"In the Days of King Herod..."

One of my favorite Christmas stories is told by Ray Vander Laan in his outstanding series, That the World May Know.  The first verse of Matthew 2 tells us, “In the days of King Herod, Jesus was born…”  Herod the Great ruled over Judea, Galilee, and Samaria for 40 years until his death just a few months after Jesus’s birth.  Herod was one of the greatest kings the middle east had ever known.  But he was cruel, often killing those who opposed him.

Herod was an ambitious builder.  His projects included the new Jerusalem temple and the mountain top fortress of Masada.  One of his more famous buildings was the Herodium, his home place, one of the largest and most beautiful palaces of its time.  Built on top of a mesa, located a couple of miles from the little town of Bethlehem, the Herodium was a massive circular 120-foot fortress with dozens of marble floored rooms for guests, servants, and the King’s family.  Within the walls were gardens and pools, maintained with water carried up from deep ground cisterns.

But this Christmas story actually begins in Genesis 25, when Isaac’s pregnant wife, Rebekah, inquired of the Lord why the twins in her womb were struggling. God answered, “Two nations are in your womb; and two peoples shall be separated from your body.  One people shall be stronger than the other; and the older shall serve the younger.”  The first to be born was Esau, followed by Jacob.  Esau, the older, became the founder of the nation of Edom.  Jacob, the younger, continued the lineage of the Jews, from which Jesus came.  The prophecy was that the descendants of “the older shall serve [the descendants] of the younger.”  This prophecy was retold elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.

When Mary and Joseph passed under the shadow of the Herodium on their way to Bethlehem, it took tremendous faith for them to believe that God had chosen them to bring forth His son.  Amazing faith was also shown by the shepherds and the magi who, when told that a king had been born, bypassed the Herodium -  the likely place for a kingly birth, and proceeded to the humble birthplace of Jesus.  But these people of faith chose to believe what God had said, and not what their eyes saw.  For King Herod was an Edomite, a descendant of Esau.  Mary and Joseph were Jews, descendants of Jacob.

Today, on the mesa outside of Bethlehem, rocks and ruins are all that’s left of Herod’s once glorious palace.  All of his mighty building projects have long ago been erased by the ravages of time.  For most people, the only thing they know about Herod, the descendant of Esau, is that he killed babies on that first Christmas.  But what of the baby born in a dirty hillside manger.  From the mountains of the Himalayas to the deserts of Africa; from the tropical jungles of Asia to the industrial lands of America, the name of Jesus, the descendant of Jacob, is praised and worshiped. 

The Herod’s of our day live in luxurious places, control lots of wealth, and exert incredible influence.  It’s tempting to think that they are the real power-brokers of our age.  But God still asks us to believe the Scriptures which say that those who believe in the Lord, Jesus Christ, who have His Spirit living in them, are the true power-holders of our time.  No matter how powerful the world appears, no matter how pervasive evil becomes, it’s the baby born in a manger who is still the King.