What Terrified the King!
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2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. 3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel. 4 And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. - Micah 5:2-4
To say Herod the Great was a wicked and appalling man is one of the great understatements of the ancient world. Herod not only murdered his way onto the throne but once he was there, he was preoccupied with a level of narcissistic paranoia that caused him to commit unspeakable acts of violence to keep it. Those atrocities include butchering his favorite wife, slaughtering many of his sons, and sadistically killing many Sadducees in cold-blooded fury. In addition, he was obsessed with splendor, building projects, and opulent living that drained the people of their wealth and left them on the brink of starvation.
Rumor even has it that when he was on the edge of death, his last order was for his servants to go throughout the land of Judah, killing all of the Jewish elders who were recently released from prison so that people would have a reason to mourn on the day that he died. Apparently, as he surmised, people would celebrate his death when it came, and his ego could not allow that to happen. He also had another of his sons murdered when he died, thinking he had defected to the Hasmoneans.
But, of all the things that paranoid this king, losing his throne sent the greatest tremors up his spine. Imagine, knowing that, how Herod reacted to the news that a new King was born in his backyard! A King that magi were coming to worship. A King who would overthrow the pitiful empire of dirt that Herod had been murderously assembling. A King who would live and reign forever and whose Kingdom would never end.
This is what terrified the sadistic tyrant and precisely what ended up happening. In the very year that Jesus was born, Herod sent the murder squads to terminate him. The irony is that Herod would die just a few months later from an incurable disease. After his death, his empire fell apart, Rome took back over Judah, and the line of the Herods became increasingly irrelevant, even to the point of extinction in just two generations. But for Jesus, the King this king tried to eliminate, His Kingdom has lasted now for 50 generations, and His reign will never end!
God took what Herod meant for evil and turned it into the most significant good that was ever accomplished!
This Christmas, remember that God still takes the awful circumstances of this life and is turning them for good. His Son is on the throne, and He is leading you, me, and us to advance His Kingdom to the ends of the earth. Of course, there will be setbacks; there will be pain and wounds of war. But, if Herod could not stop the Kingdom of our Lord and Christ, and if Satan could not stop it, then what we are going through cannot either!
Let us rejoice in our King and serve Him without fear!
