Fools, Mad Men and Refugees
(Matthew 2:1-18)
Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.’ When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him (Matt. 2:2,3).
The birth of a king was inspiring to the Magi, men from a foreign culture, and breakthrough revelation to the shepherds of Bethlehem but not to the power structure of Jerusalem. King Herod was disturbed by the news that a rival had been born. Herod was a violent, ruthless, paranoid man and whatever troubled him was troubling to all Jerusalem. All would include the complacent, compromised religious system led by the priests, the ruling council, the Pharisees.
God acting in history is never good news for the godless and mighty but how sad that the religious power brokers were wed to the political power brokers. When this happens in any generation, who will speak God’s truth to power?
Herod called together the chief priests and teachers of the law, the leading men of Jewish society, and asked them where Messiah was to be born (2:4). The king deduced that this new born King might be the long awaited One — the Messiah. In his conceit and pride, he believed that Messiah was his rival and that he could use the well honed muscle of his military to eliminate this threat.
What arrogance, to imagine that the Messiah, God’s anointed servant, prophesied in Scripture, could be destroyed by a mere man! Such is the deluding, deceiving arrogance of power.
In this, Herod reflects the arrogance and delusion of Satan, who thought he could overthrow the throne of God. This resulted only in Satan's expulsion from heaven. Evil always over reaches, drunk with grandiose dreams. Napoleon, Hitler — the list is endless. Self seduced, they were destroyed by their own impossible reach. Deception always results in loss.
In Psalm 2:2-4 we read, The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers of the earth take counsel together against the Lord and against His Messiah, saying, 'Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us.' He who sits in the heavens laughs.
The educated men reply that Bethlehem is to be the birthplace of Messiah (Matt. 2:5,6). This is clearly prophesied in Micah 5:2. The scribes and priests knew the Scriptures, knew where the Messiah was to be born but were not seeking Him. They may or may not have been able to see the star but if they did, they did not recognize it as a sign in the heavens.
They surely did have Scriptural knowledge but knowledge did not result in revelation for their lives. They knew what God had said but had no idea that God’s truth applied to their moment in history. Nor were they motivated to act on this knowledge and seek the Messiah. They knew some Scriptures revealing God’s purpose but did not know the season or time of God’s purpose.
The Magi, men from an ungodly culture, were acting with greater wisdom than the scribes and priests who worked and worshiped in the Jerusalem temple.
What can we say of those who knew facts about God but did not know God; who possessed information about the coming of the long-awaited Messiah, but did not seek Him? We can say they were complacent, yes. Self-satisfied? Yes. Conformed to their culture and spiritually compromised? Yes.
Most simply, though, we can say they were fools. For it is a fool who lives in the presence of holy light and remains blind to the One who came as a Light to the world. What light did they have? They may or may not have been able to see the star but they surely had a far greater light — the light of God’s holy word.
Herod, though, was no fool. He was merely a jealous, delusional psychopath sitting on a throne.
Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared (Matt. 2:7). He has already formed his murderous plan. By obtaining the time of Messiah's birth, he can deduce the possible age of his rival. It would be helpful to learn the child’s identity but not necessary. He only needs to kill all the children born within the parameters of this present day and the first appearance of the star.
In our generation we have seen genocide used as a political tool. The practice is ancient. Herod well understood the cold politics of mass murder, the mathematics of slaughter. This is the man who killed two sons and his wife because it was politically expedient. He ordered the slaughter of several thousand righteous men on the day of his death so that there would be weeping on that day, since no one would have wept for him. Yes, he understood the cold mathematics of murder.
Herod pretends to be a worshipper. He asks the Magi, Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him (Matt. 2:8). Paul says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). Surely he can cloak himself in the robes of a worshipping pilgrim, can veil himself in cathedral incense and candle light.
Though it is politically expedient for kings to kneel at altars, not every king who kneels and not every bishop who stands in the holy place is a worshipper of God. Sometimes, what appears to be holy may truly be profane, even demonic.
The Christmas story has always included fools and mad men.
And also refugees.
Again an angel appears to Joseph in a dream, Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him (Matt. 2:13). Does God warn everyone or only some? Was Joseph more deserving than other parents or more discerning? I don’t know the answers to those questions but I do see two truths here:
1. Jesus escaped death in this instance, and did on other occasions. The reason is because He had a divine appointment with death. Before His birth, the angel said to Joseph, You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). He would provide humanity with salvation from sin by dying in the place of sinful humanity, as the holy sacrifice.
Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). He always knew that He would die an atoning death for a lost world. No one took His life from Him, He gave it, but only in God’s time. Jesus escaped death as a child so He could give His life on the cross at God’s appointed time. Jesus said, For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative (John 10:17,18).
2. Mary escaped heart breaking grief here, but not forever. It had already been prophesied to her, A sword will pierce even your own soul (Luke 2:35), not a literal sword but the sharp pangs of grief. And so it was, thirty-three years later, when she saw her Son crucified.
Notice also four truths about Joseph:
1. He obeyed without any delay, So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt (Matt. 2:14). While it was still night — Joseph heard from God and immediately obeyed. He fled with the child and his mother.
2. Notice that Joseph did not question the command or direction of God. After all the prophecies and testimonies of angels, Magi and shepherds, wouldn’t it be tempting to ask, “Can’t God protect us where we are? If God is God, and this Child is who we believe He is, why should we flee?” But Joseph did not question the word of God. He obeyed.
3. Joseph did not pause to meditate on the command: “Hmmm, let me think about this, maybe there’s a deeper truth here.” It is sometimes easier, more convenient, more comfortable, to pause and meditate on truth than to act on it. Yes, it is good to meditate on the word of God and we do need times for prayerful reflection but the angel spoke with an urgency — Get up! — indicating the necessity of quick, decisive action. There’s a time to meditate on truth and a time to act and if we miss the time for action, it can cost us terribly. Joseph did not pause. He obeyed immediately.
4. He did not rationalize: “Did God mean what he said, that His Son and the mother of his Son should become refugees in a country not our own? That makes no rational sense.”
The truth is, obeying God is not always reasonable. God is wise but His wisdom does not always make sense to our finite minds, as the Lord said through Isaiah, For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts (Isa. 55:8,9).
The Apostle Paul reminds us, Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! (Rom. 11:33); and, The foolishness of God is wiser than men (I Cor. 1:25).
Knowing this, they we may not always understand what God is saying or doing in our lies, David the Psalmist said, O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me (Ps. 131:1).
It’s easy to evade truth by rationalizing it, to persuade ourselves that it’s just not reasonable or it applies to someone else but not to us. This is especially tempting when our response to truth will require that we step out of our comfort zone, leave our familiar surroundings and go where we’ve never gone before mentally or spiritually, culturally, racially or even geographically.
Joseph did not evade unreasonable truth by rationalizing it. He obeyed and went where he had never been before.
They journeyed to Egypt. This was no small journey. Though there were large communities of Jewish people in Egypt, they were aliens in a foreign land. It’s not likely that Joseph or Mary had family there. In a time and culture where the roots of family, kin and clan were tightly woven, it was no small act of courage to leave everything and everyone.
The Son of God, through whom and by whom all things were created, was a refugee in the world He created and came to redeem. The refugee family of God fled to Egypt and lived there until the death of Herod (Matt. 2:15).
As they wee fleeing Bethlehem, Herod, psychotic, delusional, enraged mass murderer that he was, sent his executioners and killed all the male children in Bethlehem, from two years old and younger (Matt. 2:16). His bloody mathematics was based upon the length of time that the Magi had seen the star.
That glorious star, for a band of seekers, was a golden guide post illuminating their journey toward this greatest mystery, the wondrous birth of a God-King in human flesh. But for Herod, the star was only a cold, essential factor in his deadly political equation. The light has been visible for two years — therefore every male child in Bethlehem two years and younger must die. Thus he would eliminate any potential rival to his royal throne.
A lovely light shining in a clear winter sky causes some to seek God and another to commit unspeakable savagery. There is no logic in this, no explanation. It is the stark reality of a fallen world in violent rebellion against its Creator, a world where one man’s political agenda is more precious than a baby cradled in his mother’s bosom; where some souls worship the Savior while others conceive bloody plans to destroy Him; where political, personal and career expediency is more sacred than the life of an innocent child.
Make no mistake — this was nothing other than Satan, in his unrelenting rage to destroy God and God’s purpose in this universe — acting in and through King Herod. For all his royal pomp and ceremony, Herod was nothing other than a pawn of Satan, a common, profane, filthy instrument of the devil.
In our time, more than a few despots have used genocide as a political tool to establish their power. The massacre of innocent civilians, including children, has too often been rationalized as a strategic instrument of political policy and national security. And how many politicians, who would not dream of mass murder, have excused or ignored the extermination of millions of unborn children because they believed their election to high office required this compromise?
There was no comfort for the mothers of Bethlehem nor is there for the mothers of our generation who grieve the death of the innocent.
Later, the angel of the Lord again spoke to Joseph in a dream, assuring him of safety in his native land (2:19-21). Again, Joseph obeyed, unquestioning, immediately. And again, the little family of refugees made their perilous way through the treacherous waste lands of a fallen world.
It made no sense to settle in Judea because the son of Herod, Archelaus, was even more violent and dangerous than his deranged but now deceased father. So the plan to leave Egypt may have seemed quite risky at first. But Joseph obeyed and on their way, the angel spoke again and Joseph continued his journey into Galilee, to a city called Nazareth (2:22,23).
So it was that the holy Child, the glory of God in human form, began His life in the world He made, which knew Him not.
He was in the world and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him. He came to His own and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe in His name (John 1:10-12).
Into the kingdom of this world Jesus was born and in this world we live. But we are so much more than victims of a fallen kingdom. We are children of God, overcomers by the grace of God. And when our Lord returns in power and in glory, we will stand with Him.
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