King Herod (Matthew 2)

Big Idea

Christmas reveals how people grow, how God’s plan unfolds, and why our broken world needed Jesus to come.

Sermon Summary

When we look at Christmas through King Herod’s eyes, we see a man who completely misses what God is doing—despite Scripture, signs, and opportunity. This message explores how pride blinds us, how God quietly carries out His plan through small people and simple obedience, and why Christmas had to happen in a world still filled with tragedy.

Key Scriptures

Matthew 2:1–3 – Herod is troubled by the news of a rival king Romans 1:21 – How pride darkens human thinking Matthew 2:16 – The tragedy that reveals our need for redemption

Teaching Outline

Christmas Shows Us How People Grow

• Herod grows numb as he pursues power and control
• Scripture shows that choosing the world over God leads to blindness
• Following Jesus shapes us into His likeness

Application:

• Pray for God to deal with pride
• Practice daily repentance
• Invite trusted people to ask hard questions
• Commit to real spiritual community

Christmas Shows Us How God’s Plan Is Carried Out

• God works in perfect timing
• God fulfills Scripture calmly and deliberately
• God uses insignificant people and simple obedience

Encouragements:

• If your life feels small, God often works there most
• Obey what’s right in front of you

Christmas Shows Us Why Our World Needed Jesus

• Tragedy still exists in a fallen world
• God allows human freedom while remaining fully sovereign
• Jesus came to change hearts, not force behavior

Hope: Christmas reminds us that God did something about the brokenness—He sent His Son.

Why This Still Matters

Christmas teaches us:

• How people grow — by following Jesus
• How God’s plan unfolds — often in unexpected ways
• Why the world needs Christmas — redemption begins in the heart

Take a Next Step

• Join a Life Group
• Talk with someone about following Jesus
• Consider how God may be working through your obedience

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

This morning we are gonna be in Matthew chapter two, and so if you wanna take a second and turn there, if you do not have a Bible with you this morning, do not fret. We have the scripture on the screen up there. You can also put it up on your phone. There also may be a Bible around where you are. So we're full on into Christmas time here at South Burleson. I'm excited. This Christmas, what we're gonna do, we're gonna spend the next four weeks looking at different voices, different people who played a major part in Jesus coming into the world. And it's almost as if we are considering Christmas from their perspective. What is it? What is it like from their perspective? What are they doing? What's there? What is God doing in the world from their point of view? And we're gonna begin this week with a perspective that we do not always consider.

When we listen to Herod's voice, we can see the Christmas story kinda as it happens to him. And there's a couple things that Christmas is going to show us in the midst of that. As we look at Herod, there's three things that Christmas is gonna show us. It's gonna show us how people grow. It's gonna show us how God's plan is carried out. And it's gonna show us why we still need Christmas today, why the world needs Christmas, why we need Christmas. And so we're gonna look at from Herod's point of view and we're gonna see what Christmas shows us, kinda look at it from his point of view. So let's start in Matthew chapter two, verse one. Matthew two, one, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. Now there is a more famous Herod in the Bible, and that is the Herod that ran whenever Jesus

was a grown man, the Baptist, and that's not this Herod, okay? This is that Herod's daddy, all right? So this is that King Herod, okay? And King Herod the Great. Matthew here, as we are reading Matthew two, one, he's giving perspective on what kinda time frame we're in, but also the cultural frame that we're in. Because if you are living during this time, King Herod is an extremely significant person for you, okay? He was just a nominal king of Roman rule, okay? So the way that worked was Rome, the Roman Empire, you may have heard of it before, the Holy Roman Empire, not holy yet, was Rome.

And they put a king, Alexander the Great actually, put a king over the Jews, called that person, called Herod the king of the Jews, okay? But still, even though he was just kinda this king in name only, he still had considerable sway within Jewish culture, okay? He was kind of an icon of their heritage, okay? King Herod was the one who built a huge, huge temple. And when we talk about a temple, you might think it's like a small, like maybe smaller footprint, like maybe small in this room here, like a little temple. No, no, this was a huge, grand temple with an inner court, outer court. There was trade that happened, there was gobs of people in there all the time. The whole footprint is bigger than our entire church, it's probably bigger than the entire five acres that our church sits on. It was very, very, very big. That Herod, the Herod we just read about, is the one who built that temple.

And they were very, very grateful for that big old temple to worship in, okay? The Jews were very excited. He also was protection from Rome, so he kind of served as a buffer, okay? So in other words, if he's in power, we don't love him, he's not some great, like Jewish hero guy, but he's in power and we still keep, we still get to be Jewish, right? If Herod's in power, we don't have to be Roman culturally. If he's in power, we get to be Jewish culturally. Now that was a very significant thing. And so a lot of people wanted to protect Herod, a lot of people telling yes to Herod. Herod had considerable sway. It was a big deal. Herod was a man of considerable power, much like the president of the United States today, just a, just, yeah, great, great power. You gotta be very smart, you gotta be very kind of on your toes, you have to know things about world politics.

So King Herod was no slouch, he was no dummy, he was no sucker, okay? King Herod was very smart. And he plays a major role in the Christmas story, specifically in Matthew two, but he plays it ironically. He plays a major role, but he plays it ironically. Look at verses two and three of Matthew chapter two. So these wise men came, and here's what they said. Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw, this is wise men talking, for we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. So right off the bat, we are introduced to King Herod and he is on his heels. There is a rival king that is being born. Somebody to depose him and his lineage. So he's not just worried about himself, he's worried about his kids, who would actually eventually go on to become kings themselves, tetrarchs, it's fine.

There's a rival king, let's keep reading verses four through six. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are by no means least among the rulers of Judea, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Okay. I said there was irony and the irony is a bit layered. There's two things going on. Number one, Herod, who is on top of everything, who's super in power, nothing happens without his will. Like he's completely blindsided by this prophecy of a rival king coming. Okay, completely blindsided. He should have known this because it's all over the Jewish scriptures. Okay, if you would have talked to a Jew in the first century, you would say, hey, what's one thing that you're really excited about?

That would give you one word, and that word would be Messiah. Okay, coming king. Okay, we're excited about that guy. We're looking for that guy. That's who we're excited about. That's the guy that's gonna come, that's gonna be like Superman and George Washington, all wrapped in one, okay. He's gonna come and fix everything. They were excited about Messiah. King Herod has no idea who this guy is. He's completely blindsided to the fact that that guy's gonna be born at all. There's some irony. Another thing that's ironic is that I've already kind of alluded to it, that everybody else knows this prophecy. Everybody else knows this is true. Everybody else, this is the king they're waiting for. They're waiting for that king, not Herod. And Herod doesn't know that they're not waiting for him, that they're waiting for somebody else. There's one more layer, I wanna show it.

It's in the next two verses, Matthew chapter two, verse seven and eight. It says, then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. I don't know if you've ever watched cartoons as a kid, like me, like Gen X or a kid of the 80s. There was always this moment where somebody was being disingenuous and they were doing like this and there was like this halo that appeared above him and then it turned to horns whenever you realized they were doing something bad, even though they were trying to look good while doing it. That's what's happening here. Herod has no intention of finding the child and worshiping him. Herod wants to eliminate the competition. That's what's happening.

We find this out later in a couple more verses. We're not gonna really cover those, but I thought I would spoil that part. You're welcome. He is trying to find out when he was born and where he was born so he can go find him according to the census and kill him. So that's what's happening. His true motive is to eliminate his rival. And he likely, in this moment, we can see through it, we know what's gonna happen. In this moment, the wise men that he's speaking to probably don't know that he really wants to kill this rival king.

It's a fair assumption, actually, that they have no idea that what they're, that the person they're dealing with is a treacherous murderer, okay? Maybe they have some semblance of that, but they're foreigners. They don't really know who King Herod is. They don't know, they're just following a star, bro. They're not even trying to figure out what's happening culturally. They're just saying, hey, we're here to, we're speaking. So, so he has, he has stumbled, in his mind,

this is Herod's perspective, he has stumbled upon a plot to overthrow him, okay? He's super excited about catching that plot. And then fools the wise men. He says, hey, when was this kid born? Where was he born? What's gonna happen, right? Like, who's there, you know? And yet, and yet Herod's plan still did not work. He had a perfectly laid trap. And despite his best efforts, he still misses everything that is going on. In fact, over and over and over again, as we read this narrative, and in many other places in the scripture, this happens with a lot of people, Herod misses what God is doing, okay?

And like I said, this happens all over scripture, this happens all over history, actually, because in the pursuit of the world, right? In pursuit of status, in pursuit of fame, in pursuit of wealth, in pursuit of power, okay? You're pursuing all those things, but yet, ironically, it is in that very pursuit that you become blind, you become self-absorbed, you become so vain, so surrounded by people that will tell you whatever you wanna hear, that you lose touch with reality.

That you can't see something obvious right in front of you. You miss the nose on your face, because you are so busy chasing those other things. When we do that, when people do that, like it's not just Herod, it happens all over the place. Things that should be obvious to us are not whenever we're chasing those things. Like Herod, we miss it in front of us. In the Christmas story, we see God giving Herod over to this blindness. We see God giving Herod over to this hubris, to thinking he's got this thing licked. Those wise men don't suspect a thing. I'm gonna get all the information I need, I'm gonna eliminate the rival king. Herod, in his mind, thinks his plan is going perfectly.

Perfectly. He is excited about this. He might be laying his head on his pillow at night, kinda giggling to himself about how amazing this plan is, that he's going to eliminate a rival king before he even grows up to do anything against him. And so in the Christmas story, we see Herod being given over to this blindness, to this hubris, to this self-absorption. Christmas is not just about God bringing down prideful people. Christmas is a story about how God grows people. We know this from lots of places in Scripture. Romans 8, 29, those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed into the image of his son. That's a really long way to say that God chooses people, not just to be saved from hell, God chooses people to be formed into the image of Jesus, to look like him. And when we follow Jesus over the world, we grow into his likeness. When we pursue Jesus, and even though it's going

to cost us money, fame, fortune, it's gonna cost us all of that, even though we do that, the promise is we are gonna grow into his likeness. We are going to accumulate things that cannot be burned up, that cannot be destroyed, okay? And following Jesus over the world, we grow into his likeness, but the opposite is also true. And Herod kind of marks that out for us. When we choose the world over Jesus, we get increasingly numb and dumb. The theologically technical word for this is the noetic effect of sin, N-O-E-T-I-C, noetic effect of sin. Romans 1, 21 puts it perfectly, so I won't define it beyond that. Romans 1, 21, it says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. You find all over Romans 1 that it's God who is the one doing that to them.

God is giving them over to something that they are headlong in pursuit of. A lot of times it is difficult to understand why God does that. But I would just take a second and say, let's consider it from God's perspective, right? He's giving chance after chance after chance after chance, he's wooing, he's talking, he's calling, he's putting things in your path, he's getting your attention in different ways, he's making things happen, he's allowing things to happen. All this is happening

and it's just no and no and no and no and later and when I get older or when I have a kid or when I get married or when I get settled or whatever, right, we put all these things in the way, but at some point, at some point, God just says, hey listen, I'm just gonna let you chase this for a while. I'm just gonna let you see what that's like. It's not gonna be fun. I'm trying to tell you now, don't do it, it's not gonna be great. But there is a time when God in his grace will give us over to something.

Something that will not make our life go awesome. God is not happily doing that, he's not laughing all the way down. Probably makes him very sad to do it, but it's necessary. It is because, it is because that there are people that are significant that, like Herod, they are completely self-absorbed. This is actually why we see in scripture that God takes insignificant things, small things, small people, small lives, and he uses them specifically to shame the significant, to shame the wise. He takes things that are dumb or that look dumb or that appear dumb and he helps everybody understand, even, you know, like these dumb Galileans that are his disciples are 50 times more in touch with the spirit than this theological scholar over here. God does this all the time, he takes insignificant things and he uses them to shame significant things. And it's not just so that he gets all the glory

because he does, and that is good. And he should get all the glory, but it's not just for that. It also teaches us how life should work. It teaches us how life works. Herod is a walking lesson for how life happens. And so I would just encourage you, do you wanna grow spiritually? Pray that God would deal with your pride. Pray that God would make you small. Pray that God would free you from your anxieties. Begin to rely on him. It's not just the self-help, TikTok, and medication that's gonna help you, okay? Those things are great. They have their place, awesome. Not all of it, but sure. But you wanna grow up, man, reach out to God. Begin to pray. Put yourself, put yourself at his feet. Get on your knees and say whatever you wanna do, Lord, I'm gonna do it. Whatever you want me to do, I'm there for you. You wanna see breakthrough? Repent every day. Take a moment every day and just repent.

Think of things that you should repent of. Ask the Lord to help you remember things to repent of. Have friends that you trust, and you say like, look, you see anything in me that I need to repent of, that I need to confess? Ask God to show you where you need to confess. On the note of recruiting people, I would just say, this is why our church has life groups. Life groups are extremely helpful. We're about to have a few slots open in January. And so if you've been thinking about it, it's a great way, it's an 18-month commitment, so it's not for the faint of heart, but it is helpful, and it will help you grow. It will help you begin to make some headway. Look, as we look to Herod, we can see that he's grown numb because he has rejected God. We can also see the opposite. We can also see people who follow Jesus over status, they grow into his likeness. Christmas shows us how people grow.

Christmas also shows us how God's plan is carried out. Christmas shows us how God's plan is carried out. And there's a couple of things here that we can see. Number one, we can see some perfect timing going on. Several places in Matthew two, even in the first half of the chapter, there is this fulfillment of Scripture. Now, you might have heard that phrase, use fulfillment of Scripture before. Here's what that means. That means that things that were written down by different people who don't know who Matthew is, or would be, writing them 400, 600, 800, 1200 years

in the past, writing about this Messiah coming, and it's playing out exactly like it said. So we've already seen that a savior was supposed to be born out of Bethlehem. It says, as it is written, and it quotes Micah 5:2 and Ezekiel 34:23. It quotes us, it says, out of Bethlehem, the savior is going to come. A king is going to come out of Bethlehem. That was written a really long time ago. That was written, Hosea, excuse me, Micah was written about 450 years before this time.

And he's saying it's gonna come out of Bethlehem. We see later in verse 15, we're not gonna read it just yet, but later in verse 15, it says, out of Egypt I called my son. That's Hosea 11:1, okay? Hosea, written 800 years before this time is happening. And we see later, a voice was heard in Rama, weeping and loud lamentation. That's in verses 17 and 18. That's quoting directly Jeremiah 31, 15. Jeremiah's rolling about, excuse me, about 600 years before this time.

Why am I giving you all those dates? I'm showing you that the reason that Matthew 2 is quoting scripture from hundreds of years before this is happening is to show us that God has set these events since the beginning of time. And that God is not freaking out. God is calmly moving things along at a perfect pace. Sometimes these things are good, and sometimes these things are painful. We're gonna get to the painful here in a minute. But we can take a second and see. Christmas shows us God's plan, how it's carried out. It's carried out in perfect timing. It's also carried out through insignificant people. Okay, remember we're talking about Herod. Big, significant, big deal. Now we're gonna talk about insignificant people. The wise men were foreigners with no status, okay? I know we talk about like the magi from the east. It makes it sound very like mystical, and they, you know, like they were, whatever.

They had gifts, they had really expensive gifts. Look, honestly, they probably weren't three kings, okay? I know we sing we three kings. I get it, I know. It's okay, I'm not trying to ruin Christmas for you, okay? Don't destroy your nativity set, all right? It's okay that they have crowns on, it's okay. They likely weren't kings. They were likely astrologers, okay? Which means they didn't really understand like who Yahweh was. They didn't really understand what the Old Testament was about necessarily, but they knew, they had star maps ready to go, and they knew they were charting it out, and here's this messiah that's gonna be born, this king that's gonna be born, and they're like, there's a king that's gonna be born. Let's go travel to greet that king and to give him gifts. That's the wise men. That's what they're doing. They are foreigners with no status.

And you even get the sense that they had no idea, we touched on this earlier, they had no idea that they were upsetting Herod by saying there's a king coming. They're just dudes. They may not even be God-fearers, and they are literally following a star and worshiping a king. That's all they're doing, man. They're doing something simple. Another insignificant person, look at verse 13, Matthew 2:13. It says, 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 they remain until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him, like I said. We're covering it now. Herod was gonna kill the child. Joseph and Mary, and just Joseph himself, Joseph was a poor young person of exactly no position

in the first century. You get the sense that Joseph had zero idea of what is happening on a larger stage. He just knows Mary's pregnant, not my kid. Angel told me something, I'm gonna believe it. Angel said, go to Egypt. Let's go to Egypt. Angel said, it's okay to come back. Let's go back. Joseph is not some scholar. He's not some theologian. He's not like quoting scripture back. He's just saying, okay, okay, I'll do this. We don't get a lot of commentary in the scripture. God sends an angel and they obey. So God's plan is carried out in perfect timing. It's carried out through insignificant people and it's carried out through simple obedience. How'd the wise men find Jesus? Simple obedience. How was Jesus born in Bethlehem? To fulfill scripture, simple obedience. How does Jesus, how does the Savior come out of Egypt? Simple obedience. Let me just give you two encouragements from that, okay?

I mean, I get, we're reading a Christmas story, I understand. I do think it says something about us. Here's two encouragements. Number one, if your life seems small, if your life feels insignificant right now, you are actually more likely for God's plan to happen through you than whatever YouTube star is popular this week. Let me say it again. If you're feeling small, if you're feeling little, if you're feeling insignificant, it's actually more likely for God's plan to be happening through you than through whatever famous person you know. And I know that, I know it doesn't feel true, right? I get it. I get that that doesn't feel true. It doesn't feel like you're a planet shaker. You know, it didn't feel like you're a world changer. You're making things happen. You're not an influencer, you're not a shot caller, you're not a king maker. I get it, I do. I really understand that.

But here's what the Christmas story reminds us of, that God's plan is not carried out by the planet shakers. God's plan is carried out by insignificant people doing simple obedience right in front of them. And so if you feel small, count it all joy, brothers and sisters. Count it all joy. Hallelujah, you're little. Amen? Yeah. Here's the other thing. If you're little, and you probably are, like me, then look right in front of you. Look for the small obedience right in front of you. God is directing and fulfilling his plan through small people with simple obedience. So let me just encourage you this week, I know you got Christmas happening. I know the anxiety's starting to well up. I know you got the tidal wave of like Christmas presents and what we're gonna do and all the plans. Okay, I get it.

Here's my encouragement to you. Do what's in front of you. Ask the simple question and rest in this simple answer. What is the Lord calling you to do right now? That's it. And you don't gotta worry about next week. You have to worry about a month from now. You don't even know what's gonna happen a month from now. Don't pretend like you do, just obey what's right in front of you. A lot of times, whenever we are gathered here and we're reading this word, and we're kinda listening to preaching, and we're kinda thinking a lot, like just a lot of thoughts kinda popping, that's good, right? A lot of times in that process, the Lord will bring something to mind. Like, I need to do that thing. And sometimes that thing feels real small. Sometimes that thing feels real significant. I don't know. It feels like a lot of things. But here's my encouragement. Whatever's been poppin' in your head,

just do that. Just obey the Lord. Next thing, that's it. Don't try to plan out your whole life. I know for some of you that's harder than others. Don't try to plan it all out. Read the Bible. Ask for wisdom. Look, man, I've been studying this book for a really long time, right? I've been at this for 20 plus years, okay? I get it. I'm a pro, okay? I get paid to do this. I understand. Can I just tell you, for much of my life, I was not. For much of my life, I worked two jobs to also work at a church. For much of my life, I was studying the Bible on my own. Nobody's paying me to do it. Nobody's paying me to relocate my life to Fort Worth to go to seminary. Nobody's encouraging me. I wasn't bankrolled all the way there. And so sometimes, sometimes, the temptation is to look at a guy like me and go, well, okay, it's easy for you to say. You get paid to do this. Okay, fair point.

But here's my point back. I wasn't always paid to do this. And for the majority of my life, I wasn't paid to do this. When I was 13 years old, reading the Bible on my own, trying to get through the begats, I wasn't paid to do this, okay? When I'm sitting here trying to figure out what Greek is and learning through that, I wasn't paid for that. I worked my way through seminary. And look, I'm not trying to get all up on what I've done. I'm just trying to help you understand.

It doesn't take a seminary degree to read the Bible and to ask the Lord Jesus in humility and honesty, show me what you want me to see. It doesn't. It doesn't, you don't need to check it with anybody. Look, man, here's the best thing. Here's the best thing about, I don't really get excited about being a Baptist that often, but I will just for a moment right here, okay?

Baptists are proudly people of the book, and here's what that means. It means if somebody's not a Christian, if you lock them in a room with a Bible, they're gonna come out a Christian. That's what that means. It means that I don't need some church rite. I don't need some special magnifying glass. I don't need anything. I just need the Lord, his holy spirit, and nothing else, and I'm a Christian. I can start walking with the Lord. If I'm agreeing with what the Lord is telling me in his scripture, and I say, Lord, I wanna follow you, that's it. I'm a Christian. It doesn't matter what anybody else says. And if you wanna grow as a Christian, it doesn't matter. Look, you don't need to study the Bible a specific way. There's not like some secret, there's not some clickbait like we've discovered the new way to read the Bible that they've always forgotten. Then I'm like, oh my gosh, it's just too much.

Look, crack a Bible, read it, ask the Lord to help, and I promise, I pray. I will stake my life on this. You open the Bible, you start reading it. You ask the Spirit of God to illuminate it for you. He will, period, every time. If you don't believe me, try, every time. Every time. Boy, I got on one. Okay, I gotta get back in. I gotta get back in. So, from Herod's perspective, okay, yeah, that's where we work. Herod's perspective, Joseph, Mary, wise men, small, insignificant, not worth worrying about, right? Tricking those guys to get what I want, right? And that's actually why he overlooks them. He's only interested in any other actions because he feels threatened. That's it. And this actually leads him to some extreme violence. Let's keep reading. Matthew 2:16, it says, 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. This is the part of the Christmas story that does not fit inside the Hallmark card. They're not making a movie about this. But it is part of the Christmas story. We still have a tragedy that God allows. I'll explain that in a minute. But immediately it shows us why Christmas needed to happen.

It shows us why Christmas needed to happen. Throughout the Bible and throughout history, there is unspeakable tragedy that cannot be undone. Children die, lives are ruined, hospitals are bombed, wars take innocence. It happens. It's not only always happened, it always will. It's grim. It's tough to face. But it's nonetheless true. Happens in the Christmas story right here. This is often a very difficult pill to swallow. Because we say that, I just got done saying that God has orchestrated all these things here. The star, the wise men, Joseph, protecting the family, protecting the Messiah, why stop here? Why stop with children under the age of two? Why? We need the Christmas story today because it often feels like we are not in control. Or maybe more specifically, it feels like maybe the top 1% are controlling everything. It feels like good guys finish last or die in prison.

It's not happy. It's not fun to think about, but it is real. Clay, I appreciated your words at the beginning when you were saying like sometimes the holidays ain't fun. Sometimes the holidays remind you of people you lost. That's hard. That's so hard, so heavy. But this is exactly why we need Christmas. This is exactly why. The question comes classically this way. It says if God is so good, then why does he allow pain and suffering? And if God is so powerful, why doesn't he stop? And that's true, you can ask that question of this story here in Matthew two. You can actually ask this same question. If God is so good, why does he allow children to be murdered?

And if God is so powerful, why doesn't he stop it? If he exerted all of this planning and all of these things, if he's fulfilling scripture that was 400, 800, 1200 years in this story, why isn't he stopping the murder of children? It's a tough question to answer. It's not a simple one. It's actually a whole other sermon. I'll try to answer it very quickly, because I'm crazy.

The answer lies somewhere in the space between freedom and control. Because it is true that God allows people freedom, the freedom to choose. Even to choose things with very bad intentions. People can make real choices with real consequences. And sometimes those consequences tragically hurt many other people. Everything bad in your life is not your fault. Sometimes it's other people's fault.

This is true. That freedom has consequences. And you can't always control them. It's also true that God is in control, that his great big plan has all those details woven in from wars to weekend plans, all woven in. It's coming together and in some unimaginable way. In some way that I could not explain to you, all this bad is going to turn out for good. This is the promise that we have in scripture. That God will one day right the wrongs. And it's not just putting war criminals on trial. It's every wrong. God's gonna right every wrong. And so I would simply say, let's not be discouraged. Because Christmas reminds us that God did indeed do something about it. He did. It's just not a way that we want. A way that we want is for God to turn all the bullets into butter. Right? We want God to take away all the consequences when it doesn't fit our narrative. That's what we want.

And in our finite minds, that seems real clean. Why can't God just do that? You start to unravel actual choices though. You start to get something other than human. God sent his son to redeem people at the heart level. Let me explain why that's a big deal. God did not just send his son, this is not where we sell. We don't celebrate Christmas that God sent his son so that you could punch your ticket to heaven. Okay? That's not what we're talking about here. God sent his son so that people, you and I, could be redeemed at the heart level. In other words, not just so your behavior can change, but so that you can be changed on the inside. We all know what it looks like when, you know, God bless you husbands, I'm gonna pick on you for just a second. We all know what it looks like when the husband forgets the anniversary and he's really sweet for like a week and a half after that, okay?

Why? Because he feels bad, because he goofed up. Because he forgot to stink at anniversary, okay? Don't forget the anniversary. But when he does forget the anniversary, what's gonna change? His behavior, his behavior's gonna change. Real sweet. He's going, hey hon, how you doing? Did anything I can get you and he's gonna help with dinner? And that's gonna last like 10 days, okay? It is, bless you husbands. I'm there, I understand. It's gonna last 10 days. That's about all you got in you. That's all the white knuckling you can do. Most people, it's 10 days. Some of you can go longer, go run a triathlon, okay? Don't talk to me about it. Most of us, most of us schlubs can do 10 days, okay. That's behavior change. That's behavior modification. That is not why Jesus has come to this earth. That's not what we celebrate when we celebrate Christmas. When we celebrate Christmas,

we're talking about being changed on the inside. We're talking about God giving us a new heart. We have a dead stony heart that actually the only thing that stony heart's gonna produce is selfishness, self-absorption, we're just gonna be like Herod, right? It's just gonna, it's gonna produce those things. Now we can whitewash that. We can cover that with religion and we can make that look cute. That's good, but it's dead. It's dead. It's like trying to conjure up feelings for something or someone, right, when you don't actually feel it. Like it just doesn't, it doesn't work. It's stale, it's done. That's religion. Jesus did not come to be religious. Jesus came so that we could be made new at the heart level, so that we could receive a new heart and be able to obey out of that. God's desire for us is not so that we'll be nice people.

Okay, it's not God's desire for you. Guys, don't worry about it if you're nice, okay? Joorabi, can I have an amen on that? That's right, there you go. God didn't say it was gonna be nice. Some of you nice, that's great. I mean, I'm not picking on you. That's not why Jesus came. Jesus came to make you new. He came to make you different, something other, right? That's different than what we're talking about with religion or with behavior modification or anything like that. Jesus came to make us new at the heart level. The answer to the world's problem is always, it always comes down. I don't care who you are. I don't care what political stripe you're on. I don't care what cause you have. I mean, everything from alt right to extreme left, I don't care any cause you're talking about. The answer is always to change people. Always, always. You could talk about change in laws,

but the only reason you wanna change laws is change people. You could talk about change in this infrastructure, this thing, but the only reason you wanna do that is to change people. And when you force that change, you dehumanize people every time. You turn them into robots. You can't do it. You can't legislate morality. You can't legislate love. You can't legislate what people are gonna do at the heart level. You cannot do that. Jesus changes people, Jesus changes people by dying for them,

by sacrificing himself for them, by giving them something they could never deserve, never earn, and inviting them to follow him in it. Look, as we celebrate Christmas this year, I really want you to remember what Christmas shows us. I really want you to just see it from Herod's perspective. I want you to understand it. Let Herod be your lesson this morning. Christmas shows us how people grow. Remember, we grow into Jesus' lightness by following Jesus. That means saying no to a lot of things, but it's saying yes to Jesus first. Christmas shows us how God's plan is carrying out. Look, following Jesus often involves God's plan being carried out in your life in a really strange way that you did not expect. Like the wise men, they're like, I didn't know we were gonna trick a king. That wasn't in the bingo card today, but I'm just doing what I'm told. Lastly, Christmas shows us why we need Christmas.

The story shows us why we need Christmas. Following Jesus means we are commissioned by him to be ministers, it says this, in 2 Corinthians five, ministers of reconciliation, that we are called to help people be reconciled to God. Look, if I would put our worship service in one sentence, it would be that. It would be that we are here, we are displaying the fact that we are reconciled to God. It's not anything we did. We're not super, like we're not doing jumping jacks because of how awesome we are, okay? We are doing it because we have been redeemed and that is such a good thing. That's why we baptize people, okay? Mindy's not celebrating some awesome feat that she just accomplished. She's celebrating something that happened to her. Corbin's celebrating something that happened to him. Corbin didn't plan a year and a half ago, he'd be like, I think I'm gonna become a Christian

and get baptized in a year and a half. Like that's just not what happened, right? This thing just happened to you, amen, Corbin? That's right, okay, good. We're alive this morning, okay, we're awake. Look, this is what, we are ministers of reconciliation. We implore you, like it says in 2 Corinthians five, we implore you, be reconciled to God. Look, as we sing, as we leave here, as we celebrate Christmas, as you are thinking today about what I said, what we read in Scripture, what we sang about, as you're kind of, as all that's kind of rolling around in your mind, I want you to, I really want you to consider, like what is Jesus asking me to do? What's the next right thing? What can I do, what's right in front of me? How do I be obedient to what Jesus is calling me to do? What step is the Lord asking me to take? And here's my encouragement, do it.

Spend this week doing it. Spend the rest of your life doing it. The Lord wants to meet you in the middle of that, He wants to be reconciled to you. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word, thank you for the Christmas story, thank you for everything, how crazy He was. And just all these things that just feel so bad sometimes, they feel so tragic, they feel so defeating, things that we want to work out a certain way but don't, things that we have in our plans that, it just feels like we're being blocked from it. Feels like you're blocking us maybe, that we're frustrated.

Lord, you have something to say in the middle of that, I pray you would help us to listen, help us to follow you in obedience. That's your name that we pray, amen.