"The Sorrow of Christmas" - Matthew 2:11-18

We've got a Bible. We're going to be in Matthew 2. If you don't have one,

they're on the table, page 896-ish.

The week after Christmas, Sunday after Christmas, it's always interesting because it's such a build.

It's like a roller coaster, right? You're on this roller coaster and you can

hear the clicking of the chains, right?

And that's what basically the day after Thanksgiving is, at least for us civilized people.

Okay, we keep our Christmas trees down until then. But the day after Thanksgiving

happens and up you go and you're looking at Christmas and you're buying presents

and you're planning family events and you're trying to figure out where you're

going and what you're doing and what your itinerary is,

what kind of drama you've got to deal with that comes with that.

And then you get to Christmas and hopefully it's a great time.

And then after that, it just feels like a drop off. And you're like, oh, OK.

Now we have New Year's, which is a little bit of a holiday, but then it's just

January and February and March and really on a church schedule,

now you're just looking to Easter.

But for life in general, it can be tough to come off of the Christmas high.

In fact, there's been tons of studies done on this.

And one of the times of the year that depression spikes is in January.

And there's a big reason for that because you live your life for so long looking

forward to that day and then it happens and it's such a, again, emotional high.

And then you realize, oh, life just goes on.

I can remember thinking when we had Bradley, like for me, having a child was

a massive deal and I'm not saying it isn't.

But when we went to the hospital to have him, And it was kind of weird to see how normal that was.

Like the nurses would just come in and be like, yeah, you're having a baby.

Yeah, so are nine other people on the hallway.

And in our world, it's like, man, this is insane.

At that point, I'd only ever held one baby in my life, and that was forced upon

me. And I pushed it away from me as quick as I could.

And so for me, it was this out-of-body existential experience.

But for so many people, it was like, yeah, people have kids every day.

And in the same way, it's like, hey, Christmas is every year.

But it's interesting, you know, you go through Christmas and all the toys you

bought last year now have to be thrown away or figure out where you're going

to shove them in your house for all the new toys you got this year.

Hopefully for some of us, we got new socks and new underwear we replenished

for the year, right? We've got different things going on that way.

But either way, it's over. And I thought when I was getting ready to preach

this sermon, it was like, man, there's just a sorrow that comes with Christmas.

There's a sorrow that comes with it. Now, obviously, the sorrow that Christians

feel is different when we think about Christmas, but there was sorrow that came

with the Christmas story in Matthew 2.

We're going to read about, yes, Christ has come and the King is here,

and it's an incredible story, but something happens right alongside that that is a terrible thing.

So again, if you've got a Bible, I'm going to read Matthew 2.

We'll read 13 through 18, 11 through 18, somewhere in there,

but let me give you some context. So the wise men, which we don't know if there

were three, there's assumed to be three because there's three gifts, right?

But the wise men have made their way to Jesus, right?

They stop on the way, Herod intercepts them and he says, hey,

let me know where this new king of the Jews is so I can pay my respects to him.

And of course, he's lying to them.

And so the wise men finally get there to Jesus. They go into the house.

So Jesus is upgraded from a stable to a house at this point.

They go see Jesus, right? So let me just start. Let's start in verse 8.

Sorry, 7. It says, Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained

from them what time the star had appeared and sent them to Bethlehem,

saying, Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him,

bring me word too that I may come and worship him.

After listening to the king, they went on their way, and behold,

the star they had seen, when it rose, went before until it came to rest over

a place where the child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy,

and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother,

and they fell down and worshipped him.

And opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold,

frankincense, and myrrh.

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own

country by another way." That's the context of where we're going to be.

This morning, I want to be quick. All right, so we've just got two points and a conclusion.

The two points are going to be the two Old Testament passages that Matthew references in this story.

So when we get to verse 13, we see, 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 and destroy him. And he rose and

took the child and his mother at night and departed to Egypt,

and remained there until the death of Herod.

Why did all of this happen? It said this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. it.

Out of Egypt, I called my son. Point one, out of Egypt, I called my son.

This is taken from Hosea 11, chapter one.

Literally, it says in Hosea, when Israel was a child, I loved him,

and out of Egypt, I called my son.

So in the original context of Hosea, he's recalling how God through Moses called Israel out of Egypt.

And in quoting this, what Matthew's doing is he's picturing Jesus as ushering

in a new and better Exodus, because Jesus is the new and better Moses.

That's incredibly important to see. I tell people all the time,

if you'll read your Bible as a story, as one big story.

It'll help you because what it's doing is it's writing a narrative and every

single thing is connected.

And so again, the reason that all of this takes place is so he can fulfill this

prophecy and Matthew wants you to connect the dots here.

He wants you to connect the dots and say, listen, the same way that Moses brought

his people out of Egypt. Jesus will go to Egypt and he will bring people out.

But it's not just that Jesus is like Moses.

Rather, Jesus is the embodiment of Israel itself.

He's not just a new and better Moses. He's a new and better son.

He's a new and better son.

Israel was God's chosen people. And God's chosen people rebelled and scoffed

at him, did everything he asked them not to do, never loved him.

And in quoting this, Matthew is also making the point, Jesus is the perfect

son of God. He's the perfect Israel.

If you read the first five chapters of Matthew, you'll see this theme.

Let me just walk through this real quick with you. I think you'll like this.

As Israel was oppressed in Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh, so the infant Jesus

became a refugee in Egypt under the rule of Herod.

As Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea, so Jesus passed through

the waters of John's baptism in the river Jordan.

As Israel was tested in the wilderness for 40 days, so Jesus was tested in the wilderness for 40 days.

Sorry, 40 years. Jesus was tested for 40 days.

And as Moses from Mount Sinai gave Israel the law, so Jesus from the Mount of

Beatitudes gave his disciples the true interpretation and amplification of that law.

Just as Israel went down to Egypt and then came out of Egypt into the promised

land, so God's Son will make the same journey.

Never sinning, never faltering, never doing anything that his father would have

him not do, perfectly following the law in every way.

And this in many ways is the whole point of Matthew's gospel.

Matthew is making the point over and over and over again that the Messiah that

was prophesied in the Old Testament has come, and his name is Jesus.

And again and again and again, Matthew will pull from these Old Testament passages

all throughout his gospel as if to continue to say, he is the one. He's the one.

Every single prophecy, every single prediction, every single thing that the

Messiah was supposed to do, that the Messiah was supposed to be, Jesus fulfills.

Now, the question this morning is, what is sorrowful about that?

Nothing is sad about that. That's kind of the beauty of Christmas, isn't it?

Christ is the greater Moses to lead his people out of slavery to sin and into

the promised land where they'll be with him forever. That's amazing news.

So what is the sorrow?

Well, that comes from our second Old Testament reference. So keep reading with

me in verse 16, chapter 2 of Matthew.

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.

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, sat at Jeremiah 35.

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.

This prophecy in Jeremiah is, in its own context, a picture of what it looked

like for the people of Israel to be taken into exile.

That's what Jeremiah is talking about, that the Babylonians would come in and

they would rip families apart.

They would rip kids away from their mothers and fathers, and they would take

them away into a foreign land where they couldn't be with them anymore.

And so when it says, Rachel weeping for her children, Rachel is the representation.

She's the figurehead, the mother of Israel.

It is to say that Israel is being ripped apart by these foreign invaders because

of their own sin, no doubt.

Because of their own sin and struggles, that's why this is happening,

but it doesn't make the scene any less grim.

And Matthew quotes this and ties these two events together to say,

this is what happens in the world you live.

This is the sorrow of Christmas, that the King has come. Jesus is here.

God is in the flesh. The answer to every prayer that's ever been prayed,

that Abraham and Moses, that everybody looked forward to, is here.

Christ has come, and yet what is Christ met with?

He's met with an evil King who decides to kill every single male child under

the age of two because his power is threatened.

That's the tension, or you could say the sorrow of Christmas.

That's the tension in your life and my life is that Christ has come and Christ

has done exactly what he said he would do.

He has risen from the grave. He's seated at the right hand of the Father.

He's interceding for you. All these things are true, but there is still evil

and sin in the world that you have to deal with.

Herod was an evil man. I know mainly from the writings of Josephus that he has

his wife killed, though he had 10 of them.

I guess he just got rid of the worst one. I don't know.

He has two of his sons killed.

And the reason he kills two of his sons is because he wants to leave his kingdom

with his most ruthless son.

Here we see again, one of Herod's greatest atrocities is my kingdom,

my power, my throne is threatened.

And so what am I going to do? Well, I'm just going to kill every single person

that might pose a threat to me.

This is what evil men do when their power is threatened.

They get rid of anyone who they think might usurp them.

But we read in Psalm 2 this morning for a reason, is that God has set his king on a holy hill.

And when you read, why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain,

and the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers all devised plans.

You can tie that verse to this story if it helps you picture what's going on in Psalm 2.

This is what's going on in Psalm 2, is there's evil men, there's seeds of the

serpent, like we talked about two weeks ago from Genesis 3.

There's seeds of the serpent that still exist, and they're still biting at the

heel of the seeds of the woman.

But that's a terrible thing that happens.

You can imagine on one hand, people are saying, man, the king has come.

The wise men are coming and everyone's exalting this Jesus that's been born.

And at the same time, there's wailing mothers and fathers as their male babies

are taken from them and killed.

That is, again, the tension of this whole thing, that the Christmas story is an incredible thing.

It's an incredible story of what

God has done, but it's honest about the world that Jesus is born into.

The Bible is honest about the world that you and I live in.

It doesn't just tell the Christmas story and say, man, everything's going to

be great now that Jesus is here.

No, in fact, Jesus being born actually ushers in one of the greatest tragedies

we see in the New Testament.

Again, this is what evil men do, but deeper than that is exactly what Satan

has been trying to do since Genesis 3.

So when you see evil men and when you see evil things, know that certainly they're

acting on their own volition, that they have a source.

They have a power that works behind them.

I think it's important, again, and Matthew's going to do this,

to tie this into the whole Exodus analogy that he's making.

He's already laid out Jesus as the greater Moses, as the greater Israel.

He's already said that the reason that Herod is going to do what he's going

to do is to fulfill the prophecies.

But I want you to, if you want to, if you can get there, Exodus chapter 1.

Exodus 1 · chapter mention

This isn't the first time this has happened. This is, again,

a pattern like most things in Scripture are.

As Exodus opens, we see that Israel's in Egypt, and they're growing.

They're growing in number, and they're growing in power, exactly as God said

they would, exactly as God promised Abraham they would.

As they grow in power, Pharaoh, much like Herod, who will come after him,

sees them as a threat now.

And so he begins to be harsh with them and he makes them his slaves and they do his bidding.

If you begin, let's just read it. Chapter 8 says now there are sorry,

not chapter 8, verse 8, chapter 1.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

Remember, Joseph was the one that rose to power in Egypt that gained favor with

the Pharaoh and ultimately saved God's people from destruction and a drought.

This Pharaoh said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.

Come, let us deal shrewdly with them lest they multiply. And if war breaks out,

they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from our land.

Again, this is the exact same thing you'll see Herod do. Jump down to verse 15.

Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom who was named,

Siphrah and the other Puah, when you serve as a midwife to the Hebrew women

and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him.

But if it's a daughter, she shall live. Sound familiar?

Herod's not doing anything new in Matthew 2. He's not reading from a new playbook.

This isn't some ingenious idea.

When Ecclesiastes tells us there's nothing new under the sun,

it means it for better or for worse.

This has been Satan's playbook for a long time. He doesn't know where Christ

is coming from. He doesn't know God's plan.

Satan's not able to ascertain how he's going to stop God, but he's going to

try as hard as he can. So every chance he gets.

He raises up his own minion to kill off as many of God's people as he can,

thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to cut off this seed of the woman

before he gets to cut off my head.

So what happens, verse 17, but the midwives feared God and did not do as the

king of Egypt commanded, but let the male children live.

I love this. This really has nothing to do with where we're going to go in just

a second, but verse 18 and 19 is great.

It says, so the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, why have you done this?

And let the male children live. And the midwives said to Pharaoh,

because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous

and give birth before the midwife comes to them.

In other words, he's like, our women are just better than yours.

And so we can't make it in time.

That's a great thing to say to a Pharaoh.

But again, I want you to see, and this may be a bit of a weird application,

that as we live in the tension and we live in the sorrow of the world that we

live in, we live in a world that's still wrought with sin and death.

You ready for your application this morning?

Be a Hebrew midwife. Be a Hebrew midwife, number one. Number two,

surround yourself with them.

Because when the evils of this world, both within you and outside of you,

come crashing down on you, you will be oh so tempted to bow your knee to whatever

will make your life easier.

For some people, that looks like doing anything that anyone asks them to do

so they can be liked and they can be accepted.

For some of us, that means not doing anything that anyone asks us to do because

we don't want anyone to like us or accept us.

Depending on what side of the fence you're on, I'll let you decide that for yourself.

But to give in what the world would want from you or give yourself over to what

the world would offer you or give your heart over to the sin that is within you,

all of those things should signal to us, listen, I'm more scared of myself.

I'm more scared of the people around me. I'm more scared of man than I am of God.

We don't always apply that to ourselves, but it's very true that the person

that you aim to please the most and that poses the greatest threat to you is you.

I'll say it again, the person that poses the greatest threat to you because

of the person that you aim to please the most is yourself.

Again, this plays itself out in different ways, but it may be that God's calling

you to be a discipler of someone, to invite someone into your life,

to give yourself over to someone, to serve someone like Christ has served you.

And that may be the hardest thing in the world for you to do because all you

really want to do is live your life and be left alone.

Listen, me and Karen joke about it all the time. We send each other properties

back and forth like, hey, there's 300 acres in Montana. Why not?

It's like, maybe there's a bunker out there. I don't know.

Again, the flip side of that is maybe you just want every single person to be a part of your life.

You want to do everything you can to make everyone happy around you and you're

a people pleaser to the end of the earth.

All of that stems from you, what you want.

And the midwives are a great example of saying, it doesn't matter what we want.

Because what would have made their lives a whole lot easier is if they would

have listened to the most powerful man in the world at the time.

If they just would have said, you know what, who are we to say no to this guy?

And they could even justify it when they were killing these babies by saying,

listen, we're not really killing the babies.

Pharaoh's killing the babies. He's just making us do it. And if we don't do

it, he's going to kill us. So what are we supposed to do?

Encouragement is there's an exodus coming, right? The midwives trust God.

They trust that God won't leave them there. They trust that God will be with them.

They trust that God is going to deliver them to the promised land because he's

already promised them that he will.

And while he will deliver you to the promised land, he will be with you in the wilderness.

So the first one is be a Hebrew midwife. Number two, surround yourself with them.

Surround yourself with them because you won't always have it in you to be one.

Surround yourself with people who are always reminding you to fear God more than man.

Or as Jesus is going to say in Matthew 10, 28, do not fear those who kill the

body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body and hell.

This is exactly what Hebrews 10.25 tells you to do. After it famously says,

do not neglect to meet together as some are in the habit of doing.

We love that verse because we can tell people, listen, you need to be at church

because that's what Hebrews 10.25 says. And I would challenge us like I have in the past.

If that's what we're going to say on the front end, then we need to do what

the back end of the verse says, which is encourage one another all the more

as we see the day approaching.

Yes, we want people to come to church, but it doesn't matter if they come to

church if they're not being encouraged to fear God more than man,

to do what God has called them to do, to trust that God will deliver them from

the wilderness into the promised land where they will be with him forever.

That's what we exist for.

Conclusion, do you feel the sorrow of Christmas at times? Again,

you may not this year, this may have been a banner Christmas.

You may be coming off Christmas, not feeling any kind of way,

but the sorrow of Christmas is really just the sorrow of life.

It's that every day you live, you have no idea what kinds of things are out

there. You have no idea what kinds of things are in your future.

Again, none of these families, as they were raising these babies when Jesus

was born and thought that that would mean anything to them.

Oh, there's a new baby born. Oh, they're saying he's the king of the Jews.

That's awesome. They may have even celebrated it. They had no way of knowing

that that was going to trigger Herod to go and slaughter a bunch of their babies.

In the same way in Exodus, these people are living their lives.

They're blessed by God. They've been given this reprieve.

Joseph has risen in Egypt, and they're thinking, man, what an amazing thing.

And they're doing exactly what God asked them to do. They're being fruitful

and they're multiplying.

They're having kids and a generation after generation is having more kids and

God is fulfilling his promise to them to make a great nation out of them.

They can't predict that the next Pharaoh is going to rise up and not care anything

about Joseph and all of a sudden say to them, hey, you're getting a little too powerful.

You're getting a little too big. Need to bring you down a notch or two.

In fact, we need to cull the herd so much that I'm going to have your own midwives

come amongst you and try and kill every baby boy that's born.

Now, again, what's going on there? Well, he's trying to stop,

Satan is trying to stop a guy like Moses from being born.

Satan's always trying to fight against the seed of the woman.

But that's the tension, again, that you and I live in, is we live in a world

where evil people still exist,

and sin is still in your life to be fought, and things are still hard,

and there's still pain, and there's still struggle,

and there's still all kinds of things that you deal with every single day,

and things that none of us know what's going to happen that could be great,

could be terrible, we don't know.

Encouragement is, in those moments when you are met with that tension,

with that sorrow, remind yourselves of two things. Number one,

Jesus is the greater Moses.

While the Israelites and even Moses failed in the wilderness,

Christ will never fail you. He will never leave you.

He has promised to lead you safely home to the eternal promised land where there will be no sorrow.

It's worth it. It's worth it. Number two, be a midwife. and surround yourself by them.

Do not fear what the world has to offer you. Do not fear what man would say

to you. Do not fear what anyone might put in front of you.

Don't be sucked into taking the easy path, for as Jesus tells us,

it is wide and leads to destruction.

And when you are weak and you're not sure if you can do that anymore,

make sure you have people around you that will pick you up and dust you off

and remind you of the promise that Christmas brings, that God has took on flesh and dwelt among us,

that he has taken our sin and shame upon himself on the cross,

that he will soon come back and lead us home, and everything it has ever costed

us will feel like nothing when we see him face to face. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

Thank you that it's living and active. Thank you that it cuts through bone and marrow.

Thank you that you love us enough to give us your word so that we can know you.

God, I pray this morning that as we come off of Christmas, if there's any of

us or so many that we know and come in contact with that are experiencing some

sorrow that comes with Christmas.

Would be like the midwives in Exodus. We would be constantly pointing people

and reminding people that, hey, this world is evil, but it is passing away.

There are things in this world that we wish no one would ever have to deal with,

we wish no one would ever have to face,

but God, that we have a relationship with the King of kings and the Lord of

lords that has been set on Zion's holy hill from the very beginning of time,

that all these kings and rulers and principalities and even Satan himself has

done everything he can to dethrone Jesus Christ, and he has been unsuccessful.

That he has had evil men rise up and do his bidding time and time again through

history, and yet they have never been able to accomplish anything that would

change your plan to save your people from sin and death,

that we would be proclaimers of that message to the world around us.

Not that we've got it all figured out or that our lives are great or that we

don't experience sorrow ourselves, but God, that we would be people who are

constantly telling people, hey, listen, Christ is better than these things.

Christ is better than what the world offers.

He will be with you always.

He is the answer to the sorrow of Christmas.

God, we thank you for who you are and what you've done in here I pray, amen.