Sermon Tone Analysis

Today we're starting our Advent Conspiracy series.

And there are four tenets to this series:

Spend Less- buy less stuff for people.

Give More- give more of what matters.

Yourself.

Give relationally, like Jesus did.

Love All- to love like God loves and serve other people.

Worship Fully- to enter the story.

To be filled with joy at Christmas time, rather than stress or dread.

Watch this video, and then we'll get started:

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So today, I just want to go through the Christmas story briefly looking at the Herod and the wise men, and how they each Jesus responded to the arrival of the King of Israel.

And I want to examine these two stories through the lens of Matthew 25:40:

So this baby- the hope of all the world- is born in a manger (a feeding trough).

The world doesn't have room for him, and we're going to see three reactions to Jesus from major political powers:

Herod is going to react with hatred.

Rome is going to react with indifference.

The wise men are going to react with worship.

Tell the Story

Jesus has been born and here come the three wise men, actually there was probably more than three.

Who were these wise men?

They were most likely pagan philosopher, astrologist, astronomer types who are from the priestly or ruling class of their eastern culture.

They've come into Jerusalem, looking for the one who has been born King of the Jews.

Now, Herod, was the current king set up by Rome to oversee Palestine.

He hears this and is deeply troubled, along with the rest of the ruling class in Jerusalem.

It’s good to note that the term "all Jerusalem" would have meant the religious leadership as well.

So Herod assembles Hebrew scholars to verify what’s happening and they find the prophecy in which a ruler is to come out of Bethlehem and they let him know.

Herod calls these wise men in secret and says "hey go search for this child as best you can and, as soon as you find him, be sure to send word of his exact location so that I can worship him."

Yeah, Herod, we totally believe you, especially given your reputation and past history....

If it sounds fishy it’s because it is.

First Herod is deeply troubled along with all those who are in power in Jerusalem and the next moment he is basically saying "hey be sure to tell me where this new king is so I can worship him."

Which is a lie.

Later we'll see that he actually wants to destroy the child and goes to extreme measures to make sure it happens.

Basically, he is not a good guy.

And we actually know quite a bit about him historically.

A quick sketch of Herod.

You could sum it up with words like impressive, effective, successful.

His kingdom was one of size and wealth.

He worked in relationship with Rome while he ruled Palestine.

He kept the peace, and built like a mad man.

In a lot of ways it mirrored the size and power of Rome on a little smaller scale.

But he was not outdone.

He had seven palaces all larger than those of Caesar as he ruled Palestine for 34 years.

His crowning achievement was that he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem.

Part of the brilliance of his power, was that he gave the religious crowds what they wanted.

Specifically, a newly rebuilt temple.

And the Temple he built was magnificent.

Ornate.

Impressive.

It gave much honor to the Jews.

But!

He became a paranoid tyrant who ends up killing three of his sons on suspicion of treason, putting to death his favorite wife (of his ten wives!), killing one of his mothers-in-law, drowning a high priest, and killing several uncles and a couple of cousins.

They also talk about Herod’s plot to kill a stadium of Jewish leaders, so that people would mourn when he died.

A famous quote from Caesar himself was “I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son”

He had everything and it wasn’t enough, he had everything and had nothing, which is still a theme that plays today.

His life was defined by anxiety and fear.

Funny how those things go together; having everything and yet because of fear and anxiety you actually have nothing, you could be the wealthiest most powerful man in the world and still be dominated by anxiety to the point where it chokes out life all around you.

Now compare that to Mary and Joseph, who quite literally have nothing.

They have their baby in a barn.

And yet they truly have it all.

They have the one through whom all things were made.

They are bringing the life of God into the world and not many are paying attention.

No fame, no buildings, no power and yet it is the most important moment in history thus far.

Here is the deep irony of our current cultural moment during Christmas.

This onslaught of buying more and more comes on thick on the very day when we celebrate this impoverished birth of our God.

The story has been hijacked.

"Oh you have a religious celebration?

Where?

we want to come worship too," and corporations use the holiday to make as much money as one possibly can.

If you been around before, you've heard the statistic that bears repeating every year.

450 billion dollars is spent on Christmas in America each year.

Clean water for the world would take somewhere close to 10 billion a year.

Less than 3% of our Christmas spending!

For something that literally is killing someone every 90 seconds.

To put that in perspective, since we started church this morning, statistics say that 20 children have died because they don't have clean water.

Something is wrong.

They don't want to worship.

Having it all, more and more doesn't mean having life.

It’s why we believe that Christmas is actually a time to SPEND LESS.

Its hauntingly familiar.

A paranoid leader saying "hey let me know where the baby is so I can worship him too."

He'll use any kind of rhetoric, even the language of worship to get what he wants.

Right after this the paranoid leader will create a policy based on his fear and anxiety that will result in the death of a village of babies.

At the heart of the Christmas story is a baby who poses such a threat to the most powerful man around, that he kills a whole village full of other babies just in hopes of destroying the child.

Christmas starts to sound more dangerous.

Now, back to the wise men.

OK Lets Get this straight

The religious establishment is in cahoots with a paranoid leader.

Those who find Jesus are the truth seeking pagan philosophers, and the rough neck shepherds on the edge of society.

If you want to find God in the story don't go to the temple built by the king for the religious establishment, you have to go to the barn to find him.

And that's just like God, right?

God goes to Noah and people mock him.

God went to Moses.

Obadiah.

Jeremiah, whose ministry was so successful that he never changed anyone's mind.

And David, the smallest of his brothers.

A tiny, ruddy, cute little kid.

He's like a forerunner to Scrappy Doo.

God often appears to those whom we would least expect.

All is never as it seems.