Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Psalm 1 that we used to sing in this church more often than the newer version we sing, which is from the book of Psalms. We’re singing this old version from the Anglo-Genevan Psalter. So this goes back to the days of the Reformation in Geneva in the 16th century. And you can see, once you learn that song and you kind of move it right ahead, you can see why some of their critics call these the Genevan jigs.

You could dance to this tune once you learn it. Your families sing it. It’s a lot of fun. “How blessed is the man whose walk is not”—you know, at that tempo. We don’t know it that well yet, but we’ll get there. It’s a wonderful tune. And I thought it’d be good to start out the year with Psalm 1, the introduction to the Psalter. I’m going to talk about worship today from Matthew 2:1-12. Got my Epiphany tie on—the wise men going to the light.

We’re kind of stretching out the Christmas season just a bit, 24 hours. You know, the 12 days of Christmas are from Christmas Day to Epiphany, January 6th, a celebration of Epiphany. So we’re still right at the tail end of the Christmas season. And this sermon today will talk on Epiphany and the importance of worship. That’s what’s going on in Matthew 2:1-12.

And Asaph in his altar said that he almost got envious of the wicked until he went to the sanctuary of God, the temple of God, and saw their end. And maybe that when we sing Psalm 1 or recite, and so many Psalms that talk that way in our worship service, we see the end of the wicked and are trained and reinforced not to envy them. And so this is one of the examples of how worship corrects us. How do we avoid envying the wicked? We go to church, and at church we see in Psalm 1 and various other places their end, and so it helps us to avoid envying bad people.

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All right. So let’s turn to Matthew 2:1-12. This is the sermon text—very familiar story, but maybe we don’t quite know it yet in the right way. So let’s stand and we’ll read Matthew 2:1-12 and then we’ll talk about it some.

Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: ‘But you, Bethlehem in the land of Judea, are not the least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young child. And when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also.” When they heard the king, they departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

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Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wonderful Christmas story, so thoughtful, this Epiphany message of the shining forth of the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming. Help us to understand it, Lord God. We want nothing more than to praise your name for your word and the truths in it and to be transformed by the power of your Holy Spirit today. That’s what we want, Lord God. And we know that you’re a good Father. That’s what you’re going to give us in Jesus’ name. We ask these things confidently then. Amen.

Please be seated.

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So a child is born, a star appears, and men worship. That’s the way Matthew’s gospel basically opens up. And this is the way the whole New Testament opens up, right? Because Matthew’s the first book, written probably in the 30s, written before the other gospel accounts. It’s the foundation gospel. And that’s how everything begins: Savior is born, a child is born, the star appears, men worship him.

And at the end of Matthew’s gospel, we have the same basic thing. There is the death of Jesus, of course, but then the Savior-King after he dies—a new day of Sabbath light dawns, the resurrection of Jesus. So we have again rebirth, we could say, resurrection and the light of that first day, the beginning of light on that day after the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath. We have the light in association with that, and then at the end of Matthew’s gospel, men go to that place; they go to be with Jesus ultimately and they worship him.

So presence of Christ—birth and then in resurrection, light and the worship of men. This is what the gospel is all about, and this is really kind of the basic message of Matthew’s gospel, and it’s what we focus on today: the appearance and reappearance of Jesus Christ is related to or precipitated by light, and it results in worship. That’s what this text tells us.

We want to ask ourselves today: What were those Gentiles doing? What was this thing that’s portrayed for us here? We want to talk about that a bit, and why is it that the church celebrates this season of Epiphany, celebration of the coming of the Magi to visit Jesus and worship him with gifts? And what were those gifts all about? What did they prefigure? So we’ll talk about all these things.

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The Epiphany season is frequently a time for preaching on the baptism of Christ or his transfiguration. Epiphany means a revealing, an unveiling. And so in the sense here, that Jesus is revealed to the nations of the world, represented by the wise men that come to worship him.

We at King’s Academy on Friday in Bible class had an Epiphany cake. Angie was good enough to bake it for us the night before, and you put three beans in there. Those three beans represent the wise men. In many cultures, two of those beans are white and one’s black, because tradition has it that one of the three wise men was black. And it’s a good representation of all the nations of the earth coming to worship Jesus.

And in the Epiphany cake, if you want to do this in your house—we did it on the right day, the day before Epiphany, because then the idea is that the people who get the beans in their cake are the ones who are honored as kings or wise people the next day during the feast of Epiphany, on the following day. And then other traditions have developed with this cake.

We had a thimble in the cake to represent the call, on the basis of the coming of Christ, for stewardship and craftsmanship—I guess the better term. Whoever gets the thimble has to create something or make something creatively to demonstrate or to present at next year’s Epiphany. And then there’s a dime in the cake. Whoever gets the dime has to exercise wise stewardship the next Epiphany. Whoever had that piece gets to relate to everybody who’s eating next year’s cake what he did to make that ten cents grow, how he invested it, how it became more.

Stewardship is stressed on the basis of the coming of Jesus. And then there’s a ring in there too. So the bride, represented by the ring, and whoever gets the ring, they’ve got to bake next year’s Epiphany cake. So they show their skills in baking. So domestic sort of truths related to the coming of the Magi to worship the King. All the nations and Gentiles will come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the end result will be simple tasks made glorified and made better.

And that’s taught to us in the context of that Epiphany cake tradition.

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Well, today we want to talk specifically about these guys. What is going on? What’s happening? We want to relate it to our Epiphany. Got my tie on to remind you all day about this coming to the light. And so in the context of this revelation of Jesus to the nations, we have this demonstration here.

Now, the first thing I want to do, according to your outline, is to talk about the postmillennial prefigurements that we see in these verses. I want to correct some stuff. And one of the first things we want to correct—for churches that might want to get into the practice of Epiphany—if you’re going to do that, you’ve got to understand what verses are being fulfilled and the import of those verses.

So, for instance, there was a text from Micah Chapter 5 quoted here in Matthew 2. And here’s the fuller reference: verses 1-5. “Now gather yourself in troops, O daughter of troops. He has laid siege against us. They will strike the judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek. But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time that she who is in labor is given birth. Then the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel, and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord our God, and they shall abide. For now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and this one shall be peace.”

So the context is battle. The context is that the people of God are being attacked. His going forth are from of old, from everlasting. Therefore he shall give them up until the time that she who is in labor gives birth. Then the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel.

Epiphany is a celebration of the coming of Christ being worshiped by the nations as a prefigurement that what’s going to happen before Jesus’s second coming is all the nations of the earth will indeed come and worship him. All those wonderful texts of the Old Testament, including in Micah, says that indeed he shall be great to the ends of the earth.

Again, in Numbers Chapter 24, Micah is the text that tells us about Bethlehem. That’s the text the wise men knew about. That’s the text that Herod and his guys looked to, and that text tells us that Bethlehem, the house of bread—Jesus’s body will be bread for the world, that the whole world will be saved by his coming. He’s a king of kings.

Numbers 24 is related to this Epiphany story. Let me read 24:15-23. You know, the context of this is Balaam and his prophecy. He’s been asked to curse, but he says, “I can’t curse what God wants blessed.” And God overpowers Balaam, so to speak, and he produces his own prophecies about the future. And just before these verses, we have the picture that Israel is going to be like a lion, you know, conquering nations and stuff.

And then in this section, verse 15: “He took up his oracle and said: ‘The utterance of Balaam, the son of Beor, and the utterance of the man whose eyes are opened, the utterance of him who hears the words of God, has the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, who falls down with eyes wide open.’”

Those are wonderful words, are they not, that God wrote for us and put in the mouth of Balaam. What is it? What’s the message of people that know the word of God who are worshiping him with their eyes open, looking expectantly at who it is they’re worshiping?

“What’s going to happen? ‘I see him but not now. I behold him but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel.’ You see, this is—you know, why did the wise men know a star would result in a ruler? Because of this text from Balaam’s prophecy in the book of Numbers.

‘A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel, and batter the brow of Moab, destroy all the sons of Tumult. And Edom shall be a possession. Seir also, his enemy, shall be a possession while Israel does valiantly. Out of Jacob one shall have dominion and destroy the remains of the city.’ And then he looked at Amalek and he took up his oracle and said: ‘Amalek was first among the nations, but shall be last until he perished.’

Then he looked under the Kenites, took up his oracle against them: ‘Firm is your dwelling place, and your nest is set in the rock. Nevertheless, the Kenites shall be burned. How long until Asher carries you away captive?’ Then he took up his oracle and said, ‘Alas, who shall live when God does this?’”

The star is a picture—the Epiphany story with its star and the ruler coming in relationship to it is that ruler will strike all the other nations. Jesus comes not to just sort of save a few people and depart the earth. That’s not the idea. He comes to rule through his people, exercise dominion, to all the ends of the earth are worshiping him. And if they don’t worship, he’ll destroy them.

“Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish when his wrath is kindled but a little.” You see, this is what the story of Epiphany is.

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Isaiah 60, the glory of God draws the wealth of the Gentiles. Isaiah 60, beginning in verse one: “Arise, shine, your light has come. The glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the people. But the Lord will arise over you and his glory will be seen upon you.”

Well, that’s what it was. Jesus came into darkness, decreation. John 1 says: “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. The light shines into the darkness. The darkness can’t comprehend it; it can’t overtake it. The light will create a new creation.” The world had gone into decreation because of sin.

“His glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light, this is what these kings are doing. These magi, rather kings, to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around and see. They all gather together. They come to you. Your sons shall come from afar. Your daughters shall be nursed at your side. And you shall see and become radiant and your heart shall swell with joy, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you. The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you.”

Well, that’s precisely what happens, right? And this little prefigurement in Matthew 2 tells us this is the book end. This sort of thing’s going to happen. This is what history is: the nations coming to Christ bringing their wealth and their tribute to him.

“The multitude of camels shall cover your land. See, and dromedaries of Midian and Ephah, all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and incense. They shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.”

Clearly, this is prefiguring this prefigurement of the greater picture of all this happening, the coming of those Magi. This is why, you know, the stories and the songs are that the wise men were riding camels—because that’s what Isaiah said. Isaiah tells us they’re going to ride camels. Micah says they’re going to go to this Bethlehem—Bethlehem will be the birthplace. Numbers says the star will happen. And here in Isaiah, we have these camels being talked about bringing people with gifts, the wealth of the Gentiles.

They’ll bring gold and incense. Well, those are two of the three things specifically mentioned that the wise men present to Christ in Matthew Chapter 2. They shall proclaim the praises of the Lord. That’s why they’re there. They’re going to worship him. They’re not going to learn much yet from his mouth—he’s probably two years old or a little younger—but they’re going to worship him. You see, they come to the light of Christ to worship him, and they bring tribute as part of that worship.

“All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together to you. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you. They shall ascend with acceptance on my altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory.”

The wise men are ascending to the altar. They’re coming, and as we’ll discuss, they’re kind of like creating a new altar and they ascend to that altar. They worship God. God will glorify the house of my glory. The house of light will become lighter. The Shekinah glory that stood over the place where Jesus was—guiding the wise men the way he guided Israel through the wilderness to his place—that light will grow now to fill the whole world. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can’t stop it.

“Who are these who fly like a cloud and like doves on their wings? Surely the coastlands shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish will come first to bring your sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord your God, to the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you.”

He’s shining. He’s talking about Jesus. He’s glorified Christ. They’re going to bring their gold to him because he is glory. He’s the source of that glory, glorious metal we know as gold.

“The sons of foreigners shall build up your walls.”

The sons of foreigners will build up your walls. This is the way it works. The temple, the tabernacle was built with what? Partly, a lot of it was built. Where did they get the gold and silver in the middle of the wilderness? They brought it from Egypt. Where’d the gold come from? Well, it came from the Egyptians. The Egyptians loaded the Jews as they were leaving Egypt with all their gold, all their precious jewelry and stuff. And that became the temple.

You see, when Solomon builds the temple, who brings the great stuff to build it? Hiram of Tyre, a Gentile. The Gentile Egyptians create or help build the tabernacle furniture itself. Hiram of Tyre brings the articles, much of the material building material, for Solomon’s temple. And then who provides the money and a lot of the goods to rebuild the temple in the time of the restoration? Cyrus, another Gentile, right? He sends back Nehemiah and these guys. And they got—he gives them all kinds of stuff to build the temple with.

Who builds the temple? It’s not the Jew, I mean, from one perspective it’s the Jews, but ultimately each one of these—tabernacle, temple, second temple—they all were funded, underwritten, so to speak, by Gentiles.

So what do we have going on here? Well, this text tells us: “The sons of foreigners shall build up your walls.”

They’re bringing things for the temple, the new temple, the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re bringing gifts to him.

“Your king shall minister to you. In my wrath I struck you, but in my favor I have had mercy on you. Therefore your gates shall be open continually. They shall not be shut day or night, that men may bring to you the wealth of the Gentiles and their kings in procession.”

These pictures of the three kings in procession bring the wealth of the Gentiles to Jesus. Postmillennial, man—all the world’s going to worship Jesus.

“For the nation and kingdom which will not serve you shall perish, and those nations shall be utterly ruined.”

You don’t like judgment? Too bad. Because the Christian gospel, beginning in Matthew, tells us by reference back to all these texts that we live in a time not of decreased judgment but increased judgment. You reject, you know, the prophets—that’s one thing. To reject the Son, that’s quite another. And nations that reject him, work against him—those that will not serve Jesus shall perish. Those nations shall be utterly ruined.

“The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the pine, the box tree together to beautify the place of my sanctuary, temple, sanctuary, dwelling place. And I will make the place of my feet glorious also. The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bowing to you. All those who despise you shall fall prostrate at the soles of your feet. They shall call you the city of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.”

We know in the book of Revelation that was the promise that Jesus gave to the church that was being persecuted by the Jews of the synagogue of Satan. Those that persecute you will actually come to your church services. I’m going to work. I’m going to kill some of them, but I’m going to convert others of them, and they’re going to come to the church and acknowledge Jesus Christ and the church of Jesus Christ as the true place of worship, foretold in Isaiah, worked out in the context of the church as described in the book of Revelation.

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So you know, the first misconception about Epiphany is this cute little story—like the baby Jesus coming, these wise men—that’s kind of a neat deal. We sing, “We three Kings of Orient are,” and we sing these songs, then we sing perversions of them and laugh. But no, this story—the Epiphany story—is one that must be understood going back to what these verses are being fulfilled.

These verses that are being fulfilled tell us that a time of judgment and warfare has come, but it’s a time of great glory. God’s going to glorify the Christian church. He’s going to have a new temple. It’s going to be the church, and the Gentiles will be first in that to build it. And so it’s going to fill the whole world. The wealth of the Gentiles. All the nations of the earth shall eventually be brought to the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Now, getting to the end of my sermon from the beginning: I read a book. No, I didn’t read a book. I heard about a book. Listen to Bob Brinker. You ever listen to Money Talk? There’s a Christian guy, by the way, on 1190 weeknights—Dave Ramsey—that I would encourage you to listen to in terms of finances and stuff. But there’s a guy named Bob Brinker. He’s on the weekends. He’s not Christian, but I heard him interviewing a fella who wrote a new book, just came out, called “Change or Die.”

And you know, he talks about the fact that people—you know, they go to their doctor and the doctor says, “Well, you know, if you don’t change your diet, you’re going to die in six months.” Ninety percent of people don’t change their diet. They’re told, “Change or die,” but it makes no difference.

Why is that? We’ll talk more about it later. But his answer to that—you know, the book is about how do you make people change—as a pastor, this is really significant to me. It’s why I started, my ears perked up. What’s he saying? Does it comport with what the scriptures teach? It’s a frustration to pastors, you know—people can’t change. People are very resistant to change. And if what you’re trying to do to help people change is just tell them the facts, just the facts, forget it.

Because man is not homo sapiens. Man is not man primarily as he thinks intellectually. The facts won’t do it. Man is man as he worships. He’s homo adorans. And his change will take place somehow related to that great truth.

Well, this guy says that there’s three Rs that he suggests in his book, and one of them is reframing the situation. So you reframe the reality of what you’re at. Sort of like in “Crucial Conversations,” you’ve got facts, story you tell yourself about the facts, and then emotions that come from it. And so the facts—if all you do is change them—if your story remains the same, nothing’s going to change in your life. Your interpretation of the facts must be corrected, reframed, so to speak.

Well, see, these texts I’ve just read—to those that you speak to, those that I speak to—the story of Epiphany and the wise men, right? It puts it in a different context. It tells us that the frame around this cute little story is one of judgment and death to people and all the world coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that little light growing in the light to fill the world, new creation coming, all that stuff.

That’s the proper frame to put around our Epiphany celebrations. And that’s, you see, what we’re doing too in the context of worship: reframing you and me. We’re telling ourselves the story as the Bible tells us what reality is. This story we go away in our life, in our particular place in history, and Monday through Saturday we’re told over and over again: things are bad and they’re not going to get any better. We’re headed for dark times.

I mean, most science fictions and movies—that’s what they’re like, right? A little bit of hope at the end, usually dark. And we tend to think that way, right? But we come to worship and we’re reminded that the wicked shall indeed perish. Don’t envy him. We’re reminded that the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ came at Christmas time so that all the wealth of the nations would be brought to it.

And we’re reminded that’s exactly what happened the first year or two—those prophecies started to be fulfilled. And we’re reinforced in reframing what our world is. And it gives us confidence. You see, it gives us optimism—not false optimism. We’re not, you know, shining you on here to use a light metaphor. No, this is reality. This is the Creator of the whole world who tells us this stuff. Believe it. This is who we are.

We’re those who proclaim this gospel. We’re the lightbearers into this world. And we are in the process—and you know, God knows the ways we don’t—but we’re in the process of transforming this world and bringing judgment, death, and destruction to some and bringing salvation to others. And we know that the inevitable result of the work of the church of Jesus Christ is all the world will bring their wealth to worship him.

So it reframes and refocuses it.

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Now I want to do a little bit of the same thing in terms of some other common misconceptions. The timing, as I said—they didn’t go. They weren’t there with the shepherds and with Mary and Joseph. And we don’t know for sure when they were there. It doesn’t tell us when they—after he was born, how long a time happened—but Herod tried to kill all the kids two years old and younger in Bethlehem.

So we can assume that it was closer to two years of age. So a year or two after he was born. And so that’s understanding. And that again puts it in the context of the slaughter of the innocents, the so-called murder of innocent children by Herod. And it reminds us again of the warfare, the two-seed warfare that the coming of Christ kicks off.

But anyway, the timing is different.

Were there three kings? Well, that’s what tradition tells us. It might have been three, but the Bible doesn’t give us a specific number, does it? No, it just says wise men came. Were they kings? Doesn’t call them kings either. Why do we think they were kings? Well, some of those prophecies talk about kings coming, but that doesn’t mean these guys were kings. It does tell us a specific kind of men that they were: wise men, magi.

And if we do our history and learn a little bit, we find out they weren’t kings. They were actually priests. They were kingmakers. They were more priestly in their obligations. And they would anoint kings and they would recognize kings, but they weren’t kings themselves.

So we have an unnumbered group of priests here who are coming. And I mentioned on the outline Zoroastrian godliness. Zoroaster, you know—I know his followers became cultic and believed in duality, you know, two different gods and all that stuff—but Zoroaster himself, if you read his writings, he seems to be tremendously influenced by Judaism and the Old Testament scriptures. And some people think he was actually Orthodox. And what he stressed was a God who dwells in light, in fire—fire, the altar fire, light. And so these descendants, in this part where they came from, the Magi were Zoroastrian in general in their cultural context. And again, they’re worshiping light, aren’t they? They’re coming to the light.

And in this case, they were true Gentile God-fearers. They acknowledge the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ following yonder star.

Well, was it a star? Well, not a star as we think of a star, probably. I mean, you know, people do all this astronomical stuff, and there were things in the sky maybe. So I don’t know. But I know that a star doesn’t move and guide you to some place and then reside right over the place where Jesus is born. Stars don’t do that. They give a generalized light. And so I think, you know, a star—the Hebrew word for star means to blaze forth. And stars are talked about in certain parts of the Bible.

And I think the references I give you here, you know, they talk about Moloch and where Moloch dwells in his star. A star is like the dwelling place of a God, so to speak, and the shining forth of God is from his presence. So the star has to be understood in relationship to the so-called Shekinah glory. Shekinah just means like dwelling place. And so when God inhabited the tabernacle, light—you see the fire goes up to accept the stuff.

God reveals himself in fire from heaven. He’s light. He shines forth out of the tabernacle and then he leads his people—the glory of God, right? A pillar of fire or cloud by night, kind of the same thing. You can sort of see that thing. And so it’s the fire, it’s the light, it’s the dwelling place of God. He dwells in light. And in the Psalms, we’ve sung these songs, you know: “Make your face shine and we are saved.”

Well, God shines forth out of his special place, presence, in the tabernacle, the temple, and then in the corporate worship of the church, and the light of God shines forth from this place. That’s the imagery. And it goes and then burns up certain people, calls other people. And it has this effect. It’s like the presence of God.

When we go out of this place, we take light with us. We’ve got those little flames of fire on our heads, right? Like the apostles on the day of Pentecost—we’re lights. The Bible tells us we’re lights. We’re to be lights shining in the midst of a darkened world, right? And how do we put that light out? We grumble. We complain. “Oh, he’s never going to bring judgment. Oh, the wicked are running everything,” and “Oh, life is tough,” and all this and that and the other thing—parents aren’t fair, my boss won’t do this.

You agree and complain and grumble. “Do all things,” the Bible says, “without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and harmless, sons of God, shining forth as lights in the midst of a dark world.” The presence of Christ is with you. The Holy Spirit indwells you. It, as well as the corporate worship of the church—the Spirit does, and light shines from this place. And the way light gets out there is you take your little candle as you leave. It’s on your head. It’s in your heart. It’s the presence of Christ with you by the Spirit, and you change the world. Then you go out into darkness and you bring recreating light that recasts the world and reframes it and changes it in reality.

So that star—if we think of it just as a little star up there, an interesting astronomical thing going on—we miss the whole picture. That star is the shining forth of the glory of God. And Jesus is the special dwelling place of God. He’s God, the second person of the Trinity. He’s the one, you know, it says in Psalm 19: “Their light has gone out over all the earth. Their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun. Strong man coming forth.”

You see, Jesus is that light that’s going to go from one end of the world to the other. And he’s going to save the world by recreating the world through his light.

So the idea of the star is a little off too, and we want to reframe that and understand that what it speaks about is the special presence of God in the place of convocative worship—tabernacle, temple, and then the church, and then specifically those who go forth from here, whom the Sun of Righteousness has shined upon, and we now carry that light with us as lightbearers.

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And then what about these gifts? What are these Gentiles doing? What were these particular gifts? And we hear the song and the idea is gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And this is supposed to speak to the priestly, kingly, and divine aspects of Christ, right? So gold is like a king, I think, and frankincense is like God, and myrrh is like the priest. And so we have that song: “We Three Kings.” And that’s how we framed this story.

And when we read this story, that’s the story we tell ourselves about this story—that it represents the divine, priestly, godlike nature of Christ. And that’s fine. That’s a good story. It’s a true story. It’s true that Jesus is priest, king, and the second person of the Trinity. But if that’s the only part of this story we tell ourselves, we’re missing it.

I’ve listed some verses here for you. You know, where do we find—we don’t ever want to just sort of say, “Well, yeah, that kind of reminds me of this, and that kind of reminds me of this, and that kind of reminds me of this.” That’s not the way we want to interpret the scriptures. What we want to do first is say: What does the Bible say about the Bible—distinctive to this church? How do we interpret the scriptures? We let the Bible interpret itself. We look for where gold, frankincense, and myrrh come together.

Where do they come together? Do you know? Some of you probably know. Well, one place is in the Song of Songs. There’s this couch, this palanquin, this like chariot. And some versions think Solomon’s riding in it. I happen to think he’s taking the bride up from the wilderness to marry him. He sends forth his chariot and she’s going to come in that chariot up to where Solomon is and going to marry him.

And that’s the Song of Songs—it’s all about marriage. At the middle of the whole thing, he declares that she’s spotless. Well, that’s us, right? We come up out of the bones. Jesus declares we’re spotless. He marries us, sends us forth to do his bidding every Sunday. I mean, he’s done it definitively once, but that’s the frame, that’s the story that God wants us to be reminded of every time we come forth.

He brought us out of the bones. He’s going to send us back there. You want to stay on the Mount of Transfiguration, but no—there’s demonpossessed kids down there. You’ve got work to do. There’s decreation. There’s darkness. You’re light. You’ve been transfigured with Jesus. You’ve got to go change things now ’cause my goal, he says, just have light fill the world—not just this little spot here.

So this is what’s going on. Well, that cart, that palanquin, that chariot—whatever you want to call it—she’s perfumed up with myrrh and frankincense among other things. The Song of Songs tells us the cart has gold in it as well. So you’ve got those three things together right there.

And the other place you’ve got it together is in the tabernacle and temple. The little kids have got a little coloring sheet on the back page. It shows an altar. We don’t know our Bibles too well. There’s two altars in the tabernacle and temple, right? There’s a bronze one and there’s a gold one. The bronze one is where the animals are killed. The ascension offering is given. That’s where the animals are burned up and ascend up to God. And the gold altar—that’s the one that’s in the holy place, right by the holy of holies, so close it almost seems—sometimes the Bible says it’s in that holy of holies. It’s not. It’s right on the edge of it, though. It’s the entrance.

It’s gold. It’s all gold. It’s the altar of incense. And that weird-looking drawing there—I didn’t do it—but that weird-looking drawing is the priest, and on that little pan he’s got there, he’s got incense burning. Part of that incense involves specifically frankincense. So we’ve got incense being placed on the golden altar of incense. So frankincense on gold.

Where’s the myrrh come from? Well, myrrh—and I’ve listed the text here for you. We won’t turn to them, but myrrh was part of the anointing oil. There was a special oil that had to be put together, and the priests and all the tabernacle furnishings and temple furnishings later were anointed with this oil. And the main component is myrrh. Myrrh represents the spirit of God. And this myrrh was part of the anointing. So that golden altar of incense was gold. It was anointed and had myrrh sitting on it from the anointing. They didn’t clean it off. And then frankincense is burned on that.

And that’s the golden altar of incense. That’s what—that’s where those three things come together.

Now Solomon’s couch is a little picture of the temple in traveling form, okay. So where these three elements come together is in the context of the temple of God and specifically the altar of incense.

—

So what are these guys doing? What is it precisely? What were those Gentiles doing? Well, they were doing just like Hiram of Tyre did. They’re doing just like Cyrus did. They’re doing just like the Egyptians did. They’re reconstituting a new temple. The temple, the old temple is done. It’s going to be gone, right? And the new temple, the special dwelling place of God, is now residing with Jesus Christ and those who are in union with Jesus Christ. That’s the new temple.

So you see—yeah, he’s priest, he’s king, he’s divine. But what’s happening here is a transition. The major transition—probably should have talked about this when we preach through Hebrews. Hebrews is all about Melchizedek. Jesus is no longer a Levitical priest that served in that tabernacle and temple. Now Jesus is a Melchizedekian priest. New temple, new law, new priest. Things change, stay the same somewhat, but they change. These are transformations going from glory to glory.

But see, they’re constituting now a new worship at the place of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what they’re doing. That’s what this is all about. That’s the proper story to tell yourself and your children, I think, about this text.

What were those Gentiles doing? Well, they were setting up worship. That’s what they’re doing. And that’s why worship is so emphasized. We want to see the king so we can worship him. And they get there and they see him and they worship him. And Herod says, “Tell me where he’s going to be ’cause I want to worship him, too.”

See, from one sense, their worship involves, calls tribute. We know that the tribute offering—part of the Old Testament sacrificial system—relates to the giving of tithes and offerings. What’s tribute? We go out and do our vocation and we change the world and we dig up some metal and we refine it and we make gold out of it and we bring that labor to God because it’s holy work and we consecrate it to him, and he gives us power to work some more this week and make the world more beautiful. We’re alchemists. We change it from lead to gold. We change darkness to light, so to speak. I mean, we do work.

Every work you do this week is to be presented in tribute to the King of Kings. You’re the Gentiles coming on Epiphany Sunday, bringing the wealth of what God has given you power to create in your worship of the King.

So we’ve got tribute offering going on. We’ve got worship, worship, worship, worship—repeated throughout the text. And we’ve got them constituting the new temple, the new place of worship, the Lord Jesus Christ, with gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

So what’s going on? What now? We know what’s going on. Now that’s the correct story to tell us about—to help us to understand what Epiphany is all about. It’s a wonderful, rich, joyful, optimistic story. But understand as well that it’s a story that begins and ends with worship.

They don’t come, you know, ultimately to do—you know, to read or to hear speaking or to, you know, go do a business. They come to begin the new creation, to begin their new lives in Christ with worship. So you know, the emphasis here is that Epiphany is a reminder that worship is the beginning of everything. It’s central. It’s the beginning and the end. It’s the beginning of your week. And it’s the culmination of your week.

You come before God and worship him and you reframe your world. You remember what really is going on in the world through the proclamation of the word and through the rituals that God has us do in the context.

—

We always come to this supper of victory. We come to a supper that tells us that in spite of whatever difficulties we had with folks this week, community is happening. It’s growing. It’s inevitable. That’s what God is doing at the table. We’re all coming together with joy. We’re all coming together with a sense of optimism and victory, over the Lord of Jesus’s victory over the world. The Lord Jesus Christ reigns. The Gentiles will bring their tribute.

It begins our week with joy, with community. It begins our week—God empowers us to go out and work. And then it ends our week because we then bring back what we did in the form of tribute. The way the Magi brought tribute—and it wraps our whole world up.

We’ve been thinking through King’s Academy: What’s homo adorans? Well, you know, it means that worship informs education and education leads to worship. So worship is very important. We don’t worship what we think would be a great way to worship. We worship the way God tells us to worship. And when we do that, that means our lives will be affected by that frame, by that story that worship tells us week by week.

So every bit of it, including our education, informed by worship and education, produces then fruit in our lives—intellectual and eventually capital, real stuff—you know, wood, metal, neat stuff, computers, lasers, all that stuff. Neat stuff. And all that stuff is empowered by God’s giving us the ability to do it, and it’s brought back into that worship as tribute.

So worship is the model for the rest of our lives. And while our lives culminate back in the worship of God.

—

So it tells us here the importance of convocative worship. This is the first in a series of topical sermons. And we’re going to go over the distinctives of our church. What do we believe and what difference does it make? And our Friday night gettogethers with the youth are going to be focused on these sermons and talking through more application. What does it mean? RCC believes in Calvinism. What does it mean? RCC believes in covenantalism. What does it mean? What? So what? RCC believes in paedobaptism. So what?

That’s what we’re going to be talking about. What are the distinctives of what we believe? And today, what I’m proclaiming is that this great Epiphany story tells us one of our distinctives: that we think worship is preeminent. It’s the beginning and the end. It doesn’t mean the other six days of the week are unimportant. Absolutely the reverse—with worship as the context that takes those other six days of the week and make them wholly work before God. You’re empowered by worship to model to do it, and you bring back your tribute of what you’ve done to God in worship.

It completely frames and gives meaning and significance to your life.

What difference does it make that we begin and end with worship? Well, it makes a lot of difference. It means when you go to work, this isn’t something you’re doing to feed your family ultimately. This isn’t something you’re doing to pass the time till Jesus raptures you. This isn’t something you’re going to do till the whole thing comes blowing apart in the Middle East—atom bombs and this and that and the other thing. You’re not, you know, dogpaddling when you go to work. Man, you’re swimming. You’re doing good laps. You’re doing good stuff. You’re changing the world. You’re being a lightbearer. You’re moving the world ahead. You’re beautifying the world in some way or fashion.

You see, you see—worship—and without, you know, we could kind of get some of that maybe deduced or, you know, from certain parts of the scriptures, but see, worship sets it all up.

So it makes a huge difference. And you know, it makes a difference to God, too. I mean, there are pragmatic benefits to worship.

You know, as I listen to this fella, and then as I read the first chapter of his book—there’s a blog that has his first chapter. It’s going to be one of these another big books in business, the way that “Crucial Conversations” was. A lot of books are written about business. And this guy, by the way—I think his name is Schaefer or something. He’s the same guy that wrote “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,” which is another interesting story.

You know, Steve Jobs created Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak. And then Wozniak retires. Jobs runs the company. They hire a guy named Sculley, I think, from Pepsi to run Apple. He fires Steve Jobs, the guy who made the company. So Jobs goes into his little exile and does his own little company, but eventually he gets brought back to Apple and eventually becomes head of Apple again. And he’s the guy with the iPod and the revival of the Mac—”The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.”

Very interesting story from a business perspective. Well, this guy writes these kind of books. And this book, he talks about—well, how do you make people change? If it’s not facts, what is it? And he focuses on feelings. And to get to right feelings, he reframes issues.

Well, you know, he doesn’t have the Bible, so you know, he’s saying, in other words, what we say when we say that man is homo adorans and not homo sapiens. It’s not the acquisition of knowledge that changes people by itself. No. And he says, well, there’s three things you need to do. One is this reframing thing—and that’s clearly what worship does. We ascend a cerrimo—what’s the importance of that? Does it make any difference that this is what we do? Yeah, it makes a difference because we’re going to heaven to get a heavenly perspective on what we’re doing. We’re reframing our world every Lord’s day.

And when the word is preached, we’re reframing our knowledge of that particular thing. And when we go through the rituals, we’re reframing understanding. We might be discouraged. We come here and we get encouraged because the end is presented to us. “I almost was envious,” Asaph says, “but I went to work. I went to church. Went to corporate worship.”—not worship out in the field by myself, not worship at home, but worship in the context of the convocative host who are trying to format that worship the way God’s word tells us.

That’s why it’s so important to do this. It’s a distinctive. We’re careful about worship. Why? Because it’s going to reframe our lives one way or the other. And if we don’t do it the way God tells us to do it, it’s going to reframe them improperly. It’s going to—if we change, we’re going to change for the worse, not for the better.

So it’s important to get worship right because it reframes our lives.

There’s two other Rs he said that are needed to help people change. You need relationships. You need a support group. You need to get together regularly. In business, he’s talking about, and change. Xerox has these—get together—I don’t remember what they’re called now. These gettogethers that he describes. You need to have relationship. We’re not isolated little BBs again. We’re part of a tribe. You need to have a support group around.

Well, what is worship? It’s the convening of the particular localized body of Christ in this region. And it tells us who our basic support group is. It’s the folks sitting in this church. We’re given relationship at the supper, right? We’re brought back into relationship to one another. And these are the people that are supposed to be supporting us. You look around you—these are people you’re supposed to be supporting. You’re supposed to be helping them out. You see?

So relationship is critical to make people change, to give them, you know, feedback, encouragement, all that stuff. If all you do is come to worship and go home and never see each other again, it hasn’t really worked. This sets up the week. It doesn’t predetermine it. Sets it up properly. Frames it, and it frames your life in community with these particular people. It depends. You know, it makes a difference where you’re worshiping and what they do in terms of community and what kind of reinforcement or not you’ll get during the week.

And then the third R he talked about was repetition. You know, you have to keep learning. But learning doesn’t happen like that. It happens through ritual actions. He talks about mice, rats. They learn to run a maze through a food reward. And then after 100 or 200 times, their brain has changed. And now they can do it really quickly. But they need to do it 100 or 200 times to get it down.

You see, again, we’re not just—it’s not a logical thing that gets us to that cheese at the end. We have to do repeated liturgical—we would say liturgical—actions that help us to change. You see.

So repetition, repeated actions—there’s a liturgy we do the same thing, the same process. You see? And after a while, if we’re thinking about it, and God uses that ritual, that drill that we go through to change us. You see?

So you know, there’s pragmatic reasons for you to make a renewed commitment at the beginning of this new year to the worship, the corporate worship of Reformation Covenant Church. This is your home church. Don’t be late. Don’t be tired. Don’t be drifting off. Don’t sing, you know, kind of mumbling along. Man, this is the place. This is what will change your life if you attend to it properly. It addresses all these aspects of your being.

Man is man as he worships. And as you worship on the Lord’s day, your life will change for the better. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. The Spirit ministers Jesus to you, particularly in the context of worship.

It has been incredibly debilitating for the church of Jesus Christ to promulgate Christianity apart from being tied to a local church. That’s why Peter Leithart wrote that very provocative book “Against Christianity for the Church.” It’s not because he wants power. It’s not—we think the church has magical rituals—but in the church you have just these things that research has found that you need.

You have relationship. You have repetition. You’ve got your world reframed. The church gives you the ability to change in a positive way. So there’s these good benefits of worship, and why we should act this way. They’re pragmatic benefits to this. But you know, there’s an overarching benefit that we don’t have to—we cannot understand—but we are told by God he thinks this is real important.

I mean, you know, people, Democrats and Republicans, look at the same facts and they end up with completely different approaches. Why? Because they’re telling themselves a different story. They’ve got a different frame around those facts. And as I’ve said before—from Micah—some do justice, some love mercy. We’re required to do justice, love mercy. We have Republican, Democratic, sort of swings on or perspectives on things, and walk humbly with God, which begins with worship.

And as we do that, our frame of these issues is completely different than conservatism or liberalism. Ours become a biblical perspective. Nice pragmatic reasons. But the other thing is the blessing of God on a worshiping people or the reverse, the curse of God on a non-worshiping people.

I was amazed when John S. was preaching through Malachi, and I was looking at these verses from Chapter 2. Man, they’re scary. Malachi is a scary book for a pastor. You know, it’s primarily, almost exclusively, aimed at the priests—and you know, which are the pastors today. And he’s telling them: “You know what? You’re going to have dung on your face. That’s what’s going to happen to you. I’m going to smear dung all over your face. You’re going to be—I mean, you know, I’m going to curse you. I’m going to do bad things to you. And not only bad things, people will see this stuff that I’m doing to you. I’m going to bring shame upon you.”

Why? He says: “Now, O priest, this commandment is for you if you will not hear and if you will not take it to heart to give glory to my name.” That’s what they’re not doing is giving glory, weightiness, light to the name of God. And before this in Chapter 1, he’s talking about their inability to do correct things in worship. He’s talking about the kind of worship they’re offering to him. And this becomes the curse.

“I’ll send a curse upon you. I will surely curse your blessings. Yes, I have cursed them already because you did not take it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your descendants. Your very children will be rebuked. Spread refuse or dung on your face, the refuse of your solemn feast, and one will take you away with it.”

If you don’t worship right, I’m going to spread dung on your face, he tells the priests.

So you know, why do we want to worship God and place that preeminent and priority in our lives? There’s pragmatic things that’ll help us to change. It’ll make us feel good because the Bible’s full of joyous proclamations. But the most important thing is God will be happy with our worship. And if we don’t worship him or if we don’t think it’s important how we worship him, and we go to this church or that, and you know, people leave this church or other churches, and you ask me, “What’s the worship?” Well, I don’t know. It’s kind of—sing songs. You know, listen—we don’t work hard at this because, you know, it’s some kind of curiosity to us. We’re trying to please God. And we believe that if we don’t work hard at it, and if we engage in worship that’s not thought through and not the sort of worship God wants, he’s going to spread dung on our faces. You see, we can’t do that.

So it’s important to get worship right because it reframes our lives.

There’s a big concern to me the likeness with which people approach worship. And in Malachi, he says, you know, you’re going to have judgment coming and it’s going to be because you don’t worship me correctly. And then he goes on, and in Malachi 2:17, he talks about them wearing him. And how are they wearing him?

He says: “Well, what you say is, ‘Where’s the God of justice? Where is the God of justice? Where’s the God of justice? Why don’t you take care of the Turks? Why don’t you take care of Islam? Why don’t you take care of those Mormons?’ Why, where is the justice of God? We’ve got, you know, illegal immigrants, you know, doing bad things in our country. Why don’t you do something about this? Where is God’s justice?’”

Well, what does he say? He says, “Christ is going to come. I’ll come as a refiner’s fire, as launderer’s soap. I will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He will purify the sons of Levi, purge them as gold and silver that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.”

The corrective is that God purifies his priests, his pastors, so that they will offer in corporate worship proper things. They’ll do worship right. And that they may offer to the Lord an offering of righteousness, then “the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the Lord as in the days of old. The people’s worship will follow the pastor’s worship.”

If the pastors take the charge, refine themselves, God refines us—he has us do worship better—then the people worship better, okay?

That’s what the text is saying. “It’ll be pleasant as in the former years, and I will come near you in judgment. I’ll be a swift witness against sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers who exploit wage earners, widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien.”

So what he’s saying is when worship is purified, when worship is matured, then he’ll bring the answer to the concerns about where is his judgment. You do this thing and you’ll be accepted. Your people will be accepted. RCC’s worship will be pleasing to me. And I, in response to the worship, God says, will bring judgment against those who are stiff-necked against me.

We’re going to have a service of malediction in two weeks, asking God to bring his particular curses against abortionists and the judges, you know, who allow it and all this stuff. And God says, “Those are good prayers. Why haven’t I answered them yet?” Well, in some ways he has. But why hasn’t he done it more dramatically? Because, you know, it’s a corporate deal. We’re praying for the country. The country needs to get worship purified.

God says when worship is pleasing to him, he’ll bring those judgments to the world. So why should worship be important to us? Because if we don’t do it right, two things are going to happen. We’re going to have crap on our face, and the world will be full of it. Full of it too. Because God’s not going to judge sorcerers, idolators, abortionists, those that don’t like immigrants into our country, you know—he’s not going to judge them.

So those two things—how do we turn that around? Well, Malachi, all the Bible really says that we do that. We turn it around by starting where those wise men started: by coming to worship God, by reforming that worship to purify it according to his word, obeying his word.

His law is primarily aimed at the worship of the church. That’s what we saw in Hebrews when he talked about laws—it was a summation term for all of worship. The laws about worship, the laws of culture follow that. They don’t precede it. So if we don’t place worship primary, we’re going to be disappointed. Our children will be cut off and wander, and our country will continue to wander further and further from God.

But as we mature ourselves, as we follow the wise priests into that new tabernacle, new temple, dwelling place of Christ, and the corporate worship, as we bring him our tribute, as we bow our knees before him and worship him, then things change in the context of our world.

—

And finally, we should worship just because God is wonderful. Forget what happens in the world. Let’s say none of that happens. Let’s say there’s no change in your life. Does he still deserve your worship? Oh, my friends, absolutely!

What a wonderful world he has given to us. It is filled with delights. And what a wonderful God who sent his only begotten Son to die for our sins. Should we worship him? Oh, the one who made the cosmos—and who made another cosmos—done in the little tiny things of life. You know, they have these feasts when the earth goes around the sun, one full rotation. And they’ve got these little quarks, and I don’t remember the numbers now, but they spin in little rotations too. The smallest element they found so far. And they spin like, I don’t know, a trillion times in a billionth of a second.

I mean, incomprehensible in its minuteness of life. God declares his glory, his vastness, his wonder in the smallness of life, and in the magnificence of the cosmos. He declares his wonder and his glory. And in our lives, in families, in relationships, in the world around us, it’s beautiful. Yeah, it’s fallen. There’s a lot of darkness, a lot of evil, but you know, in its essence, we can see the glory of God.

Is he worthy to be worshiped? Amen. He is. We’ve got to start with that.

May the Lord God grant us today, you know, hearts to go to the light, to go to the worship of God. And God says that, you know, as we see that and as we put him first and our thanksgiving to him first and our declaration of his praises fill our mouths first, he’s going to do great things for us. Help us to change, bring judgment to the world, help us to have glory and light, not to have shame upon our heads.

Wonderful, wonderful promises of Epiphany.

Let’s pray. Lord God, bless us as we come forward with our tribute today. Bless us in our work in the week to follow, and bless us, Lord God, to the end that we would bring back more tribute to you tomorrow, next Sunday, of the great things that you, through your power, have done through us lightbearers for you. Help us, Lord God, to be those indeed who bring light into dark places this week. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

—

As with gladness men of old did the guiding star behold,
As with joy they hailed its light, leading onward, beaming bright,
So most gracious God, may we ever more be led to Thee.

And as with joyful steps they sped to that lowly cradle bed,
There to bend the knee before Him whom heaven and earth adore,
So may we with willing feet ever seek Thy mercy seat.

As they offer gifts most rare at that manger rude and bare,
So may we with holy joy, pure and free from sin’s alloy,
All our costliest treasures bring, Christ, to Thee our heavenly King.

Holy Jesus, every day keep us in the narrow way.
And when earthly things are past, bring our ransomed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide, where no clouds Thy glory hide,
In the heavenly country bright, need they no created light.

Thou its Light, its Joy, its crown, Thou its Sun which goes not down.
Therefore ever may we sing, Hallelujah to our King!

—

Our prayer this Lord’s day is based on Psalm 1. Let us pray.