SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
12/6/2019 2:49 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Herod the King
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 2:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in
Jerusalem, saying, 2 “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we
saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him.’”
My plans
are to look at this second sub-section today and then it will take a few days
to look at the next one.
We will be
looking at Herod in this section and first we want to understand who this Herod
“the Great” is, as there were a number of Herods found in the Scripture. Julius Caesar has appointed his father,
Antipater, to be procurator, of better understood as governor, of Judea while
under the Roman occupation. Herod’s
father then managed to have his son Herod to be appointed prefect of
Galilee. While in that office Herod was
successful in quelling the Jewish guerilla bands who continued to fight against
their foreign rulers. Herod took off for
Egypt when the Parthians invaded Palestine, Herod then went to Rome around 40
B. C. He then, while in Rome declared by
Octavian and also Antony, along with the concurrence of the Roman senate to be
the king of the Jews. Herod then invaded Palestine the next year,
after several years of fighting; he drove the Parthians out of Judea and then
established his kingdom.
Herod was
not Jewish, but he was Idumean or Edomite.
He married Marianne, heiress to the Jewish Hasmonean house, in order to
make himself more acceptable to the Jews he now ruled. Herod was a clever and also a capable
warrior, orator and diplomat. MacArthur
writes “In times of severe economic hardship he have back some tax money
collected from the people. During the great
famine of 25 B. C. he melted down various gold objects in the palace to buy
food for the poor. He built theaters,
race tracks, and other structures to provide entertainment for the people, and
in 10 B. C. he began the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. He revived Samaria and built the beautiful
port city of Caesarea in honor of his benefactor Caesar Augustus (Octavian’s
title). He embellished the cities of
Beirut, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, and Rhodes, and even made contributions to rebuilding
work in Athens. He built the remarkable
and almost impregnable forces of Masada, where in A. D. 73 nearly a thousand
Jewish defenders committed suicide rather than be captured by the Roman general
Flavius Silva.”
He sounds
pretty good, but in fact Herod was also cruel and merciless. Herod was a very jealous man and also
suspicious, and afraid for his position and also for his power. Fearing his potential threat, he had the high
priest Aristobulus who in fact was his brother-in-law, (wife’s brother) drowned—after
which he provided a magnificent funeral where he pretended to weep. Next he killed his own wife Marianne, and
next her mother and two of his own sons.
It was about a year after the birth of Jesus, five days before his death
he had a third son executed. There is
more, as one of the greatest evidences of his bloodthirstiness and insane
cruelty was having the most distinguished citizen of Jerusalem arrested and imprisoned
shortly before his death. Herod knew
that he was dying, and he knew that no one would morn over his death, so he
ordered for those prisoners to be executed the moment he died—in order to
guarantee that there would be mourning in Jerusalem. There was one more barbaric act worse than
this one, and that was the killing of all the babies two years old and younger
after the magi left another way as they were told in a dream. Herod was trying to kill the baby Jesus. What he did was actually predicted in the
book of Jeremiah. Jer. 31:15 Thus says
the LORD, "A voice is heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter
weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children;
She refuses to be comforted for her
children, Because they are no more.’”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is amazing to me how the Lord can use some
very bad things, things that He has not ordered, and use them to bring glory to
God. Herod was a very bad man, and yet
he was used by the Lord to do some things that were not so bad, including the
new construction on the older Temple of God.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
I desired to continue to be taught by the Lord to be humble.
We begin a new chapter in “Love in Action.”
IV. Changing Lives…
With God’s Plan of Encouragement
O my soul, why be so gloomy and discouraged? Trust in God!
I shall praise him for his wondrous help; he will make
me smile again, for he is my God!
Psalm 43:5 TLB
12/6/2019 3:33 PM
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