So what is the real issue of the new year for all of us? Is it that the economy rebound? Is it that the new president and administration will prove themselves exemplary in upholding the constitution and the principles by which our land has prospered? Is it something more personal – a graduation, a marriage, a new job?
Those are all important, and of course we pray that all such things shall receive the blessing of our Lord!
Yet the real issue of the new year is the same as that of our text – how will people respond to Jesus? Will it be in faith or in unbelief?
In our text, we see Mary and Joseph led by God’s messengers to preserve the newborn Christ from the deadly response of Herod’s unbelief. We would like to think that we would respond differently, yet there are many who fell away from the faith this last year and many are in danger of falling into unbelief this coming year.
The unbelief of humanity does nothing to hurt God, other than to grieve Him. The unbelief of humanity is utterly self-destructive. So Jesus survived the bloody work of Herod. Yet grief was brought to so many who felt the result of his unbelief. Finally Herod himself died, hated by his people and damned by the God he disobeyed.
The response of unbelief toward Christ is often as bloody as Herod’s, as the tales of persecution around the world clearly illustrate.
But though they may not be so bloody as that, unbelief is just as destructive here in Lombard, in our own country. For those who respond to the good news of the Christ child with indifference, with selfish attention to their own affairs and a dismissive attitude toward the word, reap the harvest of their unbelief just as Herod did. They are lost to God forever.
So the real issue of the new year is, “How do we respond to Jesus?” Will it be in faith or in unbelief? The good thing is that we have the new year, for every moment of this new year (should the world last that long) is a moment of Grace. It is a moment in which Christ Himself reaches out to all with the good news that He, our Savior, has come to us.