Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Matthew 2:13-18
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  December 29, 2019

Thomas Hawks admitted that he had consumed 10 beers at FedEx field during a Redskins game before climbing into his pickup truck to drive home. It was the evening of Dec. 30, 2018, almost one year ago exactly, when Hawks rear-ended the Mejia family in their sedan at a stop light. He was going 69 miles an hour. The  Mejia’s three children, twins Rosalie and Alexis and 1-year-old Isaac were killed. As it happens, the family was returning home from a church service. 

God protects his children. That’s our theme today. But in the face of tragedy hearts often pose it as a question: Does God really protect his children? Is there a point to praying to God when you get in a vehicle? Does the Lord protect Christians, his children, in a special way? How are we to understand this protection in the face of evil and tragedy? These are good questions which deserve some thoughtful reflection. And that is exactly what I’d like to guide you through this morning as we look at Matthew 2: A story of both tragedy and protection.

As the chapter opens Matthew tells us about the Wise Men who came from the East to worship Jesus as the King of the Jews. He then tells us that after these impressive men come to honor this new king, Herod becomes murderously insecure. And so, an angel of the Lord is sent to Joseph and directs him to flee to Egypt. Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus, leave that very night and escape to Egypt until the death of Herod, roughly 1 year later. But while he was still alive, we find out that Herod issued orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding countryside, from two years old and under, to make sure the new king would be slaughtered. Now for the record, there were likely less than 20 children murdered, given the population of Bethlehem at the time. But nonetheless this is a horrific and tragic event, to say the very least. 

But Matthew not only records it happening, but forces us to linger on it. If fact, he speaks of it as a fulfillment: Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted, because they are no more. This is a quotation of Jeremiah 31:15 which speaks of Rachel weeping for her children, poetically describing the favored mother of Benjamin (pictured as the mother of all Judah) mourning because her descendants were led into exile. Rachel had been buried in Bethlehem (Gen 35:19), some six miles south of Jerusalem on the road by which the Babylonians would lead the captive Judeans north, through Ramah, and out of their homeland. Matthew, like Jeremiah, now connects another event for her to lament: Rachel, who wept from her grave in Bethlehem as the Israelites were exiled from the land now weeps again at the atrocity of the innocent boys killed in Bethlehem. 

It is a sad picture isn’t it? A mother crying out for the babies that she has lost. The death of those babies of Bethlehem is the kind of thing that makes you wonder if God really does protect his children. Kind of like getting hit in the car on your way home from church, there’s something distressingly unfair about it. It’s the kind of thing that Devil often twists into temptation. It strikes me that the Devil even chose to tempt Jesus in this way. Do you remember when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness?  The devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” The Devil tried to get Jesus to doubt the protection of God by putting it to the test. And he even used words of Scripture to do so, he quoted Psalm 91:11-12.

The Devil really knows how to pick his spots with us too, doesn’t he? He will tempt you at your weakest moment to doubt the care and protection of God. He will tempt you to doubt God’s Word and even put it to the test in dangerous ways. When a miscarriage happens, when someone we love gets seriously injured or sick, when we hear about severe Christian persecution, when death comes. These are the times he comes to us and asks whether or not we really can believe that God is our protector. And God forgive us for the times that we have doubted. God have mercy on us for the times we reject his promise of protection.

For my friends, God truly does protect his children. And we see that right here in our text today. For although Matthew’s quotation of Jeremiah is terribly sad, there is more to take from it than mere sadness. First, Rachel’s mourning shows that God mourns with those who mourn. And in his perfect love, no one cared more deeply about the lives of those newborns than God himself. And he suffers with us as well. Secondly, in Jeremiah 31, after Rachel poetically weeps for her children, God comforts her, promising the restoration of his people, saying that there would be a new covenant made with his people (Jer 31:31-34) in the future. A covenant of his grace through which he would forgive their sin and remember wickedness no more. There is an uncurrent of great hope here! Now we see what Matthew is driving at: The painful death of the babes in Bethlehem, that terrible consequence of Jesus’ persecution, is the anvil on which God would forge the fulfillment of his covenant promise to all people. Just as the cross would be the instrument God would use to shed Jesus’ blood for our forgiveness.

God protected Jesus as a baby, but when his appointed time came, God asked Jesus to give up his protection in order to shield us from the wrath our sins deserved. Jesus came to this world as the Almighty Lord in order to become vulnerable, to be hunted, to suffer persecution and death itself, all so that we might appear in safety at his Father’s throne in eternal splendor. Matthew wants us to understand that the hope promised to the mothers who wept for their children taken to Babylon is the hope promised to the parents in Bethlehem who lost their children—and to all who face horrendous evil and injustice even today: God protects his children eternally through the sacrifice of his own child.

God’s promise of protection does not mean that he is obligated to work miracles in our behalf. No, our God does not guarantee a problem-free life on this side of heaven. Just the opposite.Many faithful servants of the LORD face severe adversities, including poverty, war, sickness, and death. Jesus plainly told his disciples that as individuals they might be put to death because of their faith. That is why he stressed the need for enduring to the end. (Matthew 24:9, 13) If God  were to use his power to effect miraculous protection in all cases, there might be a basis for Satan to taunt God and to call into question the genuineness of our devotion to our God. Just as he did in Job 1:9, 10. No almost always in the Bible, when God protected individuals he did it in order to protect something far more important: the outworking of his purpose. Whether it was Noah in the Ark, Moses in a reed basket, or Jesus tucked in Mary’s arms on the road to Egypt, God protects people to secure our salvation.

A great example of our mindset can be seen in the words of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo. When faced with certain death in the fiery furnace they said this: “Our God is able to save us from the blazing fiery furnace. And he may save us from your hand, Your Majesty. But if he does not, you should know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods, and we will not worship the golden statue that you set up.” (Dan 3:17-18) But if he does not! They knew that their God was worth worshipping even if he didn’t extend their lives miraculously on earth. They acknowledged that he could, but knew that even if he decided to end their lives, he was still their God and the only true God. 

I will always encourage you to pray for protection, both physical protection and spiritual protection. Pray and know that God can and does protect you! We will never know how many times the Lord has spared our lives. But also remember this, that even if he does not, you should praise him as God, because you know that your suffering was allowed by the God who loved you. If death comes early, then you will simply get to the party before others, right? Your life is not a second shorter, you just get to spend more time in heaven! If pain and persecution come in your life, remember that God uses these to test and strengthen our faith and to give us a chance to witness to his love, so that others may believe in him. God protects his children, never deny it. You are safe in his arms, regardless of what this world throws at you. Even as you pass through the Valley of the shadow of death, his rod and his staff they will comfort you.

Amen.