Topographical - Fortresses

Okay. Anyone ever built a fort?

No.

Yeah. I'm sure it's probably the majority. I don't want anyone to feel left out. If you haven't built a fort, you know, you're still welcome. It's fine. You'll be okay.

What was your favorite fort? Anyone have a favorite fort they ever built that they want to describe? Adley?

A tiny one? Out of couch cushions? One blanket? And some pillows?

So you took two couch cushions on the sides. Blanket. As the roof. Pillows on the ground. As the fort.

Anyone else have a favorite fort? I gotta let, yeah Tony, come on.

It was 1979.

Anyone ever had some land where they had a winter where they built one and it lasted for weeks? Yeah.

I was wondering if anybody wanted to build a fort right now. Yeah. So I have this stuff that's called Make-Do.

And what you do is you take cardboard and you push a little hole through two pieces of it.

And then you take this and you screw it like a screw through and it holds those two pieces of cardboard together.

And it's got like a safe to touch little blade here that kids can use to carve things into shapes and all that jazz.

And then this actually can act like if you don't have enough finger leverage, you can put this in here and actually turn it.

It acts as a tool. And over here in our baptismal I have cut up a bunch of cardboard.

And so if any of the kids want to go over here and maybe one or two adults, if you want to be supervisors and help build a fort,

I would love to see what kind of fort we have built before the end of this service.

All right. So I'm going to put this over here and all the kids can join me over here.

So there's a ton of cardboard in the baptismal and all those Make-Do stuff.

And we'll see what they have created by the end of the service. All right.

Now, one of the best fort builders in history just so happens to be in the Bible.

Now, he was not a great person. OK, this is not what I'm saying, obviously.

He was great at building things, but he was not a great person. His name was King Herod the Great.

So who was King Herod in 40 BCE or BC before Christ?

King Herod was appointed to be the king of the Jews in Rome by the Roman Senate.

And you might be thinking, well, that sounds like a weird place for the king of the Jews to become king of the Jews in Rome.

And you'd be right, because Herod wasn't Israel's choice for king.

He was what we'd call a puppet king, a king controlled by another country.

Now, because King Herod wasn't actually from the line of David or from any royal line that had genetic Judaism in their background.

But Herod's grandfather had converted to Judaism long ago.

But on the other hand, Herod's own mother was just a princess of an Arabic tribe.

So he had a mixed religion family. He had a mixed background family.

But this gave him a uniqueness, kind of like the Apostle Paul.

The Apostle Paul was a Jew and both a Roman citizen. And so it gave him a unique perspective on that region.

And so King Herod had a unique ability to rule this area of the earth because of its religious, its social, its political,

its economic backgrounds because of how he'd been brought up with both an Hellenistic Roman teaching as well as Judaism religiously.

So Herod wasn't Israel's choice. But Rome saw the value of having someone like him at the helm of the entire region.

At the height of his rule, let's put up image number one.

At the height of his rule, this is what his kingdom looked like.

Claire, if we can put up image number one.

Oh, Robin. Oh.

Hit, hit the, you see the image on, see the little X? Hit the X and then click the first image and it should show up there.

Okay, that was X. Now hit the image. There you go.

All right.

I didn't anticipate Claire abandoning her post to build a fort.

So Herod the Great was responsible for everything that's outlined in that black line.

And Herod had a way of keeping the peace and keeping Rome from having to step in any further.

It was called violence. He was ruthless, absolutely ruthless.

Whether that meant banishing his own wife or ordering the death of another one of his wives and her family

or taking the life of his firstborn son once he had grown.

Most of us, if we're familiar with King Herod at all, are familiar with him because we're introduced to him near the end of his life.

When? At the birth of Jesus.

And what's the thing that we see him do?

Try to kill Jesus.

Actually order a massacre after the news of a newborn king and that kind of violence wasn't out of character for him at all.

For all of his power and his position, Herod was paranoid.

The older he got, the more paranoid he became.

And powerful people that are paranoid tend to do whatever they can to protect what they have.

So let's open up our Bibles to Matthew chapter 2 so we can meet Herod properly.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

And then I want to show you three of the fortresses that Herod built.

We're going to be in Matthew chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, we have Bibles out in the lobby.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

Or you can download one from any of the digital app stores.

It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Matthew is the first book in what's called the New Testament or the Second Testament.

Matthew 2. We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention.

And you can do that any number of ways. If you'd like to stand with me, you are welcome to do that.

This is Matthew chapter 2 starting in verse 1.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked,

Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?

We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him.

Let's jump to verse 7.

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.

He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child.

As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him.

Verse 12.

And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

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.

Verse 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

in his vicinity who were two years and older and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

And then verse 19.

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, Get up, take the child and his mother

and go to the land of Israel. For those who were trying to take the child's life are dead.

Let us pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the scriptures.

And I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today, I pray that it would stick,

that it would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith would become stronger,

that we would become more like your son Jesus. Amen.

Alright, you can have a seat. Thanks so much everybody.

Alright, so when we meet Herod, it's the same time that the Magi meet Herod, alright?

The Magi have come to Jerusalem looking for this new king and then Herod hears about it and invites them to this place.

The next image? Invites them to the palace in Jerusalem.

Robin, would you mind pressing the, who's in there now? Claire, do you mind, there you go.

We're playing musical chairs, it's all good.

So when they meet Him, they meet Him in this place, alright?

It's a walled palace that is in Jerusalem, but this isn't one of the places that I'm going to talk about in depth

because honestly, when you see the other places I'm going to show you, you'll see that this lacks creativity.

The first fortress I want to show you is this one, this next one, it's called Mount Masada.

That is a fortress and multiple palaces that are built on top of a mount, a mountain, a mesa,

and in the far background there, that is the Dead Sea.

To give you scale of how high up it is and how far you can see, I had to cut off the image, but it's the same on the right side.

There's a cliff over here to the right, but there's a huge chasm between this and the next closest thing.

Mount Masada actually means in Hebrew, mountain fortress.

That is very literally what that is. It is a fortress on top of a mountain.

That fortress had begun being built in the second century before Christ,

and while there are traditions that say who started building it, no one really agrees about how trustworthy those traditions are,

so it's best for us not to pontificate about who started, but we know who finished it, we know who took charge of it,

and that was Herod the Great around the year 40, the same year that he began ruling that region.

Mount Masada was claimed by King Herod.

He wasted little time expanding its usefulness.

In the year 37, so within that next three years, he had started adding irrigation,

so that water was able to be, actually would flow to that mountain and fill 12 giant cisterns that you could fit cars inside of.

A cistern is basically a giant tank that's been carved into the side of that mountain,

and they were so large that you could fit cars inside of them.

So large that years later when there was another war, families went to those,

climbed down part of the side of that wall and climbed into those cisterns so that they wouldn't be found.

Maybe you're saying how did they get the water up there?

Well it looks up, right? I actually pointed out how high it is, right?

But it's not up, up, because that's the Dead Sea over there, guys, and the Dead Sea is what?

It's the lowest point on earth, and so what they were able to do is they were able to find in the mountains

to the other regions, they were able to find springs and natural water, fresh water,

that they could actually build an aqueduct that would flow to part of that mountain

that was still using gravity to make it go downhill.

The Romans and the Jews of this era were absolutely brilliant in the way that they were actually able to use

their engineering to make these things work.

In the year 25 BC, Herod added a second palace to the summit.

If you look at that far left side of it, you see those three tiers?

That's a palace. All three tiers, all the way down to the bottom left, and then the next one and the next one,

and it's partially carved out on the inside.

You would start at the top and you would actually go down through the stone

to be able to go to other parts of this palace.

Y'all, this was 2,050 years ago.

It's absolutely amazing.

And then after that, Herod actually added storehouses on top of this mountain

that could hold enough food for 10,000 people for 10 years.

Now, they could use gravity to get water to where they wanted it to,

but imagine carrying stones up the side of that mountain,

that mountain that is a quarter of a mile tall from base to top, straight up, a quarter of a mile.

When we went to Israel a few years back, we went to Mount Masada,

and there is a path that you can walk that's about a mile, a quarter mile and a half.

It would take 40 minutes to walk.

They would not let us walk it because it was so hot they were worried

that us fragile Americans would faint halfway through.

And so we had to take the Sky Tram that's on the other side of this,

which still took like 20 minutes to Sky Tram up to the top of this mountain.

And then at the top, as if it wasn't secure enough,

at the top of this, the entire thing was surrounded by a 13-foot high wall.

This fortress was so secure that after Herod's death, the Jewish forces,

they claimed it because he was the king of the Jews.

They came in and they claimed it.

And later, Rome, it would take Rome two years with constant onslaught to win it back.

Two years.

Think about if you lived in your house right now and you said,

I can't leave this house for two years.

They had enough food, water, everything that they could survive up there with nothing else.

The second fortress I want to show you is called the Herodium.

Masada was high up, completely inaccessible,

but this compound was closer to Jerusalem, okay?

So he didn't have a spare mountain that he could build something on.

So what he did was he went the other direction.

He built a fortress and then he built the hill around it.

That is very literally a fortress, basically a castle,

that is built and then they mounted up all of the dirt around it

to make it less likely for anyone to be able to easily approach them without being caught.

It's basically an above-ground bunker with a skylight, I guess.

But it wasn't boring, you know calling it a bunker makes it sound boring,

but the Herodium had seven levels.

Seven levels, seven different stories,

and every level had amenity upon amenity on it,

every amenity that you could have wanted 2,000 years ago.

This had bathhouses, pools with mosaics and frescas,

a Roman theater inside of it had banquet halls.

Because it wasn't on a mountain miles and miles away right next to the Dead Sea,

he could have fresh food anytime that he wanted.

He could have entertainment from anyone anytime that he wanted.

Anything that he could have imagined he could have in this fortress.

In Arabic, Herodium actually means the mountain of little paradise.

It's the only place that Herod built.

He built Caesarea Maritima, he built the Masada,

he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem.

It's the only place that he built that's named after him,

because it was for him.

So much of building things back there was about politics.

I named this after someone else to honor them, to get good graces.

This was all about him.

If Herod wanted to lock himself somewhere and feel safe,

like no one and nothing could touch him, he would go to Mount Masada.

But the Herodium was the place that Herod could go if he wanted to feel safe

and opulent, like he was actually a king.

So now we've seen Mount Masada, we've seen the Herodium,

which leads me to the third fortress, which coincidentally all of us

probably have a fortress just like this.

In the passage that we read today, Herod was the first person that we know of

other than the Magi that had the chance to open their hearts to Jesus.

But Herod was used to building walls.

Herod was used to defending things that were his, that were his reign,

that were under his rule.

He was used to hiding on mountains and inside of hilled fortresses.

And I'm not sure that we are really that much different.

Don't we elevate ourselves?

Don't we make ourselves out to be better than other people?

Especially the people that we don't like or at least the people that we think

don't like us.

Don't we bury ourselves under artificial pleasures?

Under the things that we think we can mount up as a hill around us

that will protect us and make us feel safe?

Reminds me of what King David wrote.

He said, the Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.

My God is my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation,

my stronghold.

Or later the psalmist wrote, God is our refuge and strength,

an ever present help in time of trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way

and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

When our hearts are right, we know that our safest place is in the Lord.

When our hearts feel off-center, I don't think it's a question of if we corner

ourselves off in fortresses of our own design, it's more a question of what kind,

the Masada type or the Herodium type.

Do we hide away when nobody could possibly touch us?

We are so far above we can see for miles.

We know that we are above and better.

And that we know that no matter how hard someone tries,

that we have years of resources built up, that this is impenetrable.

Or are we like the Herodium where we have taken every pleasure we can possibly think of,

we have buried ourselves with them.

I will eat and I will drink and be merry for tomorrow I die.

And I don't need anyone or anything else except for what I have created for myself.

Proverbs says, above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

And so I think there is even in Christianity this sense where we look back to the writer of the Proverbs

and go well didn't the writer of the Proverbs tell me to guard my heart?

Yeah, yeah.

But Jesus taught us to love each other as he has loved us.

And this is what I know about Jesus.

That he made himself vulnerable.

That he made himself flesh and blood.

Paul actually writes that not thinking himself to be right, to be equal with God, he lowered himself to be made man.

To have a heart that was flesh and blood.

To have skin that could be hurt, to have emotions that could be moved.

And he had a heart just like that.

Guys, he was Jesus but his heart wasn't gilded with gold flake.

It was just like ours.

It could be hurt.

It could be wounded.

And to think that Jesus wasn't tempted in his humanness to either elevate himself to the top of Masada

or to bury himself inside of a herodium would be foolish.

Because he was.

He did pray on mountains.

He did go up on top of mountains to pray but he always came back down.

Until he was lifted up on a cross.

Someone might say, well, where is Jesus now?

Did he go back to heaven? Didn't he actually elevate? Didn't he ascend?

Isn't that like a fortress? And we could say, well, maybe.

But I think that if we believe the scriptures in any way that is real,

I believe that he's actually right here, that he's actually right there.

He's actually right here.

And how foolish is it for a king to choose the most vulnerable of places to be their fortress?

Think about yourself. Think about how flawed you are.

Think about how vulnerable you are.

Maybe how sensitive of a person you are.

Think about, and the idea that Jesus wants to make his home inside of that heart.

I think that there are times in our lives when we want others to comfort us,

but very literally we know that the only one that can comfort us in that moment is Jesus.

There's an artist named Lewis Capaldi.

I mentioned him to Cindy and I just talked to him about someone earlier.

And I've heard his song many, many, many, many, many times.

He's someone that has Tourette's syndrome, and so he's had to take breaks,

long breaks from touring because of what Tourette's does to his body.

And it's interesting, once he came out with that and once he made it public

and he has done interviews about it, that you listen to the words of one of his songs

and you think, wow, that takes on new meaning now.

This probably was the most popular song.

Right now you can look it up on YouTube and you can find a video of him having a moment

where his Tourette's is getting the best of him, and yet the crowd takes over and just sings for him.

The words say, now the day bleeds into nightfall, and you're not here to get me through it all.

I let my guard down and then you pulled the rug.

I was getting kind of used to being someone you loved.

I was talking to Andy before the service that I try to be a pastor that is legitimately vulnerable,

that I'm not just putting on an act to try to make you think that I am this or that you are that.

The truth is that there are times I don't want to be vulnerable because it hurts.

Because, I was telling Andy, Scott Becker and his family, they've moved to California for great reasons,

but I'm going to miss them for a long time.

And it makes me go, okay, who do I talk to about this now?

And the temptation for pastors is to climb up Mount Masada or to bury ourselves in Herodium.

And to never let our hearts be that vulnerable.

What I know of Jesus is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,

and that the Word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood.

So my encouragement for us today is that if you are finding yourself in a fortress right now,

I want to encourage you to find yourself a way out.

Find yourself a way out.

Because there are friends and people that want to stand with you.

And maybe the enemies that we are guarding ourselves from aren't imminently attacking.

Maybe there's less to protect ourselves from than we think.

Maybe there is more life and joy and enjoyment by letting ourselves be just a little bit more vulnerable

than what we have been led to believe by the fortress builders of this world. Amen?

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for the example of your Son Jesus, the vulnerability that He had.

I pray that your spirit, your spirit of comfort,

comfort our hearts, would help us learn how to climb down or climb up and out

of the fortresses that we have built for ourselves.

Put us in line and in the way of the people that will stand with us.

And when we lose friendship or relationship or things change,

I pray that you help us see the next relationship that you have for us.

As we always look to you as our salvation, our refuge, our rock. Amen. Amen?