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

The Light of the World!

[This was the prepared for sermon for worship this morning with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Matthew 2:1-12
To begin this morning, I ask you to turn to Isaiah 49:5-6 (page 508 in the pew Bibles). We're told:

“And now the LORD says-- he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength--he says: ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.’"

The speaker in this passage of prophecy written many hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, has often been believed by Christians to be the Messiah, the Christ, revealed later to be Jesus.

And in verse 6, Messiah, the Anointed King Who God promised would come to set things right in Israel--bringing people back to the right worship of God, granting forgiveness to those who repent and trust in Him alone--quotes God the Father.

Here, God the Father tells God the Son, the Messiah, in effect, “It’s much too small a project for You to usher in the Kingdom of heaven for the descendants of Abraham. I want every human being on the planet to have the opportunity for salvation from sin and death. All people. You will bring light into a world darkened by sin and death!” 



On the first Christmas, Jesus came into the world to be a light to all nations.

The passionate desire of God for relationship with people isn’t confined to one ethnic group, race, or nation.

He wants to give all people the light they need to first, see their sins and vulnerabilities--and therefore see their need of God’s offered hand of forgiveness--and second, He wants to give all people the ability to see Jesus Christ as their hope for lives made eternally new by God Himself.

God doesn’t force the Light of the world on us. The spiritually blind will only be given sight if they want the Messiah.

But He shines still today in the witness of Scripture, in the Sacraments, in the fellowship and service of the Church, in the witness of Christians who prepare themselves always to account for the hope that Jesus the Messiah has given them.

Please turn to John 1:9-13 (page 739). Here, John writes about the Messiah after Jesus’ death and resurrection, at least seven hundred years after the prophecy from Isaiah we just read.

John writes: “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.”

Jesus, the Light of the world, scours the nations not just to show us our sins, but also to enlighten the hearts and minds of every person to know that...

• those holes in our hearts with which we all are born,
• that gnawing need for meaning and significance,
• that canyon of separation between God and us

CAN BE FILLED!

They can be filled by the Messiah Jesus.

That’s what the New Testament is talking about when it says that all people can be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. (See here, here, and here, among other places.)

We see God’s passionate desire to draw all people to Himself through Christ in today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 2:1-10 (page 668). Please turn to it now.

This lesson records the event we call the Epiphany, from the Greek word epiphaneo, which means to shine upon. On the first Epiphany, a bright star led men called Magi, often called wise men, to the Light of the world, the Messiah.

And throughout this season of the Church Year called Epiphany, we will read Gospel lessons in which people had epiphanies, aha moments when someone recognized that when they came into the presence of Jesus, they were doing much more than meeting a man. They were in the presence of God in the flesh!

To our lesson, now. Verses 1 and 2: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 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.’"

The Magi were practitioners of both astronomy, a useful science, and astrology, quackery that believes the stars control the destinies of human beings.

You wouldn’t expect these guys to be among the first people to care about or seek out Jesus.

In Deuteronomy 18:10-11, God forbids relying on superstitions or mediums of any kind. Such practices are called abominations because they're expressions of the human desire to "be like God." Superstitions like astrology appeal to our human impulse to be control freaks, to take control for ourselves instead of submitting to the will and control of the Creator of the universe.

So, the Magis weren’t believers in God. Whatever knowledge they may have had of Hebrew Scripture would have merely been the result of human curiosity, not faith.

And they were also foreigners, Gentiles likely from Persia, modern day Iran.

Yet, when the Messiah was born into the world, God, in His sovereignty, chose to reveal the birth to the Magi through the very stars they superstitiously followed.

Folks, the Light of the world can use any means He chooses to invite people to worship Him, to lead us to grace and new life in His Name, to pull us to His Word of truth.

And the Light of the world wants to call even the most notorious sinners, people good Christians might think are hopelessly separated from God, into a relationship with Him.

In God's eyes, there are no hopeless cases! As long as human beings draw breath on this planet, there is a chance they can come to know Jesus and His grace and forgiveness and be saved from sin and death. That's why the mission of Christ's Church is critically important!

Verses 3 and 4: “When King Herod heard [the Magi’s belief that Messiah had been born] he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law [Herod had to get all his key advisors together in the Situation Room to face this crisis], he asked them where the Christ was to be born.”

Herod himself wasn’t Jewish and he wasn’t a descendant of David, which Israel’s kings were supposed to be.

He had been given his throne by the Romans.

In the later years of his life--and Jesus was born sometime not too long before Herod’s death--the paranoid Herod killed off potential rivals.

The news of a newborn King of the Jews disturbed him.

But Matthew says Jerusalem was in an uproar too, people in their pious religious moments would have insisted that they were pining for the coming of the Messiah who would bring God's kingdom to people in need of Him.

Why? Maybe because sometimes God gets too close for comfort. We resist Him.

I shared my faith in Christ with a friend once. Nothing pushy. “That’s fine for you, Mark,” he told me. “But I really don’t need God right now.”

Another guy told me his plan: He would wait to let Christ into his life until he was on his deathbed. Until then, he intended to do without Him. Guess no one ever told him, death isn’t always that tidy or predictable.

Neither are all the other unplanned events where we need the God of the universe and Redeemer of our souls by our sides!

But, isn’t ironic that the Magi were more excited about the birth of the King of the Jews than “Jerusalem,” by which I think Matthew meant official Jerusalem, was.

They were comfortable with their perks and power and ease.

They didn’t want the Messiah messing things up.

This should remind us to never get too comfortable with the things of this world. If we’re not careful they can become so important to us that we gain the world but lose our souls!

In verses 5 and 6, the scribes and chief teachers of God’s Law cited Old Testament passages--Micah 5:2 and 2 Samuel 5:2--to show that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, the hometown of Israel’s greatest king, David.

Verses 7 and 8: “Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 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.’" 

The Magi followed the star to the house where Jesus lived with Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. Matthew says the Magi “were overjoyed.”

Do you remember how it felt when you first realized that the God of the universe loved you, then died for you and rose for you, so that you could turn from the death and sin of this world and receive life with God as a free gift?

Maybe it wasn’t a realization that came upon you all at once.

And hopefully, it’s a realization that hits you at deeper and deeper levels as you grow and mature in your relationship with Christ.

But this must have been something of what the Magi felt at that moment.

God’s unseen hand, His Holy Spirit, had used the star to lead them to the Child and they reacted  as we do when we realize for the first time or once again the depths of God’s commitment to us despite our faults and sins.

Verse 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.”

The gifts they brought were ones commonly brought to kings. But what strikes me is that they bowed down and worshiped Jesus.

The Magi, never identified by Matthew as kings, were nonetheless, as their gifts attest, wealthy men. They were important in their society. They might well have seen themselves as important people deigning to give their approval to Jesus, in effect legitimizing Him by their gifts.

Sometimes, you know, we can get caught up in thinking what wonderful people we are and how lucky God is to have us on His side. If thoughts anything like that ever cross our minds, we should look at the Magi.

The word translated as worship here is in the Greek in which Matthew wrote, proskuneo. It can be translated as give homage or honor, like you might give to a queen or a president. We stand when presidents enter the room because they represent the sovereignty of our nation. People bow to royalty for the same reason. The Magi may have simply been acknowledging their belief that this Child, living in the home of an impoverished couple, was, despite all appearances, a king.

But virtually every time Matthew uses this word, proskuneo, he means more than simply paying honor. It’s almost always the gesture of people who realize that when they come into the presence of Jesus, they come into the presence of God. They worship Jesus.

This, of course, is precisely the claim Jesus makes for Himself.

“I and the Father are one,” Jesus says in John 10:30.

And in John 14:6-7, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you really know Me, you will know My Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”

That must have been what the Magi saw when they looked at the Child with awe and gratitude.

Two things I hope you and I will take away from Epiphany Day, 2014:

One, God’s love knows no bounds. God wants all people to know  Jesus, the Light of the world.

And two, God wants to use you and me to extend His invitation to others, not to come to Church, but to know Jesus.

In 2014, may we learn to know Jesus better and learn to rely on the Holy Spirit more, so that when we have the chance, like the star, to lead others to the Light that darkness could not snuff out, we will be ready.

As we begin this new year, let’s make it our common prayer to seek God’s help in growing not as church members, but as disciples of Jesus Christ, so that call all who don’t yet know the Messiah or the life God gives in His Name to join us in following Him.

Listen: The brightest light that shone on the first Epiphany wasn’t in the sky; it was on the earth beneath, where “the Word made flesh” brought the way of salvation to all peoples!

God be praised!