Tears

Most of us associate Christmas with joy, and rightly so; but we must remember that there are people for whom Christmas also means sorrow and tears. On more than one occasion we have been called on to conduct funerals during the Christmas season, and sometimes it was a child whose funeral we were conducting. When the Christmas season arrives, memories of departed loved ones can bring pain even in the midst of joy.

The birth of Jesus is associated with sorrow, for in his attempt to destroy Jesus, King Herod the Great killed all the boys in Bethlehem who were two years old and under (Matt. 2:16–18). Bethlehem was not a big city and perhaps no more than twenty boys were brutally slain, but even one is too many. Imagine the sorrow of the people in that little town! During his cruel reign, Herod had killed three of his own sons, so it was no problem for him to kill the sons of other people. He sired an evil family, for his son Herod Antipas killed John the Baptist (Matthew 14), and his grandson Herod Agrippa I killed the apostle James and tried to kill Peter (Acts 12).

The Christmas narrative in Luke’s Gospel is saturated with joy, but Matthew introduces tragedy into the story. Why would God permit innocent little boys to be slain, and why did Matthew record this event?

For one thing, Matthew’s account reminds us that the coming of Jesus into this world was a declaration of war. (Read Luke 11:14–26.) Throughout Old Testament history, Satan had tried to destroy the nation of Israel, especially the family of David, and thereby prevent the Savior from being born. At one point, wicked Queen Athaliah had all the royal sons slain and only Jehoash (Joash) escaped to carry on the Davidic line (2 Chron. 22:10–23:21). Satan tried to destroy Jesus after He was born but never succeeded. Today Satan attacks God’s people, the Church. There were more martyrs for the faith in the twentieth century than in all the preceding centuries! The Christian life is not a playground; it’s a battleground, and we must be armed and alert (Eph. 6:10–18; 1 Pet. 5:8–11).

But Matthew saw more than a battle in the death of the children. He connected the event with an Old Testament mother, Rachel, and an Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah. When Jacob was returning home to Bethel, his favorite wife Rachel died near Bethlehem while giving birth to a son (Gen. 35:16–20; 48:7). In her pain, she named the boy Ben-Oni, which means “son of my trouble,” but by faith Jacob changed the name to Benjamin, “son of my right hand.” The Jews honored Rachel’s name and remembered that she died near Bethlehem.

When the Babylonians overpowered Judah, they took more than ten thousand captives to Babylon (2 Kings 24:8–17), and one of the towns on their journey was Ramah in the tribe of Benjamin. In Jeremiah 31:15–17, Jeremiah pictured Rachel, the mother of Benjamin, weeping over her children going into captivity. It was as though her own death in bringing Benjamin into the world was a futile sacrifice. She had previously given birth to Joseph, and now the tribes were in captivity to Babylon. But just as Jacob by faith had changed his son’s name from “son of my trouble” to “son of my right hand,” so Jeremiah by faith looked into the future and saw the nation released and restored to their land after seventy years (25:1, 11–12). Their tears would be turned into songs of joy (31:11–13; 33:10–11)!

Today we associate Bethlehem with the joyful birth of Jesus, not the death of Rachel or the captivity of the Jews. Yes, Jesus was “a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering” (Isa. 53:3), but He is also the glorified Son at the Father’s right hand (Mark 16:19; Acts 2:33–34; Eph. 1:20). He is Benjamin, not Ben-Oni!

Do you have tears at Christmas? Is your name “son of trouble”? For the Christian believer, Bethlehem is not a place of death but a place of birth, the birth of Jesus Christ the Son of God. He has conquered death “and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). “‘So there is hope for your future,’ declares the LORD” (Jer. 31:17), for Jesus Christ is our hope (1 Tim. 1:1). “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).

 See: Bethlehem, Innocents, Mary

Tidings

The statement of the angel to the shepherds “I bring you good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10 KJV) is a familiar part of our Christmas celebration, even though the word tidings isn’t commonly used in conversation today. It comes from an Old English word that means “to happen,” so tidings means “news of an event.” The Authorized Version uses “tidings” forty-five times, and faithful Bible readers will especially recall Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.”

In the original Greek text of Luke’s Gospel, the word translated “I bring . . . good news” is euangelizo and gives us our word evangelize, which means “to tell the good news.” In his translation of the New Testament, John Wycliffe translated Luke 2:10, “I evangelize to you a great joy.” Ken Taylor’s Living Gospels reads, “I bring you the most joyful news ever announced, and it is for everyone!” Gabriel used the same word when he spoke to Zechariah the priest, “I have been sent . . . to tell you this good news” (1:19). The noted British preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon called the angel who spoke to the shepherds “the first evangelist under the gospel dispensation.”

Tidings can be either bad or good, and the tidings of the birth of Jesus are superlatively good. A Savior has been born! The true joy of Christmas is the joy of those who have trusted Jesus Christ and received God’s loving gift of salvation (Eph. 2:8–9). It isn’t enough to believe that God loved the world and sent His Son (John 3:16) or that Christ loved the church and died for it (Eph. 5:25). We must be able to say with Paul, “the Son of God . . . loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

It would be great if tomorrow’s newspaper headlines announced, “Cure discovered for cancer and AIDS!” That would make millions of sick people very happy and even more healthy people very relieved. But the good news of Christmas is even greater, for “the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14). These glad tidings are for you!

 See: Greetings, Joy, Shepherds, Zechariah