This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Christmas” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 26, 1993.

Tonight we are reading from Matthew’s Gospel, the second chapter, and we are beginning at verse one. Give your attention to the word of God. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?

For we saw his star in the east, and have come to worship him. And when Herod the king heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he began to inquire of them where the Christ was to be born. And they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet, And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah, for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ Then Herod secretly called the Magi and ascertained from them the time the star appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and make careful search for the child, and when you have found him, report to me that I too may come and worship him.

And having heard the king, they went their way, and lo, the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them, until it came and stood over where the child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy, and they came into the house and saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him, and opening their treasures, they presented to him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. and having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their own country by another way.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is going to seek for the child to destroy him. And he arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, Out of Egypt did I call my son. Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, he became very enraged and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs from two years old and under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the Magi.” Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted because they were no more.

But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise and take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead. and he arose and took the child and his mother and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned by God in a dream, he departed for the regions of Galilee and came and resided in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled. He shall be called a Nazarene.”

In light of your great gift, O God, we are drawn to you and even drawn with gifts in our hands. But Lord, we are praying that our gifts would always be those that are an extension of ourselves as you gave yourself to us, we would give ourselves to you. We thank you, our God, for the service of this church in the past year and how you have blessed this congregation in the gifts of those who have assembled here. We pray, our Father, that as we have presented these offerings to you, we might also be assured within ourselves that we have committed our lives to you and that we are concerned to live for you and for your glory. May we be an obedient people, this evidenced in the way we present ourselves to you. Your word being our guide. Indeed, your word being the environment in which we live. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Tonight I want to talk to you about two things as we look at this portion of God’s word, namely the conclusion of Matthew chapter 2. I have in view specifically what we find from the thirteenth verse on to the end of the chapter. I want to talk to you a bit, first of all, about the offense that this portion of scripture has represented in the minds of some. And secondly, I also want to speak to you about this portion of scripture’s deeper meaning.

With regard to the offense, just how far have we drifted in our consideration of the fullness of God’s Now, we have come to expect that there would be that drift amongst those who no longer have a regard for the Word of God in its entirety, who have already concluded that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is not the inspired, infallible Word of God. yet at the same time seek to maintain their position within the Church of Jesus Christ. Holding on to the Church, they have forsaken the Word, specifically they have forsaken the Scriptures, and an Orthodox doctrine with regard to the Scriptures. But I am bold to suggest to you that the drift is not simply because of the ravages of what has been called modernism or liberalism. The drift is because of what we observe having taken place within the ranks of the conservative church, even within the ranks of evangelicalism.

There was a very conservative church, an evangelical congregation, nestled in the hills of western Pennsylvania. This congregation was modestly endowed, faithfully attended by a goodly portion of the membership, a model congregation. Its leaders could claim respectability. They boasted an integrity before the community in which they lived. It was in this congregation a resonance to the gospel.

Tell them the old, old story. Tell them that story again. They seemed never to tire of hearing it. The love of God, His grace, God sending His Son, the Son’s death upon the cross for sinners, and His resurrection from the dead. This congregation also, it seems, abhorred compromise when it came to the essentials of the faith. They were earnestly and ardently evangelistic. They were devoted to missions. But there was that occasion during the Christmas season when their pastor mounted the pulpit to declare to them what he judged to be the fullness of the Christian and Christmas message.

But rather than preaching to them about shepherds and magi, this pastor on this particular day spoke to them about the horror of evil, about the horror of evil, as exemplified in Herod, that ancient butcher, so much a butcher that he did not hesitate to butcher children. The pastor also spoke to them that day about the marvelous deliverance which God had worked out according to his plan for this unique child Jesus, the one identified as the Son of God. Now, you might think in the midst of this world overrun by Herods, you might think in this world in which people are day in, day out confronted with the terrors of life, the horrors even of existence. But this congregation would have responded with heartfelt gratitude to the message they heard that day, a message which spoke to them not just of the horror, but also of the hope of the gospel and the certainties clearly presented in it.

Even though evil raises its cruel and vicious head, Even though it set itself against the Lord and against his anointed, still, God’s purpose of salvation is not overthrown. God triumphs, as is seen in his workings with regard to Joseph, Mary, and the child. But instead of glorying in God, For the wonders of his grace and the marvels of his power, these people expressed themselves in no uncertain terms.

They went to the elders of the congregation. They complained. The elders, in turn, sat the minister down for a good tongue lashing. The reason? These people were offended by the reading of and the preaching upon the account of Herod’s actions. They said, we don’t want the beauty of the season desecrated by stories about the slaughter of children. We do not find such messages appropriate to the season. Now it seems that these people, conservative, evangelical, Bible-believing, it seems that these people had failed to take notice of the fact that God was not through telling his story until he had reached the conclusion of Matthew 2. One might think, If we are appalled by an account of the slaughter of children, would we not also be appalled by the slaughter of an innocent man upon a cross thirty years later?

I tell you this horrifying story. because of what it reveals concerning even the good, the conservative, the evangelical attitude towards the Word of God. There is that commitment, in theory, to the doctrine of Scripture’s infallibility. But nevertheless, conservatives, well-intentioned evangelicals, no less than liberals, have proved quite persnickety about what they will accept from God’s Word. There are always other matters, always other considerations of seemingly great importance that overshadow what God is saying, and thus qualify that message.

In the case of this particular pastor and this particular congregation, it was the congregation’s refined sensitivities, and even sentimentality, which in their mind were to be exalted at that particular time of the year. And even God—think of the audacity of it—even God should have the sense not to smear up with unsightly blood this beautiful season. Well, the offense that registers here, I dare say, when all is stripped away, is the offense that God will bring to light in these very same people with regard to the cross in the Day of Judgment. from the offense to the meaning. And here, as we think about the meaning of this passage, I want you to focus on verses 16 through 18.

The center of this text happens to be a woman, not Mary, but Rachel. Matthew has quoted a portion in the Old Testament, Jeremiah chapter thirty-one, that makes specific mention of Rachel, and he brings this prophecy of Jeremiah to bear upon what has transpired in Bethlehem at the hands of Herod. But consider Rachel. I dare say that Rachel is one of the most interesting figures in the Old Testament.

You recall she was the daughter of Laban. You read about her in the middle chapters of the book of Genesis. She was the daughter of Laban, for whom Jacob labored fourteen years. She was the well-beloved wife While Leah, you recall, the one whom Jacob had married previously, was spurned. God took pity on Leah, and granted Leah many children. Rachel was herself quite envious. She was driven by an inner covetousness, and therefore she sought to obtain children for herself through her maid, and presented her maid to Jacob so as to secure children for herself since she was barren.

When she gains her children, however, She gives them names that memorialize her struggle and her victory over her sister. She proves to be, in the end, a woman who lives for the advantage, but also a woman who lives in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. When she had no children, she wanted When she got them, she wasn’t satisfied. She had been barren, you recall, and in her condition, she lashed out at her husband.

Give me children, she said. His response was, My God, but I can give you children. But you recall that as God proved gracious for his own reasons, to Rachel. She conceived and gave birth to a child. But even this marvelous blessing of a child to her, that for which she had longed, wasn’t enough. The name that she confers upon the child is Joseph, which means addition. But she says in regard to her son’s name, may God grant me another son. May God add to me yet one more. It isn’t merely a matter of her dealings with her husbands and her expectations with regard to children, her wish that she might have them.

There is the relationship that she bears to her family. which she is leaving, marrying, as she does, Jacob and moving south. At the point of their departure, she steals the household gods. This she does again because she seeks the advantage in ancient cultures. The one who possesses the household gods can lay claim to the inheritance. Jacob would bury those gods by an oak at Bethel when he entered into the land of promise, in order to declare that his tribe would seek no inheritance mediated by such gods who were among his wife’s people.

Such an act by her husband was a severe discipline to Rachel, because now there was no way for her to return to her brother’s house and at the same time claim the advantage in it, gain what she hoped to seek, or secure for herself what she hoped to gain.

Everything in her, then, compounds her dissatisfaction. Having a son, she asks for another. Now that second son appears. She gives him the name Ben-Ami, calls him the son of my sorrow. The extreme anguish of Rachel is that of one who had hoped to gain the great advantage to secure for herself and even her children a place in the world by actually making the world her own. In the end, you know that the birth of her second child killed her. Her quest destroys her. She dies giving birth to that child in Bethlehem of all places. Her last moments on earth are spent in tears. Rachel weeping. She cannot be comforted. Beneath the incredible realization that all of her efforts to gain the advantage over others and in the world have been worthless. she ends in death, the inheritance she hoped for forfeited.

She is as good, in the conclusion of the matter, as a woman without children. When Jeremiah says that Rachel’s children are no more, he means that the one who sought in this world her inheritance is left without an inheritance. For Jeremiah, then, Rachel becomes a figure for all Israel. And just as Rachel has been so dissatisfied in her attachment to an earthly inheritance, so also has Israel been. Rachel loses her hope in bitterness, and possibly even her faith in the process.

Israel, also passing through the great trial of spirit, through the experience of the exile, will do likewise. God’s intention was to train the Israelites to look to him as their one true inheritance, the one who gives the advantage by his grace to those who are totally undeserving, the one who is in himself the great reward for his people, such a reward that he in himself means the end of all dissatisfaction. The people’s restlessness is resolved in God and nowhere else. In Bethlehem during the infancy of Jesus, Those people that observed the tragedy of that time and the horror of the evil perpetrated by Herod were being instructed once more. The children, the male children, represented their claim upon the future, their hold upon the land. You generated male children in order to gain the advantage in the land and to retain your hold upon the inheritance there. It is a severe lesson, a hard lesson, that comes down hard upon the children of Israel and upon these who live in Bethlehem.

But it is in order that they might understand and see that the inheritance is elsewhere. It is in God himself, the one whom he preserves. The child rescued by him will set about in a ministry to set things straight, so that all who would understand God’s purpose would understand it through him. And that all who would understand God’s purpose would find full and complete contentment in their Savior and His provision.

Have you looked at the Middle East lately? Has Israel yet got the message? Have we seen the multiplication, the increase of covetousness and envy that proves not merely to be that which destroys Israel spiritually, but that which destroys the Church? Have you looked at the lay of the land in Europe?

The Church is decimated. Envy and covetousness become the standard. Possession of things here become the hope. And to the degree that the Church itself embraces such a position, she renders herself incapable of delivering any message of meaning to the world. The offense of the text, in which you can even perceive the offense of the cross, the meaning of the text, in which you are face to face with the covetousness and the envy of a woman who in a sense embraces the problem of Israel, and in the end, the problem of all. Who end up short of God’s glory and His Kingdom.

Deal with us, our Father, in our hearts We can, in fact, present ourselves to the world as those who are respectable, those who are even refined and sensitive. And yet, Lord, internally, our hearts are ravaged by dissatisfaction and grievous lack of contentment. And if the truth were told, O Lord, we would find that the source of this discontentment is our attachment to things, and even to this world, in which we live to gain the advantage, or to have, to possess, and to use. We pray that we would see clearly, in your revelation, your truth and the truth about ourselves. And insofar, Lord, as by your Spirit you cause us to see, even the horror of the evil in our hearts drive us to our knees, that we might repent and find your grace. At this coming year, would be different, and we would live in newness of life as children of the King, those blessed by Jesus Christ himself.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.