A Selfish Tragedy

Intro

Has anyone ever seen the Christmas movie “Jingle All the Way”? Well, the premise of the movie is that there is this latest and greatest action figure call Turbo Man.

Every kid wants one, its the must have toy for Christmas. In the movie Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a husband and father who forgets to pick one up for his son after his wife told him to.

But rather than come clean he lies and said he took care of it thinking he will just run to the store and grab one.

What he didn’t account for was that he waited too long and now there are none to be found anywhere.

So the movie it shows him going on the comical quest to get one of these Turbo Man action figures before it is too late.

Watch clip

Now when we watch this we can laugh and point the finger and say how ridiculous. But for anyone who has ever gone Black Friday shopping, especially before the days of online shopping, you know that this isn’t too far of a stretch.

While exaggerated, this kind of disregard for others motivated by the selfish pursuit of stuff is real.

People can get pretty nasty over these kinds of things, maybe you have done it. Don’t worry I won’t ask you to admit it.

Selfishness is easy to spot in our children and I think all of us if we are parents don’t want to be the parent of the selfish child who acts up because they aren’t getting their way.

But for kids, being selfish is part of their development. It is normal. But eventually as their brains develop they should grow out of a state of selfishness and are able to put others before themselves.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. The problem is that selfishness is a lot harder to spot in our adult selves than it is in our kids.

Selfishness, like the distractions we talked about last week have the potential to cause us to miss out on some pretty important things.

It even has the power to cause us to miss out on Christmas.

If you are just joining us, last week I started a short 3 weeks series where we are looking to the scriptures, looking for examples of people who missed or almost missed Christmas.

Last week we looked at the innkeeper who told Mary and Joseph there was no room for them and sent them to give birth in a stable.

They missed out on Christmas because they were too distracted to notice what was happening in front of them.

This morning I want to look at another character who due to their own selfishness, ended up missing Christmas.

Power in the Text

Matthew 2:1-3 NLT Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, 2 “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.” 3 King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem.

Now when we read this we will recognize some key players right away.

Jesus

Wise Men

But what about the other guy mentioned, King Herod?

Who was this King Herod and why was he as we read, “deeply disturbed”.

Understand that at this time in history, the Jewish people were no longer a sovereign people. They were under the authority and governance of the Roman Empire.

What Rome would do however is install leaders from among the people groups they subjugated to help keep order.

In this case, Herod was made the King of Judea, which was essentially the Old Testament southern kingdom of Judah.

We don’t know a ton about King Herod, often referred to as Herod the Great from scripture, but we do not a good bit about him from reading the writing of Jewish historians like Josephus.

We know that King Herod was a power hungry man who killed anyone he perceived as a threat to his throne.

He even went as far as having members of his own family including one of his wives and two of his own children killed because he was paranoid about them jockeying for his position as King.

So we shouldn’t be surprised then that we find King Herod being deeply disturbed by a report that a new King had been born.

Matthew 2:4-5a NLT 4 He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?” 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they said

Matthew 2:7-8 NLT 7 Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. 8 Then he told them, “Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him, too!”

Herod comes up with a plan to use these wise men to find out where this supposed new King of the Jews is at. And he lies by saying his intentions are to worship him.

Well, we have all seen enough movies to know this villain has other plans.

So the wise men set off on their journey and as the story goes they eventually come to find this new king names Jesus. They give him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

They Bible tells us that they left but that they took a different route back to their homeland because God warned them in a dream not to go back to King Herod.

Matthew 2:13-15a NLT 13 After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, 15 and they stayed there until Herod’s death.

You see Herod had no intentions of worship the young Jesus. He wanted to find out where he was so he could eliminate him from the equation. Herod was so power hungry that what he did next is one of his most evil acts as King of Judea.

Matthew 2:16 NLT 16 Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance.

Since Herod did not know who this new King of the Jews was he decides he will just kill any little boy 2 and under because that way he could guarantee he took out any threat to his throne.

Big Idea/Why it Matters

Herod place a dark cloud over the season of Jesus’ infancy not only for Joseph and Mary, but also for everyone under his authority.

Herod demonstrated the depths in which a person can sink when their eyes are fixated on themselves.

Herod is the epitome of broken selfishness. The kind of selfishness that brings nothing but pain to those around us.

As we see from this passage, Herod ordered the murder of many innocent infants. His broken selfishness devastated those around him.

It was his self-centered heart that made it impossible for him to see what was right in front of him; the fulfillment of prophecy, the messiah, the son of God.

Herod’s selfishness was actually a form of idolatry. Remember, Idolatry is looking to anything to give us only what God can. It placing something in the place that should be reserved for God alone.

In this case, Herod saw his power and his position as the source of meaning and purpose in his life. Rather than seeing God, he saw himself as the ultimate authority over his kingdom.

Because of his idolatrous selfishness, King Herod missed an opportunity to welcome the true King of Kings. We miss Christ, too, when we allow our pride to overcome our devotion.

Application/Closing

There is a reason why Jesus spoke so often about the first being last, and last being first. Why he taught that to become great, your must first become less.

Jesus understood the way the world worked, how people view power and authority. But he had a different vision for what his kingdom would look like and how his followers would understand power and authority.

Matthew 20:25b-28 NLT “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. 26 But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. 28 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Herod didn’t get this and because of it, he missed Christmas. If we aren’t careful, we might just do the same.

C.S Lewis in his book Mere Christianity put it this way way:

“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.”

Don’t let selfishness rob you of what Jesus wants to give you this Christmas season.

We can see it happening all around us. We see families stretching themselves too thin in order to fabricate these perfect Christmases that are about getting more stuff and satisfying our own selfish desires.

We can’t have it both ways. We either give up ourselves and find Jesus. Or, we continue to feed our own selfish wants and miss him entirely.

This Christmas I encourage you to look inward and upward and ask God to reveal your own selfish tendencies. To show you where your pride and selfish desires reside and how they are causing you to miss Christmas.

And then when he shows them to you, and he will because we all have them, will you have the courage to let them die.

Will you have the courage to sacrifice them at alter of your heart? Because only dead things can be brought back to life.

And until you die to self, you will never truly be able to experience the resurrected life Jesus came and died to give you.