Christmas: Hope in the Midst of Evil & Suffering (Matthew 2:13-18)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now when the wise men 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.

And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and 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.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.

A voice was heard in Rama, weeping and loud lamentation.

Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

A voice was heard in Rama, weeping and loud lamentation.

Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.

So let's pray.

Gracious God, you are not a God who is content to be indifferent or distanced or disinterested in our suffering.

Lord Jesus, you are God who is with us, who enters into our suffering, and who redeems our suffering, that we may have the hope of your everlasting kingdom.

And so, Lord, we pray you would direct our hearts towards the cross, towards the resurrection, and give us hope.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Among my favorite movies for Christmas time is The Charlie Brown Christmas.

And even more than the movie, I love the soundtrack.

Because I will listen to that on repeat.

There's nothing like the Vince Garaldi trio if you know what I'm talking about.

The Charlie Brown Christmas special opens up with a children's choir singing, Christmas time is here.

Happiness and cheer.

Fun for all the children call.

Their favorite time of year.

Thank you for helping me out there.

Happiness and cheer.

That's what we associate most with Christmas time, isn't it?

And we should.

Not only is this a time where we gather with loved ones and celebrate the good things in life together, this is a time where we remember God has given us the greatest gift of all, which is Himself in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus.

This is a time for happiness and cheer.

It is a time for celebration.

And yet, even in our most celebratory moments, there remains a shadow and a veil, isn't there?

Over even our happiest moments, we know that we are still subjects to evil and suffering in the world.

We celebrate Christmas here, and yet elsewhere in the world, we know that there is the reality of warfare and violence and displacement and hunger and famine and subjugation.

We know that Christmas, for all of its cheer and the announcement of good news, has yet to be fully realized.

And so we might wonder: is there any hope for those of us who, though we celebrate, remain celebrants only in a shadow?

Is there hope for us?

The Holy Innocence is a day in the church calendar, December 28th, that is set aside to commemorate those infants who are put to death at the hands of Herod.

Even while we celebrate this amazing Christmas season and the incarnation of our Lord, we remember that there are those whose refusal to receive the gift of Jesus results in violence and ruthlessness and cruelty.

Even in the midst of this joyful Christmas season, the author of this gospel, Matthew, invites us to consider that even in the midst of evil and suffering, God is still at work.

Perhaps even especially so.

In the midst of evil and suffering, God is still at work.

And what a hopeful, cheerful thought that is for those of us who celebrate Christmas time even under this veil of suffering.

This is not denial, this is not sentimentalism, but is hope founded upon God's pattern and purposes lived out in history and fully realized in our Lord Jesus.

And so if we know the reality of suffering for ourselves, if we know the reality of injustice in our own lives, and we know that no matter how much we celebrate, that we'll still remain, we can find hope today by looking not into ourselves, not inward, not around, but to the cross.

So let's look there this morning.

Open up your Bibles, if you will, to Matthew chapter 2, verse 13.

Matthew 2:13

That's page 758 in your pew Bibles.

And I'm going to keep calling them Pew Bibles.

And let's discover hope in the midst of evil and suffering where God is still at work.

Here's what I'd like to do in our time right now.

I'd like for us to see what Matthew sees in these events that transpire.

I'd like us to see the significance that Matthew sees.

And then having seen the significance of these events, that God is at work even in the midst of evil and suffering, I want us then to draw out a few implications, what this could mean for us.

Okay, let's see what Matthew sees first and foremost.

Kind of two halves to this passage here.

The first thing Matthew sees, the way that Matthew sees God at work in the midst of evil and suffering is this: God rescues the devastated.

Okay, verse 13.

When they, the wise men, had departed, we can pause right there and remember that the wise men have come to visit Herod, inquiring after the Savior who's been born.

They've gone and visited the Lord Jesus, and now they are departing.

When the wise men had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, right?

Mary's betrothed, in a dream, and said to Joseph, Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and there remain until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.

Angels of the Lord appear throughout Matthew's gospel, and indeed throughout all of Scriptures.

Often I think we can be very skeptical about the reality of angels, really just based off of, say, cultural images that we've inherited through Bugs Bunny, you know?

Long white robes.

I know I kind of look like that right now.

But, you know, strumming the harp and looking all tranquil, etc., etc.

In a biblical worldview, angels are spiritual intelligences, much like we are this spiritual material hybrid we call a human being.

Angels are spiritual intelligences who do God's will in God's way and therefore present themselves often to God's people when God so wills.

And here an angel presents himself to Joseph in a dream, which is often a common way that God communicates his will with a warning.

He warns Joseph, it's time to leave Bethlehem.

Because Herod, the kind of local ruler, the self-proclaimed king of the Jews, that's what Herod called himself, is coming after the child.

Because he's threatened by this child.

And so Joseph gathers this infant, he gathers Mary, and he rose and he took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt, and there remained until the death of Herod.

Egypt was 90 kilometers or south of Bethlehem.

That would have been an arduous journey.

But Joseph trusts the Lord, and he says yes to what it is that God is asking him when he asks him to do it.

And in so doing, he preserves this child's life.

Now, as important as all this is, Matthew recognizes a deeper spiritual, biblical significance to everything that's taken place.

Look at verse 15 with me.

Matthew inserts himself as a narrator and says, this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, the prophet Hosea.

Out of Egypt I called my son.

So at this moment, Matthew wants us to, wants to help us understand the significance of these events by looking through the lens of Scripture.

And the scripture that Matthew connects here is Hosea chapter 11, verse 1, where Hosea the prophet is reflecting on the history of God's people who have been liberated from oppression and slavery in Egypt.

Hosea 11:1

We remember the story from Sunday school, perhaps.

If you don't uh recall that, go home and watch Prince of Egypt.

You'll be doing yourself a big favor.

That's probably my favorite Bible movie.

So if we remember the history here, Joseph, right?

Jacob's son, Jacob renamed Israel's son, leads his family to Egypt to sojourn there during a famine.

But generations go by, and the new powers that be, the new Pharaoh, don't remember Joseph and all the things that he did for Egypt.

They don't have any regard for Israel's family.

And so therefore they subjugate this people, threatened.

The Pharaoh is threatened by the multiplication of this family.

Hosea is reflecting on all of these events.

He calls Israel God's son in this sense.

God cares for Israel as a father would for his own child.

And therefore, out of Egypt, out of oppression, out of bondage, out of darkness, God has called his son Israel.

Now, Matthew knows very much the biblical pattern of God's deliverance.

God works in the midst of suffering to rescue the devastated.

That's exactly what he did in the book of Exodus.

And now Matthew sees a new Exodus playing itself out.

As Israel was led to Egypt to sojourn, so now Jesus, the renewed, reconstituted, personalized Israel, is being called into Egypt so that he could be called out, so that he can come out of Egypt, and so that he can reign and rule as God's chosen Messiah.

Here's how one commentator puts it.

Just as God brought the nation of Israel out of Egypt to inaugurate his original covenant with them, so again God is bringing the Messiah who fulfills the hopes of Israel out of Egypt as he is about to inaugurate his new covenant.

God is at work rescuing the devastated.

This is the pattern that Matthew spies right here in this holy family's flight out of Bethlehem and into Egypt.

God rescues the devastated.

God is still at work.

But even more than rescuing the devastated, Matthew sees another pattern playing itself out.

God rescues the devastated, yes, God even raises the dead.

Let's look at verses 16 and what follows.

Then Herod, when he had saw 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 or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Herod, it's safe to say, is a violent and ruthless dictator.

What we know from ancient historians like Josephus is Herod was one to certainly assassinate his political opponents.

Herod was one who assassinated his own wife.

He assassinated three of his sons because he saw a threat to his power, to his throne.

In fact, the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus is attributed as saying it's better to be Herod's hog than his son, on the basis of how he treats those closest to him who may be threats to him.

So the idea that he would put to death male children under two years old in a whole region is not out of keeping with what we know of his character.

Now, some ancient and medieval scholars suggested that perhaps hundreds or thousands of children were put to death.

Modern scholars, on the basis of the relative size of Bethlehem and its surrounding area, suggests that probably no more than twelve, maybe twenty children would have been put to death at the time.

But the honest fact is, does the number really matter?

Because the death of one innocent child at the hands of a tyrant is one too many.

And even in the midst of this desperate, devastating, awful situation, Matthew nevertheless spies a pattern of God at work.

Even in the darkness, God's light is shining through.

It might be hard to spot, but let's see if we can discover it together.

Verse 17.

Then, Matthew says, was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.

A voice was heard in Rama, weeping in loud lamentation.

Rachel weeping for her children.

She refused to be comforted because they are no more.

Once again, just like Matthew saw in Hosea chapter 11, verse 1, a pattern and a purpose of God at work in the midst of evil and suffering.

Hosea 11:1

So now he sees in the prophet Jeremiah that same pattern and purpose of God at work in the midst of evil and suffering.

God is still at work rescuing the devastated, yes, but even raising the dead.

Rachel is Jacob's wife, Israel's wife in the Old Testament.

Here she's personified as the mother's, the personification of all the mothers of the people of Judah and Israel as the people are being carried out of the promised land that they were once delivered into and into exile by invading foreigners.

She weeps for her children, her descendants, who go off away from the land that God had promised and into exile.

Exile was in the consciousness in the people of Israel at the time, something like a spiritual death.

Because all of the life and flourishing that God had promised in his promised land is being taken away from the people, as the people are being taken out of the promised land.

She weeps for her children because it's as if they are no more.

They are exiled.

And this place, Rama, suggests it was a gathering place for those who are going off into exile.

It was also relatively near to Rachel's tomb.

The idea is she is weeping for those who are apart from the grace of God in a state of spiritual exile and death.

But again, just as we saw God rescuing the, or Matthew spies God rescuing the devastated, so too, Matthew understands God can even raise the dead.

There is hope here.

Because did you notice, by the way, in Jeremiah chapter 31, which we read as our Old Testament lesson, it doesn't stop at verse 15, but it continues on.

Jeremiah 31 · chapter mention

Verses 16 and 17, thus says the Lord, keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears.

For there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children should come back from their own country.

If exile is a sort of spiritual death, the prophet wants to say, There is yet hope, because God is in the business of raising the dead, and the people will return, and the children will have a future.

As Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31, 15, he assumes that we, the readers, know exactly what follows.

And that is a promise of restoration to those who experience evil and suffering.

Here's what one commentator writes Despite the tears, God says, the exiles will return.

And now Matthew likewise suggests, despite the tears of the Bethlehem mothers, there is hope because Messiah has escaped Herod and will ultimately reign.

God is still at work.

Even in the midst of devastation, even in the midst of spiritual death, God rescues and he raises.

He has not abandoned his people, but in Christ, he is renewing, restoring, rescuing.

There is hope for those of us who experience evil and suffering.

So what are we supposed to do?

What are we supposed to do in the midst of our evil, in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of this world where yes, we celebrate the hope of Christmas, but we recognize all the way that earth lags behind heaven?

Let me suggest just a few implications from this passage for us to consider today.

First and foremost, the thing that we can do is we as Christians can take up our calling to uphold the sanctity of all human life.

Herod treats human life as if it's disposable, right?

Those infants who could be a threat to his throne if they turn out to be the Messiah, well, they need to be done away with.

And perhaps Herod has any number of rationalizations for doing so.

That's a threat to the stability of the region I govern.

People are going to be better off if we maintain peace and order.

Who knows what's going through Herod's head?

But he sees people as means, not ends.

He refuses to attribute the inherent value that we attribute, are called to attribute to human life.

Because the most basic and fundamental affirmation that the Bible makes about human life is found right at the beginning of the scriptures, and it's this.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

In the creation account, what's the very first thing the Bible wants to make known about the human person?

It's that we are created in God's image.

We reflect his character.

We are meant to reflect his goodwill and his purposes and his beauty and his truth to one another, to all of creation, and ultimately reflect it back to him, to his glory.

Human beings, therefore, have an inherent value and dignity that is indelible.

It is not attributed to them on the basis of their capability or intelligence or social standing or any other measure we might have.

Human beings are inherently valuable, dignified, celebrated, precisely because human life reflects the very character and being of God.

This is the theology at the heart of human rights, isn't it?

I've never met someone who's argued against human rights.

I've never met someone who's been indifferent to human rights.

I'd be surprised if you have.

We all affirm the importance of human rights, and yet, apart from this basic biblical affirmation, we can struggle to find proper grounds for them.

We can try a utilitarian approach.

A utilitarian approach is the maximum good for the maximum amount of people, and we might say, well, human rights uh secures that, right?

It creates the sort of framework for the most good for the most people, and yet we fall short of a moral imperative against allowing the Suffering of one for the benefit of many.

And we can take a contractarian approach, and we can say, well, if I respect your human rights, then I'm putting you in a position where you're better, like we're more likely to respect mine as a human being, and yet the contractarian approach can't give us a moral imperative for attributing rights to all people.

Because taking the route of a social contract while a caste system is still a social contract of sorts.

Why would we attribute human rights to all people, including the lowliest of the low?

We can try all these approaches and we can affirm certain things about them, but the simple, basic biblical affirmation that human beings are created in God's image, is the basis for the dignity and value of all human life.

And is precisely why we grieve the death of these innocents, because they are created in God's image and loved by Him and valuable and dignified.

And so whether it is the unborn or the elderly, whether citizen or immigrant, politics doesn't matter.

Christians are here to affirm the basic value and dignity of all human life and to bear witness to the world.

One of my favorite uh books that I read in the last couple years, Rachel just read it.

It's called The Canticle for Leibowitz.

And it's an imagined future after a nuclear apocalypse where the world is rebuilding itself and the church comes alongside the civil government to try and help civilization rebuild itself, resuscitate itself.

At a certain point, there's something of a new scientific renaissance happening where old scientific knowledge that was lost in the nuclear holocaust is now being recovered.

And this one kind of young, hotshot Leonardo da Vinci type character named Thawn Tadio, he is uh he wants to do uh scientific work that's going to yada yada yada.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Let's let me let me just cut to the chase.

He has this conversation with a senior priest, uh a monseigneur, and he looks with contempt at an ordinary peasant crossing the street through the window.

And he looks at this peasant and he says to this priest, he says, Look, can you bring yourself to believe that this brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon?

Can you believe that there were such men?

Look at him.

No, but it's too dark now.

You can't see the syphilis breaking out on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away.

But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with, says this scholar, illiterate, superstitious, murderous.

Look at him.

And tell me if you see the progeny of once mighty civilization.

What do you see?

He says to the priest.

The image of Christ.

Grated the Monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger.

What do you expect me to see?

Now we can get into the theological particulars of the image of Christ and image of God, but the same basic premise is the same.

When we Christians look at another human being, what are we to see?

We are to see the image of God.

And therefore, we uphold that individual's dignity and value, even if no one else does.

We uphold the sanctity of life.

And here's the second thing that we can do.

Yeah, we got time.

We can bring the cross to bear on our suffering.

The cross is the great reversal of power, isn't it?

And I'm convinced we cannot understand this passage unless we look at it through the lens of the cross.

One of my favorite historians is named Tom Holland, not the Spider-Man guy, that's a different Tom Holland.

But he had an experience where he was filming a documentary in Iraq as ISIS was retreating, and he went to a town that had been captured by ISIS, was in ISIS territory up until maybe a few days earlier.

And he went to this town, and he says the first thing that hid him was the smell.

And as he made his way through the corridors, he saw human beings left on crosses crucified.

It was a sign and symbol that this organization, this whatever you want to call it, had the power to take life as they pleased.

It was a nod, of course, to Roman crucifixion, the most horrible and unspeakable way to die.

And Tom Holland was struck at the sheer horror and blasphemy of it.

Because for him, growing up in the West, the cross was always the symbol of the powerless triumphing over those with power, right?

The weak overcoming the strong.

But here the cross was exactly the opposite.

The cross was, in the minds of those retreating, precisely what it was for the Romans.

And so Tom Holland in another interview is reflecting on the significance of the cross.

He says the cross today is probably the most internationally recognizable cultural symbol that humanity has ever devised.

The symbolism of it has been turned on its head.

What the cross symbolized for Rome was the power of the greatest empire on the face of the earth to torture to death anyone who opposed its rule.

So the idea that this symbol of all symbols should in a sense have been upended, that from degradation, the notion of triumph, from humiliation, glory, from death, life, and more than that, the idea that someone who suffers the death of a slave emerges to become the creator of all heaven and earth, it gives dignity to people who previously would not have been afforded dignity by anyone.

It embeds, he says, at the culture of the West, or the heart of the West, the idea that the lowest of the low might, in a sense, be the highest.

In the context of Roman culture, it's hard to emphasize just how radical a concept that is.

He says, and the measure of how fast that explosion was, is that was that, pardon me, w, by now, by and large, we tend to take for granted that the lowest do have a dignity.

Such is the power of the cross.

The Apostle Paul writes in Colossians chapter 2, you church, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

And not only that, Paul says, but this God disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Christ.

The cross, which was once the great symbol of the powerful's triumph over the powerless, becomes the symbol of the powerless triumphing over those with power, precisely through Christ.

Christ hangs on the cross and says to hell, do your worst.

And he says to human tyrants, take your best shot, and that's exactly what happens.

And by way of the resurrection, Christ overcomes the worst of the worst to offer us new life.

Now, the holy innocents, I don't think, were crucified, but that doesn't really matter, does it?

They were put to just as much an unjust death as Christ was at the hands of a brutal tyrant.

The Holy Innocence's death in Matthew chapter 2 means that Christ with his family may live, but let's remember that Christ lived to die.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

And Christ's death means these infants, along with all of us, may live forever through him who is the resurrection and the life.

Evil is answered, and it's answered through the cross.

Therefore, in our evil and suffering, we must look at it through the cross and recognize that God has not abandoned us, but He is at work through the cross.

Happiness and cheer?

Yes.

Yes, but not without cross.

Do you see?

God has not abandoned us to our suffering.

Even in our midst of our evil and suffering, God is still at work.

He is at work rescuing the devastated and raising the dead.

Such is the power of our Lord Jesus.

So though Rachel weeps for her children who are no more in Matthew chapter 2, yet we look forward to that day when the power of the cross is fully realized, and the earth is restored and redeemed and renewed, and in his everlasting kingdom we celebrate because death and sadness is no more, and Christ the crucified reigns forever.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.