Summary
Pastor Safrit examines the character of King Herod in Matthew 2:1-18, highlighting his fear and paranoia in response to the birth of Jesus. He emphasizes that Herod, despite knowing the truth about the Messiah, chose to reject and oppose Him, ultimately leading to violence and tragedy. The sermon challenges listeners to reflect on their own hearts and consider whether they are allowing Christ to reign in their lives or if they are resisting His authority out of fear of losing control.
Welcome and Announcements
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, choir, for singing.
If you have a child who wants to be dismissed at Children's Church, they can be dismissed this time. I think my wife is doing it today. And so thank you for all of our ladies and men that help with our Children's Church.
It's a blessing to have that, and a blessing to have them to go to have their own lesson for themselves. And so we're going to be in week number four of our series of the characters at Christmas. And we've talked about the shepherds. We've talked about Mary and Jesus.
And today we're going to talk about someone that maybe gets overlooked a little bit in the Christmas story. And this is Herod, King Herod, during the time of Jesus' reign.
During when Jesus was born, he was reigning for just a couple of years there. And in Matthew chapter 1, I'm sorry, Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 18, we get the story of Herod and what happened here.
And so we're going to spend some time this morning looking at that and just sort of help you understand who Herod is. And so if you have your place there, we're going to stand.
The words will be on the screen as well, if you're willing and able. And we'll read the first 18 verses of Matthew chapter 2.
The Bible says, And after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star, and it's rising, and we have come to worship him.
When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all of Jerusalem with him. So he assembled all the chief priests and scribes, and the people asked him where the Messiah would be born. They replied, In Bethlehem of Judea, because it was what was written by the prophet.
And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time the star appeared.
He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child. When you find him, report back to me, so that I too can go and worship him. And after hearing the king, they went on their way. And there was the star they had seen, and it's rising.
It led them, and it came and stopped above the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy. Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and falling to their knees. They worshipped him.
They opened their treasures and presented him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route.
And after they were gone, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Get up. Take your child and his mother and flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.
So he got up and took the child and his mother during the night and escaped Egypt. He stayed there until Herod's death so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled.
Out of Egypt I will call my son. Then Herod, when he realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage.
He gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under in keeping with the time that he had learned from the wise men. That was what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet that was fulfilled.
A voice heard in Ramah weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be consoled because they are no more.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for the reading of your scripture. Thank you for the realness of your scripture that we get to read today. Help us as we expound your word this morning. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
So we look at Herod, as we look at the story of Herod.
Herod's Paranoia and Actions
Herod is one of those men throughout the history of Jerusalem that is one of the most fascinating people.
And some of this introduction I'm getting is from Josephus, who was a historian writer who wrote several books during this period.
He was alive during the time of Jesus. He wrote about the victories of Rome and how powerful they were. And he records in detail some things about Herod the Great that we know. But Herod the Great ruled for about 40 years.
It was a long time of tenure. Under Roman authority, this is some things that he did. He was a brilliant builder.
So when you go to Israel, if you've seen pictures where the golden dome is at, and you see the Temple Mount,
Herod is the one that built that Temple Mount the way it is. 40, this was right before Jesus was born, is when this Temple Mount was assembled and built because of Herod and because of his brilliant mind.
And it's still there today. He expanded the Temple. He constructed fortresses all throughout.
There's a place called Masada, which is a wonderful facility, a fortress that he built for himself. And he built for himself in an idea of if Israel revolts against him, he would have a place to go and he could live there for about 10 or 12 years
under the amount of food and staffing that was there.
It was a fortress of getaway. It was a very high mountain area. He had monuments all across the lands that were made. But this is one of the verses that says here is that he was troubled or he was angry at this news. And in the final years of Herod's life,
Herod was no longer feared by the people because of his power, but he was feared because of his paranoia. No one understood what Herod was going to do.
It was one day he would get up and he would do something, and the next day he would do the opposite. And so there was this constant paranoia, and Josephus records that as Herod aged, his suspicion grew so severe that he didn't trust anyone around him. His closest advisors,
his people that were supposed to help him, he couldn't trust them anymore. And so at one point, he was convinced that his own sons were plotting to take over the kingdom from him. And so Herod,
doing the only thing Herod knew how to do, he had all three of his sons executed because he didn't want his sons taking the kingdom from him.
Now, years earlier, he had feared that his wife was going to take the kingdom from him, so he had his wife killed for the same reason. So power for him did not make him secure.
It made him more terrified of what was going to happen. Nearing the end of his life, this is where I want us to understand here, nearing the end of his life, knowing people would no longer mourn his death, he had devised a plan,
one final chilling plan, and he ordered that several prominent men be arrested. This was people in the area that people loved, people cared about, and he said, this is what I want to happen.
At the moment, I want you to imprison them first, but the moment that I die, if someone were to come in and assassinate me, if I die of old age or whatever happens, the moment I die, I want
you to go and I want you to kill all those people that were in prison, that were prominent people, that were loved and beloved in the area, so that the nation would be filled with mourning and people would
mourn my death. You see, everything Herod did was all about himself.
It was all about who he was and how great he was, and what happened was that order was actually never carried out when Herod had died.
The ones that were with him let those men go, but this is the man that we're going to look at. This is the man we look at when we read chapter two. I want to sort of give you an idea because when we read that Herod was troubled, it wasn't an overreaction.
It was his character. It was his nature to be fearful and concerning that something was going to come in and something was going to take over, and he spent his entire life eliminating the rivals that were coming after him,
and he would try to do it again, and this is where the story of the Christmas after Jesus is born
Jesus in a Troubled World
begins to help us begin to see the light of where Jesus was at. You see, Jesus wasn't born into a peaceful nation that was overwhelmed with peace and prosperity. He was born into a world that the king, the ruler of the nation, would rather kill than kneel in front of him,
and we have to ask ourselves, is that where we're at this morning? Are we, in our heart, having the same question that Herod has?
Are we willing to allow Christ to come in this world and kneel before him and worship him, or are we threatened by Christ coming into our life and taking things that maybe we hold near and dear? And so as we dissect this passage, I want us to look at five basic things.
The first is this in verses one through three. Herod was troubled by the birth of Jesus. The Bible says that when Herod heard this, he was troubled.
He was fearful. He was nervous. He was anxious. He was disturbed and deeply disturbed by this.
You see, Herod was not a Jew. Herod was put into this position because the Roman authority put him here.
He had a Roman favor, and so his kingship depended upon the Romans and the favor of him.
And if there was any talk of this king of the Jews, it was, hey, I'm the king of the Jews. I'm the one that's put in charge. I'm King Herod.
I'm the one that's here in charge, and you're coming, and you're saying there's this new king coming up, and it was a direct threat to his legitimacy. It was a direct threat to who he was, and Herod did not like this.
This is what shows us in Scripture is that Jesus comes in, and Jesus disrupts our schedules. Has this ever happened to you?
You've been, you're doing something. You've got your schedule laid out of what you're gonna do, and then all of a sudden, the Lord just sort of nudges you, and you're like, but Lord, if I go and I do that, I'm gonna be late to this appointment. I'm gonna be late to this family gathering.
I'm gonna miss this over here, and the Lord's just like, no, but I really need you to go, and I need you to talk to that person that's struggling over there. This is what's happening. Jesus comes in.
He disrupts the schedule of what's going on. Herod had it one way, and Herod gets mad, and this is God's sovereignty in our life, his authority in our life, and Herod didn't like it. Herod stepped back and pushed back, and Herod was troubled by what is going on.
You see, oftentimes in our life,
Jesus makes people uneasy. Jesus steps into our life where it's not peaceful and brings peace, and we want peace, and we're like, God, I don't know if I like this feeling of peace, and he brings uneasiness, and he brings his love and his authority, and we oftentimes push back,
and we say, God, I know that I want you in my life. I know that I need you in my life, but really, I really like doing things the way I wanna do it, and I don't wanna submit my will to your will, right?
As Jesus said in the garden, Father, I submit my will to your will. Herod had this opportunity, and Herod, by the birth of Jesus,
I mean, you can imagine if Herod would have responded a different way, this sermon today would be completely different.
We would be talking about the king who bowed down before the baby Jesus and said, I'm gonna worship you, and he would have went down in history as one of the greatest kings that Israel ever had,
but instead, he chose to try to eliminate the person that was gonna threaten him. He was going to eliminate the person that was gonna come in and overthrow his kingdom, and so he was troubled, but also, this is where we can often get tied into the story is,
Herod knew the truth about what was going on, and yet he did not obey. Herod knew the truth, but wouldn't obey it. Herod knew where the Messiah would be born.
He asked the people, he asked the rulers, he said, where is, he goes to the chief priests and the scribes, and he says, where would this Messiah be born? And they said, in Bethlehem of Judea, and the Bible says they told them correctly.
He looked at Micah 5, 2, and pulled out Micah 5, 2, and said, this is where this king of the Jews is gonna be born.
We know he's gonna come from Bethlehem, this small town.
As we look at this, and we begin to see that we can have some information, and Herod had the right information. Herod was given correct information. Herod was given correct prophecy,
and Herod was even given that in the right moment. There's times, right, you go to, you try to find the information.
Me and my brothers, we're on a different, we're on a football group chat, and we'll ask a question about a football game, or a statistic, or something, and within moments, we can find the answer. And what aggravates me is when I know the answer, and I can't find it.
I'm like, I know that this person did this, I know this person
had these things, and then I go to look for it, and then I can't find it, and I start getting frustrated, and I start getting angry because I don't know the information, and I don't have it at the
right time. This is the opposite of Herod. He had the right information, he had the right prophecy, and he was given it at the time that he asked for it. And in that moment, he said, I am not gonna submit.
I'm gonna do my own thing, I'm gonna push against what's been told to me, and knowledge, without the submission of the Holy Spirit in our life, it begins to harden our hearts.
And the Holy Spirit begins to work in our life, and we begin to harden our life, and harden our heart, and push against the information that's been given, and push against the prodding of the Holy Spirit, and try to sort of do our own thing.
And oftentimes, this is what disobeying truth does, is it causes us to do our own thing.
And I'm guilty of this, if anyone in this room is guilty of this, it's me of wanting to do my own thing, right?
We are selfish people by nature, we wanna do our own thing, and we wanna make sure we feel good, and we are happy with whatever's going on, and this is what can happen in our life.
You see, oftentimes, you will go to a doctor if there's something going on, there's something wrong in your life, and you're having health problems, and you go to the doctor, and they tell you the information, this is what is wrong with your life. A couple of months ago,
this beginning of this year, I think it was this year or last year, Brody had this kidney obstruction that we had to go in and have surgery, he gave us all the scans and all the details, and this is what I could have done as a dad, I could have said,
Doc, thanks for the information, I know the information, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna do nothing with the information.
It would not have solved the problem that Brody had.
I had the information, I knew that he had a kidney obstruction, I knew that there was a problem here, I even knew that he needed surgery to get it done, and I could have said, you know, Allison, hey, we know what's going on, we know there's a problem,
let's just rest in knowing the information. Or we could act on the information and move forward with the information and say, okay, Doc, this is what's wrong, you say this needs to be done, we're gonna move forward, and we're gonna follow your plan of action. This is what's going on in the scripture here, Herod was given the information,
he was given what was gonna happen, and he chose to do his own thing versus submitting to the will of the Father and the will of what God had for him.
Viewing Scripture Correctly
This is the question I wanna ask you as I laid all that out, is this how you view scripture?
Is this how you view the scripture of the Holy Word, the information that we should be living our life by, the Holy Word of God, do we view it as information,
as something that is there to help us to make good decisions or to do the right thing, or are we viewing it as the authority in our life that is the final
act of authority in and through our life, that is directing our life, that is giving us every area that we go through our life, that when things go wrong, we're saying, God, I need something from your Word today,
I need something to guide me, I need something to help my kids today, I need something to help my wife today, I need something to help my in-laws today, I need something from your Word that's going to
help me get through my day today, I need something that's going to help me go through life as the authority that's laid out in front of me, or are we just looking at it like we looked at in
Sunday school this morning as a book of information that even atheists read to try to figure out
what are we viewing scripture as and how are we allowing it to work in our life? Herod knew the truth, and yet he chose to disobey the truth. Number three, Herod used religious language to hide a rebellious heart. Herod used religious language to hide a rebellious heart.
The Bible says that I too may come and worship him.
When Herod heard the scripture, when Herod heard what happened, he said, hey guys, this is good stuff, I want you to go find this man named Jesus, this Messiah, the King of the Jews, I want to go worship him.
Wouldn't that be great the king get to come and worship this new king? And Josephus records this, he said, Herod's mastery of political manipulation was he often used appearances to hide his intentions.
Has that ever been you, or have you ever been treated like this, where someone would manipulate or spiritually
manipulate the situation to say, hey, hey, come look at the good on the outside, yeah, it's going to be good for you, yeah, this is going to be really great for your life, right?
The good salesperson that comes in and says, it's only five easy payments, you're going to be fine, yes, it's going to help your life out, right? They hide behind good language
and this is what Herod did, he said, I want to come and I want to worship Jesus, I want to come and I want to be what, I want to bring gifts to him, I want to be around
him in this area and so all of a sudden Herod begins to use this manipulation in this rebellious heart but he used the right language.
That's why it's so important that we trust the word of God and we verify everything we hear with the word of God so that we know that it's the right thing, so that we are trusting that what the word of God is actually saying and it's not just man's opinion, right?
There's a guy that's on some reels that I see every once in a while and he'll say, did the Bible ever actually say this?
And he'll bring up a scripture or a story that we've heard since we were a kid and he'll bring up a situation of, you know, did Noah actually just bring two animals on the ark, two of each kind?
And you're like, yeah, of course he did but you read scripture and you're like, no, he actually brought other animals for sacrifices and for meals and for different things and so,
yes, he brought two of every kind but there were some more and there's often times where we have our version of the scripture that has been told to us and yet we didn't verify it with scripture and so
we must not just use religious language and we can't just hide behind these things we've got to ask and look at our heart and say, where is my life at? False worship often seeks control, doesn't seek surrender.
When someone is trying to control things it's because they're trying to manipulate the way that your worship actually is and so we've got to ask ourselves how are we and do our words match our submission to Christ?
As you begin to live your life and you begin to do things that you're doing as you begin to act a certain way begin to evaluate your heart and begin to evaluate your life and say, are my words
matching my actions and are my actions submitting to Christ?
Or am I actions submitting to myself and am I doing the things that just make me happy? This is the problem of what Herod was doing here. Herod was using this language to conceal his true intentions. But number four, Herod was exposed
by the faith of the wise men. Herod in this situation began to see the exposure
coming from these wise men. The Bible says that the Magi were Persian scholars most likely. These were Gentile outsiders
and they had traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to now Jerusalem to find out where this baby was going to be born, where this new king, where this Messiah was going to be born.
And they get there and I mean, you can imagine the cost that this would have cost them to come and worship Jesus. The cost of the gifts that they had, I mean, gold,
The Gifts of the Wise Men
frankincense, and myrrh. Gold was, even today, gold is valuable, right? It just hit the highest numbers, like $4,500 for an ounce of gold. If anyone wants next year,
wouldn't it be great on my 12 days of Christmas for someone to give me an ounce of gold? That would be great, right? Yeah, let's go.
Fun story, a friend of mine actually was given an ounce of gold, John, who came here. One of his uncles gave him one and he called me and was like, James, I don't even know why I'm bringing this up. He said, James, I don't even know what this is worth, what its amount.
He said, I opened it up and it just said $250 on it, so I thought it was worth like $250. And so I'm like, thanks.
And he went home and was like, do I sell it? What do I do with it?
And I'm like, John, you're holding like $4,000 in your hand right now. What are you doing? So, right, the cost that they would have encountered to come and worship Jesus was vast.
They brought gold, they brought frankincense, they brought myrrh. I'm sure they had other gifts. These are just the three that were mentioned in scripture. And they came and they traveled this long distance to come to worship Jesus. And in this moment, they were exposing the faith of actually where Herod was at.
You see, proximity to religion does not guarantee our submission to Christ. You can be close to a church.
You can be close to a group of believers and you can be here when the doors are open and you can live next door to the church and you can see the church doors open every single day and
you can even hear the preaching and hear the worship that's going on and yet never enter the kingdom of God.
Because just because you are close to what's going on does not give you access to what is actually going on. Scripture says that until we confess our sins and until we
humble ourselves before the Lord and ask Him to come in and to save us from our depraved, sinful state, we will never experience the kingdom of God. And Herod was on the outside. He was close.
He was right there. He knew the scripture. He heard the worship. He brought the wise men in. He did everything that he was supposed to do and yet he ignored the Savior itself.
And how often are we so close to Christ yet so far away because we are yet to accept Him as our Savior. My mom told me years ago, she got saved as I was a teenager and she said I was raised Lutheran and I was raised in a God-fearing loving home.
My grandma actually helped start a Baptist church. She was a charter member of a Baptist church in Kannapolis and loved the Lord and did a lot of great things and she said I was raised in church my whole life and she said I was about 18 inches away from never making it into heaven. I said 18 inches?
What are you talking about mom? She said I had the head knowledge but I had no heart knowledge. I was about 18 inches from missing heaven
and she said it scared me to death the day that I realized as a 40, 50 year old lady that I had all the knowledge of Christ and I had been told all the stories of Christ and I
knew who He was and I knew He came to die on the cross and I never accepted Christ as my Savior and it was the day that my sin was exposed that I knelt down and I accepted Christ
Being Close Yet Far from Jesus
as my Savior and I didn't want to be just close to Him to be so far away and never experience heaven
and often times church that's where we're at we're so close but yet so far away just as Herod was so close right he was right there next to Bethlehem he was right there next to Nazareth and he could
have went and he could have accepted Christ and accepted Him as the next Messiah and yet he chose to turn away and he was exposed by the wise men of who He really was and then we get to
the tragic part of the story here the fifth and final point as we begin to close out our message Herod chose violence
when he refused to bow the knee to the Father when he refused to bow the knee to the Son of God who came into this world the Bible says that he was furious
when he heard that the wise men betrayed him and went his own way
the Bible went on to say that he ordered the slaughter of boys two years old and under given Bethlehem's size at the time historians estimate that it was between 20 and 30 little boys that were killed during this time
Josephus records Herod's death shortly after marked by agony and isolation think of this man who had everything man when you if you ever get to experience going to Israel you can still go to Herod's place you can still
go and see Masada and some of the places that he had I mean this guy if he wanted something
I'll give you this from Jerusalem to Masada which is at the Dead Sea it's about 150 miles throughout this area he had built checkpoints in that he could make it to that by daytime by nighttime and he would
have a safety and secure net and every single one of those were manned 24-7 with soldiers that were there to protect him in case there was a riot the man if he wanted it he would get it
if the man wanted something he spoke it and it came into existence and yet he refused to bow and the end of his life
as all historians say there was agony isolation turmoil all because he chose to not bow the knee
one Roman emperor wrote this it is safer to be Herod's pig than to be Herod's son
what a tragedy to look at this man who was so close to Jesus who was so close to the birth of Jesus and you know it's the it's the traditional time machine question if you could go back in
time where would you go it's like the top two answers are the birth of Jesus or the crucifixion of Jesus right if you're a believer you're like I want to see these things and Herod had the opportunity he
could have said one word take me to Bethlehem so that I can go and see Jesus and I can worship him and he would have had soldiers that would have took him he would have had an armed guard
that would have taken him and he could have went he could have seen it and yet he resisted and chose to do his own thing when we resist Christ destruction always follows
when begins to destruct ourself from inside as we begin to hear the truth of God's word and it begins to penetrate our heart and we begin to reject it on the inside it begins to eat us up it begins to destroy us from the inside and then it begins to come outward
and we have to ask ourselves how are we responding to the call of the Lord when he comes to us and says repent and turn to me because I want you to come and I want you to experience
this fellowship this oneness with Christ that we can have
I was reading something this week and this illustration came up of the idea of the sun and how bright the sun is and I'm sure you've been to the beach before
and you've been out there maybe too long and you didn't bring the shade and you got sunburned but the illustration went like this it said
imagine going as a little kid out to the beach and saying I don't like the sun and so I'm going to close my eyes and the sun's going to go away and it's not going to hurt me anymore
and this little kid goes out and he stands at the beach and he looks up at the sun and he closes his eyes really hard and he says the sun's not going to hurt me and he closes his
eyes and he just keeps standing there and for the whole day he stands there and he closes his eyes and he says the sun can't hurt me because my eyes are closed
and he comes home that night and he goes mom I defeated the sun today
I never looked at the sun the sun couldn't hurt me and she looks down at him and she goes yeah but you're as red as this carpet
just because you didn't look at the sun doesn't mean it didn't have any power over you and all of a sudden he's got sunburned and I'm sure you've had kids that were sunburned before and the pain that happens
afterward that slowly begins to burn yourself up because you thought you could overcome that by just closing your eyes when I was on my very first mission trip
I'm down there in Peru in South America and I'm watching the crazy traffic if you've never been to a third world country just going for the traffic experience is a monumental thing I mean cars are whipping by there's horns going everywhere there's a
roundabout I'd never seen a roundabout before in my life at the age of 17 there's this massive roundabout cars are coming in and they're zooming around and all of a sudden I look over and there's a sidewalk and
there's this Peruvian gentleman and the cars are coming this way and he looks this way and just steps out I mean traffic's coming and Mike Kennedy was in the mission I said Mike what's going on over there this guy's about to get hit he goes in Peru
they believe if they don't see the car the car can't hurt them
and so if the car's coming this way they just look this way and just step out in traffic because they didn't see the car and so the car can't hurt them often times this is our life right we think if I don't
respond if I don't choose this if I don't get close enough if I look the other way if I close my eyes when the sun is coming down then the sun can't hurt me and yet
The Cost of Sin and Redemption
there is this cost that has to be paid in our life the sin the depravity that we have has to be paid and Christ says he's paid it already and often times our pride gets in the way of
ever accepting the gift that Christ has given us of eternal life and pride got in the way of Herod's life the story and history as Terry comes the history that the Bible records and the history that the historians
wrote of Herod he rejected Christ and at the end of his life there was misery and turmoil and agony because he chose to not obey
hold that it would be said that we would obey when the gospel was presented to us Herod spent his entire life guarding his throne he said if one thing happens I'm going to stay on the throne as king and yet soon he lost it
Jesus came to this world and he stepped down from his throne who he had every right to sit on and to sit on for all eternity he stepped down from his throne and he stepped into our world he stepped into the world that he created
all this so that he could save us as sinners
the one that deserved the throne abandoned the throne the one that didn't deserve the throne at all that was filled with pride tried to hold on to the throne and lost it all and yet Christ laid down his life so that we could experience his kingdom forever
Herod it's the saddest thing ever killed children to protect his kingdom
and yet Christ as he stepped down into our world said I would rather give up my life so that I could save sinners and I could establish my own kingdom you see Christmas does not ask if you believe Jesus existed
history records that history knows that Jesus existed scripture tells us and identifies that Jesus was here and there's evidence upon evidence upon evidence that Jesus existed we're not asking you this morning if you believe Jesus existed I'm asking you this morning are you willing to bow
are you willing to say God I don't want to do my will anymore I've done my own thing long enough I've maybe lived like Herod
I've been filled with pride I've been filled with anger I've been filled with doing my own thing and trying to get my own will worked out and today I want to bow as Christ bowed and gave his life for us
so that we could be a part of his kingdom my final question this morning as we close in prayer is Jesus a threat to your control as you look at your life and you begin to examine what you have done in your life is Jesus the one threatening the control of your life
Closing Prayer and Reflection
or is he the king and savior of your life the king of your heart and the one that rules everything is that what Jesus or is he threatening your own identity
father we love you we thank you for what you've done for us lord as we come to a close of this year last sunday of 2025 it's so hard to imagine that it feels like yesterday that it was the first sunday of january
but god you are so faithful to us help us not to have went this entire year hearing your word preached hearing the christmas time story the the characters at christmas and and respond as herod did
respond angry and mad and and upset that your will was trumping our will and we didn't want to submit to you
help us father today as we respond to respond the way that you would have us to respond lord we love you we thank you for what you've done in your name we pray amen thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of pleasant road
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Characters at Christmas - Jesus
Characters at Christmas - Mary
Characters at Christmas - The Shepherds
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