The Dark Side of

Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. I’d like you to consider this morning that, on that first Christmas night so long ago, all was not calm and all was not bright.

When we think of Christmas, our minds tend to fog over with pleasant thoughts. Popular songs and verses about Christmas drift through our memory banks. I’ll be home for Christmas, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, the stockings all hung on the chimney with care in the hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be there, I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, walking in a winter wonderland. We think of home and family and children, and we can almost taste the egg-nog and the plum pudding.

Now these warm fuzzy feelings about Christmas are all well and good - they’re part of the reason for the magic of this season. But when it comes time to consider the Christmas story in the Bible, we must be very careful. We must be sure that we don’t take all our pleasant nostalgia about our Christmases and project it back onto that first Christmas.

It is very easy to do this. In our minds eye, we see Joseph and Mary and the baby all snug and warm in their little stable, with the animals and the shepherds smiling around them. The choirs of angels sing sweetly in the background. The picture is saturated with a kind of golden glow like you see on so many Christmas card renditions of the scene.

But that wasn’t how the first Christmas was at all. The first Christmas was, in many ways, shocking and even terrifying. As you read the biblical account of Christmas, you realize that you’re reading a story about a family who are living on the edge of disaster. Matters, for Joseph and Mary, go from bad to worse. They tumble down a slippery slope from uncertainty to to inconvenience to insecurity to mortal danger. The Christmas story ends with the verse we read in

Matthew 2:18 “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

How many Christmas cards have you ever seen with that verse on them?

Let’s think about the story again. It begins with uncertainty. The angel announces to Mary that she’s going to have a baby. Right from the start, her plans are thrown into disarray. She’s engaged to be married to Joseph, and having a baby doesn’t exactly fit in with their wedding plans.

Of course, this was no ordinary baby. This was the Son of God to be born of a virgin, in keeping with the great promise given 700 years before to Isaiah:

Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

But in Mary’s hometown who would understand that? An unmarried woman who was pregnant meant one thing and one thing only, and Mary’s reputation would go down in flames. And her marriage to Joseph almost crashed and burned before it even got off the runway.

When Mary was found to be with child, as far as Joseph was concerned, it meant that she had been unfaithful to him. But because he still loved her and didn’t want to disgrace her publicly, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. You have to realize that engagement as practiced in those days was much more binding than it is today. The only way for a man and woman who were betrothed to each other to break that relationship was through divorce. That was certainly Joseph’s biblical right - the Bible sanctions divorce in cases of adultery, and the Scripture describes Joseph as a righteous man.

But the Lord intervened and sent an angel to explain to Joseph that things were not exactly as they appeared. Mary was still pure. She was still a virgin. She had been faithful to him, but she had also been faithful to God who had asked her to undertake this awesome responsibility. Her simple response to God was

“I am the Lord’s servant… May it be to me as you have said.”

The result of that simple statement of faith was uncertainty for both she and her husband. Their wedding plans were disrupted, their reputations were damaged. And the next thing that happens is that their security is taken away from them.

Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth, a small town in Galilee. There, Joseph had a carpentry business. He was a woodworker - a builder by trade. Not a prestigious job, to be sure, but a good honest way to make a living. You can imagine how he felt when he heard the news that he had to move.

A thousand miles away, in Rome, an emperor named Caesar Augustus decided that it would be a good idea to take a census for the purpose of taxing the citizens of the Roman Empire. Everyone had to go back to his hometown to register. Can you imagine what would happen if the IRS did this today?

The implications of this impersonal decree were stark and simple for Joseph and Mary. They would have to leave their home in Nazareth and make an inconvenient and dangerous 100 mile journey to Bethlehem, the home of their ancestors. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Mary was almost due to give birth. To take her away from her home and her family - her whole support system - at a time like this was the worst idea possible. But they had to go. They had no choice. Not because of Caesar’s decree, but because of God’s decree, given through Micah the prophet, that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem.

Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem. I’m sure that they were beginning to wonder what they had gotten into. What had begun with uncertainty had now gone beyond inconvenience to insecurity. I’m sure that they began to feel that sense of uprootedness that comes from being homeless. Their financial affairs were in jeopardy, as Joseph had to leave his carpentry shop in Nazareth. And Mary was ready to give birth at any moment.

We can only imagine what they must have felt when they finally arrived in Bethlehem, only to find that all the accommodations were taken. Surely, if God had sent them to Bethlehem to have this baby, He could have at least arranged a hotel reservation for them? But there was nothing. Nobody was waiting for them. Nobody welcomed them. Nobody had room for them. So they were left to fend for themselves.

The Bible is silent about how Mary actually gave birth to Jesus. Was there a midwife present? Did Joseph assist in the delivery? Where exactly was this manger that she laid the baby in? The Bible says nothing about a stable. Was it a difficult delivery? How did they clean up the mess? Can you imagine how frightened and miserable and exhausted they both must have felt after it was all over? Take another look at your Christmas cards and see how unrealistic they really are.

One thing I’m sure of. Mary and Joseph were not exactly ready for visitors. But visitors they got! Not relatives, joyfully parading in to the maternity ward with video cameras and helium balloons proclaiming “it’s a boy!” Not the town council of Bethlehem, come to thank them for having such an important baby in their town. After all, this was going to be good for their tourist business for the next 2000 years! Not a delegation of theologians from the seminary in Jerusalem, come to confirm the details of the Messiah’s birth.

No, the visitors were shepherds. Rough, dirty, uncultured, shepherds. They must have smelled great - they’d been living in the fields with their sheep. History tells us that shepherds were the most despised members of society in those days? They were on the bottom rung of the social ladder. They were scorned and mistrusted. The Jewish Talmud even tells us that a shepherd could not serve as a witness in a legal trial, because it was assumed that he would be lying. These were the visitors who came to see Mary and Joseph and the baby. Oh, and by the way, the Bible does not say that the shepherds brought any gifts with them.

The Bible does not tell us why, but the holy family had to stay in Bethlehem a lot longer than they had anticipated. Perhaps the census wasn’t going smoothly. We do have historical records of a political disturbance that broke out in Galilee at this time. Perhaps Joseph felt that it was better for them to stay in Bethlehem for awhile longer until the trouble died down.

Whatever the reason, we find them still in Bethlehem about a year and a half later. By that time, they’re living in a house, and I suppose that Joseph has set up shop and is doing carpentry once again. Life may have been finally settling down to some semblance of routine. And then they get blown right out of the water by the visit of the Magi. Let me give you a little historical background.

The Magi were a fascinating group of men from the East - as far away as Pakistan. They were not kings. They were kingmakers. They were the high-level advisors to the rulers of the Parthian Empire. They were noted for their wisdom and their expertise in science. They took a special interest in astronomy, because they believed that the stars spoke about things that would happen on earth. They were also skilled in the magic arts; the word Magi is where we get our word for magic.

The Parthian Empire was located on the Eastern border of the Roman Empire. The Romans, as mighty as they were, had met their match in the Parthians. In the year 53 BC, the Parthians gave 35,000 Roman soldiers one of their worst defeats ever at Haran on the upper Euphrates River. That’s why the Roman Empire didn’t extend any farther east into Mesopotamia - the Parthians blocked the way.

King Herod the Great ruled Judea as a puppet of the Romans. They found it convenient to have him deal with the Jews, who were a troublesome people to govern. He was a wily and unscrupulous man, and he had been on his throne for about thirty-three years. His family life was a disaster - he had murdered most of his close relatives, including his wife and two of his sons, because he was afraid that they had been plotting against him. By now he was an old man, with a disease-wracked body, and a mind poisoned by paranoia. All that mattered to him was to hang on to his power, and to do that, he had to curry the favor of the Roman Emperor.

Can you imagine his horror when a high-level delegation of Magi from the Parthian Empire showed up on his doorstep in Jerusalem asking about a new king of the Jews? By the way, I believe that the nature of their visit made it certain that there were more than just three wise men. They most likely came with a healthy escort of Parthian troops. Remember, the Parthians were the hated enemies of the Romans. Herod was in a very sticky situation. As he saw it, he had to get rid of these Magi as quickly and quietly as possible without creating an international incident, and at the same time eliminate this new king they were looking for, since he would be a threat to his power.

The Bible describes his crafty solution:

Matthew 2:7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

Well, the Magi found Jesus, and they gave him their gifts of homage. But they didn’t report back to Herod. The Lord warned them in a dream, so they returned East by another route. Herod was foiled for the time being, but Jesus and his parents were now in mortal danger. The tranquility of their lives had been shattered by the visit of the Magi. They lived under the shadow of death. Mary and Joseph were on the run again.

Matthew 2:13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt

In the providence of God, they escaped. But the other families in Bethlehem were not so fortunate. Herod, realizing that he had been duped, conceived a horrifying plan in his murderous heart. He sent troops to Bethlehem to slaughter the little boys two and under, in the hopes that he would eliminate this new king.

Can you imagine what that scene must have been like? Terrified children being torn from their hysterical mothers and brutally murdered before their very eyes.

Silent night, holy night, all is not calm, all is not bright. There is a dark side to Christmas that we dare not forget. There’s bloodshed and hatred and horror. It is there because the Son of God was born into a dark world to do battle with evil, and the forces of evil fought back. Evil didn’t want to be disturbed. Hatred didn’t want to let go its grip on the human race. This baby - the Savior of the world, the Conqueror of sin and Satan - had to be eliminated. That’s why the first Christmas ends with weeping in Bethlehem.

Just as the coming of Christmas brought uncertainty, inconvenience, insecurity, and danger to Mary and Joseph, so the coming of Jesus Christ into your life may bring the same things to you.

When Jesus challenged us to trust Him as our Savior and follow Him as our Lord, he didn’t paint a rosy picture. He didn’t promise us a comfortably predictable life. He didn’t promise us convenience or financial security or even personal safety. He said that following Him might make us outcasts in our family. It might mean that people would revile us and persecute us. It might even mean death. He said

Luke 9:23-24 If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

All these things are true because there’s still a war going on. When Jesus came into the world at Christmas and died on the cross at Easter, he dealt a death blow to Satan and sin. But Satan is still in his death throes, and he wants to take as many of us as he can down with him. And that’s why he tries to make us think that it’s too costly to live for Christ - too inconvenient - too much pain - too much to give up.

But our response should be that of Mary and Joseph. When faced with the dark side of Christmas, they didn’t flinch. Even though they didn’t know how it would all turn out, they didn’t bail out on God. They trusted that God knew what He was doing through it all - through the uncertainty, through the inconvenience, through the insecurity, and ultimately through the danger.

I wonder if you and I can you trust God like that today?