"We Have Come to Worship Him"

Some of you are wondering, I am sure, why on January 6^th we continue to sing Christmas carols such as “The First Noel” and “We Three Kings” and why our scripture reading, Matthew 2:1-12, still seems to deal with subjects appropriate to the Christmas season. “Christmas is over,” you say, “time to move on.” Well, “No,” and “Not so fast,” I answer.  According to the traditional calendar of the church Christmas is a season, not a day. It begins on the 25^th of December and ends on the 6^th of January, the twelve days of Christmas made famous by the song.

January 6^th, the last day of the Christmas season, is also known as Epiphany, a Greek word meaning “shining forth” or “revelation”. It celebrates the revelation of Christ as the Son of God come into the world. It has become associated in church tradition with the visit of the wise men from the east to the infant Christ as recounted in our scripture reading this morning, Matthew 2:1-12.

There are at least five truths about Christ and worship that Matthew wants us to see in this story:

Jesus is the Messiah, the king of the Jews and should be honored as such.

Verse 2 announces clearly whom this story is really about: “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” It's about a newborn child destined to be King of the Jews. Now, in itself that would not be a very great thing. Somewhere alive in America today there are probably three or four children or young people under the age of 18 who are going to be President of the United States some day. But nobody really cares about this, or sets out to find them or honor them.

But verse 4 makes clear what the magi really mean by "King of the Jews." It says, “When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he [Herod] asked them where the Messiah was to be born." Herod had been called "king of the Jews" by the Senate in Rome for almost 40 years. But no one called him Messiah. Messiah means the long-awaited God-anointed Ruler, who would overcome all other rule, and bring in the end of history, and establish the kingdom of God and never die or lose his reign.

We don't know how the wise men got their information that there was such a king coming. But it is clear that Herod got the message: these fellows are not searching for a mere, ordinary, human successor to me. They are searching for the final King, to end all kings. And, of course, unlike Anna and Simeon in Luke 2, that is the last thing Herod was looking for. He didn't even know the simple Scriptures about where the Messiah was to be born.

So he asks the scribes, and the one text that they focus on is Micah 5:2,6 "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 shepherd my people Israel." Now that doesn't sound very extraordinary either. The reason is that the only purpose for which the scribes quoted the text was to answer Herod's question: Where? And the answer is Bethlehem.

But what if Herod had asked them, "Who?" They might have read on in Micah 5; “whose origins are from of old, from ancient times (v. 2). . . . He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth” (v. 4). So this king is not just coming into being in the womb of his mother Mary. "His origins are from of old, from ancient times." Or, as John's Gospel says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). And this king would not be limited in his realm to Israel. "His greatness will reach to the ends of the earth."

That's the first truth and this is why worship is on their mind! And it leads us to the second truth in this text about the Messiah.

Jesus is to be worshiped not just by Jews, but by all the nations of the world, as represented by the wise men from the east.

Notice that Matthew does not tell us about the shepherds coming to visit Jesus in the stable. His focus is immediately on foreigners coming from the east to worship Jesus. Verse 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?'"

So Matthew's portrays Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel as a universal Messiah for the nations, not just for Jews. Here the first worshipers are court magicians or astrologers or wise men not from Israel but from the East - perhaps from Babylon. They were gentiles. Unclean. And at the end of Matthew the last words of Jesus are, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations."

This not only opened the door for us gentiles to rejoice in the Messiah, it added proof that he was the Messiah. Because one of the repeated prophecies was that the nations and kings would, in fact, come to him as the ruler of the world. For example, Isaiah 60:3, "Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn." So Matthew adds proof to the messiahship of Jesus and shows that he is messiah - a King, and Promise-Fulfiller - for all the nations, not just Israel. For us, not just Jews.

God uses the universe to make his Son known and worshiped.

A lot of curiosity has been expressed about the star of Bethlehem.  How did this "star" get the magi from the east to Jerusalem? It doesn't say that it led them or went before them. It only says they saw a star in the east (verse 2), and came to Jerusalem. And how did that star go before them in the little five-mile walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem as verse 9 says it did? And how did a star stand "over the place where the Child was"? The answer is: We do not know. There are numerous efforts to explain it in terms of conjunctions of planets or comets or supernovae or miraculous lights. We just don't know. And I don’t believe we should become preoccupied with developing theories that have very little spiritual significance.

In my experience people who get excited about such things as how the star worked and how the Red Sea split and how the manna fell and how Jonah survived the fish and how the moon turns to blood are people who do not seem to get as excited about the great central things of the gospel. They always seem to be taking you down a sidetrack with a new article or new tape or book.

What is plain about the star is that it is doing something that it cannot do on its own: it is guiding magi to the Son of God to worship him. There is only one Person that I can think of who can pull off something like that - God himself. So the lesson is plain: God is guiding foreigners to Christ to worship him. And he is doing it by exerting universal influence and power to get it done. Luke implies that God influenced the entire Roman Empire so that the census comes at the exact time to get a virgin to Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy concerning the birth of her Child. Matthew shows God influencing the stars in the sky to get foreign magi to Bethlehem so that they can worship him.

This is God's design. He did it then. He is still doing it now. His aim is that the nations - all the nations - worship his Son. This is God's will for everybody in your office at work, and in your neighborhood and in your home. So, at the beginning of Matthew we have a "come-see" pattern. But at the end the pattern is "go-tell". The magi came and saw. We are to go and tell. But what is not different is that the purpose of God is the ingathering of the nations to worship his Son. The magnifying of Christ in the worship of all nations is the reason the world exists.

Jesus is troubling to people who do not want to worship him and he brings out opposition for those who do.

This is probably not a main point in the mind of Matthew, but it is inescapable as the story goes on. In this story there are two kinds of people who do not want to worship Jesus, the Messiah. The first kind is the people who simply do nothing about Jesus. He is a nonentity in their lives. This group is represented by the chief priests and scribes. Verse 4: "When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, [Herod] asked them where the Messiah was to be born." Well, they told him, and that was that: back to business as usual. The sheer silence and inactivity of the leaders is overwhelming in view of the magnitude of what was happening. And notice, verse 3 says, "When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him." In other words, the rumor was going around that something big was afoot. The inactivity on the part of chief priests is staggering - why not go with the Magi? They are not interested. They do not want to worship the true God.

The second kind of person who does not want to worship Jesus is the kind who is deeply threatened by him. That is Herod in this story. He is really afraid. So much so that he schemes and lies and then commits mass murder just to get rid of Jesus.

So today these two kinds of opposition will come against Christ and his worshipers -- indifference and hostility. If you are in one of these groups I encourage you to reconsider the Messiah and ponder what it is to worship him.

So let me close with that, the fifth truth in this story. What is worship in this text?

Worshiping Jesus means joyfully ascribing authority and dignity to Christ with sacrificial gifts.

There are four pieces to that definition of worship, and all four are grounded in this text.

First, I see the magi ascribing authority to Christ by calling him "King of the Jews" in verse 2: "Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?"

Second, I see the magi ascribing dignity to him by falling down before him in verse 11: “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him." Bowing down is what you do to say to someone else: you are high and I am low. You have great dignity and I am lowly by comparison.

Third, I see the joy in these ascriptions of authority and dignity in verse 10: "When they saw the star, they were overjoyed." What was this joy about? They were on their way to the Messiah! They were almost there. True worship is not just ascribing authority and dignity to Christ; it is doing this joyfully. It is doing it because you have come to see something about Christ that is so desirable that being near him to ascribe authority and dignity to him personally is overwhelmingly compelling.

And the fourth part of the definition of worship here is that we do our ascribing with sacrificial gifts. Worshiping Jesus means joyfully ascribing authority and dignity to Christ with sacrificial gifts.

Now, we know that God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25). So the gifts of the magi are not given by way of fulfilling a need or making up for any lack. What then do these gifts mean? How are they worship?

The gifts are intensifiers of desire for Christ himself. When you give a gift to Christ like this, it's a way of saying, "The joy that I pursue (verse 10!) is not the hope of getting rich with things from you. I have not come to you for your things, but for yourself. And this desire I now intensify and demonstrate by giving up things, in the hope of enjoying you more, not things. By giving to you what you do not need, and what I might enjoy, I am saying more earnestly and more authentically, 'You are my treasure, not these things.'" I think that's what it means to worship God with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh – or of time, talent, and concern.

And so may God take the truth of this text and waken in us a desire for Christ himself. May we say from the heart, "Lord Jesus you are the Messiah, the King of Israel. All nations will come and bow down before you. God wields the world to see that you are worshiped. Therefore, whatever opposition I may find, I joyfully ascribe authority and dignity to you, and bring my gifts to say that you alone can satisfy my heart."