The Feast of Holy Innocents—Who Is Really in Control?
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Old Testament and the Gospel today, we hear of earthly rulers desiring to take the place that rightfully belongs to God. They desire to be king even over God.
They desire to have control over their life and the lives of other people and order things not according to God’s will but according to their own will.
Pharaoh fears the people of God, the Israelites, and their growth according to the promise God made to Abraham that He would make Abraham’s descendants more numerous than the stars in heaven (Genesis 15:5). And so Pharaoh, out of fear, in this desire for control over life not given to him, puts a wickedly and unjustly heavy burden of slavery on God’s people.
“He made their lives bitter with hard bondage” (Exodus 1:14), treating them as commodities, treating them like animals rather than souls created and loved by God.
Finally, Pharaoh, out of this desire to have control over this life, resorts to murdering the baby boys of God’s people.
The wise men come to King Herod saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him” (Matthew 2:2).
When Herod the king heard this, he did not rejoice in the coming of his Messiah, King, and Savior. No, Herod and all Jerusalem with him were troubled. That is what Saint Matthew tells us (Matthew 2:3).
They were troubled when they heard about the King of the Jews being born.
So Herod did not doubt the wise men. That is why he called the chief priests and the scribes to see where Christ was to be born.
He believed what the Scriptures said about the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, to the point that in order to find this Christ for himself, he inquired of his chief theologians to see what the prophets of old had said concerning the place of birth for the Messiah.
And so they told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:
‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel’” (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:5–6).
But Herod did not want a king.
He did not want a Messiah.
He did not want a ruler or a shepherd.
He wanted to rule.
He wanted to be king.
He wanted to be in control.
And so when Herod saw that he was deceived by the wise men, he was exceedingly angry, and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, in hopes that he would kill his king (Matthew 2:16).
There are terrible consequences when sinful human beings attempt to usurp the place of God in this life. Terrible consequences.
The worst outcomes imaginable take place, even at times flowing from godly desires and the best of intentions.
Even at those times, terrible things happen when we attempt to rule as king in place of the Lord Jesus.
Recently, I heard a contraceptive commercial. It had an elf lady and some prince in it. It just popped up on a YouTube video.
And I cannot remember the name of the medicine, but I remember the line from it. It shocked me while I was washing dishes.
It said, “Now that I have [fill in the blank contraceptive], I have control over my life.”
That was the line.
“Now I have control over my life.”
It reminded me of when I saw a Facebook status about a man who had five children dying from COVID and someone saying it would not have happened if he had gotten the vaccine.
“Now that I have [fill in the blank], I have control over my life.”
It is a lie sold to us in so many ways.
Take the pill.
Have this procedure.
Follow this plan.
Do this and take control over your life.
And this brings us to the title given to these children of Bethlehem who were murdered by Herod: martyrs.
We call them martyrs.
They were martyrs.
At the very least, martyrs giving witness to the truth of Christ, because this is what the word martyr means. It means to testify or to give witness to something.
That is what martyr means.
The truth witnessed to most clearly in the story of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents is that mankind—you and I, these murdered children, their grieving parents, all earthly rulers, including King Herod—are not in control of our own life or this life in general.
We are not in control.
That is what these children give witness to concerning the truth of Christ.
We do not rule.
We are not king.
The one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is Ruler of all things. He governs every circumstance in this life, even the evil acts of men and the natural disasters that take place.
But even the evil acts of men such as Herod cannot keep God from working all things according to His ultimate good and gracious will.
Herod can murder whoever he wants—sorry, he can murder whoever he wants—but he will never be king over Christ.
He will never prevent Christ from dying at the proper time, being the Savior of mankind and ruling as true God and Man over all things.
These children of Bethlehem and their story give witness—they give martyrdom—to this fact through the evil of Herod.
Even through the evil of Herod, God fulfills the prophetic Word.
Despite the evil of Herod, God the Father preserves the life of His Son, the true King, the true Messiah, so that Christ would not avoid death, but would die at the proper time so that He could raise His life up again at the proper time to save us.
And Herod can murder whoever he wants to try to make it stop, but he cannot stop it from happening.
He cannot frustrate God’s will because he is not really in control, and neither are we.
We must take this lesson to heart.
God is King and governs all that takes place in this life.
There is no pill.
There is no procedure.
There is no plan by which we can be king and govern in Christ’s place.
No cunning art devised by us can make it otherwise, and every attempt of ours to usurp God’s place as Ruler and Upholder of all things results in disaster.
One of the clearest examples of this disaster that I have heard several times in sermons preached by Lutheran pastors—one of the clearest examples of the disaster of trying to usurp this authority from God in our time—comes from abortion and contraception.
I have heard several sermons on this feast day about abortion.
Millions of children have been murdered just in our country through abortion.
Thousands every year, even with Roe v. Wade being overturned.
Thousands every year.
Through the campaigns of pro-abortion groups and the advertising of contraception in our country since the middle of the twentieth century—because that is really the time when the Church started permitting things like contraception—since that time, in those advertisements, it has become mainstream thought among Christians, Christians, that children are not a pure gift and blessing.
Instead, even among us, children are oftentimes seen as a burden.
They are seen as a hindrance to financial security and physical and mental well-being, even among us.
The natural gut reaction when we see a grocery cart full of money and a grocery cart full of kids, even among us Christians.
And it is because of lies given to us by the world for decades.
In an attempt to control when and how many children we would have, we have forgotten that it is the Lord who opens the womb.
That is what the Bible says: “The LORD opens the womb” (Genesis 29:31; 30:22; 1 Samuel 1:19–20).
And it is God who says what children are.
And He does not say they are a burden.
He says, “Children are a heritage from the LORD,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them” (Psalm 127:3–5).
He tells us that children are a blessing, not a curse, not a hindrance.
“When you eat the labor of your hands,
You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
In the very heart of your house,
Your children like olive plants
All around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
Who fears the LORD” (Psalm 128:2–4).
That is the blessing to those who fear the LORD.
It is not a punishment, as difficult as it is to be a parent.
It is not a punishment, but the world wants to tell us it is.
It is something to be avoided.
On the opposite end, we Christians can be deceived into thinking that we are entitled to children. This is another lie of the world, though, like the lie that children are a burden to be avoided or at least endured only to a certain number.
When the world considers a child as something desirable, which at times they do, they usually think of a child as a commodity, like a car or a pet. Everyone has a right to one. “Who are you,” says the world, “to say that I can’t have a child?” And so we see the rise of surrogacy, genetic engineering of designer children, and a foster and adoption system that seems to be more concerned with profit than about children being raised by godly parents.
If any of you have tried to adopt a child, remember how difficult it is. It is a joke, but it is because children are a commodity. That is how our world sees them, like an animal or a car.
Christians fall prey to this lie, especially when they are afflicted with infertility, a heavy, deep, and painful cross.
In the goodness of desiring the gift of children, they resort to methods of obtaining a child like in vitro fertilization, called IVF for short. This is a difficult topic to bring up. It is why I am reading mostly right now instead of just talking. It is a difficult topic to bring up in Christian circles because nearly all of us probably have friends and family at this very moment with children produced through in vitro fertilization. Some of you may have had children through that process yourself.
I have children in my life whom I love dearly, relatives, who were produced through IVF. But the truth must be said, and I cannot think of a better time to say it than the Feast of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents. The truth must be said regarding this.
Even though it comes from a godly desire to have children, the process of in vitro fertilization, IVF, takes the act of procreation meant to be carried out in the marital union of one man and one woman and moves it into a lab involving other people.
The same can be said of utilizing the genetic material from others outside the marriage from banks holding this material. This at least touches on the Sixth Commandment. It is why I say it first. It at least touches on it. It is not the final death blow to this practice, but it does at least touch on the Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14).
IVF ceases to reflect God’s created order for procreation that He describes as the two becoming one flesh and God Himself opening the womb for conception to take place (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5–6). God forming the child in the womb and knitting the child together in the womb.
Hopefully you hear—those are Bible passages, okay? “You knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).
IVF takes that away, usurps that, removes that normal, natural, created order that God has set in place.
But moving beyond that, because that is not the worst part of it, moving beyond that—beyond the third-party involvement of individuals outside of the marriage and the procreative process—IVF results in the freezing of untold numbers of whole, distinct, living human beings in the embryonic stage of human development. Untold numbers.
Even right now, as I speak, there are countless numbers of children frozen, trapped, and trapped in that state most of the time indefinitely, because the parents who paid for their conception have gotten enough.
And so they are sitting frozen indefinitely.
Even if they are not frozen there indefinitely and forever until Jesus comes back, if they are thawed and implantation is attempted, their life is at significant risk.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians has published an opinion based on a review of pertinent studies and reports on IVF. In their opinion, they state this:
“The greatest danger to frozen human embryos is from ice crystals that form upon thawing, which destroys many embryos. Previously, a 50% survival rate after freezing and thawing was considered standard. More recently, some clinics that use good techniques and care, survival rates in some cases can be up to 96%.”
The disparity in survival rates after freezing means that freezing and thawing itself is technique-dependent, and poor technique can lead to the deaths of many embryos.
That is 4%, according to their study, in the best case—a 4% chance of death when these embryos are thawed—human children.
Even if we were to say, though, that it was a half percent chance of death or even a 0.1% chance of death when the child is frozen and thawed, we are breaching the Fifth Commandment, if we are being honest: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
Infertility is a heavy, heavy cross. It is a heavy cross. And it may not feel like making use of IVF is elective. It may not feel like it is by choice because you did not choose to be infertile. It may not feel that way.
But the reality is that this procedure is completely voluntary. It is never an unavoidable risk.
You can be a godly Christian and see your Lord face to face and never be given the gift of a child. You do not have to go through this procedure.
Freezing our children for any amount of time and risking their life voluntarily violates the command to fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need (Small Catechism, Fifth Commandment).
It would be like me taking one of my children to the doctor to get the doctor to give them some medicine that would make them grow one millimeter, but there was a 0.1% chance of them dying. Why would I do that? Why would I do that? They do not need to be a millimeter longer, and you do not need a child.
God gives children, and you can be godly without them.
In addition to this tragic reality of the thawing risk, on top of this, countless living children in the embryonic stage of human development are murdered every day as standard practice in IVF when more than the desired amount of embryos are produced or successfully implanted in the mother’s womb.
And a conscientious Christian who makes use of IVF can elect for that not to happen to their embryos, but the very next customer that comes in is asking for it, and the same doctor working with you is gladly doing it with no compunction. That is the truth.
In addition to that, our well-intentioned godly desire to receive the gift of children through such procedures has opened the floodgates to countless children being born through surrogacy and other means to be given to sexual partners who have no business raising children.
Men engaging with men in shameful acts, paying women to birth children who will never know their mother. Women in the same sort of relationship paying a man to be an anonymous father.
It is difficult to not see that as a form of bitter and oppressive slavery, treating human beings like animals, like cattle, like slaves in our own country’s past who were stripped from their own parents or spouse against their will to be sold to the highest bidder.
When we become like Herod in attempting to take control of our life without God’s Word, this ultimately leads down the way of death. It just does, in ways you could not have predicted.
Because I am positive that no Christian who has availed themselves of IVF considered at the time the death toll, considered at the time the risk they were unnecessarily subjecting their children to. But that is the problem when we try to take control of the circumstances of this life.
Bad things happen—things that we could have never imagined and never would desire—especially Christians.
But that is what happens when we try to be like Herod. Period.
In ways you could have never imagined, even after having the best of intentions or starting with a godly desire, like the wonderful desire to have children or the desire to be a good steward of your existing family’s finances, minds, and bodies—forgetting that it is God who is in control and not us, bucking against the fact that He is your Ruler and your Shepherd over everything.
I did not mention abortion, contraception, or IVF so that you would take this information and let it drive you to despair, or that you would leave this place troubled and confused.
And if you leave today troubled and confused, I beg you, schedule a meeting with me to talk more about this, because it is not simple. It is not some clear-cut thing. I am not up here saying these things as if I think you should think they are obvious.
Like I said, I have loved ones who were produced through IVF. I know many Christians who have made use of this, and our own church body has not communicated clearly on this issue.
So please just schedule a visit with me. Do not have despair or confusion or trouble over this. But I am here to tell you the truth. These are difficult and weighty issues. They are not simple.
I am also not telling you these things to give you the impression that children in the womb or born through IVF are mistakes. They are not. I would be a false teacher if I were telling you that.
They are children redeemed by the Blood of Jesus, and children are always a blessing according to God’s Word. He is the One who formed them. They are a blessing no matter the circumstances of their conception.
Ishmael was a blessing from the Lord, even though Sarah had Abraham commit adultery to bring him about (Genesis 16; 21). Every son of Jacob—the twelve patriarchs—are a blessing from the Lord, through whom we have the Messiah, by the way, even though they were produced through four different women, two wives and two slaves (Genesis 29–30).
I am telling you these things because they are true, and because our world wants each of us to be like Herod, taking our life into our own hands against God’s Word, rather than being as the Christ Child in the care of His earthly parents and entrusting Himself to His heavenly Father, like we heard in this Gospel today—carried to Egypt to be kept safe, powerless against Herod, depending on others for care, trusting in God even as a baby (Matthew 2:13–15).
God is in control.
God the Father protected His Son, our Lord Jesus, from the murderous schemes of Herod. He preserved the life of His Son so that our Lord Jesus could suffer and die at the right time to cover all our sins—all your sinful attempts at taking control.
There is not a single one of your sins that is not done away with in this poor and lowly Child, Ruler and Shepherd of our souls, despised by Herod even as an infant. Not a single sin.
And the conception, birth, life, and death of our Lord Jesus has redeemed and sanctified every human’s conception, birth, life, and death.
All that there is to do when you are confronted with the truth of your past sins and what Christ has done with your past sins is to believe the truth that your God and Savior Jesus Christ speaks to you. That is all that is left.
Confess your sins. Turn away from them. Confess Jesus as your Lord and believe in your heart that He died for you and was raised from the dead for you and for your salvation (Romans 10:9).
Know that whatever sins you have committed in the past are covered and washed away, done away with forever in the Blood of Jesus.
And be convinced that God will work for your ultimate good, even through the aftermath of past sins, no matter how messy that history is.
We have already seen it in the Scriptures—how He has worked graciously through a mess, a hot mess of sin—and He will do it in your life too. He already has.
And bear fruit in keeping with repentance and in Christian patience.
Do not despair in pondering the past. The past oftentimes cannot be undone. There are certain decisions we have made that cannot be reversed.
But you can make living amends now, trusting in Christ for forgiveness and by the working of the Holy Spirit. We can do that as Christians.
Help others who are struggling with the afflictions laid on them. Encourage young men and women who are married to embrace the gift of children. Be there for them when parenting is difficult or when they must endure the heavy cross of infertility.
Warn those in your life contemplating the use of procedures that transgress God’s Law and His created order. Tell them that these actions that undermine the sanctity of marriage and human life ought to be avoided.
Assure those in your life who are burdened with their past sinful actions that the children they now have are a blessing from God, regardless of the circumstances of their conception.
Pronounce Christ’s forgiveness on them when they are burdened with the knowledge of past sins.
Pray for all pregnant women and children. Pray for women contemplating abortion or who are burdened with the sin of having an abortion in the past and the grief of being without their child.
Encourage Christian couples to foster and adopt children, even though the system is messed up and difficult and expensive. Encourage them in this, or encourage them to adopt children who are currently trapped in a frozen state and abandoned by their biological parents, because there are programs where you can do that as well.
Bear the cross patiently and entrust yourself to God alone for help and deliverance.
“It is God who says to us, ‘Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy’” (1 Peter 4:12–13).
In your affliction, say to yourself, “Take comfort, my heart, endure your pain. Do not be crushed by your cross. God will soon at the right time restore you.”
“His own dear Son, your Jesus, even in His tender years has to experience much greater distress when Herod in his rage with extreme deadly danger threatens Him with murderous fists. Scarcely has He come to earth, but He must at once become a fugitive.”
“Well then, comfort yourself with Jesus and believe firmly: whoever suffers here with Christ will be given by Him a share in the kingdom of heaven.”
(Lutheran hymn stanza; source commonly attributed to Paul Gerhardt)
“And storm on, storm you weather of affliction; surge, you waves, over me; you flames of misfortune, engulf me; disturb, you enemies, my peace; yet God speaks to me in consolation: ‘I am your stronghold and deliverer.’”
He is your Deliverer—from every affliction, from every tragedy, from every oppressive ruler in your life, from all despair and death, from every single sin you have ever committed. He is your Deliverer.
He is in control, and we, along with all the noble army of martyrs and witnesses to this deliverance who surround us, rejoice and praise our gracious Ruler and Shepherd. His good and gracious will is always best and shall be done forever.
Let us pray. O Lord God, heavenly Father, You have revealed Your Son Jesus Christ to us in Your holy Word and for our salvation preserved Him from the rage of tyrants and the assaults of the evil one. Grant us true repentance and a steadfast faith, that we may entrust ourselves wholly to You, doing good and bearing the cross patiently even amid suffering and affliction. Defend us from all harm and from all who oppose Your Word. Grant peace and quiet under governing authorities, that Your Church may be protected and Your Gospel proclaimed freely. And as we live as strangers and sojourners in this perilous world, keep us under Your gracious care until You call us home to our true fatherland, the kingdom of heaven; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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