Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Spiritual Warfare in Christ’s Infancy
## Matthew 2:1-23 | Pastor Tuuri

We come together today as those who have been called to the dance of the liturgy and the worship of God. And in the context of that, as we sang earlier from the Psalter, we also come together as we do every Lord’s Day to bear a two-edged sword in our hands to execute God’s judgment against those that are in rebellion against him. Let me do that in a little more focused manner every year as we think about the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

And I want us to turn to Matthew 2 today to look at spiritual warfare as done by Christ in his infancy. So the sermon text today is Matthew 2:1-23 and the subject is spiritual warfare. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Matthew 2. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the child was to be born. So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are not the least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young child, and when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also.” When they heard the king, they departed, and behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “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.” When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “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.”

Now when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise, take the young child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young child’s life are dead.” Then he arose, took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for the opening scenes here, the result of the incarnation that we celebrated for the last two months. These opening scenes in Matthew’s gospel of warfare initiated by our Savior. And Lord God, help us as we contemplate this battle in Bethlehem. Help us, Lord God, to understand how we are to go about doing our warfare as those in union with Christ. In Jesus’s name we ask it and for the sake of the victory of his kingdom, amen.

Please be seated.

The idea of this sermon came to me a couple of weeks ago as I was working in my yard. I mentioned this last week, but we’ve sung several times and we’ll do it again today. This little babe, so few days old. And the opening line is: “This little babe, so few days old, is come to rifle Satan’s fold.” And then the closing line is: “If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, then flip not from this heavenly boy.” So the song is kind of a meditation on the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the warfare that he initiates while yet in the cradle.

And so the song gives us this as an example to us of how we’re to engage in the same sort of spiritual warfare victoriously in union with Christ.

So if we think a little bit about what unfolds in Matthew chapter 2 and how Jesus wages war, how he engages in spiritual warfare, as we look at this mayhem in Bethlehem—as I mentioned last week, kind of like an inspired version of the Thriller in Manila—years ago, there was a big heavyweight fight in Manila in the Philippines and Howard Cosell called it the Thrilla in Manila. So big battle. And so here we have in Matthew a big battle. Two kings, two kings of the Jews, specifically Jesus and Herod duking it out. And of course, by the end of the narrative, Herod is dead. Jesus is alive and growing.

So how does this happen? What goes on in this mayhem that happens in Bethlehem in Herod’s slaughter of the innocents? How does this relate to us today?

And I chose this particular day to do it because this is the Sunday that we celebrate as anti-abortion Day of the Lord. Most groups call it Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. This Sunday or next they’ll celebrate it. It’s the Sunday closest to the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, giving us legalized murder of infants in the womb on demand. And so we’ve been doing this ever since we’ve been in existence as a church. And we believe the way we exercise the two-edged sword is primarily in the context of worship, praying to God that he would bring particular judgments against those who continue to kill children in the womb.

And it still goes on today. Praise God that the latest statistics we talked about it last year, through 2005, show a tremendous decline in abortion. Actually, a significant decline over the last twenty years. But still, probably about a million babies are aborted every year. So it’s a horrific slaughter that continues to happen.

The statistics also show that abortions have declined very dramatically, probably back to pre-Roe days in many communities, but not in black, minority, or poor communities. There the abortion rate remains quite high. And I bring this up because we have this set of events this week. We have the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in a few days. Then we also have the inauguration of our first black president, a black president who is radically in favor of allowing women and doctors to kill children in the womb up to the very moment that they’re being born.

That’s how Barack Obama has voted and that is his rhetoric. He believes that. And so we will definitely see as a result of his election, you know, babies aborted that wouldn’t have been aborted before. We’ve already seen the change in foreign policy as soon as he becomes president. One of his first executive orders is to get rid of the restriction on foreign aid going to countries or agencies that give abortions and promote it. So abortions will increase in the world and here in America as well because of the first black president’s ascendancy to the presidency.

And it’s ironic. It’s also in the context of Martin Luther King Day tomorrow. And to think that really the end result of abortion has been a far more disproportionate murder of blacks, black babies in the womb than it has white babies since 1973.

Those of you who know the history of Planned Parenthood know that they have an annual awards ceremony where they give the Margaret Sanger award to those who are doing the best job according to Planned Parenthood. Margaret Sanger was sort of the initial hero of the Planned Parenthood group. Sanger believed in abortions on demand and she believed in eugenics—that poor black people, black people, people that weren’t as smart as other people, they should be down in number. We don’t want a lot of them around. And one way to accomplish social goals is through killing these babies in the womb.

Now, just this year, at the end of this year, I think there is construction going on right off of Martin Luther King Boulevard of a new Planned Parenthood clinic. It’s going to have twice the capacity of their existing clinic and already their existing clinic, I think eighty percent of their services go to minority or poor people and a far number of those are blacks. And the point is this abortion clinic that Planned Parenthood is establishing, this new expanded one, is right in the middle of a very poor black area. And that’s because that’s where their clientele are. They make a ton of money killing black babies in the womb.

Now, I know that they don’t think of it self-consciously that way, but that is the overarching picture of what’s going on. So there’s a lot of irony to this week of celebration or commemoration that we have in front of us and it’s an irony that brings a lot of sadness, I think, to a lot of us and renews in us a sense of understanding of how to go about spiritual warfare correctly and try to do something about all of this that’s happening.

So we want to turn to Matthew chapter 2 and talk about this. We talked about Matthew chapter 1 last week. And Matthew chapter 1—if you think of the way the movement of Matthew 1 and 2 goes, it kind of goes from Genesis to Exodus. Matthew chapter 1, we talked about Joseph. Joseph is still a guy dreaming in Matthew chapter 2. So we’ve got a Joseph who’s known for his dreams, the same way that at the end of Genesis, we have a Joseph that’s known for his dreams.

Joseph ends up bringing forth bread for the world in Bethlehem, the city of bread, in the same way that Joseph of the Old Testament provides bread for the world in Egypt when there’s global famine and starvation going on. And so these parallels are there. And then today’s text, of course, makes it even more obvious because Joseph goes to Egypt and then comes back out of Egypt the same way that the Joseph of the Old Testament went to Egypt and comes back out of Egypt.

So there’s this big Genesis theme. In fact, Matthew 1 begins with the genealogy. “This is the record of the genealogy” is a phrase that’s taken rather directly from Genesis, the opening verses of Genesis. And so we have a new creation being pictured in the opening chapter of Matthew. And now we have, more specifically, a new Exodus that goes on here. And we see the themes.

We can think immediately of Herod killing a bunch of babies, Jewish babies, the same way that Pharaoh killed a bunch of Jewish babies. “Out of Egypt I’ll call my son.” Well, it’s kind of irony. The same irony that we think of this week with a black president advocating abortion. The same sort of irony is going on here in the sense of “out of Egypt.” Well, what is Egypt? Herod is the Egyptian guy now. Pharaoh is in Israel. Israel has become Egypt. Pharaoh had his magicians and Herod has his scribes and Pharisees in opposition to the true magi, or wise men, who are now Gentiles.

And when Joseph leaves Egypt, as it were, to go to Israel—in Egypt, things are reversed. The text explicitly tells us that he does it at night in the same way that God’s people left Egypt at night, being led out from there. So now Joseph leads his family out of the new Egypt into the new place of safety, which ironically is in Egypt, at night. And so you have this nighttime, midnight deliverance of this new Exodus.

And this will point forward—and we’ll talk about this at the communion table—to a greater Exodus that’s to happen at the end of Matthew’s gospel with the passion of our Savior. So we have these themes opening up for us, and you know, the text is just rife with these kinds of allusions and others as well that we’ll try to talk about in making some comments about the text.

But we also want to plumb this text for some examples of spiritual warfare as this war is going on in the same way as the war went on between Moses and Pharaoh. Now the war goes on between Jesus and the new Pharaoh, Herod. And Jesus in his infancy—now when the wise men come, it’s probably maybe a year or two old. He’s not a baby exactly anymore as in our song. But still Jesus in his infancy is entering into this spiritual warfare we can say.

And we want to kind of think about that today as we look at the text.

Now I’m going to address the text in five blocks. Okay? And at the end of each of these little blocks I’ll talk about some lessons from that particular block. And the first four of these five end with the fulfillment of prophecy. And so the first block is the opening scene down to the advising of Pharaoh Herod by his scribes that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem and they quote the Old Testament prophet. So it doesn’t say it’s fulfilling one of it, but it’s a citation that the prophecies are being fulfilled and of course, as we said last week, Matthew is about fulfillment of prophecies albeit in a different way than we would normally think of them as we’ll touch on as we go through this.

So beginning in verse one: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.” So this establishes where he’s born. And then “in those days of Herod the king.” So we’ve got Herod the king. “Behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.’” And then Herod the king hears this. He’s troubled and all Jerusalem with him.

Now, the way the text is laid out—I know I don’t have outlines for you that shows this—but we’ve got Herod the king and Herod the king. And in the middle of those references, we have the wise men saying, “Where is he that’s been born king of the Jews?” So the combat, the antagonism between the two kingdoms is spotlighted. At the middle, the very center of this first section, we have this spotlight that a new king, the king of the Jews, the true king of the Jews, has arrived on the scene. And they know this because they’ve seen his star.

Well, stars are pictures of rulers in the scriptures. And they’ve seen his star and they’ve come and already we see some a little bit of irony, right? The whole Gentile-Jew thing is reversed a little bit. Remember that in the Exodus they came out and God led them. The cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So the light goes before them leading them. And here now it’s Gentiles that are coming being led by a different kind of light—star, but still light nonetheless. And so the Gentiles are seen here as Israel was in the Old Testament, as coming.

Now, Matthew in his genealogy has already given us four Gentile women in the genealogy of Christ. And so from the get-go in Matthew’s gospel, part of this new creation, new Exodus, is seen really in the inclusion of the Gentiles. Now the great desire of the Gentiles has come and he now is already bringing them to him by his light.

Remember, Jesus is that pillar of cloud and fire in the Old Testament, leading. Yahweh is leaving—Jesus is the manifestation of God, leading his people on. And Jesus is in Bethlehem, but it’s his light. He is the morning star. He is the light of the world. And so Jesus is actually bringing these wise men to come and worship him just as we saw predicted in Isaiah 60.

Now just as in Isaiah 60, also all the Gentiles don’t come. All the nations aren’t converted. Remember Isaiah 60 has this great block in the center where the Gentiles are bringing treasures, references to camels and all that stuff. The Gentiles are bringing their treasures, like they are here, to Jesus. And so the great prediction of the great return from exile at the coming of Messiah is that all the world will go up to the mountain of God to worship him.

But at the very center of Isaiah 60, remember we pointed out last week at the very center of Isaiah 60, it talks about—a relatively short sentence—so relatively few nations won’t do it, but those that don’t do it, that won’t serve him are destroyed. So Isaiah 60 being fulfilled here reminds us, if we haven’t figured it out from the controversy between Herod and Jesus being articulated here, that somebody’s going to die. Herod’s going to be a picture of unbelieving leaders of nations and he’s going to die.

So this text opens up for us this idea: the fulfillment of Isaiah 60, the battle of the two kings, and the Gentiles are being led. And at the very heart, the very center of the king of the Jews, they know this because his star in the east and we’ve come—what?—to worship him. So at the center of this opening section, this opening little pericope, Jesus is drawing Gentiles to him by means of light for the specific purposes of worship and that worship is assigned then to a declaration that Jesus Christ is king, is king of the Jews.

And then it says in verse two that when Herod the king heard this he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And then he gathers together his troops. Jesus is gathering his magicians. Right? Pharaoh had his magicians. Jesus is gathering his wise men. They’re not manipulating nature, but they understand things. They’re wise guys. They’re magi. So Jesus has the true wisdom people who are seen in their submission to him, and Pharaoh, who’s going to strike out at Jesus, has his advisers, all these bright guys around him.

So there’s, you know, one of the opening—this opening scene shows us two different groups who will engage in this spiritual warfare. Jesus is the king but he’s already using members of his army, the wise men, to make proclamation to Herod of his advent. He’s using his troops. And Herod is using his army, his soldiers, to give him information so he can prosecute warfare against Jesus.

And they tell him—well, the Christ. Very significantly, he inquired about them where the Christ is, Messiah. And so where this king, the anointed one, will be, he wants to find out. And then obviously he doesn’t believe in the word because he’s going to try to kill this Christ is what he’s attempting to do.

So that’s the opening scene. What are some elements of spiritual warfare that we can discern here?

Number one: Jesus initiates war.

Baby Jesus comes and the first recorded action here in terms of the significance of him, besides the beauty of the night of his birth, the action for us given to us is that baby Jesus prosecutes warfare. He does it through proclamation. He proclaims his birth to the magi and he uses the magi to proclaim his advent to Herod. Now, that’s not self-consciously why they’re there, but that’s what they end up doing. He proclaims. Jesus proclaims his birth, proclaims that the king has come and initiates warfare.

Now, this means that it’s not our job to sit back and wait till people come after us in order to engage in spiritual warfare. Jesus is the initiator of spiritual warfare. Okay? We’re to be like Christ. Spiritual warfare is to be initiated and it’s to be initiated, I think in the same way—we could take by way of example at least—that Jesus initiated it. It’s proclamation and specifically that proclamation to Herod is set in the context of their coming with a desire to worship Jesus Christ.

So the proclamation of the worship of Christ, that Jesus is king, the wise men take that message to the one who thinks he is king, sovereignly, autonomously himself. So one of the things that churches are to do in preparation for an inauguration of a president, in preparation for a commemoration of Roe v. Wade, is to declare forth in the worship of the church of Jesus Christ and to proclaim that there is one king of kings—that’s the Lord Jesus Christ—and every other sovereign or pretender to the throne has to be submissive to him or they’ll be killed. Isaiah 60 will happen. The word is proclaimed.

The word is not some kind of otherworldly message here. The proclamation is that Jesus has come, invaded planet Earth if you want to think of it that way. And he’s come to prosecute warfare against pagan kings who are rebellious against him. It is the job of the church to do that.

So the first truth of spiritual warfare is Jesus starts it. Jesus starts the mayhem. Okay? He throws the first punch here. He doesn’t sit back and wait for Herod. He proclaims who he is through the star and then through his wise men. He proclaims that he has come. And then, as I said, this happens in the context of the worship of the Gentiles of Jesus. They’ve come forth to worship him.

Spiritual warfare is initiated by Jesus and it’s to be carried out by his, by the Gentile church, through the proclamation of his reign and authority and through the worship of who he is. Worship is spiritual warfare here and proclamation is seen in the context of that.

Now the next thing that we can say about spiritual warfare is that spiritual warfare works.

Jesus comes and declares who he is. And what’s the immediate effect upon the proclamation of who Jesus is in his totality? Baby Jesus initiates it. He slaps Herod and he knows Herod’s going to respond. He wants Herod to engage as well. Either put down, you know, submit to me or engage in warfare that I will certainly win. Herod’s fearful. Herod’s troubled. All Jerusalem is troubled.

Religion is not supposed to be the opiate of the masses. The proclamation of the Christian gospel is supposed to be a shockwave to the culture. Now, it’s a good, wonderful, beautiful thing. It’s desirable and all that, but it is a message of power and efficacy in the moment, in history, in time and space.

You know, we Christians have a great way of sort of spiritualizing away all this stuff and not seeing the political implications of the gospel. But here in Matthew, it’s seen immediately—the political implications of the proclamation of the worshiping Gentile church that Jesus is king of kings and Lord of lords. It means that every other king, every other ruler, every other judge must submit to him. It is a distinctly political message. Herod understood it better than the church understands it frequently. He knew right away he was troubled.

Why was Herod troubled? Well, we can speculate. We don’t know. Herod was kind of a bloodthirsty guy, kind of a ruler guy. And it could have just been simple paranoia as some people say. But there’s another way of looking at it. Leithart on his website has a quote by Odden and I want to read this. He says, “When [Odden] described Herod’s reaction to the news that God has been born: ‘If this is true and if the news gets out, Herod thinks all is lost. Confusion will reign.’”

Now, we don’t know this. Odden is speculating here, but it is interesting in terms of, you know, forget Herod if you will, but think about modern-day pagan rulers. They think that they have to be in control of the whole thing or the wheels are going to come off the machine. I’ve said this many, many times, but at a hearing once in Salem on homeschooling, you know, one of the guys said, the representative said, “Well, you know, I’m a control freak. I guess that’s why we’re all down here.” It’s they’re control freaks. You know, Arminianism leads to a political world—man deciding more and more that he’s got to be sovereign in what otherwise is a big fat mess.

And so Herod has a country to run and his rule and authority is there because of Rome. They’re the ones who are keeping him in there. Now, if things get out of hand and start to get troubled and if there’s already kind of an uproar about the possibility of Christ coming soon, then he could indeed, as Odden said, just fear the chaos that will ensue and even if Rome isn’t involved, modern-day political rulers think they have to impose order on the world or there will be no order there.

So the proclamation of Jesus Christ is troubling to them—that he is the ruler now and that Christians will rule in the context of the world. Let me read Odden’s quote. Some of it’s on target, some of it isn’t. But let me read what he says. He says—well, Leithart says first that Odden’s passage is one of the most effective descriptions of the nature and hubris of modern liberalism that I have come across. Hubris—because the liberal believes that his order is the only alternative to chaos.

Now quoting from Odden: “Reason will be replaced by revelation. Instead of rational law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessity of intellectual discipline and the same for all knowledge, will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions, feelings in the solar plexus induced by undernourishment, angelic images generated by fevers or drugs, dream warnings inspired by the sound of falling water. Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment. Complete epics written in private language. The dogs of schoolchildren ranked above the greatest masterpieces.

Idealism will be replaced by materialism. Life after death will be an eternal dinner where all the guests are twenty years old. Justice will be replaced by pity and the cardinal human virtue and all fear of retribution will vanish. The new aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The rough diamond, the consumptive, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the new tragedy when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.”

So sort of what happens if religion is going to rule instead of secular politics, then we’ve got a world of disorder coming upon us. Herod thinks that when the church proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ that he is ruling now in this world, that rulers are susceptible to him. When we pray things like we’ll pray today in terms of imprecation against civil rulers that allow the massacre of innocents to go on and we actually think that God is going to do something about that, and that maybe that’s the ultimate reason why abortions are declining for the last twenty years, this is frightening to the broader world. This is frightening.

Now, what we’re going to have with Obama is a new vision of spirituality and faith and Christianity. It’s great. Rick Warren’s going to do the invocation. Everything’s cool as long as it’s all subservient to the greater good of the whole country. Jesus came to trouble the country. He came to trouble the emperor. He came to say, you know, empires are good, governments are good. That’s okay, but it’s got to be subject to me or I’m going to shake it down to its very core.

So spiritual warfare is begun with the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as a political event. And frequently secular leaders understand a lot better than we do what the implication will be. The Magnificat, Mary’s great song, was banned from reading at different parts of church history because they didn’t want the laity hearing proclaimed from the pulpit or even read from the pulpit or certainly reading it themselves and chanting it, that God was putting down the mighty from their seats and exalting them of low degree. It was seen as revolutionary and in a sense it is revolutionary.

But as N.T. Wright says, Jesus came to revolutionize the way we do revolutions. He comes to change everything, to bring down the mighty like Herod who won’t rule for him, to exalt those of low degree. But he does it in a way that’s not physical. What we see in the spiritual warfare that ensues here in the next few stanzas is that Herod’s use is physical warfare. Jesus’s use—already we see it at work here. His spiritual warfare is accomplished through the word, through proclamation of who he is.

And so Jesus comes to do revolution in a totally revolutionary way. The Romans are there. Jesus says, “Love your enemy. If they take your cloak, give him your other cloak, too.” Jesus’s way of changing the world is not the way of material humanism that seeks to impose a coercive force from above upon people. Okay?

So Jesus initiates spiritual warfare. He does it through proclamation in the context of worship—magi to Herod—and he does it to trouble the opposition. Now Jesus throws the first punch and the first punch causes Herod, his opponent, rocked back on his heels. He’s troubled and all Jerusalem is troubled.

So in a way, Pharaoh here is actually Egypt. I mean, it isn’t just Herod, it’s the whole city. All right.

Scene two.

“Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared.”

So Herod’s strategy is to figure things out in secret because he wants to strike back with destroying Christ. He needs to know the time to know what age kid he’s going to go over there and kill. Okay. So Herod’s response, the way the other side responds to our spiritual warfare, is by aggressive physical force. And that’s what Herod’s going to do. And it’s accomplished by political intrigue, by secretly discerning from the wise men what time he was born.

“He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the young child. And when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him.’”

He’s a liar. He’s a lying murderer is how the second scene opens up. Herod’s a lying murderer. And in opposition to Herod, now we don’t just have Jesus. We have the description of him as a young child. So we’ve got the aged, wise, discerning king who knows what to do. He knows how to figure things out, get that time of birth, and then he’s going to go kill him. And he’s going to do it under the pretext of wanting to worship him—against a young child.

Well, one of the aspects of spiritual warfare is hope. We know who wins and we know the improbability of the young child defeating all the forces of the Judean government. So you know, it’s a cool thing because if nothing else, you learn that and we enter into this kind of warfare at the world. Even if they kill us, you know, we have great hope knowing that things are going on behind the scenes. The young child will win. Okay.

And then in verse 9: “When they heard the king, they departed and behold the star which they had seen in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.”

So God continues to guide the Gentile worshippers through divine providence. Spiritual warfare, as it advances, those that are following Christ and who are his worshippers are guided by divine guidance. Now we may not see a star leading us, but the point is God is warring from Heaven against the powers that be. The stars fight for God, so to speak. He continues to show the Gentiles that really do want to worship him where Jesus is and they go there and what’s their response? They have great joy, great joy, that they’re being brought into the place of being able to worship the young child.

And then in verse 11: “When they came into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother. Young child, young child, young child, with his mother named Mary. Okay, so there’s a real emphasis in the second section on the youngness of Jesus Christ, the improbability of him winning. And we have the introduction of the mother and the idea of the Christian family.

“They fall down and worship him. When they opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Now, here’s Isaiah 60 again. But remember, we said that the one place in the scriptures where these things come together is the golden altar of incense. So the golden altar of incense was gold. It was anointed to be used with myrrh as part of the process and they burned frankincense on it, the golden altar of incense. So the worship, the worshiping Gentiles are initiating worship as they bring these gifts to Christ.

Now, there’s some practical advantages. You know, people talk about how this funds the movement toward Egypt. Sure. Okay. But I think what we want to see here is again the great emphasis throughout these opening scenes is worship. Worship is hard. The spiritual war—the context is spiritual warfare. The way we go about manifesting that warfare or waging it is through worship.

“Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed to their own country another way.”

Okay, so they come and now they depart. And this is the only section that I end this pericope here, this section, without a statement of fulfillment of prophecy. Okay, what do we learn here?

Well, we learn that spiritual warfare is against those who respond to our war proclamation by lies and murder. That’s what Herod is going to do. Secondly, our response to lies and murder is worship, joyous worship. We see ourselves in union with the Gentiles who have come to worship Christ and they have great joy as they’re divinely led to him to worship.

So their worldview, you know, think of it. I mean, over here you’ve got Herod greatly troubled and over here you have true worshippers, not troubled in the least. And they must know, you know, that Herod’s up to no good here. They understand how things are working out, but they’re not troubled. When we come together to worship and make proclamation, come together as joyous worshippers, all the bad things going on in the world don’t bring us down.

Ultimately, spiritual warfare is carried out by joyous worshippers of God. Third, spiritual warfare is seen now. Jesus is doing this. He’s seen in the context of family. And we’ll talk more about that in a couple of minutes, but spiritual warfare is engaged in. Jesus engages in warfare partially through the family. So we have the church and the family against the state is kind of what’s going on in this section.

One other thing I wanted to point out is that since worship is at the center of this and since spiritual warfare is carried out by the Gentiles bringing their gifts to Jesus to establish new worship center, I think it kind of can connect up with where we’re at as a church. We want to in the next eighteen to twenty-four months set up a new worship center somewhere in Portland. That’s our desire. Get another work going, establish more worship centers.

To do that requires gifts. Yes, we come up to the worship of God. We bring our tithes and our offerings. Those tithes have been used by God to build this worship center. We’re now out of debt here totally. Great. We’ve established worship here. And then as you continue to bring your tithes faithfully to God and perhaps above the tithes, if you want to bring offerings for this work, we establish, like the Gentiles did, a new worshiping center.

Now, theirs is definitive. This is the new worship center, the coming of Christ. But we, like that, engage in spiritual warfare by setting up more places in the city where that proclamation is going out that Jesus Christ has come. So that more, you know, opponents will be threatened by that and made fearful and we can engage in victorious warfare in union with Christ.

So we want to set up more worship centers and to do that does require money and so we’ve done it here. We need to do it continually. So spiritual warfare is accomplished by means of the gifts of worshippers establishing worship centers.

And now they’re warned in a dream. What’s happening here, right? And this is another point of spiritual warfare: God gives guidance and direction to his people by means of dreams. And more about that in a couple of minutes.

And now finally, spiritual warfare is accomplished by deceit and disobedience. So that’s maybe, you know, it looks like the bookends of this section. You know, earlier Herod lies to them about trying to find out where he could kill him and at the end they have engaged in some degree of deceit by not going back to see him or sending word—they’re not coming back. They’ve disobeyed his command to come back and give him notice of where this kid is and they’ve been deceitful to him in not returning.

Now it’s very important that we understand this. We’re always thinking that, you know, all these deceits, all disobedience is wrong. It’s not. We think of it as Pharaoh’s, Herod’s deceit, lie. That’s a lie with an intent to kill. But the deceit of the Magi is deceit with the intent of accomplishing the purposes of God.

Herod doesn’t deserve the truth. Herod will use the truth to strike at the image of God in Christ. Jacob deceived a tyrant and he did so for the proper purposes of securing what was his in the providence of God, the inheritance of the firstborn, the blessing of God. He had a tyrant dad who was giving blessing to a disobedient, rebellious son. Jacob engages in deceit throughout his life. But it’s not an unbiblical deceit. It is a true righteous use of deceit when in the face of tyrants, whether it’s his father or then Laban or whoever it is.

And God puts his stamp of approval on those actions of Jacob when at the end of his career and he’s coming back into the promised land, end of his struggles and strivings, God wrestles with him at Peniel and he blesses him saying, “You’ve conquered well. You’ve wrestled well.” Jacob’s wrestling by using deceit, if necessary, against tyrants to prevent them doing a really bad thing is blessed by God.

Rahab’s deceit ends up with her being declared one of the great heroes of the faith. The wise men here, Gentile worshippers of Christ, they deceive Pharaoh and they’re disobedient to him. So when we know that Pharaoh wants to come to your house and find out where so and so is because they’re going to kill him, we know that they don’t deserve the truth.

Now, this is important. How do you engage in spiritual warfare? To the effect that worship is effectual to producing the spiritual warfare, we have to make sure that we understand that one of the tools in our bag could be used carefully, cautiously, and all that stuff. One of the tools in our bag is what these wise men show us. Their tool was: Jesus uses his Gentile worshippers’ deceit or disobedience against Herod for his purposes. Okay.

Next scenario.

“Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Arise, take a young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, stay there until I bring you word. Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.’ When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’”

All right. One of the aspects of spiritual warfare that’s going on here is strategic retreat. Jesus engages in a strategic retreat. Herod’s coming to kill him and God tells Jesus’s parents, engage in strategic retreat. It is foolishness to think that spiritual warfare is always advancing and doesn’t ever have the room or strategy or tactic of strategic retreat in place.

Our job is not to take, you know, a bullet in the chest for Jesus and die as a martyr. That may happen, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, but our job is to prosecute warfare successfully for King Jesus and that involves at specific points in time. Jesus here engages in strategic retreat.

Secondly, God uses an obedient family to for his purposes as part of this spiritual warfare. Jesus uses his parents. Now, Joseph is involved as well as Mary. He uses protective parents to execute spiritual warfare by defending covenant seed. Okay, so strategic retreat and then secondly, protective parents of their covenant seed.

Now, that’s what the text tells us here. When Pharaoh is out to get your kids, you’re supposed to run or hide or you don’t just turn them over. Okay? Now, Pharaoh isn’t out to get your kids today through killing them. Well, he is actually in terms of the black communities we’ve talked about and abortion and all that stuff. But the ones that he doesn’t kill, what he does with them is he wants them for his own.

You know, in the book Animal Farm, you know, Napoleon the pig gets all the little baby pups and he takes them away from their parents and he raises a troop for himself. That’s what Pharaoh does. If he can’t kill the kid, he wants to utilize the kid for his purposes. Pharaoh today is in control of the public schools and he is using the public schools to subvert the faith of the covenant seed.

It is absolutely essential that we engage in spiritual warfare by having a proper instinct to protect our children from Pharaoh’s grabbing the covenant seed and taking them away either through death or through indoctrination and training. The public school today—there’s a generation of little pups being raised by Napoleon who will bark then and enforce policies of welfare statism, liberalism, socialism, you know, global warming fanaticism, whatever it is. All that stuff is being promoted, whether consciously or unconsciously, in the context of government schools. Christian parents engage in spiritual warfare when they emulate Joseph and Mary with protecting their children from Pharaoh’s desire to grab the kids.

Now, we have a concern, proper concern for babies, whether they’re covenant babies or not, right? We don’t want any little kids being killed in the womb. We want to save those kids. Okay, that’s good. We have a proper concern for benevolence needs of our greater culture, those outside of the church of Jesus Christ. You know, people that aren’t part of the faith community, we want to show benevolent actions to and engage in that and win them through the love of Jesus Christ, right? Love, Inc., we support that kind of thing.

But now, think about this for just a minute. If the primary purpose of the Christian church and parents is to grow up the holy seed and to protect them from the attacks of Pharaoh, how important should encouraging Christian children to get out of public schools be to us in this spiritual warfare we’re involved in? If the Christian church for the next twenty years continues to work to bring the abortion rates down marginally, continues to work through Love, Inc., to try to win a few people to conversion of Christ, both of those have fairly small returns on investment. Think of it as a businessman. That’s one thing. But if we marshal our forces—and we’re never unitarian, everybody’s got lots of things they’re doing. People are called to different things. So don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we all should do this.

But if the Christian church utilizes a lot of its resources, time, money, and effort to protect the seed, Christian children, then we would have accomplished far more in twenty years than we would have accomplished, I think, if we just use the other mechanism. What’s more important? Trying to convert the world around us and in that conversion, being distracted so that we lose our own children? Or securing those children and having them along with us be part of the army that evangelizes unbelievers, that tries to stop the kind of slaughter of the innocents that we have in our day and age?

In my way of thinking, it’s kind of a no-brainer. And I sort of think, now I know at this church we understand this personally, but if we understand it personally, the significance of it, and then we understand how we’re part of the church in Oregon City, okay, do we understand the importance of what we’re doing in March with this Christian education fair?

What can you do to help Christian parents get their children out of Herod’s schools? That’s what you should be thinking. Now, some of you can’t do anything. Okay, I’m fine. I don’t, you know, like I said, every man has his own calling and his deal and God, that’s great.

But I want to bring a little bit of reflection to your mind to cause you to reflect on how spiritual warfare is done here in the opening chapters of Matthew in terms of protection of the covenant seed. Yeah, I know it’s a family’s job first. What are you doing to help other families who can’t get their kids out of government schools?

Well, they can all pull them out. They can homeschool. What if both parents work? Well, they can put them in private school. Well, what if both parents work and one’s unemployed or whatever for a little bit or they’re not making enough money to get by because of the economy? There are real difficulties to Christian parents. They don’t have the imagination to carry this off and in some cases they don’t have the means.

It’s our job. We’ve been entrusted with a tremendous gift. You know, why do we understand the significance of this issue better than other Christians? It’s the grace of God. It’s something he’s gifted this church with—understanding the importance of protecting covenant seed. We have to give that gift to the extended church of Jesus Christ.

What if we put together a volunteer school here at RCC for first graders this fall or next fall? What if we got thirty kids, Christian kids whose parents are members of trinitarian churches, not pagan, not protecting covenant children here or someplace where we could have a class legally? And what if the people of this church volunteered—moms, grandmoms, older teens that aren’t in jobs yet—volunteered to teach these kids six hours a day, basic educational stuff?

What’s the significance of that in terms of spiritual warfare? I think the significance is great, great. I think we could be a model, you know, to the other churches in Oregon City, to other communities in Oregon eventually. I pray to God that we are successful with this vision of recovering covenant children and protecting them from the schools of Herod.

Another thing I want to point out here is that Joseph has a dream, right? Oh, just give us a dream. God, tell us that this is what you want us to do. Well, who gets dreams? I’ll tell you who gets dreams. Obedient people get dreams in the Bible. I mean, at least comforting dreams. Joseph gets a dream. Joseph got a dream last chapter, too. Joseph was described as a just man, right? In his divorce proceeding with Mary, he was described as a just man. What does it mean? Well, other portions of the scriptures tell us that a just man means somebody who’s walking in faithful commands of God and is pious, set apart to God. That’s the kind of stuff that produces more direction and guidance.

If you’re not obeying in the small things, notice, by the way, that God says, “Well, do this, do this, do this, and do this,” in our text. And Joseph, it says explicitly here and in the next section, he does this and this and this and this. Godly warriors are men that can obey commands from God. The simple stuff, obeying the word of God as it applies to particular situations. Step by step, simple obedience to the law of God is what God expects from us. And if we don’t get divine direction and guidance, dreamlike ability to understand what’s where’s our future, maybe it’s because we’re not obedient yet, Joseph and Mary.

Mary said, “Let it be done unto your handmaid as is.” She’s obedient. Joseph is obedient. They both know their Bibles. Joseph knows about the divorce laws of the Old Testament. Mary knows the song of Samuel’s mother. They know their Bibles. They’re obedient to what they know. And God gives them further guidance.

Spiritual warfare is accomplished through a knowledge of the word of God and simple acts of obedience. And God then gives us more direction and guidance.

Jesus starts spiritual warfare. He troubles. He starts hitting, you know, the false kings, the usurpers to the throne. They get fearful and sort of strike out then and try to kill them. And he brings along godly parents who are going to be obedient and knowing the word and obedient to the word. And he uses them to protect covenant children by making it a priority. That’s spiritual warfare here in the opening scene in this mayhem in Bethlehem.

Okay, two more sections quickly.

“Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry. See, he was deceived. You know, why am I saying deceived? They just didn’t go back. Yeah. He sees they were—he was deceived. He gets mad. ‘Sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its districts from two years old and under, according to the time when he had discerned from the wise men.’ Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. Jeremiah is only named twice in the New Testament in a quotation, both times in Matthew.

I’ll talk about that a little later, but here’s one of them that we don’t understand: “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more.”

Now couple of things here in terms of spiritual warfare. First of all, spiritual warfare when it’s done correctly—worship, proclamation, troubling the king and then not giving in to his deceits—not pulling our kids out of public school, he’s going to get mad, he’s going to get wrathful. But the Bible tells us, “Don’t worry too much. He’s going to engage in overkill, literally. But he’s going to be like Khan.” Remember in The Wrath of Khan, Khan’s trying to kill Kirk and he just can’t pull it off. He’s trying to kill the church. That’s what the pagan guy does and he can’t do it. And you know, Kirk mocks Khan. “Oh, you’re like a bad marksman. You keep shooting and shooting, but you miss. You miss me every time. Watch what happens here.” You know, spiritual warfare produces a kind of rage that makes our opposition ineffectual. They become incompetent. Now, they’re dangerous, but they’re incompetent.

And then secondly, though, there is another component to spiritual warfare that’s given to us here, and that’s martyrdom. Some people will die, physically die. Herod will kill certain people. The state will be effective in prosecuting, you know, certain people in killing them or whatever they’re going to do. The description here is kind of devastating.

But Ramah was the place where the Judeans were taken off to captivity. They’d round them up at this city called Ramah, not too far from Bethlehem. And that would be the demarcation, the debarkation point to go off into Babylonian captivity. So the imagery is that Rachel—kind of a picture of the Old Testament mother, the way that Mary is here in this text for the church. Rachel, she’s long since dead, of course, by this time. She actually dies in Bethlehem, which is sort of interesting. Again, the fulfillment stuff in Matthew is interesting and different, not straightforward like you would think.

But Rachel, Israel, is weeping over her children because they’ve gone into captivity. Now, he quotes this from Jeremiah. He quotes her from Jeremiah 31. We cannot miss the fact that true sorrow, true weeping, Rachel isn’t seen as some kind of stupid person here. She’s supposed to weep when kids go into exile. When we lose our children by death, apostasy, or just through trials and bad health, whatever it might be, some sorrow is a proper response to that kind of—little aspects of martyrdom. Spiritual warfare.

Jesus accomplishes spiritual warfare by allowing some people to become martyrs for him. Allowing these little ones. We could talk about the psychology of this. And frequently martyrdom kind of gets people’s thoughts going. They start to think, “What in the heck are we doing? We’re killing these people.” Then lots of reasons why, but the point is martyrdom happens. Sorrow will occur. But there’s another point that, unless you know Jeremiah, you won’t get here in this text.

This is from Jeremiah 31. And it’s from a whole chapter about return from exile. And the whole chapter, just about except for this verse, is joyful. This is the gloomiest verse out of the entire chapter. Now, Matthew expects us to know Jeremiah 31. And he expects us to know that when martyrdom is required in spiritual warfare, the end will be to the end of joy. He quotes a text about going into exile. But he wants us to know they are going to come out. They came out of exile and there was far more joy at that end than there was weeping going in.

So even martyrdom, spiritual warfare is accomplished by God’s people knowing that whatever difficulties, trials, tribulations, death, if necessary, God puts us through, to the end, the end result is not continual sorrow being the end of the game, but rather joy, great joy. Read chapter 31 of Jeremiah later on and you’ll see this: joy, joy, joy, great stuff going on in Jeremiah 31.

So you know, Jesus continues the warfare. Incompetence on the part of the ones that he’s riled up and worked in his providence and messed with their psyches and their psychologies so they get ineffective in what they’re doing. And secondly, spiritual warfare is accomplished through martyrdom because martyrdom leads to joy.

Final section.

“Now when Herod was dead—okay, there’s spiritual warfare we’ll talk about just a minute. So Herod is dead. ‘Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise, take the young child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. For those who sought the young child’s life are dead.” Then he arose, took the young child, his mother, and came to the land of Israel.

See, step-by-step obedience. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea, over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And then being warned by God in a dream he turned aside into the region of Galilee and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth and it might be fulfilled spoken by the prophets: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’”

Okay, more aspects of spiritual warfare in this mayhem in Bethlehem. And the first one: now when Herod was dead, Herod died a horrible death. Josephus tells us the sort of death Herod died. I mean his body stank. He had some kind of all kinds of weird physical things going on. It made him absolutely in a foul rage the last, you know, months of his life. He had his own son executed. He made plans to execute nearly all the leaders upon his death. They weren’t carried out, fortunately. But I mean, his death was not nice. And that is the death. That’s the end of spiritual warfare.

God kills people. Now, he doesn’t use the Gentiles to use a sword. He doesn’t use his Christian church normally to wield the sword of flesh. We use the sword of the spirit, the word of God. But in the providence of God, he brings judgments to pass. Part of how Jesus executes spiritual warfare is at some time he says, “Enough is enough. I’m taking the guy out.” And Jesus takes out Herod. So spiritual warfare is accomplished through the killing, the physical death of God’s enemies.

Secondly, there’s discernment and strategy that’s called for on the part of his people. Joseph figures out it’s not a safe place to go back to on his own. Now he’s then reinforced in that with a dream. But see, there’s a transition going on here from Joseph being divinely warned about stuff that he doesn’t know to him now starting to figure things out. The church of Jesus Christ is to have discernment in terms of what’s happening at what time in the context of spiritual warfare and they’re to engage in effective strategies. We don’t just, you know, count on miracles. We are discerning people and we engage in specific strategies.

And then finally, spiritual warfare is accomplished by holy warriors who seem to be completely ineffective. Weird fulfillment of prophecy. Again, he goes to Nazareth so that the prophets might be fulfilled that he would be a Nazarene. There’s no prophets that—there’s not a collection of verses and the prophets say he’s going to be a Nazarene. So what’s going on?

Well, what’s going on is God loves words. He likes the sound of words. He likes puns. He likes sound-alike sort of things. And in the Old Testament, Jesus is going to be a Nazirite. That’s a holy one set apart to God for a particular period of holy warfare. And secondly, Jesus is to be a Nazar, a branch. We’ve talked about this, a root of the offspring of Jesse. Again, a branch, not a mighty tree like Herod, but he’s going to win.

So the final conclusion here is that again, we have the great confidence of knowing that Jesus is a holy warrior. Baby Jesus in his infancy is this holy warrior, Nazirite, conquering sort of guy and he’s the one who, while he seems like a branch, unable to do anything, will be effective in the end. And that has significance for us as well. We’re to be wholly consecrated to God. Spiritual warfare is accomplished by people who see themselves consecrated for the sort of warfare that goes on in our lives.

We’re supposed to have hair hanging long. I should grow my hair out again. The Nazirites did for a period of time. Then they cut it off and offered it on the fire when they did their duty. You guys who grow long hair, I’m not sure I agree with that. But if you’re going to do it, may it be a reminder to you in the providence of God every day this week when you look in the mirror and you see long hair, may you think of the Nazirites whose hair got long. And may you remember that you’re called to spiritual warfare in union with Christ. And that means you’re called to holiness, consecration. You’ll be victorious. You’ll look weak. You look kind of silly along here, but you look like a branch as opposed to a tree. But that’s okay. God is going to be effective in using you in spiritual warfare because you’re a holy warrior for him.

And may each of us, when we see people around us with long hair, Christians in our church, whatever it is, may that be the thing God makes us think of. Oh, no. Not reacting. Oh, they got that long hair thing going on. No. Holy warriors there. I’m supposed to have, at least in my mind, long hair, too. I’m supposed to be dedicated to warring for Jesus Christ. And how do I do it? Well, I do it through proclamation of King Jesus. I do it through the worship of the church. I do it through helping establish other worship centers. I do it through simple acts of obedience. I do it through protecting the covenant seed, not just my own, but the covenant seed of the church in Oregon City as well. That’s how I go about spiritual warfare.

And if necessary, I may be a martyr for Jesus Christ, but even there, Matthew’s told me that, yeah, that one verse is in there, but he wants me to know the entire Jeremiah 31 is about the new covenant and all the great blessings that come on the other side of captivity. God says, “Man, I can face the future as a proud, victorious warrior, knowing the end from the beginning, I’m going to be successful. Even if I die, I’m going to be successful in prosecuting the warfare of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

May God grant us today. May he grant us a knowledge of the spiritual warfare we enter into now proclaiming Jesus Christ as King of Kings, calling for his judgments. We’re not going to take him. We’re not going to do it ourselves. Calling on his providence that he would either turn these people at Planned Parenthood on Martin Luther King Boulevard, that he’d frustrate that construction that’s going on, or that he convert these people or that he destroy it somehow. Lightning strike could be with me. Whatever it is, may we understand we’re prosecuting spiritual warfare today. And may we understand that we’re in union with Jesus Christ.

We’re supposed to take these principles of the mayhem in Bethlehem, the Thrilla in Manila, and we’re supposed to know how to fight this week, how to go about doing things correctly, not like Herod, blind force, wrath, and anger and all that stuff. No, wise, controlled, obedient warriors for the Lord Jesus Christ. May he grant us victory today and in the rest of our lives.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this wonderful text. We thank you for these great truths that we can glean from it about spiritual warfare. And we pray that as we come forward now with our tithes and offerings, we would do so consecrating ourselves as holy, consecrated, set apart from other things to do your work this week. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.