“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15
When God does good, one can always expect to find Satan there trying to trying God’s good to evil or to do something that will cause people to scoff at God. We find that in the story of
Christmas.
The evil that occurs at Christmas is prophesied in Jeremiah 31 where we find Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin rising out of her grave in Ramah and weeping for her slaughtered children. Jeremiah
takes the events of his day and God shows him Rachel weeping because it was from Ramah that t the Babylonians who besieged Jerusalem gathered the captives of Israel and then led them back
to Babylon into slavery and captivity. When Rachel died she wept over her own death as she gave birth. A midwife consoled her by telling her a son was born. When Jeremiah sees Rachel weeping as the sons of Israel are taken into captivity God gives a word of comfort. In the very next verse Jeremiah records the words of the Lord. “Refrain your voice from weeping, And your eyes from tears; For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, And they shall come back from the land of
the enemy. There is hope in your future, says the Lord, That your children shall come back to their own border.” God confirms the sorrow in the moment but says joy lies ahead. Her offspring are both
the reason for her weeping in the present as well as her hope for the future.
When we come to the Christmas story in Matthew we find the wicked King Herod murdering innocent babes in an attempt to destroy the coming of the Messiah. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Matthew uses the Jeremiah passage to show us that when the Messiah came there was a fulfillment of this prophecy of death of children and comfort. But wait, Jeremiah tells us Rachel refused to be comforted. Is there comfort I the Christmas story?
What can we learn? One might ask how is there comfort is in the death of Bethlehem’s innocent children? To see it we must look at the story the way God does. We see it in three ways. First we see it in the promise in Jeremiah fulfilled in Matthew. The children are massacred because Satan tries o destroy the coming of the Messiah. The families are devastated by the evil (caused by Satan but blamed on God because He allowed it). God tells Jeremiah, “For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord”. These special children who were the first martyrs in the New Testament will be greatly rewarded in heaven by God for their sacrifice.
The second comfort we see in Matthew is the words we read of the death of the evil king Herod. This is another confirmation that evil will be judged by God in righteousness. The wicked will suffer eternal death and the righteous eternal life. The third comfort we see in Matthew is Mary and Joseph returning with baby Jesus from Egypt where God protected them from Herod’s atrocity. God’s greatest comfort is that the gates of hell cannot prevail against God or stop God’s plan. Despite all the evil of hell s united to stop the birth of
Christ, God’s plan of salvation is protected. Where God is there is comfort.