Herod¡¦s misconceptions about Christ, and then I want to bring it into our current time and look at how people¡¦s misconceptions affect and impact their destiny as well as the impact on our culture.
My intention this morning is to help us see that we just can¡¦t look at this story and pass it off as ancient history.
The basic attitude of Herod is still alive today, and we need to deal with it, even if it¡¦s not on such a horrible scale. We need to recognize it and learn how to respond. That¡¦s what I hope to help us with.
Let¡¦s lay the groundwork for that by looking for a bit at Bad Boy Herod.
1. Herod was threatened by a misconception about Jesus.
When the magi asked where the ¡§King of the Jews¡¨ was, Herod thought they were talking about an earthly political king who would take him from his role as a puppet king for Rome.
Now being the power hungry kind of guy he was, as most earthly kings were, and are, he saw a threat.
It was a false threat. Jesus had plenty of opportunities to become king, and after the feeding of the 5,000, the crowd wanted to force Him to become King, so He got out of there before they could do it.
When questioned by Pilate, He said that He was, indeed, a king, but not of an earthly political kingdom, but a heavenly one.
But being a small child at the time of this episode in Matthew, he wasn¡¦t able to communicate that to Herod in person.
So Herod decided that a threat existed, which leads us to our next point in this story, and that is that¡K
2. His misconception had an impact.
No duh, Brian! Talk about an understatement!
Herod had a bunch of innocent children slaughtered because he operated under a misconception!
Commentaries tell us that because of the relatively small population of Bethlehem at this time, the number of boys murdered was probably about a dozen or so.
Does that make any difference in how barbaric and ugly it was? Absolutely not.
My point here is that Herod, had he been a close follower of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, studying the Scriptures diligently, he may well have come to the conclusion that the Messiah was not one to be feared, but rather to be welcomed.
Instead, his paranoia got the best of him, and he reacted in a murderous manner.
Bethlehem is only about 5 miles from Jerusalem, and so it didn¡¦t take long for Herod¡¦s soldiers to make good on his commands.
But listen to this, from The Expositor¡¦s Bible Commentary:
¡§Furious at being deceived¡Khe raged against the Lord and His Anointed One (Psalm 2:2). Yet this was no narrow escape. The One enthroned in heaven laughs and scoffs at the Herods of this world.¡¨ (Vol. 8, p. 94)
His misconception had an impact on the immediate area, but not on the will of God for salvation for you and me.
Well, guess what? Times haven¡¦t changed a whole lot. Why? Because¡K
3. People still have misconceptions of Jesus.
And while these misconceptions may not lead to the butchering of innocents, they are still there and they need to be recognized.
What are some of these misconceptions? Let¡¦s look at just three today:
- Good teacher, a wise man, but not divine.
I hear this all the time. Most people I know are more than willing to proclaim that Jesus was a good man, a wise teacher, maybe even a prophet of God. But few will assign divinity to Him.
- More concerned with kindness than judgment.
The Jesus of many people would never cast the first stone (by the way, He was the only One qualified to do that, but that¡¦s not discussed much), would never consign a person to hell, and was more concerned with bringing peace, love, and harmony than anything else.
- Wrongly put to death, still dead.
He was put to death for rocking the religious establishment of His day, and for no other reason.
Since He was not God, there¡¦s no reason to believe He rose from the dead. It makes no difference that no one can point to a body in a tomb.
How do they get these misconceptions?
- Second-hand information about Jesus.
They read the writings of people who aren¡¦t followers of Christ, or people who pretend to be but aren¡¦t.
Or their parents or friends possess erroneous information, and pass it on, sincerely believing it to be true.
- Media portrayals of Jesus.
Did any here see, The Da Vinci Code? It was a special on ABC recently about a book called The Da Vinci Code, in which the author claims that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdelene.
It was a novel, but you¡¦d be surprised how seriously people are taking it, because it lends more ammunition to any idea that takes away from the Biblical Jesus.
The Jesus Seminar seeks to turn the tide of ¡§scholarly opinion¡¨ about Jesus to something He¡¦s not. And they are using the media to do it.
But in my opinion, there¡¦s one way in particular that helps these misconceptions along, and it¡¦s¡K
- Inauthentic Christians.
These are people who call themselves followers of Christ, but either are ignorant of what that means or purposely try to distort what a follower of Christ is supposed to look like.
A person who calls themselves a Christian but refuses to believe and obey Christ is not an authentic Christian.
We can all think of people who would identify themselves as Christian but have no regard for Christ and His Word.
And so Christ and His Word have no impact on their life, and others are led to believe that that¡¦s normal for a Christian.
And they¡¦ll either jump on the bandwagon with them, or become repulsed at the hypocrisy shown.
Let me be rather frank for a moment. I have found that it¡¦s easier to convince someone who does not call themselves a Christian of their need for Christ than it is to convince a nominal ¡§Christian¡¨ of their need.
And part of that is because I can identify with the disgust of the first person at the hypocrisy in much of what is called Christianity today.
Why would they want to be part of anything that includes people who hate others of another race, yet claim to love Jesus?
Why would they want to be part of something that has made an industry of tearfully begging for donations to reach the poor, yet lavish themselves with jewelry valued at more than the gross national product of third world countries?
They need to see that Jesus, while He doesn¡¦t condemn wealth, certainly had something to say about pursuing it for a life goal.
And when they see that Jesus hates hypocrisy even more than they do, we can have an honest conversation about Him.
Folks, misconceptions about Jesus abound, even within the church. Later in the message I¡¦m going to share how we can go about correcting those misconceptions, because¡K
4. Those misconceptions have an impact.
People naturally respond to Christ based on their perceptions of Him. Let¡¦s take a look at a few of the impacts a wrong perception of Jesus can lead people to.
The first is a¡K
„Y Negative reaction to the good news of Jesus.
Obviously, if one has a perception of Jesus that contradicts what they know or want, they will react negatively.
For instance, if all they know about Jesus is the kind, forgiving man who sheltered the woman caught in adultery, they won¡¦t want the Jesus through whom the Father will bring condemnation and judgment.
Or if they base their view of Jesus on people they have seen who are not authentic Christians, they will not want anything to do with that Jesus.
And they will not listen to the news of the Redeemer.
„Y Disbelief in the events in the gospels.
Why should they believe in the Bible if the scholarly world tells them it is not true? So when we bring the truth of Jesus, particularly the miracles, and the resurrection, they have no intellectual reason to consider Jesus or the gospels.
The third impact a misconception about Jesus can have is¡K
„Y Belief in a ¡§false¡¨ Jesus.
This is very evident in the world of cults where we can point out errors in theology and such, but my main concern here is something that I have touched on throughout the message.
Salvation rests on the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus of society or majority opinion.
He is not a comfortable Jesus. He¡¦s the perfect moral standard and the Redeemer.
He is God, who took the form of a man, died a horrible and painful death to satisfy the righteous justice of God, and rose again bodily so we could have forgiveness and a home in heaven.
The Jesus of the Bible demands total allegiance above all others and all things.
This Jesus does not invite the spiritually wimpy. He called us to follow Him to the death if necessary.
Who¡¦d want to follow a God like that?
Me. Because He deserves my allegiance. And He deserves yours as well.
But the problem is that people don¡¦t want to believe in that Jesus. They want the social liberator, not the Messiah who came to liberate people from sin and death.
They want the namby-pamby Jesus, meek and mild, almost apologetic for upsetting the tables of the money-changers.
Why? Because this Jesus doesn¡¦t threaten the status quo.
Well, we could go on about the impacts that happen as a result of misconceptions about Jesus, but we need to move on, because we have a job to do!
5. Our job is to bring the correct picture!
It¡¦s not enough to point out problems, we need to be part of the solution! How do we do that? Let¡¦s look at two ways:
„Ï Correct misconceptions by presenting truth.
When you come across something that¡¦s incorrect, you gently bring correction.
We¡¦ve got enough people calling themselves Christians who spend their time screaming at those they disagree with.
A few months ago, a lady told me she thought everyone would go to heaven. I had to tell her that Jesus spoke more about hell than He did about heaven.
It¡¦s a real place, and real people are going to go there, so it¡¦s important that we believe what Jesus said about it.
One guy claimed that the Jesus in the New Testament is totally contradictory to the mean, judgmental God of the Old Testament.
But Jesus said that if we refuse Him, we remain in the wrath of God. In other words, we are already in the wrath of God - the God Jesus describes in the New Testament.
Jesus believed in the wrath of God.
I can¡¦t tell you how many people I have met who believe that Jesus is just one of many paths to God.
But Jesus said He was the only way.
We need to be prepared to meet misconceptions with truth.
By the way, where do we get that truth about Christ? From your parents? From me? From Billy Graham?
Yes, to an extent. But the bottom line is that we get our truth from the primary source about Jesus¡¦ life, ministry, and teachings. We get it from the Bible. And if your parents, Billy Graham, or I disagree with the Bible, then guess which one¡¦s wrong?
Here¡¦s a hint: it¡¦s not the Bible!
Correct misconceptions by introducing truth.
Secondly, and just as importantly¡K
„Ï Live authentic lives that reflect that truth.
Here¡¦s where it gets tough, folks.
Let me explain a bit of what I mean by living authentically for Christ.
It means living with Christ¡¦s priorities in mind, and experiencing the struggles that go with it.
You live for Christ when it¡¦s convenient and when it¡¦s not. And you fully experience the joy that comes with living a life for Christ.
I don¡¦t mean we sugar-coat our relationship with Christ so it looks like we never have bad days or struggles against sin and heartache.
But we experience joy to a much fuller degree, without denying the tough times.
Living authentically means living a life of faith in God and His Word, even when we don¡¦t totally understand it.
Living authentically means asking God tough questions in an honest manner, and pleading to Him for an answer, yet trusting that He is still in control even if He doesn¡¦t answer.
That¡¦s just part of it.
An authentic Christian life is basically this: a life lived in love for Christ, in gratitude for the salvation He purchased with His own blood.
The specifics of that life will differ with each individual to some degree, although there will be some constants, such as a growing hunger for God and His Word.
Why is authenticity so important?
Because when people outside of Christ see people living for Christ in the real world, not making excuses for their mistakes, and not living according to the world¡¦s agenda, they are many times attracted to people seeking meaning in life.
You want to make an impact on those who have misconceptions about Christ? Live an authentic Christian life.
Conclusion
Herod had a misconception of Jesus.
People today have misconceptions about Jesus. And while they may not take the same kind of drastic step as Herod, they still face an eternity away from God.
It¡¦s up to us.
It¡¦s not enough to say they¡¦re wrong. We need to bring truth to combat the error, so we can be used of God to take the veil of misconception and shine the light of truth.
May God equip this church to be that kind of church ¡V a church where our desire to see the truth of Christ reign in the lives of thousands of people in our area and beyond controls us, not society¡¦s opinions about what Christianity is about.
You know what has to happen first, though?
You need to make sure that your own perceptions of Jesus are Biblically accurate. And guess how you do that?
Time in the Word. Getting tired of me telling you that? Too bad. Get used to it. It won¡¦t be the last time you hear it!
The truth of Jesus is in here. Not out there. Get in here. Let it impact your life to the point where others can¡¦t help but notice.
Not because you¡¦re trying to show off, but because Jesus has changed you.
He¡¦s made you a new person, not just theologically, but experientially, in your deepest being.
Let God impact you to the very depths of your soul, and watch what happens in your interactions with other people.
And watch misconceptions begin to melt away, and watch lives become transformed as they embrace the Jesus of the Bible.
Let¡¦s pray.
