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When wise men arrive in Jerusalem asking where to find the one born king of the Jews, Matthew 2 says Herod was deeply disturbed—and all Jerusalem with him. It’s a strange reaction to the fulfillment of a centuries-old promise, and it looks a lot like what we do when God’s work threatens the status and stability we’ve been quietly building our joy around.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts two kinds of rejoicing—earthly rejoicing in power and status versus heavenly rejoicing in God’s promises. What are some modern examples, beyond politics or church leadership, where we might be tempted to chase the wrong kind of joy? How can we tell the difference between the two?
Herod, the chief priests, and the scribes all had reasons to fear losing their positions when news of the Messiah arrived. What are the “positions” or comforts in your own life that you might unconsciously protect, even if God is calling you elsewhere? How do you wrestle with that tension?
The sermon describes Jerusalem’s disturbance as partly fear of Herod’s reaction and partly doubt that God would actually deliver on His promises. When have you experienced that combination—fear of immediate consequences mixed with doubt about God’s faithfulness—and how did it affect your choices?
The sermon uses Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement as a parallel to how we sometimes compromise our values to maintain earthly peace or status. Can you think of a time when you compromised a conviction for the sake of comfort or acceptance? What was the cost?
The pastor draws a sharp distinction between seeking an “earthly pause”—rest, stability, predictability—and seeking heavenly peace rooted in God. How is that distinction playing out in your life right now? Are these always opposed to each other, or can they coexist? What might it look like to actively choose heavenly peace over mere comfort?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Tonight, we’re looking at King Herod, and Herod’s story, well, needless to say, it’s a little different than the stories we’ve been looking at over the last couple of weeks. We’ve been looking at Mary and Joseph, and how they responded—both maybe what was immediately going on in their thoughts and minds, scrambling around as they tried to understand what God was doing, and also the bigger picture of how they walked faithfully, even as they waited. Because they knew what real rejoicing was about. They knew what was coming. They understood God’s promises, even if they didn’t understand exactly how those promises were going to play out in the moment.
Herod’s a little different story, but I think it’s a story worth coming to over and over again when we look at his story, because, as we do, we’re reminded of what we often do. You see, Mary and Joseph, at least ultimately, they were looking heavenward. They were looking for that real rejoicing we find when we’re looking at God’s promises, even when the earthly connection to them seems really incredibly vague. Herod, on the other hand, what was he looking for? He was looking for how he could find a point to rejoice in his status, his position, now. And so were the people around him.
In a sense, we’re really looking to appease the earth, we might say. It makes me think of a promising politician of the early part of last century, someone who was perhaps the first person to plan a community in England. We hear about planned communities all the time now. We know about ones even in our own area. And so this was a pretty big deal. And then he went on to be a member of Parliament, appointed to different important positions, ultimately rising to the position of Prime Minister. That’s someone with a successful political career, wouldn’t you say?
And notably, even in that, he did so starting at a late age. He was in his 40s when he joined Parliament, and I believe that makes him the oldest new member of Parliament to ever ultimately become Prime Minister. So an amazing career, yet we don’t talk about that.
Why not? Well, I’m talking about Neville Chamberlain. And if you know Chamberlain, you know the reason why we don’t talk about that is we talk about one incredibly fateful policy. A policy that, to achieve peace, to achieve a sense of calm for his nation that he was leading, he would appease Hitler by giving him some of the land that Hitler said he wanted. And that policy of appeasement, when he adopted it, he said had achieved peace for our time.
Well, looking back, we know it was a dismal failure. It didn’t work. And after it didn’t work, Chamberlain’s career and his life quickly came to a horrible conclusion. His leadership was a failure, and then it was found out that he had cancer, and he died shortly thereafter. The end of his life just ends painfully and unfortunately. And yet, for a moment, he thought he’d achieved something.
Well, when we look at the story of Herod and the people around Herod, I think they’re doing the same thing, and I think a lot of times we do as well, because we may not be dealing directly with Hitler. I mean, that’s not an everyday experience, thankfully. But as we look at this earth and what’s going on in it, and what we want to achieve, and what we want to rejoice in, what do we do over and over? We’re looking for a way to, in a sense, appease that which is evil in this world, and somehow find a way to get to the point where we feel like we can rejoice.
And the people that we’re going to encounter tonight, they thought they had. In fact, they were giving up the opportunity for real rejoicing. So let’s pray tonight that we would be discerning in our own lives in this new year, that we would be ready to see how we’re missing the joy that God is truly calling us to, and that we’d be ready to embrace real rejoicing as we not only look to the new year this month, but as we live out that year all year long. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, would you help us to be people who are ready to rejoice, but rejoice in the right things? You help us not to appease this world, not to appease the forces of evil in this world, not to appease the forms of success and status and everything else that beckons for our attention in this world, but to be focused on doing what’s pleasing to you that we might be chasing after the only true rejoicing we can ever reach. We pray this in the precious name of our Savior, Jesus. Amen.
So when we think about someone like Chamberlain, he was choosing what looked like an easier path, a successful path in the moment. And we know that ultimately, because it wasn’t chasing after what was genuinely good, it was a path that would lead to failure. Herod exemplifies the path that leads to failure in chasing after worldly power.
We want earthly power because if we have earthly power, we feel like we have control over our destiny. I think what all of us want, we want to know, well, for one, that we are going to be successful and happy and everything’s going to go the way we want, but that we are also the ones charting the course for that, because there’s a comfort in saying, well, I’m in control. I have the steering wheel. I have the ship’s rudder under my command.
Take a look at Matthew chapter 2, verse 1. It says, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, ‘Where is he who has been born the king of the Jews? For we saw his star rising and have come to worship him.’”
When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. So he assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Messiah would be born. “In Judea of Bethlehem,” they told him, “because this is what was written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel.’”
A lot of promise packed into those verses, and they’re familiar promises to us. Two thousand years later, we know, well, of course, the Messiah is going to come from Bethlehem. But notably, too, people then did. Not only was it the city of David, it was also the city that the prophets had spoken of. That’s what Matthew refers to here. He’s referring back to the city of David. There was this promise that they were referring to, that the people knew that this is where the Messiah was going to come from.
In fact, later on in Jesus’s ministry, when people thought he was originally from Galilee, they said, “Well, he can’t be the Messiah. He’s from Galilee.” So there was this promise. It was there.
Herod, not being the most religious man, he didn’t know. But people around him who were more faithful would have known. And in fact, he brings in the people of Judah. And in fact, he brings in the scribes and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, the priests, all the religious leaders. And they know, and they say, and he’s not happy.
Here’s a wonderful promise, but he’s not happy. What do we see in verse 3? He’s deeply disturbed. Why? Because he wants to be the king of the Jews. In fact, the Roman Senate had awarded him the title king of the Jews. But notably, it was the Roman Senate that had said he was the king of the Jews. Herod was half Edomite. Edomites were not to be favored in the land. They were rejected. They had been one of the enemies of the people of God.
And what it said as far as Herod being the king, well, it said that he really shouldn’t be. The people didn’t accept him as the king of the Jews. He wasn’t the proper claimant to the throne as a descendant of David. He was a pretender. And so the promise of the real king of the Jews coming, well, that didn’t make Herod feel all kinds of warm, fuzzy things. It made Herod fear for his power.
And because Herod’s main focus was maintaining his own earthly power, he’s displeased. We see that throughout Herod’s life. He became more and more paranoid trying to protect his power. In fact, at one point, as he became increasingly paranoid, he put his favorite wife to death because he was afraid for his power. And he put children to death. He put his other family members to death. He did whatever it would take to hold on to power. He wasn’t chasing after real joy here. He was chasing after what he thought would bring joy, which was a power that wasn’t really his.
Because of that, he always had to fight for it. He’d always have a fear of rejection and a rightful fear because people knew he wasn’t really the one that was supposed to be in power. So that’s Herod. But what do we do with the people around Herod? We’re told that Herod isn’t the only one deeply disturbed. He was deeply disturbed, but it goes on in verse 3, all Jerusalem with him. And so by extension, we can assume as he assembles the chief priests and the scribes, they’re deeply disturbed.
We have good reason to think they’re deeply disturbed because here come the wise men asking this question. And the chief priests and the scribes, what do they do? Well, they don’t dash off with the wise men to go find the Messiah. No, they stay back. Why? Because they’re deeply disturbed. A real leader would lead by serving. And so if Herod were such a leader, he would have set aside his power and chased after the Messiah.
Here’s the one that’s really meant to be there. Let me help the one who’s going to fulfill all the promises of the people come. And likewise, those Pharisees and those scribes, those priests, what should they have done? Well, if they were real teachers and they fancied themselves the teachers of the people, what should they have done? They should have pointed the people to the fulfillment of the promise.
But instead, they’re deeply disturbed because God bringing the Messiah, upsetting everything that they had built their lives around, the power structures that they understood, even if they disliked them, meant they might not have earthly power either. Who needs a scribe? Who needs a chief priest? If the one, the anointed one, the one that’s been promised for centuries, who needs them if he’s come? You don’t.
In fact, that’s what we see. But if you’re one of those chief priests, if you’re one of those scribes who spent his life teaching the people and being respected as a great leader, and you think about, well, now all that earthly power that I’ve had, all that earthly status I’ve had is going to be called into question. Well, oddly, the priests and the Pharisees, who normally didn’t like each other—we’ll see that later in Jesus’s life, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, they opposed each other on different things.
They didn’t like each other, but they didn’t like the prospect of someone taking their power even more. And so as Herod brings them together, they come to several unlikely conclusions together. They agree on first is simply the fulfillment of the prophecy. They can say what’s happening. And Herod may have brought them together because he knew they hated each other. And so he wanted to see if they could build a consensus on what was happening, because then no one could try to get an edge with Herod by lying about what the scripture said or anything like that.
So he brings them all together. They agree on that. But then they seemingly, by their silence and inaction, agree on something else, which is, we’d rather not see this prophecy fulfilled. Yes, we hate each other, but at least we have this uneasy alliance. We both kind of leave things alone. There’s a zealots out there. They’re always causing trouble and making the Romans upset. We’re not with them. We’re together.
Sure, the Pharisees, they’re all about the Torah and teaching the law, and the chief priests, they’re all about sacrifices, and we’re not quite in agreement on how to interpret certain biblical doctrines. But we’re together in this, that we don’t want Rome to be mad. We don’t want Herod to be mad. We like having power and status in our society.
And so even though they know Micah 5:2, which Matthew doesn’t allude to, he quotes here referring to Bethlehem as the source of the Messiah, and also then goes on to promise who that Messiah is, and we can pick up on that. Matthew links that to 2 Samuel 5:2, where we’re told he’s going to be a shepherd of the people. So not just a great king like Micah’s talking about, but a genuine shepherd. We have these two amazing things.
Even though they know these things, even though as they pull them together, as the teachers of the time would, compacting them into a single quote, well, they can know those things by heart, but they don’t want them fulfilled right now because it’s inconvenient for what they think is going to really make them happy.
Imagine—you have the opportunity. Think if you could do this, what you would say. That you have people who have figured out that the Messiah has been born. They can come in as Gentiles who don’t spend all their time studying God’s word. They may not even be worshipers of the Lord, but they’re familiar enough to know that a promise is being fulfilled.
They come and report something that points to the fact that this is happening right now in Bethlehem. And you have the opportunity to go and see Jesus after he’s been born. Would you stay in Jerusalem and be disturbed? I think all of us would like to say, no, I’d dash off. I’d go see the baby Jesus.
But think about the things that are comfortable and reliable in your life and in my life. How would we really feel? How would I feel if suddenly what I do here as a pastor wasn’t needed anymore? I hope my answer would be, “Wonderful, Jesus returned. I don’t need this anymore. This is just pointing to him.” And that’s what it should be.
Would I instead maybe try to talk myself out of seeing God fulfilling it because I wanted to protect my own spot, my own turf? If it was going to impact what you do, would you be ready to just discard it? Or would you want to protect? And I think somewhere inside all of us, as much as we want to say otherwise, there’d be a sense we want to protect. Because we do it.
We may not do it in that exact sense, but there are so many times we see God working and we want to hold back, or we don’t want to go where God’s leading us, or we don’t want those particular people to be preaching God’s word, or we don’t want them to be doing it with us, or so on and so on and so on. Because in some way or another, even if we can kind of, if we’re really forced to say that we can see God working, it doesn’t make us comfortable.
Herod and the chief priests and the Pharisees, they’re not weird. They’re human beings. And I think the fact that we want to say we wouldn’t do that should really make us pause and ask where we would. What things would we want to hold on to so carefully? We don’t want to give it up. What status have we achieved? And if that status were going to be called into question, what’s your proudest achievement?
If that were going to be called into question, would you feel quite so joyful in the moment? Or would you want to protect it? I think that’s what we’re talking about here. It’s not enough to be a leader like Herod or a teacher leader like the Pharisees or the chief priests, where they had authority. They certainly had authority that people recognized in that moment.
It’s not enough if you want to actually be a heavenward leader, a heavenward-focused person. And all of us have opportunities to lead in our lives. We lead by example. We lead maybe in our jobs or our work or our homes or our schools. We have those opportunities. It’s not enough simply to have recognition or authority.
What does real leadership look like? What does heavenward leadership look like? It looks like, well, it looks like the Magi, the wise men. What do they do? They pick up, they go to a foreign land. It’s not a comfortable trip. Not everyone there would have looked up to them. They might have been kind of fascinated by these unusual people. But they left the society that was comfortable for them to go and see what God was doing.
And so ironically, even though we don’t know much about them, we don’t know exactly how much they even understood about the Lord in that moment, they look far more like heavenward-focused leaders, very people that claim to be the king of the Jews and the teachers of the Jews were. Because they were too busy looking out for themselves to be leading and teaching the people whose name they claimed.
What are we going to do? It’s sort of funny. I was thinking about, what if you got a call this coming week? And it was the president. And he said, “I know I only have a couple more weeks in office. My term’s coming to an end. But I have a cabinet position open, and I’d like you to take it.”
Now, there’s one catch on this. You have to give up everything that you’re currently doing. Whatever your current job is, you have to give it up. Now, maybe if you hate your job and you’ve been planning to leave it anyway, you jump on the opportunity. But if it’s someplace that you’ve worked into a position that you care about, you do something that you care about, you’d have to think a great deal about this, right?
Because while there’d be an incredible status—”Hey, I was a member of the president’s cabinet,” and there aren’t that many people in the history of the world who can say that. There’s a very limited number. So there’d be maybe a temptation that this would be a really impressive status. It’s certainly something you could put on your resume the rest of your life.
I think most of us, if we were really going to pause and reflect for a moment, would have to think. Because if you’re only going to be a member of the cabinet maybe for a couple of weeks, and let’s set aside for a moment whether you can actually get through the appointment process and so on in that period of time, let’s say you could have the job for that couple of weeks, but only for that couple of weeks.
Would it be the right thing to do or not? And for many of us, I think the answer would be no. Like, I’m a political junkie. Would it be kind of neat to say I got to be a part of the president’s cabinet for a few weeks? Well, yeah. But would I want to give up what I’m doing here at Little Hills to do it? No.
Why? Because once those couple of weeks were up, I’d have given up what I’ve been working towards. What I cared about truly. And that little thing I could put on my resume wouldn’t really get me very far if I’ve given up what I feel like God’s called me to do in life. And what I want to do in life. And what I want to continue to do.
It’d be sort of, well, that’s a neat thing to get to tell people. But what’s it really matter? Well, Herod got to be king for a lot longer than a couple of weeks. The Pharisees got to be teachers for a lot longer than a couple of weeks. The chief priests, they got to be priests for a lot longer than a couple of weeks. But in the scheme of eternity, it’s really the same thing.
And it’s the same thing when we turn away from what God’s calling us to do and what He wants us to focus on, even if it means joy. Even if it means importance. Even if it means these things, well, for a lifetime. For a lifetime. Because the real question is, what really matters for eternity?
And while the people around Herod, while Herod himself looked like they’d achieved something for their lives, they weren’t thinking about what comes next. What really matters in the end? What are we going to do? Because being favored isn’t enough. And being favored isn’t the same as being faithful.
God calls us to be faithful. And as we’re faithful, we may not get the impressive thing to put on our resume. We may not get the earthly power and status that we as human beings tend to crave in the moment. But we’re moving towards the one who has the only true power, the only true favor that can ever be bestowed on us. That’s our God.
So often, I think, maybe before we even get to this point, though—and that’s why I want to think about the rest of Jerusalem—what we really want isn’t even earthly power. We just want an earthly pause. Maybe you’re there right now. I’m sort of there right now. I’m exhausted after Christmas.
I love Christmas. And I could see Christmas going on for a lot longer. Some of you, I know, read the article I wrote last week, and I was talking about how I’d like to stretch it out even longer. And for those who are into the church year, you know that there is at least somewhat of an excuse to stretch it out to Candlemas at the beginning of February.
Well, I’d like to do that. But part of the reason I want to do that is I want to kind of rest in Christmas. There aren’t huge things going on. It’s just time to absorb what we’ve been celebrating. And maybe that’s not exactly where you’re at. But I think probably most of us, in some way or another, there’s something going on. You just like to rest. You just want to catch your breath. You just want to be refreshed.
I think that’s sort of where we find a lot of Jerusalem, is they’re disturbed. Because we’re told all of Jerusalem’s disturbed back in verse 3: “When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.”
Now, we’ve already looked at why the subset that was immediately around him may have been disturbed. They wanted their own power and authority. Why was the rest of Jerusalem disturbed? I think it was twofold.
First, they were thinking immediately after this news came out, what was going to happen? Yeah, it was kind of exciting when these wise men arrived. However many, we don’t necessarily know. There were only three. Presumably, they did have an entourage. So this notable group of somewhat exotic-looking people with exotic customs and maybe exotic animals, they come in with exotic gifts for exotic promises. It was the promise of the long-awaited king.
It wasn’t just God’s promise to raise up the next leader or God’s promise to care for his people. It was God’s bringing into the world the one who’s going to bring everything together for salvation. So there’s all that initial fascination. That’s what we do as human beings.
But after the initial fascination, I think the first thing that they start worrying about is, how’s Herod going to react in the moment? He might get really angry. And in fact, he does. He does horrible things. He massacres the young boys because he wants to protect his power. They weren’t wrong to fear Herod.
And so I think that was the first part, probably followed up by the second part, which is, I think they probably didn’t really, truly grasp what God could and would do. And so if you don’t really believe that God’s going to do something that spectacular, and so on the one hand, you’re fearing what Herod’s going to do, and you’re not really setting your sights on what God is going to do, it looks like that first fear, well, it’s a lot weightier than the second part, what God’s going to do in the future that you’re filled with doubt on.
And so those two things together, I believe, causes them to be disturbed because they didn’t really need anything big to happen. They just wanted what? To go about their lives. Maybe to have things calm down a little bit.
Sure, there were plenty of people in Jerusalem that didn’t want the Romans to be ruling anymore, but they’d seen other people come and go and claim to be the one that was going to fix it, and it didn’t work. And so they just wanted to have a pause. Sure, the teachers they could turn to, they weren’t the best teachers. They weren’t the best teachers.
The king that they had, quote-unquote, he wasn’t really even a legitimate king, but all they wanted was a pause. So the idea that God was going to work, but in that they knew there was a wake coming, there was going to be destruction coming as the force of God’s hand came in and the people who didn’t like it were going to react badly.
Well, that wasn’t the rest that they wanted. Are we ready for what God’s going to do this year? Sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. Well, probably, actually, most of the time I’m not. But sometimes I’m more ready for it.
I’m at least hoping to see God move in big ways, and sometimes I’m still completely overwhelmed by what he does. But there are also times where I say, you know, I’d be okay, God, if we could just have quiet for a while. It’d be okay if I could put on my vacation reminder on life, sort of like on email, and just know things are going to just be nice and steady and predictable for a while.
Sure, it’d be nice if big things happened in your church. Sure, it’d be nice if big things happened in the world that move us closer to you, but right now all I really want is a pause. Do you ever feel that? Because I think that’s the problem that we see with Jerusalem here. It’s the problem that often happens to me, and I think it’s the problem that happens to all of us.
Are we ready to see God work, and are we willing to see God work, or do we want to somehow fight against it just to get to that pause? Because sometimes I think what happens is we mistake the pause for peace. But what we really want, what we really ultimately need, we don’t need an earthly pause. We need heavenly peace, but this is not going to be heavenly peace.
Sort of like as people looked at the not-so-great teachers that were shepherding them, allegedly at least, they thought, well, that’s good enough. They weren’t getting the true shepherd who actually would lead them, who would care for them.
It’s ironic that the shepherds—we’ve talked about them over the last couple of weeks—the earthly, non-metaphorical, just shepherds of actual livestock, shepherds that were outcast, that weren’t always ritually clean because of the work they had to do and so on, that they are actually more shepherds in the spiritual sense than the spiritual shepherds of the people of Israel. Because what do they do? They go and they run and see the newborn king. They don’t spend their time wondering what’s going to happen with Herod or how their status is going to be affected.
They just know that God’s working, that the true shepherd’s coming, and they want to be a part of it. When we’re actually living as faithful spiritual shepherds of the places that God places us, we need to have that “let’s-run-after-the-true-shepherd” mentality, even when we’re yearning for a pause.
Because what they saw, what we need to understand and see and seek, is that so much better than a pause is heavenly peace. That’s what we’re chasing after. That’s what we’re chasing after.
I’m still listening to Christmas music, and sometimes I listen to my own collection, and for the most part, I like most of what’s in it. Some of it I’ve gotten, you know, samplers over the years and some of it isn’t that great, but I’m generally pretty happy with it. It doesn’t repeat the ones we hear all the time on the radio over and over again.
But sometimes I just turn on a playlist on Amazon Music or Apple Music, something like that, and if you do that, you know there’s certain ones that are going to come up over and over again. If you listen to the radio at Christmastime, you know there’s certain ones that are going to come up over and over again, and one of them is “Happy Christmas, War is Over” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
And you probably immediately can hear it in your head because it’s played so often. I’ve never been a fan of it musically. I just don’t think it’s that great a song. But when I really listen to the words, I think that strikes me almost even more because it misses the mark on Christmas so deeply.
What’s the refrain? “War is over if you want it.” And so as it goes through the different verses, it lists out having a happy Christmas and enjoying it and enjoying the new year and so on and so forth, and with that punctuation of “if you want it,” war can be over, with the idea that, well, what we really need to achieve peace, what we need to achieve a good life is really just in our grasp, we’re the ones that are going to fix it.
And in a way, we say, well, wouldn’t that be nice? Because what does it do? It takes us right back to where we started. We want to be the ones in control of our destiny and getting to the joy that we can have. And so sometimes people probably sing that or sing along with it or listen to it and think, yeah, I’m going to go be that part and feel like I’m in control. I’m going to bring a part of that peace.
And in fact, we should be people who are bringing a sense of peace, but not that kind of peace because it won’t work. You and I, even the great leaders of the world, none of us can genuinely end war. None of us can genuinely end the evils of this world, even if we have the best of intentions.
And the problem is there are a lot of people that don’t have the best of intentions. And even those of us that do often find we’re willing to compromise those intentions or we become corrupt in our intentions. Sometimes it’s because we want that pause. We just want anything to have a pause. And so we’ll make the wrong choices because of that.
Sometimes it’s because what we really want is we want that earthly power. What we need to do is turn to the only power that really matters. Evil looks like it offers us that pause, that offers that power in this moment. Or things that are, you don’t want to say, clearly evil. We talk ourselves out of that. Ambiguous. But in the end, they’re not going to offer power. They might offer a pause.
They might offer earthly passing power that’s like that cabinet position that comes and goes. But are we going to turn to what really matters? Because what we need, what’s going to offer us hope beyond this season and hope ultimately beyond this life, is the heavenly peace that only comes from the true shepherd.
We see some in this story who look to that, like the wise men, like the shepherds. We see some grasp on to those earthly things and ultimately find that comes up short. And we’ll be those who turn to the heavenly shepherd in this new year. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, we do pray that you would help us to be people who turn to you and turn to you. Lord, when we seek after earthly power and status, would you help us to turn away from it, realizing that isn’t where our hope and our joy is?
We want just an earthly pause, and so we turn away from the things you’re calling us to. Nothing wrong with getting rest. But Lord, when that desire for rest, for peace, ultimately turns us away from the heavenly peace that you offer, would you help us to see that? Ultimately, it turns us away from the heavenly peace that you offer.
Would you help us to see that and to realize it will come up short? And that the only thing that offers us hope, only one who offers us hope, is your Son, our Savior, Jesus, who came into this world to live for us, to die for us, and to triumph over death for us. That when we turn to him, we receive true peace.
We now come to a time of communion tonight, and as we do, if you have your elements, I encourage you to take them out. Now, if you haven’t yet turned to the Prince of Peace, and you’ve been chasing after those things, we all do at times, even if after we’ve said, I want Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, but if you’ve not yet experienced turning to him, we ask that you not take the elements tonight.
Not because we don’t want to share them with you, but tonight would be the night to say, I want to run like a shepherd to the Savior. All you have to do is come to him and say, “I’m a sinner, I need your help. I’ve chased after earthly power, I’ve chased after earthly status, I’ve chased after worldly favor, I’ve chased after that earthly pause, I’ve chased after those things, and I know they’re not what I truly need, not what I truly want. I want you, Jesus.”
And he will answer that prayer. And then come and join us next week and take part in this, because this table is open to all believers. As we take these elements, we don’t come perfectly. We will do all those things over and over again. One difference is, just like the shepherds, we’re going to mess up again. If we’re running to him, if we’re in his presence, well, then we can come anyway, because the Father looks at us and sees the Son’s righteousness.
He sees the finished work that Jesus came to do for us. He sees the finished work that Jesus came to do for us when he came on that Christmas day.
So as we take those elements, they’re not elements that bring condemnation upon us for being those who fall short, rather strength for those of us who need God’s help to run the rest of the way to that heavenward place he’s calling us to.
So it was on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and he broke it and he gave it to them saying, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And like manna after supper, he took the cup.
He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for you under the remission of sins. Do this as often as you drink of it in remembrance of me. As often as you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
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