No one wants to miss the magic of Christmas. And no one wants to have anything less than a fantastic Christmas holiday experience. Christmas is this wonderful time of year, and we want to spread that unmitigated joy to everyone! But there are just some Christmases that we don’t have the joy that we want. The truth is some Christmases, we just don’t feel like celebrating Christmas.
Find Matthew 2 with me and look up here when you find it.
Law Enforcement officers from all over DFW gathered to honor slain police officer Richard Lee Houston II. He was responding to a domestic dispute in an Albertson’s parking lot when he was shot and killed. Officer Houston was a father of three and just 46 years old when he died. He was a strong believer as other officers found his Bible and devotional materials in his police car at the time of his death. I don’t think we have to imagine very hard to realize that his wife Shelly and his three children will find it hard to celebrate Christmas in a couple of weeks.
Pearl Harbor
On this past Tuesday (December 7), our nation observed the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The bombing began at 7:55 am local time in Hawaii. The enemy chose the first Sunday morning after a military pay-day to launch their surprise attack. Hours later, the last bomb was finally dropped, and 2,403 lives were lost. In just a few hours, America would declare war on the Axis powers of Japan, Italy, and Germany. If you are like me, we often forget just how close the bombing of Pearl Harbor was to Christmas. After all, coffins and Christmas carols don’t go together. A number of families were burying their dead sailors on Christmas 1941. And a number of other families were saying goodbye to their sons and daughters who were off to fight a war. Millie Fricke of Chicago reflected back on that Christmas when she said, “I noticed how much stronger people felt about their faith.” Yet, President Roosevelt determined that there would not only be a Christmas Tree lighting but there would also be a Christmas Eve ceremony.
In the moments to come, I want to speak to you about celebrating Christmas even when we don’t feel like Christmas.
Today’s Scripture
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, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 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.”
16 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. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “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.”
19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20 saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” 21 And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. 23 And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:13-23).
Our story happens a long time after the first Christmas. Jesus may very well be two years old when our story takes place. The wise men have come and gone from seeing the Christ child. As the wise men leave, Joseph and Mary consider their next move(s). Joseph and Mary will probably finance their trip to Egypt with “gold and frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11). Until Joseph could work again, they could sell or barter the expensive elements to care for their family.
Now, Bethlehem was not the family’s home, and they were likely staying with family there for all this time. Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth, and they are thinking seriously about heading back home. Mary would have wanted to be near her mother. Joseph would have wanted to show off his Son to his family and friends. Instead, the holy family is redirected.
How do we celebrate Christmas even when we don’t feel like celebrating? After all, the perfect Christmas does not contain the words slaughter and brutality. Most all the stories about the birth of Jesus we see in Luke and Matthew are filled with glad tidings of great joy, right?
This is a dark episode. God includes this story to remind us: Christmas doesn’t mean the end of all your problems. Christmas doesn’t immediately mean the end of all darkness. But Christmas does mean there is a light in the darkness. And the light will eventually overtake the darkness.
1. Angels and Christmas
“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, to destroy him’” (Matthew 2:13).
Angels are all over the Christmas story. Angels literally hover over the Christmas story. It’s important you know a little about angels. You’ll spend more time with angels (of one kind or another) than you will with your parents, your siblings, or even your children. Let me say that again: You’ll spend more time with angels (of one kind or another) than you will with your parents, your siblings, or even your children. In your second life, you’ll be surrounded by angels or fallen angels, depending on where you spend eternity. So it’s important you know a little about the angels!
1.1 What’s an Angel?
Angels are thought by many to be bite-size, cute little pets you can place in a woman’s purse. It’s thought they offer us nice feelings of warmth like when you receive a delivery of flowers. Angels are supernatural agents that have great power and are entrusted with important assignments. Angels protect, comfort, and guide people. Angels make war, make announcements, and teach. But the main job of the angels is to worship God Almighty. Now, the name angel means “messenger.” Throughout the Bible, you’ll see angels carrying God’s message to people.
1.2 Jesus and Angels
Angels have a rich history not just in the Christmas story but in Jesus’ entire life. Jesus was surrounded by angels in Heaven before He was born in Bethlehem (John 1:1-2). An angel shows up the night before Jesus is crucified to strengthen him in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:43). And it was an angel that met the women at the empty tomb to explain to them that Jesus had risen (Matthew 28:5). And it will be an angel’s voice to alert all the earth for Christ’s Second Coming one day soon (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
1.3 Angels in the Christmas Story
Angels are synonymous with Christmas. We use angels as ornaments on our Christmas trees and angel cookies. As we turn to the Christmas story, angels play more than a cameo appearance. Almost everywhere you turn in the Christmas story, you see an angel! An angel tells Mary she’s pregnant with the long-awaited Messiah (Luke 1:28-35). An angel visits Joseph and says in effect, “Marry her (Mary). She didn’t cheat on you, Joseph. She is pregnant through the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20-23). The angel tells Mary to name her child Jesus because He will save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). And the angels came to the shepherds to tell them the good news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:14). And more than a year after Jesus’ birth, angels appear once again. This time, the angel warns Joseph. God dispatched an angel in order to protect the Child.
1.4 The Angel’s Message
“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, to destroy him’” (Matthew 2:13). The angel warns Joseph in effect, “Herod is about to search for the child to murder the child. You need to get out of here. You need to flee to Egypt.”
The truth is that Christmas brings a sword as it brings peace. Yes, Jesus solves so many of our problems. But Jesus can also bring strife into our lives. “You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin… Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:5, 8).
Surely, if the Son of God has come to destroy the works of the devil, you’d expect the devil to put up a fight? You don’t make war on Satan and expect everything to be smooth as “hot knife through butter.” No, the battle of Jesus’ life was just about to begin, and already there were signs of the conflict to come. In one aspect, Christmas is about war. Christmas is a declaration of war from the throne room of heaven. It is God’s pronouncement of war on Satan Himself. We often think of Christmas in terms of peace. Yet, Christmas is war. Listen to Jesus in His Own words: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). And Paul writes: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (Romans 16:20). The angel warned Joseph of the fight to come.
1.5 The Angel vs. Herod
Does it surprise anyone that an angel who was more powerful than Herod and his armies would tell Joseph to flee? God could have protected His Son in many other ways and in many other places (even in Bethlehem or Jerusalem) right under Herod’s very nose. He could have blinded Herod’s soldiers where they couldn’t have found His Son. He could have destroyed Herod with this same angel that told Joseph to flee.
Why did God choose to do it this way? To fulfill the words spoken by the prophets years before, as verse 15 says, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2:15b). There was a huge expatriate Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. We know that there were over one million Jewish people there already. Anybody who had political problems who was Jewish would go there. So the child and His parent fled to Egypt because of the angel’s words. The angels teach us that God will do anything to protect His Son.
1. Angels and Christmas
2. Herod and the Child
“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” (Matthew 2:16).
When Herod died later in verse 19, everyone was relieved. And once you know a little more about Herod, it’s easy to see why. We are introduced to Herod the Great earlier in Matthew 2 when the Magi alert him that there is a rival king born in Bethlehem. Now, six different members of Herod’s family show up in the New Testament, so I cannot blame you for not keeping precise track of all of them. Herod the Great is like the Rose Bowl; he’s the “granddaddy of them all.” Herod the Great is the only Herod who is significant in the birth of Christ. And years later, both John the Baptist and the adult Jesus will have to deal with members of Herod’s family.
2.1 Herod the Great
Herod the Great began his career as a military man but pushed his way to the top in politics. Rome appointed him the king of Judea in about 40 BC. It took him about three years to get control. He was reigning when Jesus was born. Nearly everything Herod did was to move up, to increase his power. Get this: he had killed his wife because of a perceived threat as well as his three sons over time. He would extort, blackmail, kidnap, torture, and execute people for more power.
2.2 Herod’s Brutality
Herod has murder on his mind. He will do everything in his power to kill the baby born King of the Jews. One time in a fit of rage, he ordered three hundred court nobles killed. One time because he really didn’t trust her, he had his wife executed. Then he had her mother executed. When Herod came into power, the first thing he did was slaughter everybody in the former dynasty. The older dynasty of the kings of Judea was called the Hasmonean dynasty, and he was starting his own dynasty. He slaughtered everybody to make sure none of them would give him any trouble. At one point in his life, he executed half the Sanhedrin, which is the seventy priests and elders who were, in a sense, the religious supreme court of Israel because they were giving him trouble. Herod issued a hideous brutal command to be performed upon his death. He commanded that some recently imprisoned Jewish elders be executed when Herod died. That way, people would be mourning during his death. Thankfully they failed to obey the dying dictator’s wishes.
2.3 Killing Infants
So verse 16 is in perfect harmony with what we know of Herod: “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” (Matthew 2:16). When Herod decides the wise men aren’t coming back, he says, “It’s been so many months, so I know I can wipe out the Messiah as long as I kill all the children under the age of two in Bethlehem.” Herod’s brutal order would have probably executed around a couple of dozen babies, given the small population of Bethlehem. Herod, realizing he has been tricked, slaughters all children under the age of two in Bethlehem. Yet, for those mothers and fathers, his inhuman directive would have added incredible grief in those early years after the first Christmas. Still, it was only one more “train car” of grief and neurotic madness to a long train of genocidal actions by the regional ruler of Israel of that time.
2.4 Light Despite Darkness
What do we make of all this? Christ threatens the powers of this ungodly world. Christmas doesn’t mean the end of their problems, and it won’t mean the end of all your problems. It didn’t mean the end of all problems for those young families in Bethlehem. Christmas doesn’t mean the immediate end of all your problems. Christmas doesn’t immediately mean the end of darkness. But Christmas does mean there is a light in the darkness, and the light will eventually overtake the darkness.
That’s extremely important for us to understand, so I’ll repeat myself. Again, Christmas doesn’t mean the end of all your problems. Christmas doesn’t immediately mean the end of darkness. But Christmas does means there is a light in the darkness. And the light will eventually overtake the darkness.
2.5 Simeon’s Message
A year or more before our story today, an old man makes a prediction. Joseph, Mary, and the child were in the Temple when a man named Simeon had a message for Mary – a painful message for Mary. Jesus was only days old as she held Him in her arms. She entered the great Temple in Jerusalem. She and Joseph had traveled six miles one way from Bethlehem to purify their Son as Moses had commanded them (Luke 2:22). Simeon awaited them there. He had a painful message. As the parents made their way inside the Temple Complex, an old man appeared in front of them. The old man looked to her and gently asked, “May I see your son?” Mary smiled and nodded. The old man moved near and looked in awe at the child. Barely audible, he muttered, “The salvation of Israel. The glory of Israel.” A few minutes later, the old man would hand the child back to His mother with these words: “And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, ‘Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed’” (Luke 2:34-35). We cannot but remember where this journey takes Mary standing before her Son at the cross.
The angels teach us that God will do anything to protect His Son. Herod teaches us that Jesus doesn’t mean the end of all your problems. Jesus doesn’t immediately mean the end of all darkness and all evil. But Jesus does mean there is a light coming at the end of darkness. And the light will eventually overtake the darkness.
1. Angels and Christmas
2. Herod and the Child
3. Joseph and the Journey
“And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod… And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel” (Matthew 2:14-15, 21).
We get our English word, “fugitive,” from the Greek word for “flee.” Jesus and His family are refugees. Now Joseph is being asked to take a mother and a little baby seventy-five miles (which was the distance from Bethlehem to Egypt) and then another 100 miles into Egypt to get to a place of safety in that country. They move from Asia to Africa. Traveling with a baby made the trip not only slower but also more dangerous. We really don’t know much of anything from Jesus’ time in Egypt.
3.1 Egyptian Speculation
This hasn’t prevented people from speculating down through the centuries. Some people said that the journey of the family to Egypt was made easier by many miracles worked in their favor: they were protected from dragons, reverenced by lions and leopards who wagged their tails in homage, marvelously fed by palm trees that bent down before them. And today, you can visit places in Egypt that claim to know exactly where Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed while they were there. And not to be outdone, two robbers who supposedly attempted to rob Joseph and Mary, but when the one thief saw Mary’s tears, he repented. And supposedly, these were the same two robbers who were to be crucified with Jesus on Calvary, and the one who repented was the Good Thief!
3.2 Zechariah and Joseph
“But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20 saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’ 21 And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel” (Matthew 2:19-21).
Joseph HAD TO BE used to the angel’s instructions by this time! Joseph obeys the angels just as he did every step along the journey. Compare Joseph to another prominent man in the Christmas story, Zechariah (Luke 1:5-25). Zechariah is a priest, and an angel visits him while he’s in the Holy of Holies. And the angel says in effect, “I’ve got good news, Zechariah. Your wife is finally pregnant. You’re going to have a baby! And you’re son is going to be a game-changer for God!” And Zechariah asks the angel, “How can I be sure of this?” And the angel says to Zechariah, “I am Gabriel, and I stand in the presence of God Almighty. Here’s how you can be sure your wife will have a baby. You’re going to be mute until the baby comes.”
Now, Zechariah is the exact opposite of Joseph. Joseph immediately believes the angel’s words. Zechariah is standing in the very Holy of Holies when the angel visits Him. The Holy of Holies is God’s chosen place in all the earth to make His presence known. Imagine if God gave you a cell phone to call Him. The Holy of Holies is the place with the best reception. And Zechariah says, “How will I know?” Not Joseph. Joseph seemingly didn’t blink an eye. He immediately obeys the angel.
Are you more like Zechariah or Joseph?
3.3 Imagine Joseph’s Life
Pause and imagine Joseph explaining everything to his parents for a moment. “Yes, mom, as I told you earlier. Mary is a good young lady, and we didn’t do anything. She is “with child” because of the Holy Spirit, and I didn’t lay a hand on her. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise you it’s true.” And perhaps a couple of years later, another phone call with Joseph’s parents might have gone like this, “I know this whole thing is difficult for you to believe, but an angel showed up again last night. I am to take Mary and the child to Egypt. No, we cannot come home to see you guys just yet. And yes, another angel told me to do this. You have to believe me!”
Stop and consider just how much Joseph and Mary sacrificed to make Christmas happen. But that’s what you do when God asks you. He says, “Jump,” and you say, “How high?”
Again, are you more like Zechariah or Joseph?
3.4 Return to Nazareth
“But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. 23 And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:22-23).
And that’s where Christ will remain until He’s an adult—spending His days with His parents and His brothers and sisters in time. Notice every step of Jesus’ journey is a fulfillment of the predictions of the Old Testament.
Back to Joseph. Joseph likely dies before Jesus is an adult. We will not hear from him again as we read the gospels. The angels teach us that God will do anything to protect His Son. Herod teaches us that Jesus doesn’t mean the end of all your problems. But Jesus does mean there is a light coming at the end of darkness.
And what does Joseph teach us? Joseph teaches us that you don’t need to know everything about everything to obey God. Just obey the last instructions God has told you.
