[Matthew 2:16-23] 2025.12.27 The Mad Fear of Losing

The Mad Fear of Losing

Passage: Matthew 2:16-23

Big Idea: Though man in his madness bring us grief, God in his mercy gives us hope in Jesus the Nazarene

Over the past year, a few of us had to move houses, either because our lease ran out, or we bought a house, or if you’re in my family, the Departmenet of Education is using our house as their site office!

When you sign up to look at houses, the real estate agent ask you to provide your contact details and then they keep sending you ads about houses until you ubsubscribe!

Every now and then, an ad will come up to see if I’m interesetd to buy a particular type of house.

What do you think they think I’m interested in buying?

A Church buidling!

Here’s an ad for a church building on 105 MAIN ROAD, CAMPBELLS CREEK, Victoria.

This is the first paragraph of the ad, “Step into a remarkable piece of history, where the past meets modern luxury in a residential conversion like no other. The 1873 Holy Trinity Brick Church, with its stunning gardens and unique character, offers a lifestyle that's both inspiring and serene.”

It’s a younger church building than the one we’re in today!

There was a time when a group of Christians like us, would meet in the Church buidling.

They would’ve had dreams and goals for the Church.

Over time, the Church must have shrunk.

They might have struggled as a little church for a while until it got to a point when then couldn’t afford to keep the Church any longer.

They then list it for sale, not for other Christians, but for anyone who’s interested, to turn it into a residential home.

It’s a story that’s repeated throughout Australia and throughout the world.

There are many little Churches in subrubs all around Australia, who continue to meet even though there are bigger churches, with more resources nearby.

There are little churches who continue to meet even though you can go to church online and watch the service from the comfort of your own home.

And so, why do little churches like ours continue to meet even in the last few days of 2025 and beyond?

What’s the point of being a little church, with little resources, when you can be more comfortable in a bigger church, with much more resources?

Can anything good come from little Churches?

To find out, please open with me to Matthew 2:16-23.

From your puzzled looks I can say that yes, this little passage about what King Herod did has a lot to say about why we should continue as little, relatively unknown churches.

We’ll see three things:

1. A Mad king rages against the Innocents

2. Mother Rachel weeps for her children

3. Merciful God gives hope in Jesus the Nazarene

Before we look into it, let’s pray, “Father, by your Holy Spirit, please help us to see your will clearly, that despite the devil, the world and our own flesh, we’ll follow Jesus the Nazarene, in whose name we pray, Amen.”

1.      A Mad king rages against the Innocents

Many of us would be familiar with the account of the wise men coming from the East to worship Jesus.

Hopefully, those of you who came on Christmas Day would remmeber that that’s what I preached on, just four days ago.

The wise men came to Jerusalem and King Herod the Great wanted to find out more about where Jesus was born.

Herod knew that this King would be the Christ, the One whom God chose to save God’s people.

And so, Herod sent the wisemen on their way and asked them to report back to him so that he can worship Jesus also, or so he said.

After the wisemen found and worshipped Jesus, they were warned in dreams not to go back to Jerusalem.

Joseph, the husband of Mary, was warned in a dream also, and fled to Egypt with the Boy Jesus along with his mother Mary.

Please open up your Bible to Matthew 2:16 and see how Herod responded.

“Then Herod, when he realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage.”

Herod was in a rage; he was furious!

And so what did he do? The second half of verse 16, “He gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men.”

He responded with utter ruthlessness.

He massacred all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under.

It was a targetted attack.

It was a mad, monstrous attack with no regard for vulnerable, innocent babies.

Over a year ago, I prepared the passages for 2025.

Back then, I had no way of knowing that just two weeks ago, on 14 Decemeber, a targetted, mad, monstrous attack on the Jews would happen at Bondi.

Jewish people, both boys and girls, were targets of two mad, vicious, monstrous killers.

It was horrific.

The terror that happened at Bondi was like an echo of the terror that filled Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago.

Whereas the Bondi shooters killed people in one area, Herod’s terror was far wider.

It was Bethlehem and the surrounding region.

He wanted to make sure that there was no chance that the Boy whom the Wise Men came to worship would escape.

History tells us that this wasn’t the only time King Herod inflicted terror on his own people.

Herod’s fear of losing his power was so great that it led him to murder his mother-in-law, his favourite wife, three of his sons, and the High Priest.

Herod was a mad king.

In his madness, he wanted to kill the one who was born King of the Jews, the Christ, the Messiah.

In his madness, he would kill the Saviour of the World, and if it means killing other innocent boys in the process, then so be it.

Sadly, we see this terror repeated throughout the ages, not just for Jewish boys and girls, but men and women of all cultures.

Why do human beings do such horrible things to other human beings?

How could they turn into monsters who hunt down those who are innocent?

Why do people turn mad like King Herod? 

There are many reasons, but a common one that drives people to commit horrific acts is this: it’s the fear of losing.

Herod’s fear of losing power drove King Herod’s madness.

For the ancient Egyptian rulers like the Pharaohs, their fear of losing their Jewish slaves meant refusing to let God’s people go to the point of them losing their flock, losing their water supply and even losing their sons.

It was utter madness.

For others, it might be the fear of losing face that drives them to madness.

Still others, it might the fear of losing respect, of the fear of losing friends.

And the big one of course, is the fear of losing money; people go mad at the thought of losing money.

People go made for the fear of losing.

It makes sense, of course, that everyone wants to be a winner.

Who wants to be a loser?

Sadly, this fear of not wanting to be a loser drives us to do things that on a better day, we might not do.

It might drive us to do things that we would usually condemn.

It is madness, but that’s what sin is like.

Sin is madness.

Sin is not listening to the God who made us and knows us better than ourselves.

Sin is not caring what God thinks, even though He loves us more than we can ever know or imagine.

Sin is utter madness, and it’s a madness that has plagued us ever since we made the choice to turn away from God.

Sin is not just a private, personal disagreement you have with God. Every act of terror traces back to the madness of a sinful heart.

The sinful heart would rather commit acts of vile madness against God and against fellow men than to be seen and known as a loser. 

Look back over the year.

Are there times when you’ve seen others who made decisions that seem to be borne out of madness rather than following God’s word?

Are there times in your life when you acted out of madness, doing the wrong things, even harmful things, because you don’t want to be seen as a loser?

May God help us to come humbly before Him, and ask for strength to resist our urge to avoid being seen or known as losers.

May God be merciful to us lest that urge leads us to acts of madness, as it did for Herod against the mothers of Bethlehem.

2.      Mother Rachel weeps for her children

Great sadness must have fallen over the parents of Bethlehem on that dreadful night.

However, interestingly, rather than describing the horrors of Bethlehem directly, the Bible takes us back to an old teastament prophecy.

Look with me at verses 17-18,

“17 Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:

18 A voice was heard in Ramah,

weeping, and great mourning,Rachel weeping for her children;and she refused to be consoled,because they are no more.”

Rachel was the wife of Jacob in the Old Testament; she was also the mother of Joseph and Benjamin.

Rachel was someone who really wanted to be a mother.

In fact, she once said to Jacob her husband, “Give me children or I will die!”

When she was giving birth to Benjamin, she was having difficulties with the labour.

Almost immediately after she gave birth to Benjamin, she died.

While she was known as the beloved wife of Jacob, she was also known as a mother to the descendants of Israel.

The prophecy that Matthew referred to came from the prophet Jeremiah, as recorded in Jeremiah 31:15.

The prophecy referred to a town called Ramah.

Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, the Babylonian Army used Ramah as a prisoner-of-war camp, where the Israelites would wait for their exile to Babylon.

Most of these Israelites would die in a foreign land and never see the land of Israel again.

The prophecy was speaking figuratively, saying that if Rachel were alive, she would be weeping and mourning for her children at Ramah.

It would’ve been a very bitter experience for her.

In the New Testament, Matthew was saying that figuratively, if Rachel was alive in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus, she would be weeping again.

This time, she would be mourning for her boys who were lost to the madness of King Herod.

To lose a beloved child would be so painful.

We saw glimpses of this sadness as mothers and fathers mourned for Matilda, a little girl who was killed at Bondi.

I cannot begin to even imagine the pain.

Someone who have gone through the pain of losing not their child but their grandchild is Philip Jensen.

Some of us met Philip when we went to the Young Adults camp earlier this year.

Philip Jensen was and still is a powerful and influential speaker.

What you might not know is that a few years ago, Philip had lost his grandson to cancer.

Here’s an excerpt of an article that Philip wrote reflecting the death of Nathan, his grandson.

‘The death of a grandson is not simply natural and normal; it is tragic and horrible.’ 

‘My grandson, Nathan, was as his name indicated, a gift from God.

Thirteen months ago, he and I went fishing down at Port Hacking.

As I taught him how to spin for tailor, he told me of his hopes and plans for education, girlfriends, his church youth group, school Bible Study and discussed with me whether to be a preacher or a Bible translator.

A couple of weeks later the headaches started and he underwent brain surgery.

A couple of months later we learnt of the heart tumour and the likelihood of death.

I prayed that God would take my three score and ten years in place of his less than one score. But it doesn’t work like that.’

Philip and his family went through the tragic loss of Nathan.

It must have been very painful.

It must have also felt very wrong. A parent shouldn’t attend the funeral of their child.

A grandparent shouldn’t attend the funeral of their grandchild.

It’s just wrong.

While Nathan’s loss was painful, it was not the end.

It was not the end because Nathan has hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the last few months of his life, Nathan made a video in the hospital for his school friends.

He wants his friends to have the same hope that he has in Jesus.

Even in the face of death, there is hope for the Christian.

The prophecy in Jeremiah 31: 15 was one of the lowest points in that section of Jeremiah.

However, later on in the same chapter, in 31:31, we read,

““Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”

There will be a new covenant, a new hope.

Look with me at Jeremiah 31:34 No longer will one teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the LORD’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.”

In this new covenant, according to this new promise, God will forgive his people’s iniquities and has committed to never again remember their sin.

This new hope will come through Jesus, the Christ-Child who was saved from the Bethlehem massacre.

God, in his mercy, gives us hope in Jesus, the Nazarene.

3.      Merciful God gives hope in Jesus the Nazarene

When Joseph was in Egypt with his family, he was told by the angel of the Lord that King Herod has dead.

As he was dying, he gave orders that on his death, the leading member of every family in Jerusalem should be executed, so as to make sure that throughout the land, there would be genuine grief at his passing.

Herod was afraid of not having anyone shed any tears for him, and so he made sure that there was at least someone crying on the day of his death, even if the tears weren’t for him.

Thankfully, as far as we know, that order wasn’t carried out.

Joseph obeyed the angel of the Lord and took his family back to Israel.

However, he got worried when he heard that Herod’s son Archelaus was king.

Archelaus was a terrible king as well.

Again, after being warned in a dream, Joseph and his family withdrew to Galilee.

Look with me at verse 23, “ Then he went and settled in a town called Nazareth to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.”

Most visitors who travel to Australia would come to Sydney, the biggest city in Australia, which has a population of 5.5 million.

However, few people would ever go to a little town called Cooladdi, which is situated 800km from Brisbane.

It’s the smallest town in Australia with a total of two residents.

Nazareth was a fairly small town like Cooladdi, though scholars suggested that there were up to 500 people living in Nazareth at the time of Jesus.

Interestingly, Jesus wasn’t raised in the important city of Jerusalem, not even Bethlehem, the city of King David, but Nazareth.

When a potential disciple by the name of Nathanael first heard about Jesus, and that he was from Nazareth, he said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46. Nathanael could not think of one good thing that could possibly come out of Nazareth.

It was a tiny, insignificant town. Why would someone as important as the Messiah come from there?

But there’s one other problem.

No prophets in the Bible mentioned about the Christ growing up in a town called Nazareth.

But since Matthew mentioned that it was mentioned by the prophets, then it must be true that he was mentioned by the prophets, even though we couldn’t find an explicit verse about it.

And so, in what sense do the prophets of the Old Testament point to the Christ, the Chosen One, as a boy who grew up in Nazareth?

And why is so significant, that it’s mentioned in the Bible?

It comes back to the name of the town – Nazareth.

The word in the Hebrew for a branch is neṣer.

The word appears in Isa 11:1, “Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch (neṣer) from his roots will bear fruit.”

It’s possible that a group of people who firmly believed in the hope of the Branch (neṣer )of Jesse, gathered together a small community, called their town, “The Naser Town” or  the BranchTown.

As people of ‘The Naser Town” or Nazareth, they would’ve referred to themselves as the Nazarenes, or “People of the Branch”.

They gathered together and and would’ve encouraged each other to look forward to the Branch of David coming to save to God’s people.

The picture of a branch is a very humbling symbol.

They didn’t use pictures of a towering tree, or a majestic animal like the lion. They saw themselves as a humble branch.

The symbol of the humble branch is a recurring theme that the Bible applies to the despised Servant of God.

Look with me at Isaiah 53:2, “He grew up before him like a young plant  and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.”

So while there wasn’t an explicit verse that says Jesus will come from Nazareth, the prophets do use the theme of the humble branch, the Neser, to describe his Suffering Servant and his faithful people.

There’s a sense, then, that Nazareth’s significance lies in its insignificance.

It wasn’t attractive from a human point of view.

It wasn’t spectacular like the building projects Herod the Great invested in.

The significance of Nazareth comes from the fact that Jesus grew up there.

From a human point of view, Jesus wouldn’t have particularly stood out as he was growing up in the relatively insignificant town of Nazareth.

He was from an insignificant family who came back after living as refugees in Egypt for a short time.

As he began his ministry, Jesus would be known as Jesus of Nazareth.

It wasn’t not a term of flattery, but a term of mockery.

That is, Jesus was despised because he came from Nazareth.

His followers would be despised too.

They were known as the Nazarene sect to some (Acts 24:5).

They were known as the strange people who followed Jesus.

Christians are the Branch people who had put their trust in Jesus, the Branch of David. (Jeremiah 33:15).

Contrary to what drives the world mad, Christians are not to run away from being despised as losers who follow Jesus, for Jesus was himself identified by the world as a loser.

Jesus was despised as a loser in the eyes of the world.

But it was Jesus himself who chose this path.

He chose to let go of the glories of heaven, far grander than anything the Mad King Herod could ever imagine, and came to be born in a poor family.

He chose to grow up in Nazareth, and he chose to die, so that he can take us to be by his side in heaven, to be with God forever.

Jesus chose to be weak, chose to be despised, chose to look like a loser, to save a people like us, and to bring glory to God.

And as his followers, that’s what we’re called to do.

Follow Jesus, even if you are despised, even if you are seen as a loser, for Jesus has done it for you.

And now he asks me and you to be losers for the sake of others.

He asked us to be losers for the Kingdom of God.

He asked us to be despised in the eyes of the world for him.

Would you be despised for him?

It’s always interesting to hear how people introduce their church to new people who come to visit.

For some churches, they might say that they have a great youth programme, or a great community outreach programme, or great music.

They want to tell people about their church’s strengths; they want to show their church as a winner.

However, sadly, every now and then, when people introduce their church to others, it’s often filled with complaints.

They might say that their church doesn’t have a great youth programme, or that the building is falling apart or that certain people groups aren’t welcomed.

It’s crazy, even a little mad, for church members to criticise their church to new people, but I’ve seen and heard about it in different churches, big and small.

And so, how do I introduce our Church?

I would be open about the difficulties we face, and how stretched we are, and sadly, even how we’ve been despised, but I’ll also say that despite all these, despite all the difficulties, despite the madness of men, God’s so good in keeping us as a Church.

God has a purpose for our Church – he wants us to be a little believing community that keeps our trust in Jesus.

And God is not finished with us yet.

I’ve been speaking with different teams over the past few weeks and it’s amazing what God has in store for us.

I can’t wait to tell you more about it in January.

One of the things I would love to happen in our little Church community, whether it’s 2026 or 2036, is to see our church members keep pointing one another to the hope in Jesus the Nazarene, who gave himself up to win us back to God.

How would you encourage someone in our Church to keep trusting in God in 2026, despite the madness of our world?

And so, coming back to our first question, why do little churches like ours continue to meet even in 2026?

It’s only because God hasn’t finished with us yet.

He wants us to continue to be little communities of hope that will trust God even in our grief.

He wants us to continue to be little communities of hope that will trust God despite man’s madness.

He wants us to bear the shame, the dishonour, as well as the joy and the comfort, that comes from following Jesus the Nazarene.

Though man in his madness bring us grief, God in his mercy gives us hope in Jesus the Nazarene.

Here are three questions for us to think about as we head towards the new year.

1.     When are we tempted to follow the madness of man rather than the mercy of God?

2.     What’s the danger of despising little churches?

3.     What will you do to strengthen another person’s hope in Jesus in 2026?

Friends, though man in his madness bring us grief, God in his mercy gives us hope in Jesus the Nazarene.

Let’s pray, “Our heavenly Father, thank you for taking us through another year. Thank you for sustaining us when we’ve been despised and when we have failed. Father, by your Holy Spirit, please give us the strength to resist the madness inside of us, the madness of choosing our way instead of yours, the madness of choosing to be a monster that hates instead of being the children of the living God. Father, give us the strength to humbly follow Jesus the Nazarene, the Son of God, in whose name we pray, Amen.”