The Castle and the Cave

Oh, it's good to have you. Are you guys as stoked as I am to be starting the Jesus journey? Because I'm totally fully stoked about this. We've been talking about it for weeks. But before we get into this, let me tell you a little bit of a story.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I want to go to the Santa Cruz County Fair. How many of you went to the fair when it was up just a couple of weeks ago, right? A lot of you. Of course, I wanted to go for the educational farm history exhibits, for the inspiring 4-H projects, and of course, the deep fried Twinkies, richly educational experience. But nobody else in the family can go. So I head into the car and I head down there myself, stand in a long line for admission, just stretched way out into the parking lot, finally get to the front, whip out my credit card, only to find they only take cash. And I have the none, like zero in my pockets, not even a penny.

So I go to the ATM machine they have there, which charges like a service fee of like 15 bucks or something, you know that one. And I stand in another long line, get to the front, realize I have forgotten my ATM PIN number. I try like five or six different combinations, none of them work. So I do what all men do at times like this. I called my wife, right? What am I going to do? I don't have any cash. I forgot my ATM PIN number. And she says, "René, first of all, calm down." And this is the way so many of my conversations with my wife go. I'm the emotional one of the family. She's the one who pretty much in every conversation is going, "Take a deep breath, my friend. Calm down, calm that relax me freaking out."

So she goes, "René, I guess here's your alternatives. You either come home or you go down the entry line and look for a friendly face." And so most awkward moments ever, I am strolling down the entry line at the fair, hoping to see somebody I know so I can get into the fair. And finally, after four Twin Lakes families, turn me down. Very nice Santa Cruz Bible family let me in. No, just kidding about that. But I did discover how amazingly effective it is to say, "So you want to go to heaven? Give me 10 bucks." No, just kidding about that. I get in thanks to a very nice church family and I shoot over to my favorite part of the fair, the animals.

How many of you love the animals at the fair? I just love that part of the fair. And every time I'm there, I'm reminded of a universal truth. Baby anythings are cute. Am I right? I mean, animals that are just downright ugly as adults are cute as babies. They check this out. They had a little calf. How cute is this and little lambs and they had these little tiny piglets who were pretty awesomely cute. Look at this baby. Anythings are cute. And I was thinking about this. It's like nature's defense mechanism, you know, because baby anythings are also very demanding. Can I hear an amen from all the parents here on that?

And so you're upset at your kids and they look at you like this and you go, "Oh, I want to hug you and hold you and kiss you, keep you forever." I mean, baby alligators, they had them all at the fair. They're all cute, right? But the best thing at the fair were these little baby goats. Because remember how I said a couple of weeks ago that goats always want to stand on the highest thing, you know, and the goat pen, whatever that is. Well, for these babies, the highest thing was mom. And so they kept jumping up on mom, you know, like I'm the top goat here, you know, check this out. I'm the greatest goat in the goat pen, you know.

And meanwhile, look at mom. Is she paying any attention to this? She's just keeping busy, doesn't even notice, doing her chores while the kids leap around like many of you moms every day around your children. It was hilarious. So I just got to thinking, why is it that we think lording it over others like this is so childish, right? When humans try to do this, look at how big I am. Why do we think that that's so ridiculous? Think of it. All of human culture 2,000 years ago was basically all about being the top goat, the big man, the boss, the king, the top, the chief.

And one person came along to pop that pretentious bubble and make humility seem like a virtue and make all that kind of posturing just seem childish and ridiculous. And it was Jesus. Grab your message notes as we start the Jesus journey. If this is your first time in a long time at TLC, you chose a great time to start because we are launching a 40-day journey, which is really a trip back into time and back into space to the ancient land of Jesus Christ. We want to see what his world was like and get to know him in a fresh new way.

This is sort of one of those unveiling histories mysteries kind of series today, the castle and the cave. We want to start the Jesus journey by going all the way back to his birth. And yes, you can talk about Christmas even when it's not Christmas. And so let's read this verse out loud together. Let me hear you read Matthew 2:1 with me. "Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod." Now stop right there because in the time this was written in the first century, that sentence right there was filled with fascinating information. To you, it's just like the pledge of allegiance, just a bunch of words. But people back then read that and went, "What? No way." Because that sentence was full of tension.

Because that sentence right there is a dramatic collision of protagonist and antagonist. There's a story behind every word of that sentence. And this morning I want to make it pop for you. I want you to be able to see this like people in the first century back there in Palestine would have read this and slapped their foreheads and went, "Oh boy, I can't wait for this story." Because this little phrase set up the whole rest of the tale. Check this out. When people in the first century looked at the sentence, they instantly recognized four things wrapped up in that little nugget. The place, the players, the promise, and the point. Each of those four contributes to the drama that's about to unfold, a drama that will change everything on planet earth.

First, the place. Matthew mentions King Herod and Bethlehem in the same breath. And to first century readers, there's an image that would instantly come to mind, which most modern readers never even think of. And it's this volcano-shaped mountain. It loomed over Bethlehem. Literally, its shadow covered the village in the early morning hours. It's called the Herodium. It looks like a volcano, doesn't it? But it's man-made. It was once just a small hill, but a few years before Christ was born, King Herod the Great, the king of all Judea at the time Jesus was born, had thousands of slaves shave the top off of a neighboring hill until it was almost flat. And they poured thousands of tons of that fill dirt on this hill and made it into a mountain, kind of like a kid building a sandcastle on the beach by just pouring sand into one big mound.

And then Herod had them scoop out the top so that it was like a volcano. And this is going to date me, but it was kind of like Blofeld's volcano base in that James Bond movie. Anybody remember that? Can I see it? Thank you, two of you. Very good. Now, look, you're just seeing the ruins here, but in its glory, there was a castle on top with a ten-story high tower. This isn't the first century. This is just a marvel. There were mirrors on top of the tower that could reflect sunlight in code so that they could give and receive signals from one of the closest other palaces of Herod in the city of Jerusalem so that when Herod was here near Bethlehem, he could stay up to date on all the latest news from Jerusalem.

And down below, there was a pleasure palace. It had a swimming pool twice the size of an Olympic pool with a man-made island in the middle, a sauna, a spa, gardens, a theater. And so when Matthew says, "In Bethlehem, in the time of King Herod," people would have instantly pictured this as quickly as when people say San Francisco today instantly without even trying cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge come to everybody's mind. Because this was a marvel of the ancient world in Bethlehem, and yet we rarely think of it in our day because it's been forgotten.

But what did they picture when they heard the word "Bethlehem"? Well, this is the view from the top of the Herodium toward Bethlehem today. It's actually become a pretty big suburb of Jerusalem now. But in the other direction, there's a small village that still looks something like Bethlehem would have looked in the time of Christ. It's a tiny little village. And the Bible says Bethlehem was so small that it was, quote, "the least of the cities of Judah." It was the tiniest little place. And let me give you some of the backstory. And remember this, because this is going to become relevant in just a few minutes.

We first hear of it in the Bible when Jacob, almost 2,000 years before Christ, builds a tomb for his beloved wife, Rachel, here. And Bethlehem becomes associated from then on with the name Jacob. Remember that. It becomes kind of Jacob's village. A thousand years later, Bethlehem is the birthplace of King David, but then for the next thousand years, it recedes into obscurity in the literal shadow of the man-made mountain, which had to remind them just daily of the volcanic temper of the man who rules them and is trying to keep out all pretenders to the throne.

And Jesus is born there in the shadow of the mountain, laid in a manger, which was a feeding trough, and that meant he was probably born in a cave. This is a cave in Bethlehem today. The whole area is full of limestone caves, and these were used as stables in the first century and are still used as stables today. Even in Israel today, you see Bedouins kind of slightly remodel these limestone caves, just like this one. This is in Israel today. And this is still what they use as sheepstalls.

So almost certainly, Jesus Christ was not born in a wooden stable with a peaked roof and hay on the top, like you see in Christmas cards, but in a cave. And you can go see the cave where Jesus Christ was born, or at least you can see the cave the Christians, only about a hundred years after Christ, believed he was born in. Now how in the world was that ancient site preserved? Fascinating tale. In about 135 AD, only a hundred years after Christ's death, the Roman government tried to wipe out all trace of Christianity on planet Earth. And since Christians in Bethlehem believed that one particular cave there was the birthplace of Christ, the Romans built a shrine to Adonis, much like this one built at the same time in Lebanon, over the cave.

But of course the whole plan backfired, because instead of wiping out Christianity and the memory of that cave, what did this shrine do? They unintentionally preserved the exact spot by marking it with their shrine. And so two centuries later, Christians finally legal tore down the Adonis shrine and built the Church of Nativity over that cave. This is the oldest continuously operating church in Israel, and it may be the oldest continually operating church in the world. It was first built in the 300s and then had some destruction, so it was rebuilt in the 500s. And that is the church with some remodeling. It was last remodeled in the 1100s. That was the last remodel.

But that is the church, the church that was built in the 500s, that you go to today, and people have been worshipping every Sunday since the 500s in this building. I mean, it's just outstanding. Now you might say, "But I heard that during the Crusades and during all the invasions there, all Christian churches were destroyed at one point." That's true of every church but this one. Why was this church not destroyed in the back and forth battles between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades? Well, when the Turkish Muslim army came into this church prepared to destroy it, they looked up and saw a mosaic on the wall of the Magi, the wise men, visiting the baby Jesus, because this is where it was believed that that happened.

And guess what the Magi looked like with their turbans and their curved swords? They looked like the Turkish army. And so the illiterate soldiers said, "Look at that! This is a place associated with people like us! We better not destroy it." And that's why this is the oldest continually operating church, perhaps, in the entire world. And I've been there. When I was there, I went into the church and down these ancient aisles and then down underneath it into that old cave that it covers. Now, these days the cave is all covered with marble and tapestries and a gold star covers the spot in the back of the cave where tradition holds Jesus was born.

Now, realistically, is this the very cave where Christ was born? There's no way to know for sure. It could be. There's probably 10 or 20 of these kinds of caves in the vicinity of the old village of Bethlehem, so there's like a one in 20 chance. But do you get the poetry that God wrote into history here? Jesus was almost certainly born in a cave in Bethlehem. I mean, he was. So it was in the shadow of the castle that the king of all creation came to a cave, literally from heaven to a hole in the ground. I mean, when God came down, he came all the way down, shooting past the palace into this cave.

And I love that fact because he did that to make a statement, right, to teach us that God is not only majestic and sovereign and powerful like a king, but also humble and concerned with the lowly and with you and me when we're in our cave times. And that brings me to the players. First, Herod. I've told you a little bit about him already, but you might wonder why he's called the king of the Jews. Well, the Romans gave him that title, but he was actually not a Jew. He was an Idumean. Now, I want you to remember that word, too. Idumean. They came from a country just south and east of Israel in the desert, but Herod had fought and schemed and scratched and clawed his way to power in Israel.

And this guy was something else. He was... Let me just kind of... In brief, this guy took Macho to a whole new level. Herod was like a combination of Donald Trump, Genghis Khan, and a Klingon. This was Herod's personality. How can you describe him? Three quick words. First, proud. I mean, Herod called himself Herod the Great. This isn't what, like, later generations called him. This was the nickname he called himself. And in those days, this is what rulers were expected to do to posture like this. His immediate boss, Caesar Augustus, chose that name for himself, and Augustus means the most magnificent. I'm the most magnificent. I'm the Great. That'd be like me going, "Hello, my name is René. I am Aptos Man of the Year." Yeah, I mean, you know, you'd go, "Oh, brother," right? But this is what they were expected to do.

Now, check this out. Then Herod decides to make his name like a brand, right? So guess what he names every single one of his sons? Herod. That's right. There's Herod Philip, Herod Antipas, Herod Arcolaeus, and so on. At least one of his granddaughters is named Herodias. It's kind of like George Foreman, the boxer. You know what George Foreman named every single one of his boys? Yeah, George. There's George I, George II, George III. And this is kind of like Herod, but he did it seriously, very prideful guy. And he was powerful. And more important than that, he was all about clinging to power in some dastardly ways.

Herod was married 10 or 11 times. Historians aren't really sure. They argue about this. They write journal articles about this 10 or 11 times, lots of wives. But there was only one of his wives that he told his official biography he really loved, and her name was Mary Amny. He married her when she was 15, and she was his favorite. He just loved her. Unfortunately, when she was in her 30s, he suspected her of having treasonous designs on the throne. Now, there wasn't any evidence for this. He just had a feeling, and so he had to have her executed. He hated to do it. He really loved her, but you know, had ever killed. Two of his sons, same thing, executed. Five days before he died, he knew he was dying, yet he suspected another one of his sons of trying to take over the throne too soon, had him executed too. Not a nice guy. This was Herod, all about clinging desperately to power.

And he was always striving, trying to get, you know, higher on the ladder rungs, so he could be bigger and boast that he was more magnificent than anybody else. I mean, I mentioned the Herodium, but that was just one of his palaces. Check this out. He also built a massive three-tiered palace and fortress 20 miles south of Bethlehem, on the highest mesa he could find, Masada. I want to show you a great helicopter shot of the palace, so that you can see what its ruins look like today. And as the camera tilts down, you'll be able to see the three tiers of his ancient palace looking down, and you can see how high up this fortress was. And yet he had an elaborately engineered water system, so they could have baths and pools, even way up here, amazing spot.

He also built a Las Vegas style pleasure city on the coast of the Mediterranean, most beautiful spot there. It had race tracks and theaters. It was called Caesarea, and many, many more palaces all around the country. But to God, you know what all that was? It was this. Look how high I am. Yeah, he was higher than the other goats, but he was still just a goat in a goat pen to God. Proud, powerful, striving, that's Herod. And in this corner, Mary, another one of the players, total opposite. Three words to describe Mary, humble, powerless, receptive. I mean, you know that her story better than Herod's. Think about it. She was probably a young teenager, a nobody in the circles that Herod moved in, probably very poor.

It's interesting, Herod always married for the social value it gave him. All of his wives were about social climbing. He married the daughter of the high priest in Jerusalem. He married the daughter of Cleopatra, you know, just all about status. And yet Mary was the opposite of that, and she's receptive to whatever God wants to do. She says, "God, I'm your servant. May it be to me as you have said." But look at these two descriptions. Do you see how these two are opposites? Herod, proud, powerful, striving, merry, humble, powerless, receptive. And get this. When the Messiah comes, who does he go to? What avenue does he go through? This is, don't miss this, this is a huge part of the plot twist of the Bible.

As we talked about last weekend, for centuries there's been this anticipation building for the new king, for the kingdom of God, for the Messiah. And the existing kings are either pretending that they are the Messiah, or they're guarding against us. They're killing all pretenders to the throne. But then the Messiah slips in under the radar. How? He invades not wearing armor, but wearing diapers. The Son of God unexpectedly enters the world through a temporarily homeless, worried, poor, newly married couple who had to lay their baby in a feeding trough in a cave. And then the inner circle that this Messiah chooses is what? Untrained fishermen and despised tax collectors and women with a past like Mary Magdalene. And he serves them, instead of them serving him.

And in fact, he's a servant to them all the way, even unto his death on a cross. Why? Jesus was saying, "This is what it looks like when the kingdom of God is established." This is what it looks like when up there comes down here. It doesn't look like Herod's kingdom, only more religious and with even cooler castles. It's a place where the lowly are loved. And I love that God is the kind of God that would do this. I saw this great news story the other day that reminded me, in fact, of what Jesus did. And Michael says, "A 16-year-old girl at a rural high school in Michigan named Whitney Crop" -- this is Whitney -- "was surprised to hear over the loudspeaker during morning announcements in homeroom that she had been voted as junior class homecoming princess, a coveted spot that normally goes only to the cool kids.

Well, it turns out the voting was part of an elaborate joke by some fellow students who thought it would be funny to choose Whitney by far the least popular girl in class as the most popular. Everyone quickly got the joke, including Whitney, who was humiliated. She told a TV station, "I had actually reached a point where I thought about suicide. I thought I wasn't worthy to be at Ogama Heights High School at all." Well, after a good cry at home, Whitney decided she was going to the homecoming event Saturday to take her rightful place. Somebody posted a "Support Whitney Crop" Facebook page on her behalf and quickly got 3,500 likes, which far exceeds the entire town population.

And then the tiny farm town, 140 miles northwest of Detroit, took over. Businesses will buy her dinner, take her photo, fix her nails, fix her hair, dress her in a free gown, free shoes, and a beautiful jeweled tiara. She wrote on Facebook, this past week, her homecoming was yesterday, she wrote on Facebook, "Going to Homecoming to show them I'm not a joke. I'm a beautiful person and you shouldn't mess with me." Don't you love that story? Well, I love that God is a God who puts a tiara on the least popular girls. God's a God who comes down and his kingdom is like a prom for the outcasts. He lavishes grace on the unworthy.

And I'm not importing some meaning to this. Mary sees exactly what is happening when she says, "He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts." Herod. "He has brought down rulers from their thrones." Herod. "But has lifted up the humble, he has filled the hungry with good things." And the grown-up Jesus echoes her song when he says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." I hope I've established by painting a picture of Herod how unlikely it was for anybody to say this. The strong inherited the earth, the rich and scheming manipulators, they're the ones who got the kingdoms. And Jesus says, "No, it's the hungry, it's the thirsty, it's the poor, it's the humble. This is really good news."

Now, some of you might be thinking, "Ugh, I was in the homecoming court when I was in high school. Does Jesus ever have homecoming kings and queens in his, you know, little inner circle? Does he ever have rich and powerful and well-educated followers to?" Absolutely. The ones who learned to humble themselves. The ones like Nicodemus and Luke and Paul, who were well off and well-educated, but they learned to seek first the kingdom. Hear me well. The alternative to worldly ambition, like Herod's, is not no ambition. It's godly ambition. Godly ambition, learning to seek first the kingdom of Jesus.

And so ask yourself, honestly, which of these three-word descriptions best describes me? Powerful, power-seeking, full of pride, striving. You know what? I'll admit, true confession time, I'll admit that describes me all too often. I'm a competitive person, and we've all got that Herod gene in us, every one of us, even little kids. One time I rented a limo for my wife, Lori's birthday, as a surprise for her. And after I picked Lori up, we picked up the kids from grade school in this limo. And we just rolled right up to school. It was letting out with all the other minivans, right? Only we had this big, the biggest, longest black-stretched Cadillac I could find.

And I had clued the kids in that this was going to happen. So they were in third grade and fifth grade at the time, and they had put dark sunglasses in their backpacks. Limo pulls up. They slap those sunglasses on. They walk through the crowd, which just was an odd at all. You know, kids just are chattering, and all the chatter just died down. And this line opens up. You know, the sea parts for them. And they walk through the crowd. The driver gets out, opens their door. First thing they do when they get in that car is they open the sunroof. They stand up as we pull away, and they wave at their schoolmates and shout, "Goodbye, peasants!"

One limo ride, and it's Herod and Herodias, Jr., you know? We all want to climb up and get on the highest ground in the goat pen. You know, "Look at me. I'm doing better than the other--" But here's the thing. Look at Herod's description again. The problem is, this is a description, listen, of the person who cannot receive God's grace. When you're prideful, when you're concerned about staying in power, when you're striving to earn every cent, this is the person who cannot receive God's grace. And now listen, sometimes people just move these character defects into the religious realm.

You know, in case you're sitting here going, "Oh, I don't have worldly ambition." You know what? You move these same three traits into the religious realm. You know what you get? A Pharisee. And so many Christians, including myself at times, are like that, proud of our religious accomplishments. Always seeking religious power, striving to somehow get accolades from other people about our religious stuff, you know? Or earn brownie points from God. Where counter-intuitively, it's when you let go of your pride that you find true worth. It's when you realize how powerless you really are. That's when you find God's power. It's when you stop your constant striving and simply receive what God has for you that you find real joy.

All right, two other quick but fascinating points. When people read that sentence, "Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod," they thought of the place, the picture I just painted you, the man-made volcano-based thing, the cave, Jesus and Mary compared to Herod's personality. But you know what instantly would have popped their head also when they talked about kings in Bethlehem? The prophecies. Over 300 prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures about the Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Amazing prophecies! I just put a couple of them there in your notes. I won't go through all these, but I want you to notice Bethlehem is predicted as the place from which the Messiah will arise.

And I also stuck something else in there. Last week I mentioned that it was not just Jewish scriptures that foretold a Messianic figure. And so I put that part of a prophecy from the Roman writer Virgil in your notes too. First century Roman Christians believe that this was a pagan prophecy about Jesus Christ. But I want you to read that last one, because way, way back in Genesis, the pagan prophet Balaam is quoted as blessing Israel. And by the way, Balaam is not just quoted in the Bible. We actually have other religious writings from pagan religions also quoting Balaam. But in the book of Numbers, he says this. It's from Numbers 24:17. This is Balaam speaking. I mean, cue the Twilight Zone music here. "I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near." This is a prophecy from 2,000 years before Christ. "A star will come out of Jacob." Now stop there for a second. "A star out of Jacob." What city was associated with Jacob? Bethlehem. And what appeared above Bethlehem when Christ was born? A star. That's interesting.

"A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise out of Israel." And it says, "Edom will be conquered." Remember I said, what was the ethnicity of Herod? He was an Idumean. Idumeans. That's just the Greek word for Edomites. Idumea? Edom. So centuries before it happened, here's the foreshadowing. And so people are going, yes, yes, exactly as was prophesied 2,000 years before. And then they would have slapped their heads and seen the point. Let's bring this all home. This is where it changes our lives. The first readers would have instantly seen the point of the whole story in that verse. Three things in a world of broken promises, God keeps his word.

Herod was king, but Jesus was born, beginning to fill the over 300 prophecies about the Messiah. And that means God will keep his word to you. Like I will never leave you or forsake you. Like I go to prepare a place for you. Like I will always be with you. That's a promise. And this means in a world that looks like it's going wrong, God is at work. It looked like Herod the Great was winning. But Jesus shows up and says, "God's still at work." This guy's building his fortresses were underground, literally, in caves. God's at work and his kingdom is leaking into our world one heart at a time. And one day the Messiah will return in power to establish his kingdom thoroughly.

And in your world, it may look like it's going wrong. All the right, all the wrong people are getting all the right breaks. Or maybe death has struck your family. Or there's been some other tragedy. But you got to know in the midst of the king of Herod's of this world, God's at work in the caves. And in a world all about power, God is with the lowly. I love that. God's with the lowly. That doesn't mean the un-loli can't get in. But I want to show you something. I showed you the church and the nativity. But do you see any doors in this church? There's really only one way to get into this place. The large doors were bricked up a thousand years ago. And now there's only that one tiny entrance.

To get in, you literally have to stoop down. When I was there, I bonked my head on the top of the door because it's much lower than you think. And while I was there, this little Palestinian boy was running in and out of the church the whole time. And you know what? He didn't have to stoop at all. Just zip right in, zip right out. It was the right height for him. Well, that doorway, that's such a great parable for how to enter the kingdom of heaven. Let me close with these verses. It says, "At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?'" They sometimes go through the gospels and check out how many times the disciples were arguing about things like, "Who had the most greatness?" Why? Because their world was all about being the top goat in the pen. And they were all about, "Great, Jesus has started this new pen. Who's the top? Who's the top goat here?"

"Uh, you know, everybody hated King Herod, but they all wanted to be like him." And then Jesus recalibrates them, calls a little child to him, places the child among them. And he said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you'll never even enter the kingdom. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." You know, maybe you've been a little like that goat at the fair. You keep climbing over people to try to stay on top, and you keep telling yourself, "You're in control here," and it's wearing you out, and it's wearing out everybody around you. Instead, go in through the narrow gate, humbled like a child. Admit your powerless mess and receive God's grace. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

With our heads bowed, maybe you want to say, "God, I am so tired of being a pretender to the throne. Today I just want to admit my need of you. Start your kingdom in my life. Jesus, I want to acknowledge you as the Lord. I've been serving King Herod's for too long. You're the Lord of my life." Or maybe with your heads still bowed right now, you're lonely. You're at a dead end. You're in a cave wondering if anybody cares. Well, God cares. The Messiah came to a cave. He's truly God with us in the lowest place. And you might want to say, "God, thank you so much that you're with me through every cave." God, thank you that you came not to be served but to serve, that unlike the Herod's of this world, you don't cling to your power and position but you gave it up to be the servant of all, unto death on a cross. And then God, here's the challenge. Help our attitude to be the same. In Jesus' name, amen.