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“Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

Merry Christmas!

᛭ INI ᛭

Satan wants to stop Christ from fulfilling His Work. So, he used his handyman Herod to hasten the death of Christ. He spurred him on to a jealous rage that ended in the earliest Martyrs for our Lord. The youngest to take up their crosses and follow Christ unto death, now to rest beneath the altar of God, as revealed in Revelation.

Satan has been a murderer from the beginning. He murdered Adam and Eve, and brought all humanity into it as well! “For as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death spread to all men because all sinned.” He would blot out all holiness, all goodness. He would ruin all God’s gifts, including the worldly gifts of life and happiness, along with Christ Himself, and the holy Christian church. The devil’s hatred knows no bounds.

Why would God allow such a thing? It’s the hidden will of God. God allows such a destructive blow to be struck around Bethlehem, that boys two years old and younger would be struck down. Bethlehem blighted with the blood of Children.

Satan worked this in ancient Israel as well, when he wore the mask of Molech. To Molech the Israelites made their children pass through fire. Satan sought to cut off the promised Seed from the earth before He would be born. It was Satan’s game from the beginning, once the promise had been made. From the Egyptians to the Babylonians, even among the Israelites, and even in Herod, Satan sought to stop salvation in the slaughtering of children. But it would not be so! Joseph “took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod.”

Satan’s game continues today. He continues to scourge our land with the slaughtering of almost countless children. No longer with the name Molech but “Choice” his work continues. Since the Christ was born and accomplished salvation, now Satan seeks to sear the hearts and souls of men to salvation, that they would not believe in Christ. That their love would grow cold. That mankind would not see Christ in the face of the little ones, that they would not see His sacred face in the ultrasounds of the preborn. The devil works so that mankind would not take to heart Christ’s warning: “Whoever causes one of these little one’s to stumble, it would be better that a millstone would be tied around his neck, and he be thrown into the depths of the sea.” Indeed, “as you did it to one of the least of these little ones, you did it to Me,” Christ says.

Indeed, even our hearts grow cold from the weight of it. Our voices ought to ring out as they did in Bethlehem, as even the Prophet Jeremiah records: “A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more.” Not only for Ramah, but Western, modern man…

But the blight that Herod worked in Bethlehem, a blight continuing for different reasons in our times, finds its culmination not in Bethlehem, not even in Egypt, but at Calvary. “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” He came and bore in His own body our sins and the sins of the whole world. His infant flesh preserved that He might bear the stripes worked, not by Herod, but by Pontius Pilate. He is the defiled One for the sake of the abominations and desolations of all time. By His holy life and sacrificial suffering and death is the compassion and love of God in the face of great evil, even the evil of your sins and the sins of the whole world. Indeed, “He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea.” (Mic 7)

The boys of Bethlehem bore Christ’s stripes, glorious scars. They are the first Martyrs for Christ, and John saw them in Revelation 6:

I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

Indeed, let us rejoice at such a Birth as Christ’s! His birth is new birth for the whole of mankind. “For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many,” even to you and to me. Because of what Christ has done for us, there is no need to fear and every reason to seek to see in all mankind those purchased by the precious blood of Christ. To see in the weakest and youngest and oldest those who we might treat as Joseph treated Mary and Christ rather than Herod.

He has brought us out of darkness, the darkness of Egypt, slavery to sin and pharaoh Satan, into His marvelous light. The light and peace and holiness of the forgiveness of sins. He unites us into His death and resurrection. He unites us to His holy flesh and blood, that we might be one body and blood with Him, even as the Holy Innocents’ are one with Him now. And one day Christ will raise them unto eternal life, too.

Herod’s hatred will be undone. Satan’s murder will be overturned. Death itself will be gone and done for. Satan, death, and all those who are his will be cast into the depths of the lake of fire forever. But to life with Christ shall arise the boys of Bethlehem, and so also you and me, who believe and trust in Him alone. We the baptized. We baptized into His death and life at the Font. The children martyred unto eternal life. Indeed, Christ’s promise holds true for them: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10) We as the entire body of Christ, the 144,000, “follow the Lamb wherever he goes. [We] have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb,” forever.

Merry Christmas!

᛭ INI ᛭