No Better Than Herod

When I write my sermons, I generally don't write them out in full. However, I had to preach an evangelistic sermon for preaching lab recently and, for whatever reason, I ended up writing out most all of it and preached it pretty close to how it was written. So, I figured I might as well just post it here. A couple notes:
1) In general I write sermons how I speak, which means the grammar here is less than perfect in places. I've also preserved the many paragraph breaks to give a sense of how it flows and where the pauses might fall.
2) The setting we were assigned was a 10-15 minute evangelistic sermon based on a Christmas narrative passage, the idea being a sermon you might preach around Christmas, when lots of people will be in church who wouldn't normally be there.

Anyway, here it is:

Most people, even if they’ve never set foot inside a church, know at least something of the Christmas story. Maybe you’ve seen a children’s play about it, or in all likelihood you drove past a nativity on your way here. You’ve heard of Mary and Joseph, the Shepherds, Wise Men and the baby Jesus. Well, today we’re going to answer a very simple question, maybe it’s a question you’ve asked yourself, “what’s so important about Christmas?” Why is it that 2000 years later, we’re celebrating the birth of some kid? What’s the big deal, and more importantly, why should I care? 

 Please turn with me to Matthew 2:1-16.

Going into high school, I was sure I was going to make the basketball team. After all, it was a pretty small school, and I was better than most of my friends in pick-up games. I thought I was pretty great, of course I would make the team. When tryouts finally rolled around though, and little freshman Xan walked into the gym, I realized something: all these guys were much, much better than I was. See, I was deceived, because the standard I was measuring myself against was extremely low. I fooled myself into thinking I’d be a star in high school, because my standard was pick-up games with friends, so I thought I was better than I actually was.

In the story we read, who do you identify with? Maybe you identify with the wise men: searching, adventuring, journeying to find the child. Maybe you identify with Mary and Joseph, probably scared out of their minds and fleeing to a foreign land.

You probably don’t identify with Herod. Of course not, he’s the bad guy! Herod is a monster. He’s so insecure and worried about his throne that he kills an entire town full of innocent children. He’s a terrible, terrible person. This actually matches up with what we know about Herod from the history books. He killed 3 of his sons, his brother-in-law and his wife because he thought they would take his throne.

Herod would kill his own family and mass murder babies just to ensure he stays on the throne. He’s a monster. Even people who don’t believe in Hell say “I hope there’s a Hell because he deserves it.” We read the story of Herod and it should enrage us.

But here’s the thing, and when I say this your brain is immediately going to reject the idea. We are just as deserving of judgment as Herod. We are just as deserving of Hell.

“But I’m a better person than Herod,” you say, “I haven’t killed any children.” And if the standard for salvation were being better than Herod, you’d be right, but here’s the thing: Herod isn’t the standard we’re measuring ourselves against, that’s not God’s standard. God’s standard isn’t even the guy you work with, or the lady who lives down the hall. See, just like me and my pick-up basketball games, we tend to set our standard for “good person” as being better than those around us, but God’s standard is much, much higher.

See, God tells us in the Bible that his standard is perfection. Not just “really good” or “trying really hard”, but perfection. God says “Be holy, for I am holy.” Holy is a word that means perfect, pure, set-apart. God says “I am the standard!” “Be perfect, because I am perfect.” That’s the standard. Perfection.

Seen in that light, we don’t look quite so good anymore. Who here claims perfection? Anyone? In fact, when we look at it that way, we’re a lot closer to Herod than we’d like to admit. While his actions may differ from ours, we can see a lot of familiar things in Herod.

• He’s selfish and prideful. He wants so badly to cling to his kingdom, to the power he’s attained, that he’s willing to do anything. Are we so different? Have we never craved power and prestige? In our own ways we’re all guilty of clinging to our own kingdoms.
• He’s deceitful, lying to the wise men. Anybody here ever lied?
• He’s a murderer. Now, you may not have murdered someone, but the Bible says anyone who is angry with his brother suffers the same punishment as a murderer, that you’ve committed murder in your heart. I don’t know about you all, but a bad day in rush hour traffic can have me committing a lot of murder in my heart.

When we measure ourselves against God’s standard, against perfection, we don’t look so much different than Herod.

Let me put it this way. Every week I play basketball with some of the guys from the seminary. One of the guys who plays is my friend Mike. Now, before we started playing, Mike was not a basketball player. And Mike has gotten a lot better since we started, but you can still tell. If you came down and watched our games, and you watched me and you watched Mike, you could probably say “that guy has played basketball for a while, and that guy…not so much.” However, if you were to take Mike and I and have us both play a game of 1-on-1 against LeBron James, you probably wouldn’t see much of a difference between us. The difference between Mike and I may seem huge in a pick-up game, but measured against the best player in the world, the difference between us is negligible.

When measured against God’s standard, we’re no different than Herod. We deserve judgment just like him. We’re not even close to perfect, we screw up every day. We are deeply, deeply rebellious. We rebel against God and his law all the time. That’s what the Bible calls “sin”, rebelling against God, and we do it all the time, it’s natural to us. We’re rebellious by nature.

If you’ve spent much time around small children, you know this, right? Kids do not have to learn to be selfish or rebellious. It does not take them long to learn the word “no”. All you have to do is tell a child they can’t have something, and that thing will suddenly become their whole focus. Rebellion is in our nature, specifically rebellion from God.

Every minute of every day, we get further and further from that standard of perfection. We sin more and more, we rebel more and more. We’re never going to come close. The Bible says even our good deeds are like dirty rags, because we do them selfishly, and not for God. All of us, from Herod and Hitler to Mother Teresa and Ghandi, fall short of perfection. When the standard is perfection, God’s up here, and we’re all down here.

So what do we do? If we’re all desperately short of perfection, if we’re all deserving of Hell and judgment, if even our good deeds are bad, then what do we do? You’re thinking “I thought this message was supposed to be about why Christmas is important, and all he’s doing is telling me how bad I am.” And you’re right. Because to appreciate the good news, you have to know the bad news. You have to know that you and I are broken, we’re screwed up, we’re rebellious. We’re no better than Herod and fall far short of the standard. You and I deserve judgment and Hell, and we can’t do anything to fix it. That’s the bad news.

But, remember that baby the wise men were looking for, the one that had Herod so worried? Herod thought that Jesus was going to be a revolutionary, that he was going to lead the Jews in an uprising against him. That’s what he thought they meant by “king of the Jews.” And the thing is, if that’s what Jesus had done, he’d be a footnote in history. You would never have heard of him. We certainly wouldn’t be celebrating him 2000 years later. No, here is the good news. That child wasn’t just a revolutionary, he was God come to earth in human flesh. That’s what the chapter before this, Matthew 1, says. It says he is “Immanuel” which means “God with us”. Jesus is no ordinary child, he’s God! And he hasn’t come to judge, he’s come to save.

See, we are sinful and rebellious, and we are completely incapable of getting to God, so instead, God came to us. He came, and he was born in a manger, and he lived a human life, full of all the sufferings and temptations we face. He lived as we did, but with one important difference: he didn’t sin. He was perfect. He lived his whole life and lived up to that impossible standard, because he knew we couldn’t. Then he died, to take on our punishment, so that we wouldn’t have to face judgment.

That’s why we celebrate Christmas. That’s why we celebrate the birth of this child, 2000 years later. That’s why it’s important. We celebrate that God came down to earth and said “You can’t be good enough, you can’t live up to the standard…so I’m going to do it for you.”

He didn’t come down to give instructions on how to be perfect. That wouldn’t have worked. LeBron James could come and teach me all his moves and everything about how he plays, and guess what? I’m still not gonna play like LeBron James. Jesus didn’t just come to teach us how to live a perfect life, he lived it for us! Now when God looks at me he doesn’t see my sin and my pride and my rebellion, instead he sees the perfect life of Jesus.

That’s why Christmas matters! That’s why Christmas is important to you! God came down to earth and lived a perfect life so that you don’t have to! And he did it because he loves you.

Do you want to know that God? Do you want to meet the perfect God who loves imperfect people? Maybe you heard this sermon and realized for the first time just how far you are from God’s standard. Maybe you know you aren’t perfect, but have been trying so hard to get there, to look good. Maybe you feel crushed by the weight of your sin, or crushed by the effort of trying to “be good”. To all of us, God has the same answer: “Give up.” “Give up. You can’t do it, but I already did.”

Turn to God. Say “I’m tired of being a rebel. I’m tired of trying to be good. I can’t do it, and I need Jesus.” God needs nor wants nothing more from you than to say “I’m a sinner and I need Jesus as Lord and Savior.” There is no magic phrase or ritual incantation, just putting your life and salvation in the hands of a God who loves you and came to earth for you.