St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church + Benton Harbor, Michigan
Epiphany, 2 January, 2000
Matthew 2:1-12
"Come and see the Epiphany Son, rising out of Bethlehem!"
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.
Let there be light. O, to have seen it when God created light: to have seen that dead and dark universe flooded with bright, glorious light. That would have been something amazing. Light is probably the most essential thing God created for the universe and life in general. Light has a lot amazing qualities: It travels very fast. It completely saturates an open space. It can gently, or violently, wake people out of their sleep.
Keeping these qualities of light in mind, it doesn’t surprise us, then, that God often uses light as an illustration. David called God’s Word a light. Jesus said, “I am the light of the World.” Jesus said that we are lights to the world. That God, his Word, and Christians are called light is very appropriate. Jesus, our light, has woken us up from our spiritual deadness. The light of God’s Word has saturated our entire lives. The light of the Gospel has quickly spread and saturated the whole world so that we can sing:
1) We thank you for your Church unsleeping 2) As over continent and island
While the earth rolls onward into light, Each dawn leads to another day,
Through all the world her watch is keeping The voice of prayer is never silent,
And never rests by day or night. Nor do the praises die away.
Today we are celebrating Epiphany, which means to bring to
light, or reveal. We are about to see
how God revealed His Son as King, God and Savior to Israel and to the whole
world. The interesting thing we will
note in our text is that God’s light of the Gospel had already spread to
distant countries. It also very
interesting that God actually had to use Gentiles to be a light to the
Israelites, and reveal their Savior to them, shortly after Jesus birth. God did this through the magi, because of
Israel’s blindness and complacency.
With the Gentile magi, then, let us come
and see the Epiphany Son rising out of Bethlehem! Follow His Light. Worship Him as our King, God, and Sacrifice.
1) Follow His Light!
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem. Who were the magi? In all honesty, no one can say for sure who they were, how many there were or where they came from. We can guess that the magi were astronomers from the fact that they were looking for a star, and we know that ancient wise men did do a lot of star gazing. There are two good guesses as to who the magi were and where came from. Some think that they came from Babylon, and heard about the coming Savior from when Daniel was chief wise man some 600 years earlier. Thus a tradition of God’s Word would have been constantly passed along the generations, as they waited for the Christ. Babylon was over 500 miles from Bethlehem.
Others think that the magi came from Sheba, because of the
prophecy in Isaiah (which was also our Old Testament lesson for today) which
stated: And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming
the praise of the LORD. Remember, the queen of Sheba visited Solomon some
950 years before Christ’s birth. He
most likely told her about the coming Savior.
She then could have passed it along in her own country. Sheba, by the way, is where present day
Yemen is, about 1500 miles south east of Israel, south of Saudi Arabia.
Another mystery
surrounding the wise men, is that they said, “We saw his (the
Messiah’s) star in the east and have come to worship him.” There really is no clear prophecy in Old
Testament that talks about a star
rising up when the Messiah was born. The
only possible passage might be Balaam’s oracle to Balak, which said: "I
see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of
Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab,
the skulls of all the sons of Sheth. But even here, the star seems to
refer to the Messiah himself, not a physical star. Yet some how, from some where, they heard about a real star that
would tell them of the Savior’s coming.
Generations of magi, whatever nation they represented, were looking forward to the coming of the Savior. They were waiting, perhaps for 100’s of years in eager expectation for the Son of God to come. When they saw the special star in the sky, they were filled with great joy and went immediately to meet their Savior. Great faith pushed them on.
No one expected the magi’s arrival in Jerusalem. Dignitaries such as they didn’t come through so often, especially from so far, unannounced! It was a very big surprise in Jerusalem. The magi actually seemed to cause quite the stir in Jerusalem. You can just imagine this great delegation going around in the streets asking people, “Where is the Messiah? We traveled hundreds of miles to worship the King of the Jews, who was just born. We saw his star. Where is your King?” What a horrible surprise it must have been for the magi that the Messiahs’ own people didn’t know about His birth. You can just imagine the puzzled faces given to the magi, wondering what they were talking about.
When King Herod (an Edomite and, not a Jew, whom the Romans allowed to be king over the Jews) heard of this delegation coming in search of a newly born king, he was terrified. Herod was a very jealous and paranoid tyrant. We could compare him to what we know of Stalin. Herod even had his own sons executed, because he thought that they wanted to steal the throne away from him. Jerusalem was rightly disturbed when Herod was disturbed, because they knew what kind of bloodshed he could cause.
Herod called together the Sanhedrin to explain to him where the Messiah was to be born. Already he was plotting to kill the Messiah, so as to keep this kingdom. The scholars of the Sanhedrin were quick to answer. What is striking is that the members of the Sanhedrin didn’t really seem to care about the report of the magi coming to worship the Messiah. Certainly they knew that they had come to worship the Messiah, but the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin didn’t seem to make an effort to go and see Jesus. They didn’t seem to care.
St. John wrote in the 1st chapter of his Gospel: He (the Messiah) came
to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. How true this
is when we look at today’s account.
Here the long expected Messiah came, the one whom all the prophets
testified about, the one who every Jew was to look for. He came, and his own did not receive
him. How many Jews do we hear of in the
Bible who worshipped baby Jesus at and in the earlier years after
Christmas? The shepherds, Simeon and
Anna. I am sure that there were more,
but NO official delegation of priests, Pharisees, scholars, or leaders came
from the Jews, or even knew that the Savior was born!!! Yet wise men, from a totally different
country, who didn’t have access to the temple and Old Testament Scriptures so
readily as the Jews, came. They waited
for and saw the signs that the Savior had come. They knew, as we will find out later, exactly who this child was
and what he would do. They were led by
God’s light!
When I say that magi
were led by God’s light, I don’t mean the star. The light that led them to the Son raising out of Bethlehem was
the same light that guides us. It is
the light of God’s word. The only
reason they followed the star to Bethlehem, hundreds of miles from there home,
was because of God’s promise connected with that star. Faith in God’s Word motivated them to search
for the Messiah, and God himself led them right to Jesus.
God’s light (His word)
also leads us to Jesus. God’s light has
revealed our filthy sinfulness and shown us our absolute need for
Salvation. God’s light has told us that
the Father loved us so much, He sent his Son into the world to be mocked, spit
upon, hit, beaten, whipped, and pierced for our sins. God’s light has revealed to us who the Savior is: Jesus, and what
he will continue to do for us. Though
there was no special star that guided all of you to church this morning, God’s
light from the true star rising out of Judah (Jesus himself) has led you all
here through faith. Praise God for
this! Praise God that he has rescued
you from that complacency, which blinded the Jews. God has given each of you the same light that guided the wise
men. Come and see the Epiphany Son
rising out of Bethlehem. Follow the
light. Worship him as your King, God
and Sacrifice.
2) Worship Him as your King, God,
and Sacrifice
Our text says that the
wise men came to worship Jesus. The
Greek word translated here as worship, was reserved for the worship of deities
alone. It was never used for normal humans,
no matter it they were kings or emperors.
This shows that the magi understood who this little baby in Bethlehem
was. They knew that he was the one true
God in the Flesh, who had come to save them from their sins.
Not only does the act of worship tell us what the magi knew about Jesus; their gifts also tell a story. Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh are very strange gifts for a child, both then and now. But there was a very special reason why they brought them. . .
Gold is gift for a King. The magi, with this gift, were acknowledging that this little child was their king. Frankincense was a very special ingredient added to offerings burnt at the Temple, and for the oil used to anoint priests. The formula for oil was so special that, according to Old Testament law, the Jews were not allowed to use this formula for themselves, lest they be cut off from their people. This frankincense (as well as their worship) revealed that they saw this child as their true God and sacrifice for sin. Myrrh was a common spice used in burial practices.
The gifts and worship of the magi show that they saw Jesus, as their King, God and perfect Sacrifice for sin. They traveled hundreds of miles just so that they could briefly worship the Christ child. Now that they saw the Messiah, they could go back home rejoicing, knowing that God had come to fulfill his promise to save them from sin.
The Magi knew their sinfulness and need for the Savior. This knowledge kept them from being complacent and caused them to be constantly looking for Christ who would save them from sin. What an example to follow.
Many today, as many of the Jews in Jesus day, don’t realize their need for the Savior. In every man there is this natural inclination to think that we can work out our own salvation; that we aren’t that bad. But, we are “that bad!” God’s Word says that we are dead in sin. Dead! It should go with out saying that dead people can’t save themselves. Only when a person realizes that he is spiritually dead, with no hope whatsoever of saving himself, does he realize his need for a Savior. When that need is realized, he no longer runs away from God’s light, but God’s light grabs hold of him, wakes him up and shows him the Savior, Jesus Christ.
The light from the Epiphany Son, God’s Law and Gospel, raised the magi from their spiritual deadness. God’s light led the magi to their Savior in Bethlehem. God’s light gave them knowledge as to who this baby in Bethlehem was: their God, King and Savior from sin. Does it happen any differently with us than it did with the magi? God’s light: the Law and the Gospel, has woken us up from our spiritual deadness. God’s light has shown us salvation and who our Savior is. Because of God’s light, we know and worship Jesus as our eternal God and King, and our once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins.
With the same light of His Word, God has guided you here this Sunday to worship Jesus. In the same spirit of joy, you sang praises to Jesus, and prayed to him. In same spirit of thankfulness you are about to give your gifts to your King, God and Savior. But in a very special way, in a way that was not yet known to the magi, you are about to physically receive your Savior (body and blood) in the Sacrament. You are about to receive him so that he might dwell in you and assure you that your sins are forgiven.
Oh blessed Epiphany Son,
Whose light has led us here,
We worship and praise you,
Our King and Savior dear.
As we bow before you,
Accept our gifts and praise,
And in our hearts forever,
Shine forth your love and grace.
Isn’t it a wonderful thought that every Sunday God guides us
to Church, as he did the wise men, to worship and acknowledge his Son as our
Savior, King and God! Thanks be to God that he has given us his love and light
to guide and motivate us to worship Him.
May we never loose the light of the Epiphany Son and be complacent as
others have become. God help us in
this. Amen.