Praise the Lord for this New Day. The Lord of the earth and the Lord of all
seasons is ushering some warm weather into our region. I just glanced at the weather map and read, to
my surprise, that it snowed over 15 inches over the Sahara Desert. The
temperature reached 117 in Sydney, Australia, where it is summer. Spring
is not far away. My wife gave me a Seed Catalogue for Christmas, so I am
examining all the seeds, looking forward to another gardening season.
The Lord blessed us in His house
yesterday with His joy, grace, and sweet fellowship. It was wonderful and
joyful to be in His house with His people on the first Sunday of the New Year.
I have shared in of recent
blogs that Jesus, the mighty warrior, confronted the enemy, the adversary, the
devil, head on. It is written that the devil is pacing up and down in
this earth as an adversary, like a lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter
5:8). Satan (literally, the Adversary)
boasted of the same thing long ago when he appeared amongst the sons of God in
heaven (Job 1:6-7; Job 2:2). However, the LORD, being
Sovereign, the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10) can only push us as far
as God allows (Job 1:12; Job 2:6). The enemy of our souls is a dog on a leash, a
lion on a chain, subject to the overall control of God. Ultimately, whatever seeming victories Satan
has, he is overcome by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation12:11). Satan sought to destroy
Simon Peter, but failed because of the prayer of Jesus (Luke 22:31-32). Since our
Lord was persecuted, his servants can expect nothing less (John15:20). Satan sought to
destroy Jesus from the very beginning. The
LORD is not mentioned in the book of Esther, but His providence is seen
throughout. An attempted genocide of the
Jewish people threatened the seed from whom Messiah would come. Good Queen
Esther took her life in her hands, and dared to appear uninvited before her
husband the king of Persia. He held out
the golden scepter towards her in acknowledgement, and answered her petitions. If we come before God at any time, in the name
of Jesus, we are received, and our prayers are just as surely answered
(Hebrews 4:16).
According to God’s sovereign and
infallible plans and purposes, wise men from the East came seeking the newborn
King, the Bright and Morning Star.
Presuming the King would be born in the palace, the wise men made their
way to Jerusalem, where they found themselves in the court of Herod the Great. Having heard the news of the newborn King,
Herod was both disturbed and distressed.
To Herod, He posed a threat. Though
Herod was coronated with power and prestige, he was insecure, unstable, and
terrified. The good news is that we find our security in
and through Christ, the Rock of Ages.
Herod feigned interest, but
intended all along to destroy Him. Having gathered all the chief priests and
scribes together, he inquired where the Christ was to be born (Matthew 2:4). They searched the Scriptures, and at last
found the answer in Micah 5:2. “Bethlehem in Judea,” they answered
(Matthew 2:5-6). Herod sought to find out the truth in order to defy the Truth! Having found the
answer, Herod sent the travelers on their way, still pretending that he wanted
to do homage to the holy child (Matthew 2:8).
However, after the wise men had
found Him, they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, so they wisely returned
home by another route (Matthew2:12). Sometimes our dreams do have meaning,
especially when we have been in the divine Presence! The
good news is that, once we encounter the newborn King and worship Him as the
Lord and Savior, our lives, direction, and destiny change forever.
Herod's paranoid reactions showed
his true desire. Herod had no desire
towards “the desire of all nations”. Herod
had all the baby boys in Bethlehem murdered because he desired to destroy Him,
to eliminate any perceived threat to the throne. (Matthew 2:16). We are rightly
appalled at the horrendous atrocities of Herod. The murder of babies in particular strikes a
sympathetic chord with us. Yet is our
generation innocent of this same crime with our abortion-on-demand?
The Lord, in His infinite wisdom,
outwitted Herod, who was too late in his attack against the children. Joseph had received instructions from an
angel, and he had taken the Child and His mother and they had all escaped to
Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15). There seemed to be no consolation for the mothers in
Bethlehem. Rachel, who was buried there after her own death in childbirth, is
portrayed by Jeremiah as weeping for her children as they went into exile
(Jeremiah 31:15). Matthew sees her weeping again, in another fulfillment of
this Scripture, when the infants in Bethlehem were so cruelly massacred
(Matthew 2:17-18). Jeremiah's
prophecy does not stop with Rachel's weeping, but proceeds to offer her counsel
(Jeremiah 31:16-17). “Refrain from
weeping.” says the LORD through Jeremiah. “They shall come back! Your children shall come back to their own
border.” The Jewish people did return from exile seventy years
after Jeremiah's prophecy. They have
done so again in our own generation, against all the odds, after a second exile
of nearly 2,000 years.
“Weeping may endure for a night,
but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Terrorism is thought to be
a modern phenomenon, but when you think of it, Herod was a terrorist. The idea is to instill fear upon the intended
victim, prior to destroying him entirely. Herod the Great came to
his end alone and in agony one year after the slaughter of the innocents. In fact, it was five days after he ordered
the execution of his own son. (Not a
nice man) The devil seeks to terrorize
our own souls, but he will fail. The
irony is that when we suffer reproach on behalf of Jesus, it carries its own
benediction (Matthew 5:11-12). In the
end Satan cannot eliminate the anointing within us. We find rest in the midst of reproach, and in
the end all his failed attempts redound to the glory of God (1 Peter 4:14).
Brown
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