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

When You've Got Decisions to Make (Church Lessons, Part 6)

[This was shared yesterday morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Acts 1:12-26

When I was in school and we neared the end of an academic year or of a quarter, we reviewed all that we’d learned before we took the final test or heard the final bell. Today is the last Sunday of the Easter Season, 2018. Throughout this season, we’ve looked at the New Testament book of Acts. Acts is the history of the early Church, from Jesus’ ascension somewhere between 28 and 33 AD until sometime around 90 AD. We’ve considered how the early Church followed Jesus, lived life, and shared Jesus with others after Jesus had gone back to heaven. Today, we will review the lessons God has been teaching us throughout Acts. 

But there’s a sense in which all of the lessons we’ve derived from Acts this Easter Season are summed up in the sixth one we cull from today’s appointed first Bible lesson, Acts 1:12-26. It's this: Every decision we make as the Church and as individual disciples is to be rooted in God’s Word and in prayer. 

In other words, our every action, our every word, are to be rooted in a relationship of intimacy with God that we share together as sisters and brothers in Christ.

In John 15, Jesus tells His Church, including us, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) 

If we do anything in life apart from the life-giving power that only comes to human beings through Jesus Christ, apart from an intimate relationship with the risen and ascended Jesus, we will never accomplish all that we might otherwise. 

Proverbs 16:25 tells us, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” We need to be connected with the God we know in Jesus in order to make the right decisions in life. 

As the Church and as individual disciples of Jesus, our standard isn’t what the world thinks. 

It isn’t what the standards of this or that profession proscribe. 

The only One Whose say-so matters is Jesus. 

That’s why the apostle Paul said, “I can do all this through him [Christ] who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

A friend recently asked me about a decision I’d made and why I felt so confident about it. 

Above all, I wanted the person to know that I have no confidence in Mark Daniels. Zero. 

There were two very different reasons for my confidence, I explained. 

First, because I had spent time every day with God in His Word and in prayer. 

Second, because the decision I sensed that God was calling me to make was precisely the opposite of what I had wanted to make before I started praying. I’d preferred the easier route; God pointed me to the harder one. 

What, my friend wondered, had God done to make things clear to me. I told him that it was the same way God has always made things clear to me from the day I came to faith in Jesus. No voice from heaven. No flashing lights. No bolt from heaven. Just peace, clarity, and certainty. 

I liken it to the experience of Elijah who sought a word from God. God didn’t make Himself known to Elijah in a mighty wind that cracked open ancient rock formations. God didn’t reveal Himself or His Word to Elijah in an earthquake. God didn’t disclose Himself or His will to Elijah in a raging fire. Elijah only finally perceived God in “a gentle whisper,” or as another translation puts it, “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). 

Elijah experienced “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). 

And that’s what you and I can experience when we seek intimacy with God, when we root everything we do and say in the Word of God and in prayer in Jesus’ name.

We find the early Church acting on that belief in today’s first lesson, Acts 1:12-26. Let’s set the stage: The eleven remaining apostles have just returned from the Mount of Olives from which they had watched the resurrected Jesus ascend back to heaven. Just before that, Jesus told them to wait for the Holy Spirit’s power before they pursued the mission of the Church, making disciples. 

The apostles are to wait. 

And how do they wait? 

Verse 13: “When they [the apostles] arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” 

The apostles and the others with them spent their time waiting by praying. We don’t know the content of their prayers in Jesus’ name. But we do know that they prayed. They waited on God.

After a period of prayer, Acts tells us, starting at verse 15, Peter felt compelled to speak. As he’d been praying, Peter had also been considering the Word of God. 

Listen: Prayer that isn’t rooted in God’s Word can deteriorate into a self-absorption that leads us away from God. Considering God’s Word as we pray can remind us that our primary concerns, in order, need to be: God first, others second, ourselves last. 

But considering God’s Word without prayer can turn Bible-reading into an intellectual exercise, the acquisition of facts untethered from God. You get bragging rights at the next small group or Bible study meeting.

Peter knew that prayer and consideration of God's Word need to go together. So, as he prayed, he remembered or read two passages from the Psalms, Psalm 69:25 and Psalm 109:8. As he prayed, Peter understood the application of these two verses to the life of the Church. Always, as we read Scripture, we need to be asking God, "How does this apply to me today? What does this passage tell me I need to see or do today?" 

Peter, in prayer, considering God's Word, and considering the life of the infant Church, saw an application in those two passages from the Psalms.
Let me explain: Jesus was the fulfillment of the mission of salvation and new life God had started Israel, with its twelve patriarchs, the great-grandsons of Abraham and Sarah. 

Israel’s entire purpose for being was to bring God’s salvation to the world through the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, God's Anointed King.

When Jesus called apostles, He called twelve of them. That was no accident! Through the apostles' proclamation of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus, a greater Israel, one made up of Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus, was to come into being. 

Judas had been called to be an apostle. But he had betrayed Jesus and defected to Satan, the Evil One. The psalms told Peter that someone who, like the other apostles, had witnessed Jesus’ resurrection had to take Judas’ place as an apostle, a patriarch of God’s enlarged Israel so that the mission of the Church could proceed as God intended.

Now, if Peter and the others were Americans like us, he might have said, “Let’s take a vote for a replacement apostle.” 

Instead, the group came up with the names of two men who had been with Jesus from the day that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan until they saw Him risen from the grave, then asked God to show which of the two--Justus called Barsabbas or Matthias--it should be. 

They cast lots to figure out who God chose. We don’t know exactly what the Bible meant when it spoke of “casting lots”: It could have been tossing dice, drawing straws, or something else. But the point is, when God’s people “cast lots,” they weren’t putting their faith in dice or straws. They were trusting God to show them what to do after they had prayed and considered God’s Word. 

The lot fell to Matthias and, at that moment, having a full complement of twelve apostles, the Church was ready for the coming the Holy Spirit. 

I wonder whether after the lots had been cast if there wasn’t someone in that room who wasn’t sure about Matthias and was tempted to suggest, “How about if we make it two out of three?” 

However tempted any of them may have felt, all accepted that, because they were people rooted in prayer and God’s Word, Matthias was the apostle God had chosen.

The New Testament book of Acts can help us to answer the question: After we have been baptized and can say that we believe in Jesus as our God and Savior, now what? How do we live as the Church? How do we live as Christian disciples? (It's interesting to note that when Luke set out to give us a clue about the answers to these questions from the experience of the first-century Church, he didn't write the Book of Just Hanging Around. He wrote the Book of Acts!)

The lessons the book of Acts has taught us this Easter Season have included: 

• (1) In all ways, we are to seek to take care of the needs of our fellow believers so that together, we can be authentic witnesses for the new life God is establishing in all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. 
• (2) Share Jesus, knowing what to share about Jesus, sharing what we have personally experienced of Jesus, and looking for opportunities to share Jesus. 
• (3) The only power to overcome the sin, death, and futility of this world is the risen Jesus Christ. The true, eternal Church is made up of those who trustingly live as though they believe that’s true...because it is! 
• (4) Every disciple in Christ’s Church is a witness for Christ. 
• (5) God has no favorites. 
• (6) Every decision we make as the Church and as individual disciples is to be rooted in God’s Word and in prayer.

And honestly, as I've said, if we can remember this last one, God will empower us to do the rest. 

We who make up Christ’s Church need each other. The New Testament describes the Church as Christ’s body. When any part of its body gives up on mutual care, sharing Jesus with others, trusting in Christ’s power over sin and death, being witnesses, accepting that God loves and Jesus died and rose for all people, or regularly praying and considering God’s Word, the body can’t function as Jesus intends for it to function. 

But it must all be rooted in a daily time with God in prayer and consideration of Scripture. It’s in these quiet times that God can 

• assure us of His love for us, 
• listen to our confession and grant us His forgiveness, and 
• empower us to live the life that our Church Lessons show us are meant to be normal for everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord.

Look, I know how busy life can be. I’m right there with you. 

But I also find that the more time I spend in God’s Word and in prayer, the more time God seems to manufacture for me to get the things I need to get done accomplished. 

And I am assured through this regular interaction with the God I meet in Jesus that maybe the things I think I need to get done don’t need doing at all. 

In the end, the Christian life is simple: To stay close to Jesus and to share Jesus with others. Spending intimate time with the God we know in Jesus will help us to live that life.

Martin Luther, whose life was filled with busy-ness, including preaching, teaching, pastoring, leading, raising a family, and welcoming all sorts of people to his home, once said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours [of every day] in prayer.” Never try to face the frenzy of daily living before spending time with the One Who can conquer any storm!

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” Jesus tells us, “and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). When we come to Jesus, He will also give us the power to live faithfully for Him. 

Be ready for all that God has called you to do and be in life: Soak up His Word and pray in Jesus’ name. Amen

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

Reuben, Dysfunctional Families, Depending on God

[I try to keep a quiet time with God five days every week. Below is my journal entry for today. Here. I explain how I approach my quiet time with God.]

Look: “When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him [Joseph] from their hands. ‘Let’s not take his life,’ he said. ‘Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.’ Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.” (Genesis 37:21-22)

Reuben is a man in the uncomfortable middle. Nine of his brothers are intent on murdering their step-brother Joseph.

In these circumstances, nine people constitute a mob and Reuben is afraid to stand up to them. They want Joseph, the kid brother preferred by their dad in their dysfunctional extended family, gone. (This rings true: Extended families often behave exactly like willful, controlling mobs, anxious to keep its members in line.)

The nine want to murder Joseph. Reuben wants to rescue Joseph and take him back to their father. But, fearful of his brothers’ rage, sure that he can rescue Joseph later, he suggests that the mob simply throw Joseph into a cistern. Then he, Reuben, would go back, free Joseph, and return the kid to Jacob.

Compromise and calm can be good things. Shrewdness can be too. Jesus says that believers are to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). But when our shrewd acts are rooted in our own analysis and not in the mind and plans of God, they can backfire. “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 16:25).

Later, when Reuben returns to the cistern to rescue Joseph, he finds that his brothers have sold the younger brother to passing slave traders. He goes to his brothers and says: “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”

Reuben then acquiesces to the brothers’ plan of lying to their father about what had happened to Joseph. Joseph must have been killed by a wild animal, they intimate. Reuben may have rationalized being a party to this lie. “After all,” he may have thought, “better for my father to think that Joseph is dead than to learn he’s still alive and set us off to search for a brat nobody liked.”

Besides, the lie was now being enforced by the conspiracy that had been hatched at Dothan. The mob (the family) had proven ruthless enough to dispose of those who stood in their way; who was to say that they wouldn’t go after Reuben if he showed any inclination to break from the conspiracy?

Reuben had reason to feel guilty on multiple counts: (1) for not standing up to his brothers in the first place; (2) for hatching his own plan, relying on his own resources; (3) for not trying to find Joseph after he had been sold into slavery.

Listen: Peer pressure can a be a horrible thing, especially when the peers in question are one’s own family members. Families can have a brutal way of pigeonholing and suppressing their members.

This happens a lot when there are dysfunctionality and favoritism from parents. These spawn a kind of dog-eat-dog nastiness among siblings that remains into adulthood. I’ve observed this many times, making the story of Joseph and his brothers accessible and believable.

The basic problem, of course, is disconnectedness from God. When we remain connected to the God now revealed to everyone in Jesus, in faith buttessed by worship, prayer, receiving Holy Communion, and remaining in fellowship with God's people, the Church, God gives us the capacity to deal with things like family dysfunctionality, fear of the crowd, and our own limited thinking. As we pray to God in Jesus’ name, He supplies the Holy Spirit to give us faith, authentic repentance, guidance, a desire to do what God wills, love for God and for others, and courage.

These are all assets that Reuben could have used at Dothan and beyond.

Even his fear of death at the hands of his brothers in revenge for his helping Joseph would have been overcome. When we cultivate a close relationship with the God we know in Jesus, we know that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to us.

In fact, there is a kind of living death that Reuben must have endured all of those years.

Not all things that people know need to be revealed, of course. The Hebrew midwives were right to conceal the birth of Hebrew boys from the murderous Pharaoh (Exodus 1:19). Corrie ten Boom and her family were right to conceal the Jews they attempted to save from the murderous Nazis.

Sometimes, I think, it’s also best to conceal facts that would only hurt, disrupt, or kill relationships. Much of the Oprah-zation of America, our practice of spilling all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, is predicated on the idea that this is healthy for the one doing the revealing. But how healthy, how helpful, is it for the one to whom sinful thoughts and actions of which they had no knowledge of them are revealed? Jesus says that one day, all of our secret thoughts will be revealed, of course (Luke 8:17).

But God’s Word also tells us to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Some people speak the truth but without a hint of love, making others miserable. They speak it in order to shock, to elevate themselves, to bring others down. This is weaponizing truth, a bit like what the serpent did in the garden when he told Eve that if they ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, they wouldn't die. That was a true statement, in a way: Eve and Adam didn't die immediately after eating the fruit. But what the serpent concealed with his artful truth-telling was that because they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve would die, just not right away.

We should always, I think, prayerfully examine our motives before speaking truth to someone else. God, in fact, may sometimes call us to keep our traps shut and keep the misery to ourselves rather than unnecessarily spreading it to others.

This, in fact, maybe what Reuben thought he was doing by not telling his father all those years what had really happened to Joseph. On that then, we might want to give Reuben a pass and spare him our judgment. (This is an example of why I'm so happy not to be God!)

But since Reuben was complicit in so many ways with what happened to Joseph and he failed to do the right thing because he relied on himself rather than on God, it’s hard not to see him as a morally compromised person.

The question that remains, of course: Is God showing me some of myself in Reuben? Is there something in Reuben story indicating that God wants me to see or change my own behaviors?

I have to say yes. Like Reuben, I’m prone to stand down when I should stand up. Like Reuben, I can be fearful of what others might say or think of me rather than heeding God’s will. Like Reuben, I often busy myself with my own plans when I should be consulting with God regarding His plans for me.

Respond: Help me, Lord, in a tangible way, to stand with You today. And help me today to make plans in consultation with you and not with my own heart, mind, or preferences. In Jesus’ name I pray.