10 January 2016
I. Introduction
-- turn in
Bibles to Matthew 2:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12 (NIV)
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the
time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
2 and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king
of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all
Jerusalem with him.
4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests
and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.
5 "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for
this is what the prophet has written:
6 "'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no
means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who
will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'"
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from
them the exact time the star had appeared.
8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a
careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I
too may go and worship him."
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and
the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the
place where the child was.
10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his
mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their
treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.
12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to
Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
--
yesterday, when I finished the fiction book I was reading, I went to Amazon to
look at the list of books I had already purchased for the Kindle to try to
figure out what to read next -- if any of you have a Kindle, you know that
Amazon is always putting books on sale or putting out free books, and when I
see a deal, I go ahead and add them to my library -- and what has happened is
I’ve got this huge back-log of books that I’ve got on Amazon that I haven’t
read yet -- I originally switched to the Kindle because I was tired of tripping
over piles of unread books in my house, but apparently I’ve just replaced the
physical books with an equivalent digital pile
-- anyway,
as I was scouring this pile of unread books yesterday and trying to find
something that piqued my interest, it occurred to me how many of these books
were similar -- no matter the genre -- whether they were Christian fiction or
fantasy or just popular fiction -- they all had a common theme -- they all
involved a great quest or a great struggle where an unknown hero is called from
obscurity to rise up and seek a hidden treasure or rescue a damsel in distress
or stand up for righteousness and justice against evil
-- I
finally settled on adding a couple of classics to my Kindle -- Allan
Quartermain and King Solomon’s Mine by H. Rider Haggard -- but that idea of an
epic quest -- of seeking that which the heart desires most above all -- just
kind of stuck with me and I thought about it all night
-- I firmly
believe this desire to seek a great treasure -- this desire for an epic quest
in our lives -- is a desire given to us by God -- I think it’s part of His
prevenient grace -- this stirring in our hearts, before we even really know Him
-- to seek Him -- to find Him
-- it is
this stirring in our hearts that lets us know that we are not complete -- that
we are missing something in our lives -- that there is more out there for us,
just over the horizon -- and it is this stirring that causes us to get up and
put the world to our back and set out on an epic quest to Calvary and the cross
of salvation
-- many
hear this call, but few choose to follow -- many feel the stirring in their
hearts to go to a distant land as Abram did, but few actually break free of the
comfortable and the known to venture out into the unknown and into the wild
where Jesus waits -- but for those who do, an epic quest and a grand adventure
awaits
II. Scripture Lesson: The Epic Quest of the Magi
(Matthew 2:1-12)
-- this
morning, I wanted us to look at a passage in the Bible about men who did hear
and respond to this stirring in their hearts -- men who heard the call to
travel to distant lands in search of a great treasure and who got up and left
all behind to seek out the Savior of the world in the greatest quest of all
time -- the quest to find the newborn King of the Jews
-- so join
me now in this familiar passage from Matthew 2 and let’s look at the story of
the Magi and their epic quest
-- verse 1
Matthew 2:1-6 (NIV)
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the
time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
2 and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king
of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all
Jerusalem with him.
4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests
and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.
5 "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for
this is what the prophet has written:
6 "'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no
means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who
will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'"
-- several
years ago, when I was serving as a Methodist pastor, the Valdosta District of
the Methodist Church had an interruption in the force, if you will -- all of a
sudden, without any warning at all, a delegation of South Korean Methodists
showed up at the District Office to announce they had been sent by God from
Korea to serve as missionaries to our region
-- the
District Superintendant was dumb-founded -- he didn’t know what to do with
these visitors from the East -- so he called the Bishop up in Macon, and the
Bishop didn’t have any idea, either -- everyone thought things were fine --
everyone was happy with the way things were going -- here we were in little old
south Georgia, just going along with the flow -- doing our thing and having our
normal church services and turning in our annual reports and just basically
being comfortable in our religious tradition
-- so when
these visitors show up and basically announce that God has sent them to evangelize
to us and shake us up, we didn’t know what to do
-- that is
exactly what is happening in these verses
-- you see,
the story of God’s interactions with man up to this point in history was
basically interwoven into the story of the Jews -- from the point where God
promises the Messiah to Adam and Eve and then through the covenant with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God had called the Jews to be His chosen people --
the ones from whom the Messiah would come -- the ones who were chosen to have
the Holy Scriptures -- the ones who were given the Law and the religious
traditions that pointed to the coming of the Messiah
-- and for
four thousand years, the Jews had been content in their religion -- they had
their services in the temple -- they celebrated the great feasts and offered
sacrifices to God to atone of the sins of the people -- they gathered to
worship just as God had told them -- and they thought everything was going
along fine -- that nothing needed to change -- that if the Messiah did come, that
God would let them know
-- but, all
of a sudden, these visitors from the East showed up and said, “So where is the
one who was born King of the Jews? -- God sent us a sign and we’ve come to
worship Him” -- you can imagine the consternation this caused in Jerusalem -- Matthew
tells us in verse 3 that King Herod and all Jerusalem were disturbed by the
coming of the Magi -- who were these men who showed up claiming to know more
about the Messiah than the religious Jews in Jerusalem? -- what was going on?
-- let’s
answer that -- the Bible tells us these men were Magi from the east --
traditionally, we call them “wise men,” but they were really more than that --
as best we can tell, the Magi were probably priests in the religion of the
Persians at that time -- they would have been learned men, knowledgeable in
astronomy and astrology -- they would have been men who looked to the heavens
for spiritual guidance -- who searched the stars for divine portents and who
trusted in a pantheon of gods, seeing their gods as being present in the stars
and in the natural occurrences and in the earth around them
-- more
than likely, they would have been familiar with the prophecies of the Jewish
people in regards to the coming of the Messiah -- remember that the Magi came from
the Persian region -- the same area where the Jews were exiled in captivity for
70 years -- so they probably absorbed some of the teachings of the Jews into
their religion during that time
-- and so,
when they noticed a strange star to their west over the land of the Jews, they
immediately made the connection to the Jewish prophecy of the Messiah -- they
saw what the Jews missed -- they realized this star portended the birth of a
new and mighty king -- the king of the Jews
-- this
star was God’s call to the Magi to start their epic quest -- not so much just a
physical quest to travel the 1200 miles from Persia to Jerusalem -- but the
quest for the truth -- the search for the true God who had come to the save the
world from its sins
-- the Magi
don’t know the true purpose of their quest at this point -- all they know is a
sign has appeared and a king has been born and it is a momentous occurrence, so
they loaded up their camels and headed west as the star directed
-- and
that’s important to remember, because when God calls us to seek Him on our epic
quest, He rarely tells us the whole plan -- think about Abram -- all he had to
go on was God’s call to leave his home and go to the land that God would show
him -- it wasn’t until much later, after Abram responded in faith to the call
to seek the Promised Land, that God made His covenant with Abraham
-- epic
quests begin with a single step -- epic quests begin when you hear the call and
take that first step towards God
-- it was the
same way with the Magi -- God called the Magi to seek out the newborn king of the
Jews by sending them a star -- and so they stepped out in faith on a long and
harrowing journey, not really sure of who or what they would find, but trusting
in the One who sent them
-- it’s interesting
to note that it was the Magi who saw the star and not the Jews -- that same
star the Magi noticed in the east was right there in the skies over Jerusalem,
but nobody noticed -- not the king -- not the priests -- not the people -- no
one
-- epic quests
can only begin when we hear and see the call of God -- when we notice the star
leading us on -- are you looking for God’s star in this new year? -- are you
listening for His call to come and follow Him where He leads? -- God is
constantly calling us to join Him on epic quests -- to join Him where He is
working -- but we can only do so if we are looking and listening and expecting
His call
-- and when
that call comes, we must do as the Magi and respond in faith and take that
first step into the unknown to seek that which God promises
-- skip
down to verse 9
Matthew 2:9-12 (NIV)
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and
the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the
place where the child was.
10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his
mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their
treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.
12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to
Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
-- after
Herod meets secretly with the Magi to try to fool them into revealing the
location of the newborn, they realize the people of Israel are clueless -- and
so the Magi continue their quest on their own -- they follow the star to
Bethlehem and find the house where Mary and Joseph and Jesus were staying
-- it
appears that their quest has come to an end, but it is at this moment that the
true purpose of their quest comes to light
-- in the
church we celebrate the coming of the Magi on January 6th, a day we call
Epiphany -- that name was not chosen at random -- an epiphany is typically
defined as a manifestation or revealing or a divine or supernatural being -- so
our Epiphany on January 6th is the day we celebrate the revealing of Jesus as
the newborn King of the Jews -- as the Messiah
-- but the
word epiphany has another definition
which is applicable here -- an epiphany is defined in the dictionary as a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or
essential meaning of something -- or, to put it another way, a moment in which
you suddenly see or understand something in a new or very clear way
-- what we
are witnessing in this passage is the epiphany of the Magi -- the moment that
God revealed the true purpose of their quest -- the moment He revealed the
truth about who Jesus was to these men
-- as they
entered into that little house and witnessed the baby Jesus, in that one moment
Matthew tells us the Magi became overjoyed -- they have been transformed from
men who simply followed a star seeking a human king to believers worshiping the
one true God
-- their
lives have been fundamentally changed -- they are no longer the men they were
when they began their quest -- they have been changed forever by the presence
of God in Christ
-- in verse
12, we read that the Magi left for their own country by another road or another
route -- obviously, Matthew is talking about the physical route that the Magi
took back to their land -- but this statement is also true in a spiritual sense
as well
-- when the
Magi came seeking the newborn King of the Jews, they came as pagans -- as
Gentiles -- unaware of the One God of Israel -- unaware of the role of the
Messiah in redeeming the whole world -- unaware of the promise of a King who
would save the world from its sins
--
they started their epic quest on one road by simply following a star and
searching for the king of the Jews -- but when they left, Matthew tells us they
left by another road -- the road of faith in the Christ who had been sent to
save them
--
in John 14:6, Jesus told the disciples that He was the Way and the Truth and
the Life -- He described Himself as the narrow way and the only gate -- this
was the path that the Magi took when they returned to their country -- this epiphany
was the culmination of their quest and the first revelation to the world that
the Messiah had finally come
III. Closing
--
as I close, let me leave you with a couple of principles that we need to
remember about epic quests with God
--
first, never forget that God is always at work around us -- God's work did not
end when the Bible was written -- it did not end when the apostles all passed
away -- it did not end when the Magi finally found Jesus -- God continues to
work in the world today through the presence of His Holy Spirit in the church
--
one of the signs of a maturing Christian -- of someone who is starting to grow
in their faith -- is that they start to notice things -- they begin to see and
hear the call of God -- they look at the world and they see the fingerprints of
God all around them -- the signs of His presence and His work in the people
they come into contact with
--
and when they see these signs of God -- when they see God at work -- they
recognize that these are epiphanies -- revelations and insights from God to
them and invitations to join Him in His work to make Jesus known to others
--
secondly, never forget that God still speaks to us today -- God still reveals
Himself and His ways and His purposes through the Bible, through prayer,
through circumstances and through the church -- we don’t want to be like the
people in Jerusalem in this passage, who missed the Messiah because they
weren’t looking for the star that was right above them -- who missed the
Messiah because they weren’t listening for God’s revelation in their lives
--
2 Tim 3:16-17 says, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for
teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man
of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." -- God continues
to reveal Himself and His ways through the Scriptures and through His people
--
God wants us to know Him and to hear Him and to join Him in His work -- and, as
2016 begins in earnest, we need to actively look for God -- we need to actively
listen for God -- we need to see where He is working and join Him -- we need to
hear His voice and obey Him by taking that first step of faith on our epic
quest
--
we should be like the wise men in this passage -- we should be actively
searching for Jesus -- listening for His voice -- looking for His presence --
so that we can learn new truths about Him and be filled with a desire to go
forth and share the message of Christ with others
--
not only with our words, as we witness to them who Jesus is and what He has
done for us -- but also with our hands, as we share the love of Christ with
others in tangible ways through our service and love to them
--
when the Magi left home, they didn’t know exactly what they were seeking --
they didn’t know what God was going to do to them or how He wanted to use them
-- but when they finally saw Jesus face-to-face, they knew -- they had their
epiphany -- and they were never the same
--
my prayer is that each of you embark on an epic quest this year -- and that
2016 will mark the time when your life and the lives of those around you are
forever changed through the experience of this new journey with Christ
--
seek Jesus as the wise men did -- search for Him with your whole heart -- and
let Him change you in this new year -- let Him use you as He did the wise men
-- step out on your epic quest, and do great things for Him
--
let us pray
