As Rachel was expiring from childbirth she named her son Benoni: son of my sorrows. And then Jacob’s cherished wife dies. Jacob had worked under Laban’s tyrannical demands for fourteen years in order to claim Rachel as his bride. She’d been barren for long years before bringing forth his beloved son Joseph. And now his bride perished in anguished sorrow. Jacob buried her in Bethlehem (Ramah is relatively nearby to Bethlehem). Rachel had prayed, “Give me children or I die” and it was in bringing forth her second son that she died. This baby boy was both a son of sorrow and a son of his father’s right hand.

The hallmark of Christmas is joy. Ear to ear grins. Hot chocolate mustaches. Gleeful shouts as presents are unwrapped. But your joy, true joy, is given to you by the grief of the Man of sorrows. The story of Christ’s birth, which brought glad tidings and peace on earth, is swiftly followed by a grisly tale of the ravenous wolf of sin. The Advent story, to put it another way, is no Hallmark movie. It doesn’t airbrush away the vileness of depravity, nor does it paper over the weight of our grief & suffering. The Advent story tells us that Jesus had come to engage in fierce combat with that ancient dragon. Christ in the manger is not a story of escapist sentimentality. It is the first jab & parry in the war He’d come to wage on evil.
The Text
Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Matthew 2:16-18
Tyrannical Brutes
The slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem is staggering. Herod stands in a long line of brutes who use their throne to slaughter the innocent. Pharaoh killed the Hebrew infants. Saul deputized Doeg (an Edomite like Herod) to slaughter the priests in Nob for helping David. Nebuchadnezzar starved the Jews of Jerusalem (during the two year siege, circa 587BC), and then as he marched them off to exile he brutally slaughtered many of them (Cf. Lam. 2:19-22, Ps 137:8-9, 2 Ki. 25:20-21).
The thing which set Herod off was the wise men refusing to cooperate with his design to destroy the Christ-child. Herod had been informed that Bethlehem was prophesied to be the birthplace of the new davidic king (Micah 5:2), and he knew that the star had appeared less than two years before, implying the baby was no older than that. Caesar Augustus is said to have stated that he’d rather be one of Herod’s swine than one of his sons. Herod’s brutality was well-known. But in the slaughter of Bethlehem’s sons, his wicked wrath is put on full and gruesome display.
Adam & Eve submitted to the Serpent, and reduced mankind to the level of brute. The first tyrant bludgeoned his brother. Man’s depravity always leads to murder. It leads to devouring others. The coming of Christ the King is good news, and this is put in stark relief when contrasted with the reign of Man in bondage to sin and Satan. Herod is the City of Man. He is a mirror held up to us to see the depravity of the human heart. But in Christ, the Kingdom of God has come upon us.
Weeping Exiles
Matthew tells us that this slaughter was a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy in Jeremiah 31:15, “Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.”
When the Babylonians took the Jews into exile, they released Jeremiah at Ramah: “Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah, when he had taken him being bound in chains among all that were carried away captive of Jerusalem and Judah, which were carried away captive unto Babylon (Jer 40:1).” Jeremiah then is taken down to Egypt by a remnant of Jewish leaders (Jer. 42-43). Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s young men in particular were being cruelly slaughtered at Riblah (Jer. 52:27). There are echoes of Jeremiah in the story of Joseph whisking his wife and son down to Egypt (in fulfillment of another prophecy, Cf. Mt. 2:15), while Herod’s henchmen slaughter Bethlehem’s boys.
This is the context for Jeremiah’s prophecy. His prophecy had a two-fold fulfillment; first in the events that shortly followed his prophecy. But these events themselves become a type of the slaughter of Bethlehem’s sons. Both Nebuchadnezzar & Herod are non-davidic kings slaughtering the sons of Israel. A theme we’ll revisit in a future sermon. For now, it suits our purpose to simply make mention of it.
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Written by Bradley G. Green |
Monday, September 12, 2022
The two cities lay at the heart of history. Indeed, the history of the two cities is the heart of world history. And the heart and its loves lies right at the center of all this. A heart which loves God constitutes the person who is a member of the city of God. A heart which loves itself—in the narcissistic sense—constitutes the person who is a member of the city of man.

When I look across the nation at those centers of learning which are truly serious about the Lordship of Christ, I am not particularly encouraged. There are a number of them, and I hope they continue to press on, and I hope additional centers of learning join their rank. Colorado Christian University is one of those places which is serious about the lordship of Christ in relationship to the educational endeavor.
Now, I do not want to depress us when we have an embarrassment of riches—the insights of Augustine—to explore. But it is nonetheless worth recognizing that we live in perilous times, and that therefore exploring the insights of someone like Augustine is all the more important.
Professor Clary has already shared the classic quotation from page 1 of Confessions: “You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”1
It is hard to overestimate how significant this insight from Augustine has been in Western culture—and especially in Christian theology. Augustine’s basic point was that God makes us as creatures who can only be satisfied when we are finding our ultimate joy and happiness and satisfaction in God. Augustine’s point has been essentially affirmed by the universal Christian church.
So, Christians have taken this insight and spent the last 1600+ years praising the God of Scripture, for this God creates us by grace, and creates us in such a way that we really find ultimate joy, happiness, and satisfaction.
One of the truest tragedies of human existence is that while we live in a world where we creatures truly can experience ultimate joy and fulfillment, we willingly choose to not find our joy and fulfillment in God—the only one who can provide such joy and fulfillment.
But Augustine’s maxim—”you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”—gets worked out, or applied, in a certain way in City of God. In that work, we learn that Augustine’s notion of the heart and of the heart’s loves is—on Augustine’s view—at the center of world history.
City of God is one of the works for which he is most well-known. In this work, Augustine was—at least in part—offering an apology for or defense of the faith. Rome had fallen to the Visigoths in A.D. 410. Some detractors of the faith had argued that Rome had fallen because Rome had abandoned their traditional gods, and had embraced the Christian God. Augustine’s City of God responded to this criticism.
Augustine summarizes his understanding of the two cities—the city of God and the city of man—in Book IV of City of God. He writes:
Two loves, then, have made two cities. Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city, and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city. Thus the former [the love of self] glories in itself, and the latter [the love of God] glories in the Lord. The former [love of self] seeks its glory from men, but the latter [love of God] finds its highest glory in God, the witness of our conscience. The former [love of self] lifts up its head in its own glory; the latter [love of God] says to its God, “My glory, and the one who lifts up my head” (Ps. 3:3). In the former [love of self] the lust for domination dominates both its princes and that nation that it subjugates; in the latter [love of God] both leaders and followers serve one another in love, the leaders by their counsel, the followers by their obedience. The former [the love of self] loves its own strength, displayed in the power of men; the latter [love of God] says to its God, “I love you, O Lord, my strength” (Ps. 18:1).”2
The longer I have read Augustine, the more I am struck by the radical nature of what he is saying here. Augustine is saying that the present world is constituted by two cities—the city of God and the city of man. Augustine equivocates a bit here and there when defining the two cities, but at one level the cities are:

The city of God (those persons who know and love God)
The city of man (unbelievers, those persons who will never come to Christ)

At other times the two cities are:

The city of God: those things exclusively dealing with spiritual/eternal things
The city of man: those things relating to our everyday, earthly existence

The main point is that Augustine sees all of world history as the history of these two cities, including their interplay and their intermingling. But also—and this is key to our discussion at this symposium—at the center of those two cities, and hence at the center of world history, is the human heart.
That is, the two cities lay at the heart of history. Indeed, the history of the two cities is the heart of world history. And the heart and its loves lies right at the center of all this. A heart which loves God constitutes the person who is a member of the city of God. A heart which loves itself—in the narcissistic sense—constitutes the person who is a member of the city of man.
Augustine goes on in this same section to write of the two cities:
In the former, then [the city of man], its wise men, who live according to man, have pursued the goods either of the body or of their own mind or of both together; or, at best, any who were able to know God ‘did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish heart was darkened. Claiming to be wise’—that is exalting themselves in their own wisdom, under the domination of pride—’they became fools; and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of a corruptible man or of birds or of four-footed beasts or of serpents’—for in adoring idols of this kind they were either leaders or followers of the people—‘and worship and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.’ (Rom. 1:21-23. 25). In the latter [the city of God], in contrast, there is no human wisdom except the piety which rightly worships the true God and which looks for its reward in the company of the saints, that is, in the company of both holy men and holy angels, in order ‘that God may be all in all’ (1 Cor. 15.28).
I suspect we all recognize the main biblical passage Augustine is quoting in this passage. Augustine is quoting from Romans 1—one to which Augustine often turns.
It is completely appropriate for Augustine to turn to Paul’s teaching in Romans 1 here. For Paul’s point—at least in part—is along the following lines. God has created the world. God proceeds to reveal Himself through the created order, and reveals Himself to all persons. But—and this is key—people suppress the knowledge of God. That is, people suppress, hold down, squash the knowledge of God. And because of the suppression of the knowledge of God, God’s wrath is being revealed against such persons. For Scriptures considers such persons guilty. And as a consequence of such suppression, Scripture says that these persons “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools (Rom. 1:22). These persons also became idolaters: they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom. 1:23).
Paul goes on to argue that as a result of suppressing the knowledge of God, God gives people up the “lusts of their hearts” and to both lesbianism and male homosexuality (Rom. 1:26-27).
Paul’s point in Romans 1, echoed by Augustine, is quite clear. People either love God, or they suppress the knowledge of God and their foolish hearts become darkened. Or put another way, there are only two human paths:

Loving God
Idolatry

Or:

Loving God
Being given up to the lusts of one’s hearts

Or:

Loving God
Being given over to homosexuality

In short, having one’s heart right is key. Indeed, the human heart—if Augustine is right—is at the center of world history. It is also the case, as Paul sees it, that if one does not love God as one ought, there are serious consequences indeed. Indeed, there is an unmistakable and intractable moral component to loving God fully with one’s heart. This is important to keep before us. Central to the Pauline/Augustinian notion of the heart is the truth that how we manage or shepherd or direct our hearts is fundamentally a moral reality. And that a failure to manage or shepherd or direct our hearts as we ought can result in horrific consequences, the most significant of which is the judgement of God itself.
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While not all Tamils share the same joy in the souls Ziegenbalg led to Christ, they are grateful for Ziegenbalg’s contribution to the development of their language and culture. In fact, even from a historical point of view, Ziegenbalg’s writings…are still one of the best sources for the study of South Indian history and traditions.

While William Carey’s role in the evangelization of India is undisputed, few remember a two-men team who preceded him by 88 years. In reality, the German Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau, who landed in the Indian region of Tranquebar in 1706, can be considered the first Protestant missionaries to India. Their endeavor is known as the Tranquebar Mission or the Danish-Halle Mission (since it was sponsored by the Danish king and the students and faculty of Halle University – especially theologian, A. H. Francke).
A Tamil Bible
Born in 1682 and 1676 respectively, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau were both Halle graduates– both known for their piety, devotion to the Scriptures, sacrificial love, and interest in education. Of the two, Ziegelbalg was the most linguistically talented. Within six months of his arrival at Tranquebar, he was able to read, write, and speak Tamil, a local language that was particularly difficult for Europeans to master.
In 1708, being fluent, he began translating the New Testament, finishing his first draft in two and a half years – an impressive record, if we consider he also fulfilled his pastoral and evangelical duties while troubled by ill health. He also translated Luther’s Catechism and several hymns and prayers, and started the Old Testament, going as far as the book of Ruth.
Far from being content with a wooden translation, Ziegelbalg spent time studying the nuances of the Tamil language as they appeared in their cultural context. He did so through conversations and through the study of Tamil classical literature, both on his own and in local schools.
He later described his cultural discoveries in two long ethnological treatises which became popular in Europe. These volumes, together with a Tamil grammar book for future missionaries, helped to launch the study and appreciation of Oriental languages and cultures in Germany and have been influential in dispelling the negative conceptions many Europeans had fostered about India.
Although he had brought his own printing press, he had to request the presence of two Dutch blacksmiths to create Tamil character molds. There was also a scarcity of paper. Most Tamil classics were written on palm leaves. He solved this problem by setting up a paper manufactory.
To Bring Many to Salvation
As most missionaries, he had times of discouragement. “If we consider the success of this Mission from its first beginning; it hath not yet indeed been answerable to our desires: the iniquity of the times, fewness of the laborers, the perverse lives of some Christians among us, the rudeness of the pagans, the dignity of the employment itself and our own insufficiency for it, the want still of more necessary helps, together with other impediments, have been the cause why this work has hitherto made no greater advances,”[1] he wrote, in Latin, in 1716 – at the end of a two-year visit to Europe, where he got married.
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