St John the Beloved
Sermon and teaching audio from St John Church in Cincinnati Ohio.
St John the Beloved
Disturber of the Peace
A caravan from the East rolls into Jerusalem and asks a question no one is ready to answer: where is the newborn King? That simple inquiry cracks the city’s calm, exposes Herod’s fear, and reveals a deeper truth about real peace. We open Matthew 2 and trace how Jesus first unsettles us—our plans, our power, our sense of safety—so that He can give a truer peace than comfort ever could.
We start with the Magi and the shock of holy interruption. Plans look wise until the real King arrives and asks for our attention, loyalty, and worship. From there, we confront Herod as the template for tyranny: power used to control others for personal gain. History confirms his cruelty; the text uncovers the spiritual battle under it. Allegiance to Christ places limits on every throne, boardroom, and living room, compelling us to obey God rather than men when conscience is pressed and to steward any authority we hold for the good of others.
Finally, we follow the flight to Egypt and the unsettling claim that there is no safe place for the gospel. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head, and His people are pilgrims who seek the city to come. That doesn’t mean passivity; it means vigilance. We work for justice and guard hard-won liberties, yet we refuse to baptize any nation, party, or institution as our permanent home. The peace Jesus offers is not fragile stability—it is the resilient life of a people shaped by courage, humility, and worship.
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Matthew 2, 1 through 18. 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? Now for now oh sorry, 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, Do you want to sit down?
SPEAKER_03:Maybe I don't know. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01:He inquired of them where Christ was to be born. They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: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.
SPEAKER_02: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. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them, until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy, and going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. They opening their treasures, they offered him gifts and gold and merchant, frankincense, and mirror, 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, Don't do it. I already did it. The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, and in the dream 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 all the region that who were two years old and 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 in loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be comforted because they are no more. Let us pray. Faithful and holy God, as we light this final candle of Advent, we remember the child born to be our King, sought by the wise, worshipped with gifts, and threatened by the powers of this world. In the story of Jesus' birth, we see both great joy and deep sorrow, light shining in the darkness, and darkness resisting the light. Yet even here, your purposes are not undone. As we wait on the edge of Christmas, teach us to see Christ as the Magi did, with courage, humility, and worship. Protect the vulnerable, comfort the grieving, and turn our hearts away from fear and torrid trust. May the light we kindle today remind us that no shadow can overcome your love, that Christ has come for all nations, and that Emmanuel is with us, even in the hardest places. Prepare us to welcome the newborn King with faithful hearts and lives of obedience through Christ our Lord. Amen.
SPEAKER_03:Amen. Thank you, Hershey family. At this time, I'll go ahead and dismiss kids age two through second grade to be part of Kids Church downstairs. Unless you want to stay up here with us, you're welcome to do that as well, kids. I guess not. There's nothing more disruptive than the birth of a child. I tell young couples all the time who are expecting uh their first baby, uh, I liken it to an asteroid hitting a planet. Um before you have your well, it doesn't even have to be your first child, it could be any child. But before you're living on your your nice life on your little planet with your you know balanced ecosystem that you've made, you know that there's an asteroid that's gonna hit in about nine months. Um and you can read the books, you can attend classes, you can buy all of the things that you need, but there's really uh nothing you can do to truly prepare for the birth of a child. When it hits, everything changes. The landscape changes, the old world is gone, and you're just getting to know that your new world. There is no going back. And you adjust in real time and you learn as you go, and you become a different person. Sadly, our culture often teaches that having a child will ruin your life. And to that I say that it most absolutely will ruin your life, especially, especially if your life is devoted to yourself. Um, especially if comfort and control are among your highest goals, it's going to absolutely ruin all of that. Because a child forces you into a world where you must devote yourself to someone other than you. And so it will it will disrupt your life in the most significant sense. But also will lead you into a joy that you never would have found otherwise. This Advent season we're looking at the stories of conflict surrounding the birth of Jesus. And Matthew 2 is is this whole chapter is full of that. It shows us that the birth of Jesus was especially disruptive. It was disruptive to the lives of Mary and Joseph, it was disruptive to the people of Jerusalem, it was disruptive to Bethlehem and the families that were devastated by the capriciousness of Herod. Wherever God shows up, he disrupts business as usual. But what if that's exactly what we need? What if some of our most comfortable routines are also the things that are holding us back? What if we've settled into dysfunction so deeply that only a holy disruption can save us and can bring us back to where we're supposed to be? Salvation does not always feel like peace at first. Sometimes, in order to bring about real and lasting peace in our lives and in our world, Jesus must first be the disturber of the peace. And that's what we see that he is here in Matthew 2. Here in Matthew 2, we see three ways that Jesus is the disturber of the peace before he brings about real and lasting peace. He disrupts our plans, he disrupts tyranny, and he disrupts our sense of safety. So first, he disrupts our plans. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the Lord's purposes that will stand. Matthew 2 opens just after the birth of Jesus in verses 1 and 2. It says, After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men or magi from the east came to Jerusalem. From the perspective of the people of Jerusalem, this is completely unexpected. As far as they know, they already have a king. It's King Herod. There have been no palace celebrations, there have been no royal announcements and no acknowledgement of a king being born. Life is just carrying on. They're buying and selling, they're working and sleeping, business as usual. But then, without warning, this caravan rolls in from the east. We don't know how many, how large it was or how many there were. Sometimes, you know, we've gotten into the habit of thinking that there were three of them because they offer three gifts. But nowhere in the story does it tell us how many there were or how large their caravan their caravan was. But they roll up without warning. It's a group of magi. These are men from the East, they're Persian astrologers, pagan philosophers, and they ask the one question that nobody in Jerusalem expects. Where is he who has been born, king of the Jews? This was alarming, alarming news. The Magi assume that Jerusalem must know, they assume the palace must have celebrated the arrival of a newborn prince, whom they discerned from reading the stars, as the astrologists are wont to do. But instead they find a city that's caught off guard, utterly unaware of any newborn king, unaware of what God is doing. Jerusalem here in this part of the story is not yet hostile to Jesus. They're just busy. They're busy with their own lives, they're busy with their own priorities, their own plans. And then in verse 3 we read, When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Herod is troubled because this is a potential threat to his throne and his power. Jerusalem is troubled because their stability now is threatened. Herod was famously unpredictable and dangerous and capricious. And when he's troubled and disturbed, every the status quo and the peace itself is threatened. So their first instinct is not excitement about the possibility of the Messiah. They're not waiting for the Messiah. Their first instinct is anxiousness about the loss of the status quo. They're not expecting redemption, they're protecting their sense of what's normal. They fear losing the status quo more than they long for the promises of God. So just what is going on here? To conclude, there's that famous line, the pithy line, that life is what happens when we're busy making other plans, as John Lennon's saying, or another version that if you want to make God laugh, show him your five-year plan. In this story, Jerusalem has plans, Herod has plans, everybody has plans, and into all of those carefully laid plans, God unexpectedly shows up. He unexpectedly arrives. And the question that the text asks us is this When the real king arrives, do I welcome him? Am I watching for him? Am I waiting for him? Am I expecting him? Or am I troubled? Do I resent him for interfering with my plans or for interrupting my plans? We all have many plans, but only God's plans stand. And our peace is not found in our plans working out, but it's found in God's plan breaking into our lives and into our plans. I lived in a small town in my early childhood before we moved to the suburbs. And I only have a handful of memories of life in that small town. But this is one of them. One summer evening, my friends and I we were minding our own business. We were playing at the park, which is kind of in the central part of the town, this large park, baseball fields, playgrounds, and just a lot of open area. We were there one summer evening when something magical happened. This huge caravan of strange, colorful trucks rolled into town. We could see them turn in to our small town from the state route, and then they came straight straight for us, straight for where we were. They rolled onto the field right next to where we were playing. We'd never seen any cars or trucks drive onto this field before. Some of the trucks carried lions and elephants. A big tent started to go up, and suddenly there were clowns walking around on stilts. Without any advertisements or announcements, this is again way before any kind of social media. Without any advertisement or announcement, the circus had come to town. Because it is not every day that the circus comes to town, especially in a small town. And I learned something that day that has stuck with me. Don't be too attached to your plans because there is always the possibility that the circus might come to town. It's a lesson I've carried with me. However remote that possibility might be, the chances are never zero. It could happen even today. So don't hold too tightly to your plans. And that's sort of what Matthew 2 is showing us. Jerusalem had plans, Herod had plans, everyone was busy with their own lives and their concerns. And then this caravan rolls in from the east. People they weren't expecting, news they were not prepared for, a king they were not looking for. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the Lord's purpose that will stand. And sometimes God's purpose will disrupt and interrupt every plan that we have. Not to ruin our lives, but because we need it, to invite us into something far greater. When God shows up, he disrupts our plans, the disturber of the peace. But this doesn't mean that we shouldn't make plans, but it does show us how valuable our plans actually are and how far they can go. I've noticed that my kids like to make plans. On the weekend, for example, they might plan out exactly how they want their day to go, or maybe on their birthday, they plan out how their day is going to go and all the things that they want to do, and what in order, uh what order they want to do them in. And that's not necessarily a problem to plan out our lives. But when things inevitably don't go according to plan, they can begin to get very frustrated because it's not, this is not how we planned it to be. This is not how it's supposed to go. Um and I think that that that happens to all of us. For those of you who love to plan, how do you handle it when things don't go according to plan? When God inevitably disrupts your plans? Are you able to roll with the punches and pivot and adjust and to get with the program? The scriptures often teach us that we should make noble plans. We should plan, we should plan ambitiously, but our plans at the same time should be humble, acknowledging that without God no plans will succeed. Our plans should be prayerful, submitted to God in prayer, and our plans should be open to adjustment because God is in control and not us. The most important thing to know is this is that your peace does not depend on your plans working out, however intelligent they are, but it depends on God's plans breaking into your life and us uh cohering with the plans of God. So he disrupts our plans. The second thing that we see, a bit of a um a bigger pitcher point, is that he disrupts tyranny. Because our ultimate allegiance is to Jesus, Jesus disrupts every force that would seek to control us. This is no secret, but Herod was a tyrant. He's the pitcher of a tyrant. Uh we can see this in the story before us today, but it's also well attested outside of the Bible. Josephus, the Jewish historian, gives us a long record of his of his brutality. He was consumed by paranoia. Anyone who threatened his throne or who he thought might threaten it was ruthlessly eliminated. And to this end, he executed one of his wives, he executed multiple of his sons, he executed his own brother over the course of his life. Power for Herod was not something that he carefully stewarded in order to responsibly care for those under his charge, but it was something that he defended at any cost. He was the kind of man who would rather kill members of his family than lose control. And this is all what we know just from outside of the biblical record. The reason that Herod is troubled by the appearance of the Magi is that this represents a potential rival to his throne. So in typical Herodian fashion, he seeks to eliminate the threat. He feigns an interest in religion. He calls a meeting of the Bible scholars and scribes to learn where it is that the Messiah is supposed to be born. And they tell him the scriptures say in Bethlehem. And so he shares this information with the Magi under the pretense that he too wants to go and pay homage to the child, when we know that in reality he wants to find the child to eliminate him. And when Herod loses his chess match with God, and the Magi abandon him, and Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt out of his reach, in desperation he orders the slaughter of the innocents, as it has been called. Every male child in Bethlehem, aged two and under, is to be slaughtered. Given what we know about the population of Bethlehem at the time, this meant the slaughter of maybe about twenty children, which is horrific and terrible, but honestly fairly mild compared to the atrocities that he would later go on to commit in his life. Herod is the pitcher of the tyrant. And that word gets thrown around a lot, tyranny and tyrant, but what does it really mean? I'd like to make it simple. Tyranny is using power to control others for your own benefit. Using power to control others for your own benefit. Herod had more power than most of us ever will, and he used it to control others and to oppress others for purely selfish purposes, for his own benefit. But tyranny comes in many shapes and sizes. Anytime anyone seeks to use whatever power they have to control others for their own benefit, they're being little tyrants. All of us, all of us have it within our own heart. The tendency of human nature is toward tyranny. Whether it's in uh on a throne or in a government or in an office building or in a home or wherever. And Jesus is a huge problem for tyrants because our allegiance is ultimately to him, and he places a limit on all power and authority. The United States federal government has never established a national church, and that is a very good thing. But in early America, many of the original colonies, the original 13 states, had state-sanctioned churches. So let's take Virginia, for example. Uh our our own Janice is from it's Virginia, not West Virginia, is that right? West Virginia. I got that wrong. Well, what's the difference anyway? I know. In poor taste, sorry. Um but let's take for let's take Virginia, for example. Before and after the revolution, the Anglican Church was the state church of Virginia. That's why it's it's such an Anglican area even today. And that meant for them that every citizen was taxed, and those taxes went to Support the local Anglican minister, whether or not you were Anglican, even if you never attended that church or worshipped there, even if you belonged to a different church, even if that violated your conscience, if you were an objector, it didn't matter. Your taxes went to support that minister and that congregation. And if you failed to pay them, you could suffer legal consequences. And if you wanted to preach the gospel in Virginia, you needed a license from the state, a license that you could only get if you were ordained in the Church of England. In 1773, a Baptist preacher named Jeremiah Moore, one of the Separatists, refused to comply. He had no state license. He didn't believe he needed one. He had no Anglican ordination. He was not going to be part of that godless church as he saw it. He simply preached. He preached Christ, and because of this, they threw him in jail for unlicensed preaching. Could you imagine that happening today? That happened back then in 1773. Moore and the other dissenters, or the separatists, as they were known, called this what it was. They said, this is tyranny. The government, they said, has no right to decide who can preach. The government has no right to force citizens to fund a church that violates their conscience. So they fought for something revolutionary: the separation of church and state and religious liberty for every soul. Why? Why did they fight for that? Because we must obey God rather than men, and Jesus alone is the Lord of the conscience. That's those are some of the preliminary principles of our own church government in the PCA. But more and the other dissenters ultimately won that fight, but not without great cost to themselves. And the lesson remains that authority is good. God institutes many authorities, parents, teachers, police, pastors, governments. All of these are given by God and they ought to be respected. But all earthly authority has limits. And every human heart, whether it's on a throne or in an office or in a home, has a tendency toward tyranny, which is why Jesus is such a problem for tyrants. Because those who follow Jesus must eventually say no to the tyrant, and that is not a word that any tyrant likes to hear. So what does this mean for us? Two things. Number one, do not fear to obey God rather than men. All of us live under authority, and we always will, sadly. Well, maybe not, maybe not so sadly. I mean, we have a tense relationship with authority, but we all live under authority. Parents, teachers, employers, clients, government officials. Scripture tells us to honor those authorities because God uses them for good. But no earthly authority is absolute, and every human leader has limits, even within the home. Only Jesus has the right to command your ultimate loyalty, which means that there will be times in life when you must disobey a person in order to obey Christ, or when you must disappoint someone's expectations, because Jesus does not demand what they demand, or when you must say no to pressures that would compromise your integrity or your calling. And when you do, there are going to be people who don't like it, and there are going to be people who throw a fit, and some may even punish you for it. But Christians are called to a holy stubbornness. Acts 5209, when the authorities in Jerusalem charged the apostles no longer to preach Jesus, they said, We must obey God rather than men. And they did not listen to those tyrants. So we check tyranny wherever it shows up by doing our work heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men. Colossians 3 23. So do not be afraid to obey God rather than men. But number two, don't be a tyrant. Don't be a tyrant. Many of you, we all live under authority, but many of us also have some measure of authority. You're a parent, you're a husband, you are a supervisor, or a team leader, or a coach, or a ministry leader, or whatever it might be. And here is the warning of Herod. That Herod is showing us what is possible for all of us, because tyranny it is the tendency of fallen man. It does not begin when you get into power, it's already there, and it's exacerbated when we come into power. It begins in the human heart. So whenever you try to use the power that you have to control another person for your benefit, you are being a son of Herod or a daughter of Herod. So don't do that. Repent when you see that impulse in your heart. And listen when someone tells you that that they're feeling controlled or manipulated. Use your authority not to protect your status or your comfort, but to bless and to serve and to build up. And the difference is simple. Herod says that my power exists to protect me. And Jesus says, My power exists in order to give life and in order to bless and to build up and serve. Authority is good, but because Jesus is king, authority must look like his authority, which sets aside its own good for the benefit of others. And then point three, he disrupts our sense of safety. A final thing that we learn in this chapter is that, or that we begin to learn, and that Matthew continues to teach us throughout his gospel, is that there is no safe place for the gospel in this world. Jesus escapes Herod by fleeing to Egypt, Jesus and and his through his parents. We read in verses 13 and through 15. 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, quote, out of Egypt I called my son. It's hard to know how long they were in Egypt. It could have been a few months, it could have been as long as a few years. But Matthew takes this opportunity to make a prophetic connection. He quotes Hosea 11:1, which says, When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. In the Old Testament, Israel is often called the Son of God. And Matthew is saying that Jesus is the fulfillment of what Israel was supposed to be. Jesus is the true Son of God. He's the true vine. He's the true temple. He's the true Israel. And like Israel, he is called out of Egypt, and he is leading a sojourning people who are waiting to be brought home to their eternal inheritance. Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel. Matthew is drawing our attention to the fact that Jesus is a sojourner. In Matthew 8, later on in the gospel, a zealous would-be disciple said to Jesus, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. And to this Jesus warned him, saying, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Matthew and Jesus are saying the same thing. They're saying that following Jesus is not safe, and that there is no place, there is no place in time or history where the gospel has ever been safe. There is no place of rest, there is no Christian homeland on this side of glory. The author of Hebrews sums it up like this: Hebrews 13, 14, for here, in this age, we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. The Son of Man has no permanent place of rest in this world, and neither do his disciples. Earlier this year, I I've shared this before, but this was just in January, so almost a year ago, we discovered that a family of rats had taken up residence in our basement. And when we discovered it, we acted quickly and decisively. I cleaned the place from top to bottom, and I everything got organized and sanitized, and I set traps and I set out poison. I wasn't, it was, this was not catch and release. This was seek and destroy, okay? Um I found every hole and sealed it. Every shred of dog food and cat food was put away at night, and we were very vigilant at first. And because we took decisive action, we got rid of them within a week or so. But as the weeks and the months went on, we did a very human thing. And we relaxed and we we let down our guard and we stopped monitoring traps and worrying about everything being clean and foolishly assuming that the victory is permanent. As far as I know, there are no rats today, but the watchman is asleep. We've convinced ourselves that because they're gone, that they'll stay gone, and we've forgotten how easily they come back and how quickly they return when no one is paying attention. And here's the connection: there is never a moment in the history of the church where the gospel is safe, where we can let down our guard. Yes, Christians have fought for religious liberty around the world. Yes, there have been seasons and times and places where the church enjoyed some measure of peace and security, but those victories are always temporary and always precarious and will fall apart at some point. We are always only one decision, one election, one cultural shift away from danger and hostility returning. As Hebrews says, here we have no lasting city. So what should we do? The author of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 13, 12 and 13, so Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, here's what we should do: let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. As Christians, we ought to stay vigilant and we ought to fight wherever we are for liberty and for justice and for righteousness in the world. And we also ought to conserve or fight to conserve the good things that we have inherited from brave men and women who came before us, from things that our fathers fought and died for, uh, men who suffered so that we could have the liberties that we enjoy. But at the same time, we can never identify any place on earth as a safe place for Christians. There is no nation, there is no tribe, there is no club, there is no political party, there is no church denomination that will ever be a permanent place of rest for the gospel. All of these things will eventually at some point assault the gospel on some front. We are strangers and sojourners in this world, seeking good in this world, but not resting in this world. Our rest is in Christ alone. Before Jesus is able to give us peace, he must be the disturber of the peace. It is good for us that he disrupts our plans, because most of them are bad plans anyway. It is good for us that he disrupts tyranny because Christ alone is Lord. And it is good for us that he disrupts our sense of safety, because we were never intended to make a permanent home in this fallen world. To these ends, let us pray. Jesus, we thank you that you are the King of peace. You do offer true and lasting peace. You bring peace into our lives, you give peace, but not as the world does, as you tell us. But oftentimes, in order to experience the peace that you bring, it doesn't feel like peace at first because you do uh you call us to repentance, you call us to a change of mind and a change of direction. You um you challenge things that are sacred to us that shouldn't be, and you bring us into peace with yourself and with the Father. We pray, God, that you would help us to be men and women of peace and peaceable people. Help us to be people who seek to live peaceably with all us so far as it concerns us. Uh, help us to be peacemakers. But Lord, we know that um we know that that's not easy, and so, and we also know that you send us out into this world uh as sheep in the midst of wolves, and so we are to be wise as serpents and yet innocent as doves. Help us, Lord, to imitate you in this and to join you outside the camp, bearing the reproach that you endured for our sake and for our salvation. All of this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.