“When Herod heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with Him.” - Matthew 2:3
Herod was troubled. We might say he was scared to death. You know that sinking feeling when the free ride is about to come to a screeching halt, when your charade is about to be revealed, and your scam is about to be uncovered.
Herod was a pretender. He knew he was a pretender. The notion that the authentic king might have been born was more of a threat than he could bear.
We are most threatened when we are least honest with God, with ourselves, and with others. We are terrified when we try to maintain our deception against all odds. We flail about, plot, and scheme when our straw houses begin to crumble around us – and we trouble all of those around us who have bought into our lies.
Are you like Herod, thoroughly invested in a false sense of who you are without which you would not know your own identity? Are you like those in Jerusalem who rode his coattails, riding the wave of someone else’s “power grab”? Or are you like the Magi, with no vested interest in protecting their positions or status, merely eager to embrace the reality of God’s presence in the world, anxious to find the King that they might worship Him?
Jesus invades our spheres of influence and our little kingdoms to establish His own rightful rule. There is no need to be troubled. The greatest honor and freedom in life is found when we step down from our thrones and let Him take His place of Lordship.
We are threatened when we compulsively protect what is not really ours. We are troubled when we see Him coming and convince ourselves that He is coming to rob us of our lives. We are terrified at the prospect of having to forge a new identity from the self we have deluded ourselves into believing was real.
In fact, He comes to reclaim what is His – the throne, our lives, and even our identities. We have been living in a delusion and only realizing the tiniest fraction of our potential. It is only through surrender that we gain victory. It is only by relinquishing the throne do we become truly great. It is only in denying ourselves do we find our true selves and begin to live.
What Herod rejected out of fear, we must embrace by faith.
