King Herod: The King who tried to kill God

Text: Matthew 2:1-18

Dr Alex Tang

Summary

Whom do you worship?  If  you do not worship the Lord, you will end up worshipping personal power and spiritual powers.

Matt 2:1-18

MT 2:1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem

Herod the Great, king of the Jews 40-4 bc, born c. 73 bc. His father Antipater, a Jew of Idumaean descent, attained a position of great influence in Judaea after the Roman conquest and was appointed procurator of Judaea by Julius Caesar in 47 bc. He in turn appointed his son Herod military prefect of Galilee, and Herod showed his qualities by the vigor with which he suppressed brigandage in that region; the Roman governor of Syria was so impressed by his energy that he made him military prefect of Coele-Syria. After the assassination of Caesar and subsequent civil war Herod enjoyed the goodwill of Antony. When the Parthians invaded Syria and Palestine and set the Hasmonaean Antigonus on the throne of Judaea (40-37 bc) the Roman senate, advised by Antony and Octavian, gave Herod the title ‘king of the Jews’. It took him 3 years of fighting to make his title effective, but when he had done so he governed Judaea for 33 years as a loyal ‘friend and ally’ of Rome.

King Herod the Great

King of Judea, Galilee, Iturea, Traconitis (37-4BC)

Birth of Jesus (Mt 2:1-19; Lk 1:5)

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Herod                  Archelaus        Aristobulus    Herod               Herod               Antipater

Philip II                                          Alexander                         Antipas           Philip I

M:Cleopatra                 M:Malthace              M: Mariamne        M:Malthace              M: Mariamne            M: Doris

Tetrach of Iturea         Governor of            Not mentioned     Tetratch of              He did not rule

and Traconis               Judea, Idumea         in the Bible.          Galilee and              First husband of

(4BC – AD34)              (4 BC – AD 6)          Hasmonaeans     Perea                       Herodias (Mt14:3;

(Lk 3:1)                                                                                    (4BC-AD39)            Mk6:17)

Second husband

of Herodias. He

put John the

Baptist to death

(Mt 14:1-12)

Pilate sent

Jesus to him

(Lk 23:7-12)

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Herod of Chalcis                   King Herod Agrippa I

King of Judea (AD 37-44)

Killed James, put Peter in

prison.

Struck down by an angel

(Ac 12:1-24)

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Drusilla            King Herod Agrippa II              Bernice

Married Felix,           King of Judea. Paul make a                     with her

governor of             legal defence before him.                       brother at the

Judea                      (Ac 25:13-26:32)                                    time of Paul’s

(AD 52-59)                                                                              defense

Felix tried                                                                                 (Ac 25:13)

Paul

(AD 24:24)

2 and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."

Magi are probably astrologers, perhaps from Persia, southern Arabia or China? They are not kings. Nowhere in the Bible did it indicate that there are three Magi. They are looking for the kings of the Jews, indicating that they were Gentiles. Matthew wants to show that Jesus will be Lord over all the nations of the earth.

MT 2:3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:

The chief priests are the Seducees who were in charge of the worship in the temple and the teachers of the law were probably the Pharisees.

The text said Herod was disturbed and all Jerusalem was disturbed. Why was everybody disturbed? I am sure from the priests and the teachers; Herod must have learnt about the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Christ. Herod was disturbed because here was a new challenge to his kingship. I am surprised that Jerusalem was disturbed. I would have thought that they would be delighted that their long awaited messiah is here.

MT 2:6 " `But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for out of you will come a ruler

who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.' "

The prophecy from Micah was given seven centuries earlier. There are 330 prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament. Bethlehem was the place where Jacob buried Rachel. Where Ruth met and married Boaz. Where David grew up and tended sheep. That is why it is also called ‘the city of David’.

MT 2:7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."

MT 2:9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Contrary to popular beliefs, the Magi did not visit baby Jesus at the night of his birth, as did the shepherds. As Luke would have noted, it is unlikely that the shepherds would be out with their sheep in the hills during winter. Most scholars agree that Jesus was likely to be born in the spring or summer in the year 4 BC. The Magi came some months later and saw the child, not a baby and in his house, not in a manger.

·        Gold was considered the most precious of metal and the universal symbol of material value and wealth. It is also a symbol of nobility and royalty.

·        Frankincense was a costly beautiful smelling incense that was used only for special occasions such as the grain offering at the Tabernacle and Temple.

·        Myrrh was a perfume, not so expensive as frankincense, but valuable. Mixed with wine, it is used as an anesthetic (Mk 15:23) and mixed with other spices, it is used to prepare bodies for burial.

Those were the Magi’s gift to Jesus. Gold for the King of kings, frankincense for his Deity and myrrh for His Humanity.

MT 2:13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."

MT 2:14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

MT 2:16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

MT 2:18 "A voice is heard in Ramah,

weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more."

Jeremiah 31:15. Ramah is a small town about 5 miles north of Jerusalem. It is one of the towns the people will be lead in chains to their exile by the Babylonians. Rachel, Jacob’s favorite  wife and the grandmother of Ephraim and Manasseh were symbolic of the northern kingdom.

John MacArthur in his commentary on this passage said these are “ the three typical response to Jesus Christ throughout history.

(1)    Some, like Herod are immediately hateful, wanting to know nothing of God’s way except to attack, and if possible destroy it.

(2)    Others, like the chief priest and scribes, pay little if any attention to God and his ways…

(3)    Others, however, like the magi from the east, accept the Lord when he comes to them. They may have little of His light initially, but because they know it is His light, they believe, obey and worship.”

Why would Herod want to kill the ‘king of the Jews’? The messiah? The Christ?

Power. Power of being king. In those times, being king is like almost like being God. You have absolute power over everything in your kingdom. You have absolute control over everyone. It is not a constitutional monarchy. It is raw power. Once you have such power you will not want to give it up. You begin to worship the power. Herod has fallen into the power trap.

A.                                               Worship of personal power.

The crown ‘king of the Jews’ sat uneasy on Herod’s head. Herod is a king that is afraid that his personal power will be taken away from him. He wants to hang on to power at all cost. He worships power.

(1)    Antony was influential in giving him the crown. Antony was having an affair with Cleopatra. And Cleopatra wants Judea to be added to her kingdom.

(2)    Octavian became Augustus Caesar. Herod tried to please him by lavish building projects. He rebuilt Samaria and named it Sebaste after the emperor. He rebuilt Strato’s Tower and named it Caesarea.

(3)    The people were not happy with him because he is an Edomite. A descendent of Esau, not Jacob. He tried to please the people by embracing the Jewish religion and rebuilding the Temple. The rebuilding began in 19 BC and was finished 68 years after his death.

Herod’s paranoid nature is well illustrated by the story of the visit of the Magi and the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem (Mt. 2); although this story does not appear elsewhere, any rumor of a rival king of the Jews was bound to rouse his worst fears. This suspicion latterly grew to insane proportions, and in consequence Herod has been remembered more for his murderous outbursts than for his administrative ability. You can have an idea about his personality in this story that he knew that when he died, there would be no one to mourn him. So he ordered that some prominent leaders in Jerusalem be killed on the day that he died, so that there will be mourning in Jerusalem.

B.                                              Worship of Spiritual Powers

There is another side to this story. Another side to the coin.  Herod and his kingdom are in the physical world. In the spiritual world, there are also others who are involved. The physical world is only the tip of an iceberg.

In Ephesians  6:12, Paul wrote:  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

We must be aware that there is a supernatural realm that exist and is closely intertwined with our physical realms. In the spiritual realms are angels that worship and obey God. There are also fallen angels and demons that oppose God and what God wants to do in this world. Paul named them as rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of evil. These powers exist and want us to worship them.

Think of the players in a football game. The game is going on and we can see the players kicking the ball. What we do not see was the coach who designed the game strategy, the owners who financed the football club. The invisible dimension which has its influence on the game.

The answer to Daniel’s prayers was delayed for 21 days because the messenger angel which God sent was opposed by the ‘prince of Persia’, obviously a fallen angel. He managed to get through when Michael, the guardian angel of Israel came to his help. So angels are given control over certain countries.

The letters to the 7 churches in Revelation is addressed to the angels rather than the people in the churches.

Walter Wink, professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York wrote that Powers are spiritual beings in charge of social and economic institutions. There are powers behind companies, communities, governments and ideologies. That’s why we talk of corporate culture, and wonder why certain communities have personality of its own. In his three books, Engaging the Powers, Unmasking the Powers and Naming the Powers, Walter Wink awakened the church to presence of these powers.

He wrote:           The Powers are good

The Powers are fallen

The Powers must be redeemed.

In the meantime, the Powers are opposing God and influencing man and woman to worship them. Herod is one such man. These Powers offers wealth, health, control, and ‘all the good things in life’. I believe it is under influence of this Powers that Herod tried to kill Jesus. By killing Jesus in childhood, the Powers will have prevented the redemptive act of God.

Lessons for us

A.     How to Avoid the Worship of  Personal Power

The antidote for the worship of personal power is self-denial.

MT 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, wrote: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  It is only when we die to self can we break the worship of personal power.

B.    How Avoid the Worship of Spiritual Powers

Richard Foster, Money, Sex & Power, gave us 6 principles to break the worship of spiritual powers:

i.                    We must recognize that Christ has already defeated the powers.

ii.                  We defeat the powers by cultivating the gift of discernment.

iii.                We defeat the powers by forthrightly facing the ‘demons’ within.

iv.                 We defeat the powers by inner renunciation of all things

v.                   We defeat the power by rejecting the weapons of power of this world

vi.                 We defeat the powers by using weapons of Ephesians 6.

13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

This can be summarized as discernment, armor of God and intercessory prayer.

Concluding remarks

It is very easy to fall into the worship of personal power and spiritual powers. The spiritual powers will try to destroy the work of God. Herod tried to kill Jesus because he thought Jesus would become king of the Jews, thus a threat to his personal power. The spiritual powers know that Jesus, God who became flesh, has come to bring us redemption and tried to kill Jesus by using Herod. Herod tried to kill God. It is the understanding of Paul and the author of Revelation that demonic activities and worship of spiritual powers will increase in the last days.

Whom do you worship?  God?  Personal power?  Spiritual powers?

In our study of the Four Kings, we have considered various aspect of worship:

King Asa: The King who started well.

King Jeroboam: The King who corrupted the heart of worship

King Ahad: The King who committed apostasy

King Herod: The King who tried to kill God.

From the four kings we can draw the following lessons about worship:

A life of worship: a good beginning does not

guarantee  a good ending. Complacency and

loss of trust lead to a bad end.

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The heart of worship is corrupted when we

worship by our own rituals and our own

understanding.

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Worship is further corrupted when we add

elements of other religions : God plus

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We end up worshipping personal power and

spiritual powers instead of God.

Whom do we Worship?

Soli Deo Gloria