What comes to your mind when you think of a king? A psychotic, paranoid, insecure leader? That was the kind of king Herod was.

Herod came to power in 37 B.C. [This was not the same Herod that Pontius Pilate sent Jesus to before his crucifixion.] He was ruler over all four of the political districts set up by the Roman Senate. Herod was a king, but a king subservient to the ultimate authority of the Roman Empire. Herod worked hard at his relationship with the leaders in Rome. He demonstrated his loyalty, first to Mark Antony, the Roman emperor, and after his death, to Octavian (who later came to be known as Augustus). After Mark Antony’s death, the new emperor, Octavian, summoned all the kings. On that occasion, Herod declared his unapologetic loyalty to Antony, but swore that he would now transfer that loyalty to Octavian.

Herod was torn between his loyalties to two groups of people, the Romans on the one hand, and the Jewish people, on the other. He needed to please both groups to preserve his position and power. If Rome detected even a whiff of unrest or disloyalty, they would remove him in a heart-beat. Cleopatra (married to Mark Antony) wanted to bring Palestine under the control of Egypt. Herod lived with this tension and fear until Mark Antony’s death. Herod also had to be careful with his own people. If he seemed too Roman-like, or if he disregarded the laws of the Jews, they would rise up against him and cause unrest, which would of course, cause Rome to step in. No one wanted unrest because no one wanted the legions of the Roman army at his door.

Herod was a great builder, but he was also a great tyrant. Augustus, the Roman emperor, once said, “It is safer to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.” He murdered three of his own sons, and one of his wives (he had nine). It was said that before his death, he locked up dozens of the nobility in his region with orders that at the point of his death, they were to be killed, so that there would be weeping in all the land on that day.

Let’s be careful not to place Herod in some kind of fantasy land. He was not a mythical character; this was a real man in real history. A real tyrant not much different from our modern-day tyrants. Yet this tyrannical man reveals to us that when Jesus breaks into our lives, he disturbs everything. He disturbed Herod’s life and threatened his leadership. Jesus will disturb your life and threaten whoever or whatever leads your life. Herod’s response was to kill babies, trying to eliminate the disturbance. What will your response be?

I know some struggle with the Christmas season, but I love it. I love the Christmas specials on TV like A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, and many others. I love the first snow that falls on the land that stills and calms everything. I love the Christmas CDs. But there’s something about this baby Jesus that the Nativities and many of the Christmas songs don’t tell us. Jesus causes a disturbance in life as we know it. There never seems to be neutral ground when it comes to Jesus. For King Herod, the idea of Jesus almost drove him insane. Why such a disturbance in his life? The Messiah – the one promised from the line of King David in Micah 5:2 - was prophesied to be born in Bethlehem. The one that would set every wrong right would overthrow the rulers. The expectation of the Jews was that the Messiah, the one promised in the Old Testament, would be their Alexander the Great. Life as they knew it would change. For the king, his advisors, and the religious leaders, nothing would be the same if what they heard was indeed true.

King Herod had his own particular concerns:

Herod was not the rightful heir to the throne of David. He was the king of the Jews by Roman appointment. He was only partly Jewish, having descended not from Jacob, but from Esau. He was an Idumean Arab, and his people had been forcefully converted a century earlier (126 B.C.), but Herod sincerely considered himself not only Jewish by faith, but also a faithful Jew. But if this prophecy about the baby were true, in the Jews’ eyes, this baby was really the rightful heir to the Davidic throne. They might want to remove Herod from the throne and make the baby king. Jesus would be King of the Jews, not by human appointment, but by God’s appointment.

The wise men’s news also troubled Herod because he knew that the Jewish people expected the Messiah to come soon (Luke 3:15). Many of the Jews believed that their generation would live to see the one promised to their ancestors. For all these reasons, Herod was deeply disturbed, as this baby threatened everything he held so dear.

What about us? Does Jesus disturb us? If not, we have not yet fully engaged the truth of who he really is. Jesus is disturbing. Yet we have domesticated Jesus into the god we want him to be, not the God he is. When we open the Bible, and open our hearts and minds, we discover the marvelous wonder of His disturbing presence.

This is some very countercultural stuff for us. We are told that if something disturbs us, we are to medicate it; to run from it. Pain, change, discomfort, they’re all bad - take a pill, buy something, run to the movies, escape into a novel, drink a $4 latte, find a new partner, get away from it, suppress it, cover it up!

Friends, Jesus, the real Jesus, is disturbing, but please don’t medicate what he does to you. Don’t run from it, but run to him, and allow his loving disturbance to change you. It is only in the disturbance of Jesus that transformation begins. Jesus has called us to follow him with our whole being. He is not asking us for the Sunday morning, an occasional Bible reading time, to drop a few coins in the Salvation Army bowl, or to be a good person at work. To follow Jesus is to give your entire self to him. Your past struggles, hurts, and victories. The present path you’re on, and your future dreams and fears. It is to have more of Jesus in your life, his ways, and his values, than anything else. It is to live your life for the applause of Jesus more than the applause of your boss, neighbor, or even parents.

Don’t be psychotic like Herod and try to kill the disturbance, but embrace what Christ will do in your life. Take some time this Christmas season to engage the Jesus of the Bible and be changed! Start your journey by reading the revolutionary message of Jesus in Matthew chapters 5 and 6. Have a Merry Christmas, and be disturbed.

On the Journey together,

Jason Esposito
Senior Pastor