Are You Lonesome Tonight?
As we move into short days and long nights, it becomes easier to feel discouraged. If we are increasingly secluded (by weather and, this year, by governmental edict), we can experience genuine loneliness. I enjoy being alone, but I have a choice in the matter; others do not. Solitude occurs when we want to be alone; loneliness happens when friends and family are taken from us. Solitude soothes, whereas loneliness looms. Because God knows all about us, His Word speaks to us about the painful subject of loneliness. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
On Christmas Day, it may seem strange to think about King Herod. However, of all the lonely people at the first Christmas, there was no one as lonely as this evil man. Oh, he was surrounded by servants and suppliants, but there is no indication in Scripture or in other historical accounts that one person grieved when this corrupt killer died. Matthew 2:1-20 records Herod’s role in that first Christmas, and it is universally savage. Verse 3 tells us that “all Jerusalem” was troubled because Herod was: they knew that an agitated Herod meant death and destruction to come. Then, finding that the wisemen had wisely left without telling him anything about the Messiah, he slaughtered the children that lived in the Bethlehem area. The contrast with Jesus is absolute. Whereas Jesus left the throne of heaven to come to earth in Bethlehem, ultimately to die on the Cross in Jerusalem, Herod would not leave his throne in Jerusalem to travel the five short miles (downhill!) to Bethlehem to see the Messiah; instead, he sent soldiers to slay the innocents. The life of Herod is a warning to all; the life of Jesus Christ is a gift to all. May we always spurn the way of Herod and turn instead to the way of our Savior. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12; see also Proverbs 16:25). The end of Jesus’ way is life, life everlasting.