OBEY OR OPPOSE, WORSHIP OR KILL
Matthew 1:18-2:23
OBEY OR OPPOSE, WORSHIP OR KILL
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
Whether you see, as I do, the presence of evil behind the actions of Herod—he was sure that the Magi were talking about the Messiah and he plotted ahead to obtain the information about the birthplace of the Messiah to offer the Magi to lead them to believe that he is genuinely behind their cause, and he asked the Magi carefully about the exact time of the appearance of the star so that he would have a rough idea the age of the child, and he brazenly told them that he desires to worship the child—or you see a man who would stop at nothing to preserve his position, you cannot escape the picture painted for us, that Jesus was born into a hostile world.
You also cannot escape the fact that God did not assert his will with the fullness of his power. Jesus did not come in the splendour of his deity. God did not protect him with a legion of angels, as indeed he could. Jesus was born in the context of a young girl willing to trust him and entrust her future into his hands. He was protected by a man who was willing to set aside his doubts and trust the angel telling him to trust that young girl who was to become his wife. The way I see it, Jesus was cocooned in the faith and submission of an ordinary man and an ordinary woman. But their faith and obedience enabled God to assert and establish his will and his word.
And so I see in Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus the Messiah a man who expressed his faith by his obedience. But I also see, in that little act of Joseph in refraining from sexual relations with Mary, a meaningful offering, a small sacrifice, expressing his respect for the fact that his wife carries within her God’s Anointed. It was not asked for, but freely given.
While the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh had meaning as to the life of the child, to me, the fact that the Magi took it upon themselves to travel in search of the one that God had told them of, tells me of the faith that they expressed. I very much doubt that there were any instructions to follow the trail of information because then they would not have needed to ask for the location of the birthplace. To me, their seeking for the child is an expression of their faith in the God who had revealed to them, even though they were not Jews, they knew to respond in reverence and awe.
It is when you see this backdrop of faith and reverence that you can see the stain of Herod’s evil and how an event that is cause for joy and celebration was turned into a time of weeping and sorrow. And this picture remains true in all our lives. As Christ was born into a hostile world, so too our Christian lives play out in a hostile environment.
Where faith, obedience, reverence and awe exist, there also exist doubt, ignorance, indifference and evil to mar the beauty of God’s will. When we exercise faith and obey God, as Joseph did, or we might go one step further, as Joseph did, as the Magi did, to offer our sacrifice in awe and reverence of him, to go out of our way to seek him in order that we might worship him, his blessed will unfolds in our lives. But when we give in to doubt, or ignorance or indifference, or evil desires, we open our lives to forces that are destructive.
At the end of the day, God’s will and God’s word will prevail. The question is whether we will be in that will and word or whether we would have yielded ourselves to those forces that oppose him. Will our lives express our obedience or our opposition?
“Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”