Tuesday - Study It - The Night That Changed the Powerful
We’re looking this week at how Jesus’ birth threatened powerful people. Here’s the story:
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:
“‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” (…) And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:1-8, 12-18 ESV)
Just like last week, you can see the story of Jesus’ birth was part of God’s big story throughout history. There’ve been hints throughout time that these events would occur, even if people couldn’t see them in advance, many more could see them in retrospect.
We can see that from the beginning of his life…powerful people encountered Jesus and recognized who he was, even if they didn’t like it.
Here in this story we have two people, both claiming the title King of the Jews. Herod is a powerful man, but he’s a middle man. The Romans are really in charge, but keep him as King of the local area because he’s useful to them, at least for now.
On the other side, the people under him allow him to rule because of fear. They know he’s not a legitimate heir to the throne of Israel, even though he claims the title.
So Herod hangs on to power by removing any threat to his power. He uses fear out of his own fear. This is why he is so concerned by these wise men, who show up and say they’re looking for the King of the Jews. Herod is King of the Jews! Not by birthline or right of course, but because he got what he wanted, and has everyone afraid of him. So if someone else claims to be the rightful King, and can claim the right bloodline, right town of birth, etc. that simply won’t do. So instead of just telling them they’re crazy, and having this rumour get out of hand, Herod uses them.
We’ll talk more about that later…but suffice it to say he is manipulative, dangerous, uses people to keep himself in power, and moreover is illegitimate.
Question: A prophet 500 years before this happened said the Messiah would emerge as a light in “dark times.” How was the era when Jesus came a dark time? Are there similarities to our time?
Reminder: We have a great Christmas event coming December 14th, 2013: The Original Christmas Party. Hope you’re coming!
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
Hi, welcome to Redeem The Commute. I'm Ryan your host of the daily challenges. Normally, we follow a weekly rhythm that helps us explore a different topic and how following Jesus impacts topic. This week's going to be a little different. We're going to be taking an opportunity to just see where we are as a community.
Now, you probably know us by mobile app and website for busy commuters, but we're also trying to become a church community. As we explore what it means to follow Jesus as individual people engaged in a busy lifestyle, I want to make sure that we're not completely disconnected from one another, and that even though we're usually quite scattered as a community we want to take time to gather as well.
As a gathered community we want to make sure that we are committed to some of the same things in common. That's why through this week and this week alone, it's going to be kind of a special week. We're going to be looking at each of the things our community is committed to one by one, and see how we're doing as a community by hearing the stories of individuals who are part of our growing online community or our in person courses who are seeing their lives changed. We hope that will inspire you to see some transformation in your own life as well.
Now, the five things that we're committed to as a community start with being committed to growth and discipleship. We have some common content to learn together. We also want to be committed to God and worship, committed to generosity in our resources, committed to Grace in our lifestyles and witness, and finally committed to groups in community.
Today's Tuesday, so we're going to continue in our series looking at the five things that Redeem The Commute is meant to be committed to as we become a church community called Redeemer Church. Yesterday, we looked at how we're going to be committed to growth and discipleship, some common learning content, and then today we're looking at how we're going to be committed to groups. How we're going to try to become a community who spend time together, who learn in gathered mode but also in scattered modes.
Gathered mode is when we gather together in groups, in groups big and small. Sometimes that looks like a course. Sometimes it looks like a small group that meets regularly just to study the challenges together. Sometimes that looks like a large group setting like say, our parenting course or one of the larger scale courses we run like Christianity 101.
Each day we're going to introduce a story of somebody, a real life person who's part of the Redeem Community who's being transformed in the area we're exploring. Today, since it's groups gathering, we're going to talk about the story of one woman who came to us having had some bad experiences with church in the past, really didn't want to have anything to do with a church community anymore having had some bad experiences, but was still interested in exploring learning about God and Jesus. That still mattered very much to this person, just wished it could be explored without the baggage of the church community attached to it for her.
In the end, even though I wasn't able to meet with this person for coffee for a long time, we were able to finally meet up when she came to the Christianity 101 course that we ran live in [Wimpy 00:03:37] last fall. Yes, she learned some good contents, some good discipleship content, but I think what mattered most was being exposed to other people who were learning to follow Jesus at the same time. That included me, the person teaching the course, the person facilitating her table group and also those who were sitting at her table.
That experience of gathering together with others and exploring the same kind of discipleship content can be really transformative because God never intended for anybody to try to follow Jesus alone. There's really very little evidence in the Bible that anybody can do that. There's one person, John, who gets exiled to a desert island, and I suppose you could say he was somebody who'd follow Jesus alone, but other than that everybody in the Bible who's following Jesus has a community from which to do it. Seems to be a really essential part of following Jesus.
Even though that's hard for us as a community of busy commuters, we want to make sure that we've got some opportunity, not just to be scattered all the time but to be gathered as a community together.
A lot of people, like the woman whose story I just told you, start out connecting with community through a large scale course like Christianity 101 or a parenting course, but those courses all have end dates attached to them. Following Jesus is meant to be a lifelong pursuit.
The most sustainable group to be a part of is a small group. A small group is a group that meets regularly, usually to study the Bible, worship God together in prayer, to serve their community in some way and just to have a good time and grow in fellowship with one another. That's what a small group is all about and they're meant to do that not just for a limited time, but as a regular ongoing rhythm in sync with their lives where they're able to make that a sustainable part of following Jesus. Where they can encourage each other and also challenge each other, depending on what's happening.
I think it's a really essential part of following Jesus. It's a really essential part of being in a church community. Not just to go to big services and big courses, but to have a small group pf people who look after you. If say, life is getting difficult, somebody notices if you're missing. Somebody knows to bring you a warm meal if you're sick. Those kinds of things. That happens best when you've got a few people gathered together on a regular basis to study, have a good time, pray together and to serve their community.
In a lot of church communities, small groups are organized in a pretty top down fashion. There's an organized list of groups that are there that you can join. Sometimes they're capped and you can't join because one is too full, and sometimes they start new groups and are looking for people to join. What really makes Redeemer unique is that we're trying to become a community of organic small groups. Groups that aren't organized from the top down but rather groups that you organize yourself. I think you've got the best connections in your life to those who are best going to support you and challenge you as you learn to follow Jesus. They're probably already your friends or co-workers or people you know from the daycare or the commute. Whatever places you find yourself in life, you're probably connecting with people already who could be helping you follow Jesus.
We want to encourage you to start your own small group with your own people. Not to jump out of your comfort zone and meet a bunch of new people, but rather to connect more deeply with those you already know.
If you're organizing a small group of people to study our challenges, it's easiest if you meet later on in the week because you'll already have seen all our challenge questions at the end of each day, but if you're going to meet earlier in the week just let me know. We're going to have a special study guide available on our website each week where you can find all the study questions for the week. So if your small group meets earlier you can still discuss together how you're learning to follow Jesus through our challenges.
Because of our organics small groups model things are really flexible. I know some of you are meeting together in groups. I've seen you register them on the website. Others among you are just doing it on the fly. Whenever something really grabs you and you want to discuss it with somebody else, you just find the nearest person you know and discuss it with them. Either way is great. What matters most is not exactly what structure you're using but that you are meeting regularly with others in a group with some consistency, and that you're able to be well rounded enough as a group where you're not just learning together, but you can pray for each other as well. That Friday is part of your routine and also that you are finding some way to serve and give to the community around you. That's an important part of being a church community as well.
I've talked mostly about the gathering in small groups mode, but gathering also happens as a large group. We've got opportunities to do that in some of our larger courses like our parenting course that's starting right at the end of this month. Love for you to join us. Even if your parenting is pretty stellar, it's an opportunity to learn a little bit more but also an opportunity to connect with other parents who are part of The Redeem The Commute Community. It'd be a great chance to make some connections that might turn into a small group for you, studying the course regularly.
Another model that we're going to use is overtime, we're going to start gathering together as a church community regularly for worship. We'll talk about that later this week, but a big component of when we have a large group gathering like that is that we'll just have a good time. It's really been the focus of our group gathering so far. Things like our outdoor movie night, the Easter egg hunt that we recently sponsored. These are all just fellowship events, opportunities for people to gather and have a great time before we go deeper and start to worship God together, study the Bible together and so on.
Attached to everyday of content this week we've got a special challenge for you to take on related to the commitments we have as a community to one of these five "G" words. Today being, "gathering," my challenge for you is to let me know, first of all, if you are part of a group regularly or not. We've got a little one question survey today right at the bottom of today's content, where you can let me know if you are part of a group community regularly studying this stuff.
If you're not part of a group yet, you can also use that survey to let me know if you'd like to be part of a group. If I know of one meeting in your area or people like you, then I might be able to connect you with a group that would be a good fit or start a group. If you've got people in your life who you know you could be discussing this stuff regularly with, I'd love to help you get started with them. If you're nervous about maybe leading a group like that, you've never done that before, just get in touch with me through that little survey. I'd love to be able to give you a bit of coaching in leading some small groups. There's a lot of great resources out there and I'd love to help get you in touch with them.
That's your challenge for today. Hope you have a great time putting that into practice and discussing it with your group or developing your group in the first place. Don't forget we're reading the Bible in sync as a community. Check the website or today’s app to see today’s Bible reading, and we've got a parenting course starting soon, April 30th. Visit our website or app's live events listing to see more information and to RSVP because it would be a great way to get connected with others and a great course where you'll have a lot of fun.
