Sermon Tone Analysis

We Two Kings

 

/Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on.

The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family./

/ /

/Anthony Robbins/

 

Scriptures/:  Ph.

2:6-11; Matthew 2:1-16; 2 Samuel 21, 22/

 

 

Herod the Great

 

q      An Edomite – natural enmity with Israel.

See 1Sa 21:7; 22:9, 18, 22

 

q      Appointed King of Judea in B.C. 40 by the Roman Senate at the suggestion of Marc Antony

 

q      68 years old – Died at 70 years of age

 

q      In the 35th year of his reign – marked by bloodshed

 

q      Murdered his wife Mariamne and the two sons that she bore him –

 

q      Ordered the mass execution of male children in Bethlehem under 2 years of age in an effort to eliminate the Messiah

 

 

!!

A Walk Through The Scriptural Account – Matthew 2

 

1 ¶ After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi {Traditionally Wise Men} from the east came to Jerusalem  2  and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?

We saw his star in the east {Or star when it rose} and have come to worship him."

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 {Or Messiah} was to be born.

5  "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:  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.'"

{Micah 5:2}  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."

9 ¶ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east {Or seen when it rose} 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 worshipped 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.

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."

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." {Hosea 11:1}  16 ¶ When Herod realised 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.

q      Protecting his turf -  /When King Herod heard this he was disturbed  /He was disturbed because the promise of a Messiah had direct implications for his own life, which he obviously enjoyed to the fullest.

He was threatened by the possibility that the scripturally promised Messiah would upstage him.

After all even the possibility being known would raise hope in the common man.

Although he held a position that was handed to him, a foreigner, by a foreign army, he was never embraced by the people he ruled.

He had done many good things probably in an attempt to win their acceptance and yet he never had.

It was merely his bloodthirsty nature that silenced the dissatisfaction.

There are times in life when people become slaves to the positions that they hold.

They draw their identity and their sense of well being from that position and the possibility of losing it or having it’s parameters infringed upon can make them into formidable enemies.

q      Self-consumed – He realized that this was possibly the fulfillment of prophecy and so asked people who would know better than he.

When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them /where the Christ {Or Messiah} was to be born./

All of his responses and actions were about him and his welfare.

This made him blind to the task that He was undertaking.

Spurgeon said:

 

Success exposes a man to the pressure of people and thus tempts him to hold on to his gains by means of fleshly methods and practices, and to let himself be ruled wholly by the dictatorial demands of incessant expansion.

Success can go to my head, and will unless I remember that it is God who accomplishes the work, that He can continue to do so without my help, and that He will be able to make out with other means whenever He cuts me down to size.

See:  2 Sam 7:18; Prov 16:18-19

 

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me.

I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.

All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself.

But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image.

During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew.

God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn.

I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.

... Bede Griffiths, The Golden String, pp.

107-8

 

 

 

q      Opposing God’s plans – He was actually prepared to eliminate the promised Messiah to protect his own interests.

How many times have their been people in the church who have opposed plans and opportunities that would bring great blessing to a local church family?

Regardless of the circumstance that would provoke someone to stand in this precarious position, it is a dangerous place to be.

God will make a way and his church will not give ground to the gates of hell.

One way or another, it will go forward and how many people have fallen fruitless and barren in the desert of ineffectiveness because they would not trust God to help them face the challenge ahead?

q      Duplicitous Nature – Feigned interest in the Messianic prophecy.

He had a hidden agenda.

His interest was to further his evil plot and ultimately to murder the Messiah.

q      Secrecy – There is great

 

q      Manipulative nature – He used these seekers to further his own evil ends.

q      Unrestrained morally –

 

! Jesus Christ

 

q      He was God and entitled to everything in accordance with that position.

He never had to aspire to greatness.

He was innately greater than any other.

He was too great for his disciples.

And in view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching?

Perhaps the priests and the rich men understood him better than his followers.

He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made from social service into the light of a universal religious life.

He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto.

In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love.

Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out against him?

Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare them the light.

Is it any wonder that the priests realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or priestcraft should perish?

Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar of him?

For to take him seriously was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness...  Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?

... H. G. Wells, The Outline of History [1920]

 

Napoleon (cited by Vernon C. Grounds, The Reason for Our Hope) said: "I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man.

Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions.

That resemblance does not exist.

There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity.... Everything in Christ astonishes me.

His spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me.

Between him and whoever else in the world, there is no possible term of comparison.

He is truly a being by Himself.

His ideas and sentiments, the truth which he announces, His manner of convincing, are not explained either by human organization or by the nature of things....

The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine, everything is above me -- everything remains grand, of a grandeur which overpowers.

His religion is a revelation from an intelligence which certainly is not that of man....

One can absolutely find nowhere, but in Him alone, the imitation or the example of His life....

I search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the gospel.

Neither history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature, offer me anything with which I am able to compare it or to explain it.

Here everything is extraordinary.

See:  Mark 1:27; John 3:31; Col 1:15-18

 

q      He was willing to lose everything.