You Can't Fight God's Will

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the First Sunday of Christmas on Sunday, December 28, 2025.

You may be familiar with the quote from the British historian Lord Acton:

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I prefer the version championed by former Secretary of the Navy Jim Lehman:

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat!

No, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There are few places where that is more obviously true than in today's gospel lesson. King Herod, the so-called king of the Jews (the king of Judea) realizes that he has been tricked by the wise men. Actually, it's not so much that the wise men have tricked him as God himself has, but they certainly were participants in God's plan.

And his power, he feels, is being threatened.

If he understood what kind of Messiah Jesus Christ truly was going to be he probably was not going to feel as threatened, but he did not. He knew that he was a Jew, and he knew that there was a prophecy that there would be a messianic king who would take over and restore the kingdom of Israel. He was well aware that there was no way that his kingdom would stand in the face of such a Messiah.

He just didn't think it was going to happen then and there. But one cannot be too careful.

When he realizes that his power is being threatened, when he realizes that God, or at least these wise men, these magi from the East (probably astrologers, certainly not Jews) have tricked him, when he realizes that perhaps it is true that there is actually a child born king of the Jews, and most notably, it's not his son who has been born, but rather another, he sends troops to slaughter all children two years old and younger in and around Bethlehem.

A disgusting act of barbary. An absolutely unconscionable act of mass murder.

Merry Christmas, huh?

God's Will Cannot Be Thwarted

But God is not thwarted by the designs of men.

It's funny, and we'll talk about this more a little later, but sometimes we imagine that somehow God's will is only going to be done if it is done in and through me. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

You all should have learned in your catechism classes, when you were studying Luther's Small Catechism, that God's will will come about whether we like it or not. But we pray in the Lord's Prayer, thy will be done, that it should be done in and through me.

Despite Herod's best efforts to murder Jesus Christ, He is saved on account of God's provision. God sends an angel to warn his stepfather, Joseph, in a dream.

Herod is trying to kill Jesus. It's time to leave.

So he packs up his go-bag, and he grabs Mary and the child, and they set off on yet another journey on foot, leaving Bethlehem before they can even return home to Nazareth. And they travel south and then west into Egypt.

It's funny to imagine that there are those who would, fleeing political violence, travel to a country where they would be situated among their enemies. But that's exactly what Joseph has done. At God's direction, he has packed up his family and moved to a place where he will be counted not as a friend, a neighbor, not as somebody deserving love and care, but as an outsider and a foreigner.

They go into Egypt, and there they live. (And we don't exactly know how long. There are some estimates that put it at months, some that put it at a small number of years.) It doesn't take a long time before Herod dies. (And the legends are pretty gruesome about how Herod dies. In all honesty, he deserved it. But God ends him.)

And then another message comes by angel to Joseph saying, The ones who are seeking the life of the child are dead. You can come back now.

Joseph's dream is for us a perfect example of how we can imagine that we can orchestrate events to get around God's will. Isn't it kind of a funny and amazingly arrogant thing for Herod to think, this Messiah has been born, but if I can just kill him, that's going to work out for me. God's will is about to come to pass, but if I can just murder him, murder the children who might be that promised Messiah, then God's will won't be done.

Can you imagine the unfathomable arrogance to say, I can change the course of history and deviate it from God's will on the basis of my own sovereign choice.

God is not mocked, nor is he overthrown.

Human Arrogance Versus Divine Sovereignty

We often think, though, that we, by our own choices, can interfere in God's will.

We will oftentimes put ourselves in positions where we think, I can get away with it because nobody sees what I'm doing.

But what is done in the darkness is revealed in the light, and we are no more able to change the sovereign will of God than a child is to change the consequences of his actions.

You have chosen, and you are either aligned with God's will or not.

Herod, in threatening Jesus, threatening his life, just helps to fulfill God's prophecies. Though he swings and bats at Jesus, trying to reach out and snatch him and kill him, Herod's threats only further fulfill the prophecy through the prophet Hosea in chapter 11.

Out of Egypt, I will call my son.

Here's the full quote, because I think it's instructive, in Hosea chapter 11.

1a. When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called my son.

Well, that's not exactly how the story goes, is it? It's like Hosea is pointing to something that's going to happen.

1b. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me, they sacrificed to the Baals, incense to images.

How is that for a story of how Israel got into the place that it is? Overthrown multiple times, given into the hands of their enemies, now controlled by just the last in a long string of empires which have conquered and ruled the people of Israel. The province of Judea in the Roman Empire was conquered and then conquered and then conquered again because they were unfaithful to the God who made them and made promise to them.

2. They sacrificed to false gods and burned incense to images. They worshipped created things rather than the creator.

And God was not overthrown. His sovereign will was not undone by their unwillingness to worship the Lord who had made them and saved them and set them apart as his chosen people.

3. Who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms. But they did not realize it was I who healed them.
4. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.

We have a beautiful picture of a loving Father picking up a tiny child and holding him to his cheek and loving him. And yet God's tender love for the people of Israel was met with rejection. The more that God called them back to repentance and renewal of their faith, the more that they traveled in the opposite direction.

But Hosea's prophecy here shows us that even though the more that they were called, the more they went in the other direction, Jesus will heal and complete what was lacking in Israel's walk with God. Jesus will obey God perfectly in a way that no one in Israel ever did.

Hosea prophesies, "I healed them and taught them to walk, but they didn't recognize it was me." And then Jesus Christ, God's own Son, became flesh, healed us, taught us to walk with God. But as St. John says in both our Christmas Eve and our Sunday, our Christmas Day worship, "He came to what was His own, and His own did not receive Him."

Hosea says, "I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love." And the Word of God has become human flesh in Jesus Christ.

And we are like the little child being lifted up by our loving Heavenly Father as God has taken up our humanity into Himself.

Jeremiah's Prophecy and Hope

It's the same with Jeremiah's prophecy being referenced here in Matthew 2. It's fulfilled in the lamentation of Rachel weeping for her children. There and here, it is not literally Rachel that the prophet is speaking of, but Rachel as a mother of Israel.

But even in this, the following verses from Jeremiah,

Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded, declares the Lord. They will return from the land of the enemy, so there is hope for your descendants, says the Lord.

And in this way, Jesus Christ returns from the land of His enemies, the people of Egypt, who are not friends to the people of Israel, even to this day. And there through Him is hope for Jesus' descendants, not of His flesh, but of His Spirit, all those of us who call upon His name.

We cannot interfere in God's will. Even in the most disgusting machinations of King Herod's mind, his desire to murder innocent children in order to protect his power, he thinks that somehow he can short-circuit God's will in this world.

But we cannot interfere in God's will. It will be done whether we participate in it or not.

No, as Luther says in the Small Catechism, in the Lord's Prayer, when we talk about, Thy will be done, we are saying, not that we're giving permission for God that His will would be done, as if we could get together as a church and have a committee and say, God, we've given it some thought, and we've decided today that Your will should be done. You may do that. Go right ahead, God. You have permission.

You see that in some churches where people are like: God, let Your kingdom come now. Send Your fire on us. Send Your Spirit on us.

He's going to do what He wants! I don't know why you think you're giving Him permission.

Luther says, No, that it be done in and through me.

Change me, Lord, so that when Your will is done, that it would be done in me and through me as well.

But one way or another, God's will is done. Herod's threats and murder fulfills Hosea's prophecy, fulfills Jeremiah's prophecy, and ultimately, all of these things fail to interfere in the will of God.

Because God's will is done.

Jesus Christ Fulfills God's Will

In the person of Jesus Christ, God has willed that the people of Israel will come to saving knowledge of Him.

That God Himself will obey God's holy law in a way that they never could:

• actively keeping the law
• and also passively and willingly going to the cross. Dying upon it to be the great high priest and sacrifice for our sins.

He has taken up the humanity of the person, Jesus of Nazareth, into God and breathed into it the fullness of who God is, so much so that even today, on account of His ascension into heaven, the human man, the body and soul of Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the human male crucified on the cross at Calvary, is resurrected and ascended and is seated on the throne at the right hand of God the Father to this very moment!

Because God's will will be done whether we like it or not, but may it be done in and through us.

Aligning Our Will with God's

Christian, will you be part of what God is doing in the world? Or will you use your power in other ways?

• Will you do good for the people around you and sacrifice expecting nothing in return?
• Will you make everything about you instead of making everything about others and Christ?
• Will you use your power to harm others and work against His purposes?
• Will you do your will instead of God's?

Because one way or another, God's will will be done.

And I'm here to tell you today that the best life that a human can live is to align our will with the will of Christ.

For God has sent His Son not to condemn the world but to save it, to point out what it is to be truly human in every meaningful way. For He has given us both an example and a guide in His Son, Jesus Christ.

For God has taken up our humanity and held it cheek to cheek with Himself. In Jesus Christ, heaven and earth have kissed.

God has sent His Son to live with us, to teach us, to walk, to take us by the hands, to hold us to His cheek, to love us, to redeem us, though we have been unfaithful.

Or as St. Paul says in our reading from Galatians today, He has given us a spirit of adoption. He has grafted us into His own family tree. He has made us His adopted children through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

May you know that intimacy with God. May you seek God's will over and against your own. May you find His love and peace which guides you by the hand. May you remember that you are a beloved, adopted child of God through the cross and resurrection of Christ. May you know the love and grace of God in this season of Christmas.

And may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord to life everlasting. Amen.