God keeps His children safe, even in death

Sermon for the Sunday after New Year

1 Peter 4:12-19  +  Matthew 2:13-23

On this twelfth and final day of the Christmas season, with the Christmas tree still lit, we celebrate some events surrounding the birth of Christ that don’t exactly fit the world’s idea of a “merry” Christmas, and we learn some lessons that don’t come easy. The devil and the world hate Jesus with a real hatred. If they can’t attack Him directly, then they’ll attack everyone who is connected to Him. And, to some degree, God allows those earthly attacks to happen against His children. But at the same time, even in the midst of those vicious attacks, God keeps His children safe and sound in eternal happiness and keeps working out His plan to defeat the devil and the world once and for all.

Today’s Gospel begins with the departure of the wise men. (We’ll hear about their visit in our service tomorrow evening.) The wise men left the land of Israel without reporting to King Herod the whereabouts of the Child whose star had appeared over that house in Bethlehem. But Herod would find out soon enough, and God foresaw all that Herod would do. So He sent His angel to warn Joseph in a dream. Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him. No matter how King Herod or the devil himself raged against the Christ-Child, they couldn’t keep God’s from keeping His Son safe.

But why send the holy family completely out of the land of Israel, all the way to Egypt? Matthew tells us that it was in order to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy: …that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” That’s from the Prophet Hosea. The whole verse goes like this: When Israel was a child, I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son. It’s God referring to the nation of Israel in its infancy, as Jacob (also known as Israel) was forced to go down to Egypt to be kept safe from the famine that was in the land of Canaan. Then, at the time of Moses, after Israel’s descendants had multiplied in the land of Egypt, God called Israel, His “son,” out of Egypt and brought Israel safely to the promised land. Hosea’s prophecy goes on to describe just how well God’s son, the nation of Israel, did after God called them out of Egypt. They sacrificed to the Baals, And burned incense to carved images. Israel, as a nation, proved to be an unfaithful son to God. But according to St. Matthew, Hosea’s words also apply to the Christ, who was the true Son of God and the perfect Israel who was sent to take the place of sinful Israel, a Son who would always fear, love, and trust in God above all things so that He might cover us all with His righteousness. God’s plan required that His Son Jesus retrace the footsteps of the nation of Israel to Egypt and back again, as a testimony to His saving work as Israel’s perfect Substitute.

But see how God got His Son down to Egypt to retrace those steps! He used the devil’s own wickedness against him, just as He would later do with the crucifixion itself. God used Herod’s wicked plot, designed to kill Jesus, in order to accomplish His plan for Jesus to be Israel’s Substitute, in order to bring salvation to all God’s children. Because all of God’s children—you and I included—are as faithless by nature as the nation of Israel was. We were like the rest, lost and dead in sins and trespasses. We needed a Savior who would take our place under the Law, a Savior who would be a true and obedient Son of God, a better Israel in whom we could trust, so that by Baptism into Christ and by faith in Christ, the true Israel of God, we might be incorporated into Him and be counted by God as righteous, being made members of the Christian Church, the body of Christ, who is the true Israel, making us members of the true Israel.

But none of that takes away from the horror of King Herod’s actions as he sent for all the baby boys of Bethlehem to be torn away from their mothers and slaughtered. Such was his hatred for the Christ-child, that it spilled over onto those innocent children. Such is the devil’s hatred of the human race and especially of those who are in any way connected to Christ. And so another horrible prophecy was fulfilled, A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more. Rachel, Israel’s second wife, died centuries earlier giving birth to her second son, Benjamin, right there in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Now this terrible slaughter takes place in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy.

How do we make sense of such a massacre of innocent little children? There is no making sense of it, just as there is no making sense of the massacre of the roughly one million tiny babies who were slaughtered in the United States just this past year, and every year, in the slaughter houses of abortion clinics. What we do is to place the blame for it where it belongs: on wicked King Herod and on those who supported him in his wickedness. On those who commit and support the same kinds of atrocities today. What we do not do is put the blame on God, who forbids such things.

Of course, the same world that champions abortion wags its finger at God and blames Him for massacres like Herod committed. How could God allow such a thing?!? A better question would be, How can mankind be so wicked? Better yet, How can I be so wicked? Because the same corruption of sin that leads some people to commit such atrocities and murders also dwells in your flesh and mine, causing you to look out for yourself first, or to doubt God and blame God and pretend to be God, so that you would tear Him down from His throne and sit in judgment of how He governs the world. No, the best question of all in the face of such human wickedness is this: How could God love this world of sinners, so that He should give His only-begotten Son into our flesh, to suffer and die for people as wicked as we are?

Herod’s wickedness is nothing but an extreme symptom of the same wickedness that dwells in our flesh. But God has had amazing mercy upon us and has called us to repent of our wickedness, to claim it and to renounce it, and to trust in the One who was spared from Herod’s slaughter so that He might spare us from the wrath and punishment that we deserve. And He has spared us. He has forgiven you all your sins in Holy Baptism. He continues to forgive us, calling us daily to live in repentance and to receive His forgiveness in Word and Sacrament. He continues to use Herod’s wickedness to keep us mindful of sin’s ugliness and of His grace that He still holds out to the world in Christ.

But what of those children of Bethlehem, who died only because of their connection to Christ? Is there any good for them in all of this, and if so, where is it? Shall we conclude with the Baptists that all children up to a certain (unknown) age automatically go to heaven? We have no Scriptural basis to believe that.

What we do have is the knowledge that these were Israelite baby boys, and as such, circumcised on the eighth day, just like Isaac was, just like Jesus was. That was more than an external rite. It was an external rite with God’s Word and promise attached to it, that those children were now His children. Those children of Bethlehem had the means of grace applied to them. Prayers were said for them by their believing parents. And so we trust that faith was also granted to them, little as they were, and with faith comes righteousness before God. From an earthly perspective, their lives were cut short. But from a heavenly perspective, their lives were spared from a lifetime of earthly evil and their souls kept safe and sound for eternal life.

This is also why we baptize our children soon after they’re born. Because we don’t have a Word from God that all children go to heaven. What we do have is His Word that whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. What we do have is His promise that faith comes by hearing, and that Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal life to all who believe this, together with the knowledge from Scripture that infants, too, can believe in Jesus for salvation. Nothing can keep God from keeping His children safe, even in death, and His method for accomplishing it is Baptism, prayer, Holy Communion, and a lifetime of studying and learning His Word, so that, whether we live a long life on the earth or a very short one, whether we die a natural death or a violent one, we may always be found in Christ, and thus defy death together with Him.

Finally in our Gospel we have the holy family’s return to the land of Israel, and again, God shows us that He keeps His children safe.

What happened to Herod? What happened to his minions? As the angel said to Joseph in a dream, those who sought the young Child’s life are dead. Josephus the historian reports that Herod died after suffering an excruciatingly painful, putrefying illness. Those who rage against Christ and against His Church rage for a little while and threaten for a time, and then, sooner or later, they die and face judgment. And you can be sure that those who have done any harm to God’s children will pay dearly for it.

What happened to Jesus after Herod’s death? He was kept safe. He lived and grew up in the small town of Nazareth, in Galilee, so that He would always be known as Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Nazarene. To be called a Nazarene was to be despised in Israel, and that seems to be what Matthew is referring to when he refers to “the prophets” prophesying that, He shall be called a Nazarene. Even in death, that is how Jesus was known, with that famous sign posted about His head, “Iesus Nazarenus,” Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. God kept His Son safe from Herod, but only so that He could one day bring Jesus safely to the cross and death, so that He could accomplish His mission on earth, until it was finished. That was God’s plan all along: not to keep Jesus safe from death, but to keep us safe from death through His death. And then to keep both Him and us safe through His resurrection from the dead, which guarantees our own.

Nothing could keep God’s from getting His Son to the cross on time. Nothing could keep Him from seeing to it that you were baptized and brought into fellowship with Christ. And nothing will keep Him from seeing you safely through this vale of tears to your heavenly home, even if you have to suffer for confessing Christ in the world, as Peter said in today’s Epistle: Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. One last time this season, Merry Christmas! Amen.