Legendary ABC newscaster Paul Harvey who died in 2009 at the age of 90 told a remarkable story of God’s sovereign, providential care over thousands of allied prisoners during World War II, many of whom were Christians. One of America’s revered B-29 bombers took off from the island of Guam headed for Kokura, Japan, with a deadly payload. Heavy clouds covered the intended target area, so the sleek B-29 was forced to circle and circle and kept circling for nearly an hour until its fuel supply reached dangerously low level. The captain and crew were frustrated, disappointed, angry because they were flying right over the primary target for an hour and yet unable to successfully complete their mission. Having no choice with fuel levels depleted, they finally decided they had better go for the secondary target before heading home. So they changed course and the sky quickly cleared as they approached their secondary target. The command was given, \”Bombs away,” so the B-29 dropped its payload and headed for home base.
Sometime after that mission, an officer who was directly involved received some startling information from military intelligence. Just one week before that bombing mission, the Japanese had transferred one of their largest concentrations of captured Americans to the city of Kokura, the small town which was the intended primary target of that mission. Upon hearing this, the officer exclaimed, \”Thank God for that protecting cloud! If the city hadn’t been hidden from the bomber, it would have been destroyed and thousands of American boys would have died.\”
And when I think about God’s sovereign, providential protection of those American boys, I can’t help but think about God’s sovereign, providential protection of his own baby boy, the Son of God, Jesus, throughout his birth and infancy.
I can’t help but think of God’s sovereign protection of His own Son, from the hands of king Herod and the forces of evil behind him who tried to destroy Jesus—God protects him through divine intervention in the form of supernatural revelation, given to Joseph and to the Magi, ensuring the wicked Herod’s murderous plot would not succeed.
That reality is what leaps from the pages of Matthew as you read the Christmas story and the narrative of Jesus’ virginal conception, birth, and infancy—and is the golden interweaving thread that binds the storyline of Scripture and all redemptive history, together.
God is sovereign over creation and history and in his sovereign control is now unfolding history and more specifically, salvation history, precisely the way he promised and predicted he would, centuries and millennia earlier, in the OT, through the prophets, at the exact moment he intends to, which now culminates in the revelation of His Son, Jesus—the promised Davidic King, Messiah, and Savior, who comes down from heaven to earth at the incarnation—The Son and Word of God made flesh—to be born of a virgin—all to rescue us from sin and death—
And no one or nothing—not wicked men or women—not the forces of evil behind them—not the hordes of hell—not the prince of the power of the air—no, not even Satan—can thwart, frustrate or disrupt God’s plans, God’s purposes, or God’s will in salvation and in history—
He will accomplish precisely what he has decreed and determined to accomplish—including the saving of sinners through the sending of His Son. Yet wicked, corrupt, godless, Satan-puppeteered people will try…Like Herod, who in his jealousy and rage, desperate to hold on to his power, his position, and his prestige, orders the systematic slaughter of innocent blood, all the baby boys in Bethlehem. And that’s what we’re gonna look at this week in our Advent series after seeing some right responses to the news of the born King, Jesus, from Joseph and Mary, Jesus’ earthly parents, to the Wise Men, now as the birth narrative unfolds.
Here is the wrong response—what not to do—hateful, murderous, jealous, rage, and rejection of Jesus as the rightful King of the Jews, King of kings, King of the world, and King of your life…Because it will cost you eternity, as it did for Herod, and anyone who rejects Jesus as King