The Christmas Story: Matthew 2:13-18: What Happened after Christmas

What was the next thing that happened in the lives of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus after the wise men packed up and went home? This sad event helps us to understand what the Christmas story really means to us.

MATTHEW 2:13-18: WHAT HAPPENED AFTER CHRISTMAS

Christmas is over and past. But what comes next?

Today I’m going to read to you what happened to Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus after the wise men said good bye and began their long journey home.

MATTHEW 2:13-18

This is not a story you see illustrated on Christmas cards or acted out in Christmas pageants.
It isn’t a cute story and it doesn’t make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Isn’t it strange that this little baby called “Immanuel,” “God with Us,” is now fleeing for his life? “Immanuel” is on the run.
Isn’t it strange that after the angels sing “Peace on earth” the Prince of Peace is now a homeless refugee?
Scholars tell us that there were probably 20 or 30 little boys under two-years-old in Bethlehem at that time.
Isn’t it terrible that the birth of the Savior of the world was the direct cause of so many little children being torn from their mothers’ arms and cruelly murdered by Herod’s soldiers?

But this story is important to us because it helps us understand the sorrow that surrounded God’s sending his son into the world.

I. Although astrology—telling fortunes by the stars—was forbidden to the Israelites, God spoke to heathen astrologers in a language they knew. These were the “wise men” we read about in the Christmas story.

A. It is interesting that when God wanted to give Jewish shepherds the message of his Son’s birth, he sent a company of angels to them. And when he wanted to call pagan astrologers, he sent a sign in the sky. God speaks to people of different backgrounds in ways that each can understand.

B. These men, dwelling in heathen darkness as they were, were also open to God’s message and took the trouble and expense of the long journey to come and worship the Savior.

C. The story shows these men as not only “wise” but also as men of great faith.

Though Jesus was only a baby and they saw no angels or miracles and heard no teaching, they fell down before the Baby and worshiped him, presenting him, out of their treasures, precious gifts.

II. We read that when the wise men told Herod what they had learned—that a new king had been born in Israel—he became frightened. He determined to kill Jesus.

A. But God warned Joseph in a dream and Joseph obeyed.

B. It was a hard journey.

Joseph and Mary had no time to pack.
It was 200 miles to Egypt. Mary and Joseph were poor people. I doubt they could have afforded the donkey you see on the Christmas cards. They probably walked the whole way.
They would be refugees in a strange land.
So how did they survive? I think they sold the gold, frankincense, and myrrh the wise men had brought to the baby Jesus.

III. But back in Bethlehem Herod sent his soldiers to kill every boy child in Bethlehem under two-years-old. That way he thought he would be sure to get rid of this “new king” that had been born there.

A. King Herod was a brave, cruel ruler. He was paranoid, always imagining that someone was plotting against him. He had one of his wives and three of his sons executed unjustly.

This story troubles many Christians. Why didn’t God save the lives of those poor children who died that day? We don’t know.
We don’t know why awful things happen in the world. But we believe in the resurrection. We believe that God can make up for the injustices that occur in our world.
The story reminds us that suffering is never far from the joy of Christmas.

B. Catholic Christians honor the murdered children as the first Christian martyrs. Their feast day—“Holy Innocents’ Day”—is celebrated on December 28. The Orthodox Churches celebrate Holy Innocents’ Day on December 27.
They remember these children and pray for innocent people everywhere who suffer from the injustices in the world.

On Holy Innocents Day in Bethlehem, children still gather in the church of the Nativity to sing a hymn in memory of the children who died so long ago.

IV. This story reminds us that trouble followed Jesus from start to finish.

A. Even when he was a baby, someone wanted to kill him.

Jesus came into a world that mostly rejected him. And most of the world still does.

B. The prophet Isaiah wrote hundreds of years before Jesus was born. He foretold that God’s Servant would be “a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

“He was despised and rejected of men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised and we esteemed him not.
But he was wounded for our transgression;
he was bruised for our iniquities,
and upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed.”

There was tragedy in Jesus’ life—from the murder of these little boys and to rejection and trouble all his life—even until his death on a cross.

C. One Christmas season, when I was teaching 6th grade, I assigned my students to write a holiday poem. One of my students, a girl named Laura Ralston, turned in this original poem:

“Christmas giving goes back quite a way;
When Christ was born it was Christmas day.
But the greatest gift the world ever received
Was also the one that cost the most grief.”

CONCLUSION

Let us remember that God became Man so that he could suffer
The story of Jesus involves rejection and suffering—suffering for Mary and Joseph. Later Jesus would be rejected and be killed.
Still later, Jesus’ disciples who followed in his footsteps would also suffer.
And the killing of faithful believers goes on today in several nations.

This story encourages us to move from the sentimentality of Christmas to the life of Jesus and remind us how much our salvation cost God.

These three must always be kept together in our minds: Christmas—Good Friday—Easter

At Christmas we remember that God sent his Son to be the Savior of the world

On Good Friday we remember that Jesus died to bring us to God.

And at Easter we remember that Jesus was victor over sin and death.

Because Jesus came, died, and rose again, we also will rise again to eternal life.

We walk with Jesus by the way of the cross, but there is also resurrection and glory at the end.