So Why Did They Follow the Star?

[Below you'll find video of both of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the message for the day. Have a good week!]

Matthew 2:1-12

We’re celebrating today as the Sunday of the Epiphany. Epiphany, of course, is a word we use for “AHA” moments, moments of clarity when we “get” things. The word comes to us from Greek and it literally means manifestation or appearance. During the Epiphany Season, we remember those times when Jesus most especially disclosed Himself to be God the Son and Savior of the world. January 6, Epiphany Day, annually remembers when the identity of the toddler Jesus as God and Savior was disclosed to Gentile visitors from the East and they worshiped Jesus. Because Epiphany didn’t fall on a Sunday, our Bible lessons this morning are the readings assigned for that day. Our Gospel lesson is Matthew 2:1-12.

This lesson, as I see it, raises three questions for us to consider.

First: What prompted the Magi to follow the star?

These were superstitious men. They didn’t believe in God. They made gods out of things they could see, touch, or manipulate. They were astrologers and mediums.

The Bible forbade such activities as idol worship. Leviticus 19:31, part of the “Holiness Code” that explains the Ten Commandments, says, “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.”

And yet, to foreign idol-worshipers God gave a sign of the birth of the Messiah. That’s because it’s God’s pleasure and desire to make Himself and the grace by which He saves repentant sinners known to all people. God used a sign the Magi would notice in order to call them to worship Christ, the newborn King.

But would a star have been reason enough for them to set off on a journey to an unknown destination to see a King Who may have been indifferent to them? I doubt it.

The only thing that would have prompted them, I think, is that they must have heard or read the Word of God that promised the Messiah!

Scholars tell us that the Magi came from Babylon or Persia, lands that had once conquered God’s people and taken some of them to live in exile in their lands. One of the Judean exiles, Daniel, told the Babylonians and Persians in the fifth century BC about God’s promise of a Messiah, Who would make all things right between God and His fallen creation. “...the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed,” God revealed through Daniel. “It will crush all [other] kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” (Daniel 2:44)

After the star appeared to them, it was God’s Word, however deeply or well understood, that sent the Magi to follow the star to the Messiah.

Christians today wring their hands over the future of Christ’s Church. They ask, “What can we do?”

Our call is simply to receive and then to share the Word that out of His love for us, God sent the Son Jesus to die to take the condemnation for sin we deserve, then raised Him from the dead so that all who daily turn from sin and trust in Christ have the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God.

This Word gives more light to the world than any star ever could!

When John talked about Jesus entering our world, he called Jesus, the Light of the world and said, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

It was the Word they’d heard about a Messiah that compelled the wise men to follow the star. They wanted to see Jesus!

The second question is this: When did the Magi lose track of the star? We know they did lose track of it because Matthew tells us that following their visit to King Herod, “the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was…” (Matthew 2:9) The star reappeared to the Magi!

Evidently, once they’d gotten close to Jerusalem, they reasoned they needn’t depend on the star sent by God any longer. If the Messiah was “the King of the Jews,” He had to be in the palace at Jerusalem, right? Or at least, the present King there would know where the newborn Messiah was. Or the priests and scribes who worked in the temple and synagogues would know.

So, like an overly-confident driver turning off his GPS in a strange place before he’s reached his destination, the Magi take their eyes off the star sent by God and take a detour. Instead of relying on the Word of God to reveal the Messiah to them, the Magi decide to rely on themselves to find Jesus.

We can do this in our own lives, relying on ourselves God’s Word. It’s always a mistake. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,” Proverbs 3:5 reminds us,  “and lean not on your own understanding.” Another passage in Proverbs tells us that, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 16:25)

If we’re to see Jesus in our daily lives or in eternity, we need to turn to where He promises to be: in the Word and in the Sacraments, in the fellowship of believers, in Christ’s Church.

The Magis’ visit hit King Herod and his hangers-on like a bomb! Herod loved power. He didn’t want a Messiah messing things up.

He pretended to be pleased though and called in the priests and teachers of the Law to learn, from God’s Word, where the child was to be born. The answer was in the Old Testament book of Micah: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel…” (Micah 5:2)

That leads then to our third question. When did the Magi finally find the Savior pointed to by the star? That’s simple: When they once more heard and trusted in the Word of God! That Word said the Baby would be born in Bethlehem. The passage from Micah led them to Jesus. When the star revealed Jesus’ location, they worshiped the Baby. Through God’s Word, they knew they were in the presence of God Himself!

There’s a writer and editor with whom I’ve interacted through my blog, Facebook, and Twitter for nearly twenty years now. She’s a self-described unbeliever, but deeply respectful of the belief she sees in some Christians. She wrote this past week that what she found unique about Jesus among all the religious figures of history is that He “is a living presence of overwhelming love” in the lives of those who believe in Him.

My heart fairly skipped a beat when I read those words! She sees that Jesus gives to believers what no other religion and no other philosophical system in the world can give: the assurance that, despite what we deserve because of our sin, we are loved by the God revealed in Jesus!

There’s a reason Christians sense themselves to be “living in the presence of overwhelming love.”

Back when I was an atheist, a Christian might have been able to convince me of God’s existence by one or both of several arguments.

They may have said, “A creation must have a Creator.” But even if I had agreed to that proposition, it would have left me far from a the belief in Jesus that assures believers they live in the presence of overwhelming love.

A Christian may have pointed to moral law, the sense of right and wrong that everyone seems to have, even if they don’t believe in God. “That sense of right and wrong came from Someone,” a Christian may have told me, “and that Someone is God.” But even if I’d been convinced of their argument, I still would have been far from knowing and believing in Jesus as Savior, King, God…my Savior, King, and God.

It took the Word of God about Christ in the words and the lives of people in the church to which Jesus once dragged me for me to become a believer in Jesus Christ. Even now, I can see them and picture the disciples of Jesus Who spoke God’s Word in such a way that caught my attention and gave me faith. There were the Dells, the Larsons, the Schneiders, and others. They were the “stars” God used to lead me to Jesus, to trusting in Him, to worshiping Him.

Through these ordinary saints who got knocked down by life and lifted up again by Jesus, who trusted Him for life even in the face of death, I came to trust Jesus too. They taught me in practice the truth of God’s Word which Jesus threw back at Satan when he tried to tempt Jesus: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) Through them and their proclamation of God’s Word, I came to believe in Jesus. That’s no mystery, because as Paul says in Romans 10:17: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”

When the Magi heeded God’s Word to follow the star, they soon found themselves in the living presence of overwhelming love. They came into the presence of and worshiped Jesus, God in the flesh.

This is the God revealed to you in His Word and in the Word made visible in bread and wine and water.

He’s the God Who has died for your sin and was raised again by the Father so that as you, by the power of God’s Word, turn from sin each day and turn to Christ, you live knowing that You are loved deeply and overwhelmingly.

You know you have been set free from your slavery to sin and death, set free to live in God’s forgiveness and are saved to live forever with the God Who made you.

Whether because of our sin, the devil, or the evil in the world, it’s so easy for us, like the Magi, to get lost: to think we know better than God about right and wrong, to grow indifferent to God and His Word, to become spiritually proud or to wallow in self-condemnation.

But God’s Word about Jesus can set us straight and bring us into the presence of God and His love again and again. That can happen every time we listen to or read God’s Word or receive the Sacraments.

When we hear and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to trust God’s Word about Jesus our God and King, we can say with the psalmist, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” (Psalm 40:2)

Friends, it was God’s Word that led the Magi to Jesus and to faith in Him. And it’s God’s Word–in the Bible, in the words of Christians, in the Sacraments–that lead us to Jesus and to faith in Him.

You can trust in Him and in His Word! Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2

Free to Take a Different Way (#AUDIO)

Here.

Free to Take a Different Way

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 2:1-12

On this Sunday when we celebrate the Epiphany, I want to focus on a single verse from our gospel lesson, Matthew 2:12. It tells us: “And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”

The ones warned here, of course, are the magi from the East. We have no idea how many of them came to worship the Christ child, just that they brought three gifts. But we do know that when God’s Word came to them after they had seen Jesus the Christ--the Messiah, they didn’t go back to Herod to tell him the identity or whereabouts of the Child as Herod had told them to do. Instead, “they returned to their country by another route.” 

The magi obeyed the Word of God, not the orders of Herod. 

They surrendered to the will of God, not to the ways of the world.

As foreigners from Persia or Babylon, the magi would have understood that nobody could intervene to help them if they were caught deliberately disobeying Herod’s order to them. Before seeing Jesus, they had naively gone to Herod and Jerusalem, thinking that the king and the people there would be as excited about the birth of the Christ as they were.  Now, God told them that they needed to protect Jesus from Herod. 

It would have been less risky for them to do what Herod wanted, telling him where Jesus could be found. The pathway of convenience, of going along to get along is still the popular one in our world. But as Jesus would later warn, “...wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14) 

That way really is narrow, comprised of Jesus alone, Who tells us, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) 

In traveling “to their country by another route,” the magi were taking the narrow, eternal way, rather than the wide, easy ways of our corrupt and dying world.

But what incited the magi's faith? What caused them to become subversives who rebelled against and disobeyed an earthly government? 

It was the Word of God. 

The magi lived in places where God’s ancient people, the Jews, had lived in exile as slaves of nations that had conquered them. Exiles like Daniel and Esther shared the Word of God with their Gentile conquerors in places like Persia, Babylon, Assyria, and elsewhere. The magi then would have likely known about the Old Testament prophecies of a Jewish Messiah Who would come to save the whole world from sin and death. They also would have known enough about the skies to notice a star they'd never seen before. Through the Scriptures and this strange sign, God spoke His Word to them: The Savior Messiah had been born!

You know, we Lutheran believe and teach that when we are exposed to God’s Word, it comes to us as either Law or Gospel, as threat or promise. When the magi considered that God’s promise of a Savior was being fulfilled, they saw it as pure Gospel. They understood that the birth of Jesus was good news for the whole human race. When they saw the star leading them to the house where the baby Jesus was in Bethlehem, Matthew tells us in today’s lesson, “they were overjoyed.” (Matthew 2:10) (Actually, in the Greek in which Matthew originally wrote his gospel, he literally says, "they rejoiced with great joy exceedingly." The magi were stoked!) 

And they had good reason for their excitement. The world, long weighed down by human sin and death, was now to be liberated from those curses by the King of kings they now met. God’s Word had come to the magi, causing them to bear any burden or sacrifice, face any danger for the mere pleasure of seeing and following Jesus. Is that how you view the gospel Word about everlasting life through repentance and faith in Jesus this morning?

I ask that because it’s possible to hear the story of the Messiah’s birth among us not as Gospel, but as Law; not as promise, but as threat. 

In fact, our gospel lesson for this morning makes it clear that Herod and the religious leaders and all of Jerusalem heard the Word of Jesus’ birth as Law and threat. “When King Herod heard…,” Matthew says, “he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” (Matthew 2:3) Herod saw Jesus as a threat to his continued corrupt and sinful rule. 

All Jerusalem feared this Messiah too because they were happy to keep on with their religious charades--like modern-day politicians who end every speech with a disingenuine, “God bless America”--while living as though God didn’t exist. A Messiah from God might confront them for not loving God and not loving their neighbor, then call them to repentance for their sin, call them to change the way they lived, call them to provide for the poor, welcome the stranger, forgive those who sinned against them, call them to trust in God more than they trusted in their money, position, comfort, or bigotries. Jesus threatened everything they wanted or really believed in. For them, the Word of Jesus’ birth was God’s Law and they did not want to hear it! They wanted to kill off Jesus before He had the chance to do His saving work on the cross. That’s why God told the magi to save the child from Herod by returning to their homeland by a different route. Do we sometimes drown out the Word of God so that we can pursue our ambitions to “be like God”?

The fact is that we need desperately to hear God’s Word, both as Law and as Gospel. 

We need to hear God’s Law so that He can confront us for our sin--our failure to love God and love neighbor, to honor God as God over every part of our lives. 

But once the Law has done its work of leading us to confess our sins and, like the magi, to seek Jesus, our encounters with Jesus and His Word, are pure gospel. As we meet Jesus in His Word, He gives us faith. And Jesus tells us that we are free from sin and death, free to live with the faith and courage God gave to the magi. 

This Word that emboldened the magi also sets us free to take a different route, one not dictated by the demands of earthly rulers or the world’s petty expectations, but the way of Jesus that leads to life with God that never ends. God’s Word tells us that we are free to follow Jesus, where we are enveloped by God’s forgiveness, grace, and love, by God’s peace, now and always.

Jesus tells us elsewhere, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29) When the Word of God came to the magi and set faith in Christ alight within them. They were set free by God to live for Christ alone. 

Don’t run from the Word of God, friends! Take advantage of every opportunity to be in communion with Jesus--through daily quiet time and prayer built around Scripture reading, time with small groups discussing the Bible, regular worship and receiving the sacrament. These are the means by which God slips past our inborn sinful resistance to His rule of love over our lives, the means by which we hear the Word of Law that confronts us and the Word of Gospel that comforts us. As we encounter Jesus in God’s Word each day, may God create deep faith in Christ within us. 

And may we, like the magi, travel by a different route, the narrow way, the way of everlasting life with Jesus. Amen

[The painter of the piece seen above was Stefano di Giovanni di Consolo, known as il Sassetta, who lived from 1392-1450, in Siena, Italy.]

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Knowing Christ (Part 1, 'Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom') AUDIO

Here.

Knowing Christ (Part 1, 'Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom')

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 2:1-12
I have a terrible sense of direction. Without a GPS, a roadmap, if I’m driving outside of familiar territory, I quickly get lost. Even with GPS, I sometimes get lost, as happened when, after my interview with Living Water’s call committee five years ago, speaking with Ann on the phone, I traveled twenty-five miles west on I-70 before realizing I was going the wrong way. 

Truth is, good sense of direction or not, we all need maps, pathways, to take us where we intend to be. The Magi, the wise men from the East in today’s gospel lesson, didn’t have a roadmap or GPS, but their pathway was marked out for them by both a star set in the sky by God and by God’s Word, which told them there would be a Savior of the world born among God’s people, the Jews.

Over the past four years, we’ve been seeking to respond to God’s call here at Living Water to be a disciple-making congregation, to being and to make disciples of Jesus Christ. 

In that time, we’ve laid out a vision: to make disciples, just as Jesus commissions us to do. 

We’ve identified our mission: to 

• (1) reach up to worship, praise, and know the God revealed in Jesus Christ; 
• (2) reach in to grow together, pray together, and learn together and to serve and love each other as Jesus’ people; and 
• (3) reach out to share the good news of new and everlasting life through faith in Jesus Christ and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. 

We’ve identified our portrait of a disciple. A disciple, we’ve said, daily: 

• (1) loves Jesus above all; 
• (2) lives in the light of God’s Word; 
• (3) denies the dark side; 
• (4) embraces God’s will, obeying Jesus; 
• (5) loves other believers as Christ loves us; 
• (6) joins in Christ’s mission of reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out.

As a result of our commitment to being and making disciples, the only job Christ gave to His Church, we’ve instituted small groups in which we can read and reflect on God’s Word together, grow in faith together, pray together, encourage one another, and be accountable to each other. There will be new small groups this year. 

We’re also committed to making disciples through every ministry in this congregation: from the Knitwits to the Haiti mission; from Upward Sports to Chevy Chase tutoring, among our adults and among our children and youth. 

Taking Faith Home is also part of our discipleship initiative. 

We want every member of Living Water to be a confident and faithful believer in Jesus, disciples who live in hope and can share that hope with others!

So, we have our vision, mission, and portrait of a disciple, all rooted in biblical truth and many hours spent in prayer for God’s guidance. 

Today and over the next three Sundays, we unveil the pathway, the roadmap, our congregational GPS, by which disciples are made. 

This is what we’re aiming to have happen in the life of every person we touch, both within Living Water and out in a world as much in need of Jesus Christ as the wise men were two-thousand years ago: To create opportunities for people to follow the roadmap to a deep and intimate walk with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. In the video, we have a postcard summarizing the roadmap, the pathway.

Truly, none of us can make disciples of other people. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us, “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” 

Knowing this, Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism [show these words onscreen, please]: 

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified [that is, made holy] and preserved me in true faith. In the same way, He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and preserves it in unity with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church, He daily forgives abundantly all my sins and the sins of all believers; and at the last day, He will raise me and all the dead and will grant everlasting life to all who believe in Christ. This is most certainly true!

Only God can make disciples of Jesus. But He uses His Church--you and me--to do it. 

We can be used by God to make disciples in our own homes, at work, at school, at play. 

We can help people along the pathway of knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and then, showing Christ to the world. That, in fact, is what we’re here for as Living Water Lutheran Church!

We become disciples when we get to know Christ. The wise men, familiar with the Old Testament prophecies of a saving King, saw a star and believed it to be a sign of that King’s birth. God invited them to know God the Son, Jesus, and to worship Him. 

When they arrive in Jerusalem, believing that Herod must know of and be rejoicing over the birth of the Messiah (they only learned later how evil and paranoid Herod was): “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 

You see, God created a thirst and an appetite within the wise men to know and to worship Jesus. 

By our faithful discipleship and unashamed witness for Christ--telling others what He has done for us on the cross and from the empty tomb, talking about how He is giving us life with God, joy in the midst of sorrow, hope that trumps death--we can be used to create an appetite for Christ in others too. 

Saint Paul asks the Church about our unbelieving neighbors: “How...can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’" (Romans 10:14-15) 

Now, when Paul talks here about preaching, he doesn't have in mind the people who speak to us on Sunday mornings, but every Christian disciple, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to tell others about Christ. Today, disciples are made when Christians take Jesus’ lordship and His great commission seriously and, sharing Christ and His Word with others, become the lights who in a dark world, like the star of Bethlehem, lead others to know Jesus.

If we’re going to follow the discipleship roadmap, it starts with knowing Christ. 

And if we’re going to help others to know Him, we must make knowing Him through His Word our daily pursuit. 

After all, we can’t give away a Savior we don’t know ourselves! When, after their long journey, the wise men finally came in contact with the Christ, we’re told in today’s gospel lesson: “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, frankincense and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11) 

The wise men had been willing to do anything to know Jesus. Can the same be said of us?

Although it’s the first step on the pathway of discipleship, our need to know Christ and be rooted in Him never stops. You may have learned the alphabet when you were small, but you will never outgrow your need of the alphabet every day of your life. 

The apostle Paul wrote years after he had come to know Christ as his God and Savior: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10-11) Paul wanted his life to go in the right direction. I think that we all do too. 

Our call at Living Water Lutheran Church is to drink deeply of God’s Word and all the means of grace He creates to give us that Word--to Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, in daily Bible reading and quiet time and small groups, in worship and Bible study, in prayer and service in Jesus’ name--so that we know Jesus Christ and we can help others know Him too. 

More next Sunday. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]