A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel
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A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel |
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Vol. 5, Issue 4 | Winter 2011 |
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Primum Mobile is a quarterly web magazine. This issue and all its contents are © Copyright 2004-2011 by the editors. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
by Paul Lytle
And going into the house they [the wise men] saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
-Matthew 2:11-16
There are certain stories we love to hear each Christmas. Amongst the most popular is how Mary and Joseph were turned away at the inn and had to give birth in a stable. The story of the shepherds who witnessed a choir of angels worship God sparks a certain amount of awe in us. I very much like the story of Zacharias and Elisabeth myself.
When it comes to the wise men, however, we seem to love half the story only. The other half gets passed over nearly every time. The Christmas tale we like to tell is one of peace on earth and good will toward men, after all! But there’s a little detail in the story of the wise men that really ruins the whole mood of the narrative. It’s not a scene that we will find depicted with wooden cutouts in our neighbor’s front yard at Christmas. The murder of an unknown number of children by Herod does not get many Christmas morning sermons.
And yet it is a critical point, because it is a reminder of the greater story we find ourselves in, and the greater war that is being waged. The birth of Christ was not the final victory in that war, but it marked the coming of that end, and the forces of evil would not stand by even in this wondrous serene moment without attempting to take out the coming Messiah before he had even really begun to work.
It’s not the first time in Scripture that something like this had happened. Ever since the Fall has there been a battle waging—one described by the Holy Spirit through Moses as occurring between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent (Genesis 3:15 – “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel”).
There is much we can draw from this verse, but we should take it in two ways that are critical to understand. In the first, there is now a battle between the children of God and the god of this world. Surely, Paul points out that Satan will be crushed by God under the feet of believers (Romans 16:20).
But the seed also refers specifically to a man – the one the Scriptures call the Messiah. It is he who brings about the final victory, and against him Satan will not be able to stand.
The Old Testament, from this moment on, follows the seed of the woman throughout time and explains how God provides for them, rescues them, and preserves them. In fact, it is a story of truly miraculous preservation through situations that should have destroyed them were they any other group. We also see that there is a force against them like no other, and there is a particular vengeance against the seed of the woman that is often irrational and cruel.
From the very start, when Cain killed Abel, there has been an effort to destroy that seed. But the seed lived on through Seth. Pharaoh’s opposition to Moses began reasonable enough – for why should he give up this people? – but quickly moved into irrationality. Even his magicians began to counsel him to obey God (Exodus 8:19), but he would not.
This same sort of irrationality caused Haman to seek the destruction of the entire Jewish people because Mordecai, a single man, would not bow before him (Esther 3:6). Such influence did Haman have with the king that he was able bring about a decree that would, in fact, destroy the Jews.
Daniel describes two laws in his lifetime that made it a capital crime to worship the God of the Bible rather than idols. Ezra and Nehemiah note incredible opposition to their efforts to unite the Jewish people in Jerusalem and bring about repentance and faith in that people. Even in Judah was the influence of false religions so great that the Law was forgotten and lost for a time (see 2 Kings 22) until the reign of King Josiah.
This whole story of redemption is filled with these conflicts, where a people go astray, or another people sought to destroy the faithful of God. And yet in every time did God raise up someone to squelch the efforts of the seed of the serpent to destroy the seed of the woman. Mordecai and Esther thwarted Haman; Moses was able to bring the people out of Egypt; Hilkiah found the Law and gave it to King Josiah, who repented of the kingdom’s failure to keep it; Daniel and his friends remained faithful in a foreign land and were saved (miraculously) from death.
God is faithful to his children, and that has not stopped since Jesus appeared. He raised up a persecutor of the church named Saul to spread the Gospel throughout a hostile land. He raised up Athanasius to stand firm (and basically alone) against a terrible heresy that threatened to destroy the Christian church in the fourth century after Christ. When the Roman Church (much like in Josiah’s day) had kept the Bible away from the people and abandoned the Gospel, God brought a small group of Reformers to rediscover the truth and teach the Gospel to a people who had never heard it.
God’s people are in all ages under attack, and yet Romans 16:20 returns to mind: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”
That first Christmas did not happen outside of this greater context. It did not happen in a world of peace that would only later be ruined. It happened in the midst of a war, and surely the seed of the serpent would do anything to stop the coming of the Messiah, for it would be the Messiah to end it.
The wicked Herod was a pawn in this particular battle, and it was a battle that must have seemed so very discouraging for those who feared God. Only a few knew the importance of that time and place, and fewer still knew that Jesus had escaped (or even that the Messiah was named Jesus, because the wise men had not returned to tell Herod’s court that). In the darkness of that wicked day, it probably seemed very much that the seed of the serpent was winning.
So too it seemed on a Friday about thirty-three years later, when that same Messiah, protected by the Spirit in Bethlehem, was placed upon a Roman cross to die. It must have seemed very much that Satan was winning.
But he was not.
Part of the reason we celebrate Christmas is that we know what happens. We know that he escaped to Egypt, and that he returned. We know that he died, and rose from the dead. It’s easy to pass over this part of the story because we know we have a happy ending coming. It is not my point here to ruin that ending.
It’s my point to show what Jesus is overcoming.
The war is won, but Satan has not yet been cast into the lake of fire, and therefore there are still battles. The evil and irrational rage against the seed of the woman lives on in many ways, most notably in abortion. We are legally murdering far more children every year than Herod did in Bethlehem, but we make up ridiculous excuses for it.
We embrace sin; we embrace idols. Like those Jews in the Old Testament, we chase after all sorts of other pleasures and faiths instead of fearing the one true God. We love pluralism, we love greed. We have abandoned the Word in favor of work, football, entertainment, sex, or a hundred other things.
Yet God will win his Elect. He has chosen a people for himself, and this people will not be turned finally away from him. We have sound preachers in this land, some preaching to thousands and some to scores, who remain true to their calling and preach the Word rather than their own philosophy or self-help ideas. We are being led by faithful under-shepherds, just as God’s people always have been. We will be maintained until Jesus returns, and the war will see its final battle.
