Dennis Tuuri

# EPIPHANY SERMON
## Matthew 2:1-12

Come thronging from afar to thee. We see a representation of that in the sermon text today. Matthew 2:1-12. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Matthew 2:1-12

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 Judah 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.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wonderful story. We thank you for this part of your scriptures that is filled with such hope for us and such joy. We pray now that you would open this text to us. Help us to understand it that it might change us and transform us that we may be lightbearers of the Lord Jesus Christ as we go into this world. In Jesus’ name we ask and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

So a child is born, light appears and people worship. This is how the gospel of Matthew represents the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Matthew ends in much the same way. Jesus is crucified and then he is raised up and light appears. He is raised up at the beginning of the day with the brightness of the coming of the Son. And in response to that, we have the Great Commission. But that happens in the context of worship. So men worship the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today, as the cover of your order of worship shows, as well as the coloring page for the young children, we’re focusing again on Epiphany. Epiphany is January 6th, and it just so happens that this year, January 6 falls on a Sunday. I traditionally do an Epiphany sermon in the context of Epiphany Sunday, but it isn’t always the same day, but today it is. January 6th is Epiphany.

And Epiphany means revelation or the illumination of something or someone. An epiphany—I had an epiphany, a thought appeared to me. And so the epiphany is the light of the Lord Jesus Christ and his birth shining out and attracting men from far away, Gentiles, to come and worship him. So Epiphany Sunday is the Sunday at which we remember that and think about it in the context of the church year.

Epiphany is the 12th day after Christmas. And so the 12 days of Christmas culminate in January 6th. And so this kind of brings the Christmas season to its close. For many of us, at least some of us, that Christmas season is not just 12 days, but kind of a month because we sort of start on December 6th, which is the celebration of St. Nicholas’s life, the benevolent saint who becomes our Santa Claus today, but we remember who he is in some of our homes and some of us do stockings and think about benevolence and how we’re called to be our St. Nicholases in our day and age to be benevolent as well.

And of course, we have Advent that leads up to the celebration of Christmas. But Epiphany is this celebration, the end of the Christmas 12 days of Christmas, the culmination of that and this wonderful story that’s presented to us today.

And what I want to do today is quickly go over some of the details of the story. We’ve done this before and I want to focus at the end of the sermon on how we can be lightbearers as well. In a way, Chris W., who preached last week on bearing light for the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s a perfect introduction to what we’re going to talk about today.

And I’m going to kind of at the end of the sermon draw in another feast day that’s not normally celebrated in Christian circles and that is the celebration of the circumcision of Jesus Christ that of course was 8 days after his birth and it’s at that point that his name is actually given to him so the naming of Christ and his circumcision we’ll kind of talk about that and who we are what’s our identity.

You know, we encouraged this last week and I know that some of you may not think of it this way—that’s okay—but from my perspective, you know, the lightbearing of Epiphany and of the Christian nation that this country used to be and to some extent still is kind of shown in the Iowa caucuses.

I do think that it’s a singular moment that should fill us with a great deal of appreciation for Christianity and the sort of country Christianity produces. The fact that a man who is black could win the Democratic caucus in the state where 87% of the people are white. And some of the younger people in our church may not understand what that means. But for those of us who are older, we understand the problems that exist to fallen men as they have incipient racism both ways, black versus white, white versus black.

And to be able to have a country in which those racial boundaries are overlooked as we select our leader is, I think, whether you agree with the politics of Barack Obama or not, probably most of us don’t, the fact is it is the result of the light of the Lord Jesus Christ bringing to birth a nation that has grown and matured in its elimination of sinful tendencies.

And on the Republican side, Governor Huckabee, again, whether you agree with his particular policies or not, certainly bears light to the Lord Jesus Christ in his victory speech. He said, you know, he used to be a Southern Baptist preacher years ago and then was governor of Arkansas for four terms. But he and his people know how to write good speeches and they have some wonderful themes and I wanted to just mention a few of them.

He talked about how one of the lessons from the Iowa caucuses was that people are more important than the purse. Nice way to put it. He was outspent 10 to 15 to 1 by Mitt Romney and still because of people, not because of his money, he was able to become the victor in that race. As he said in his acceptance speech, it wasn’t about who raised the most money, but who raised the greatest hopes, dreams, and aspirations for our children and their future. Another excellent line, and I’ll be talking about this in a couple of weeks.

We have our anti-abortion day of the Lord service in two weeks from today. And I want to use it of course to pray and we’ll pray about abortionists getting them to stop what they’re doing but we’ll also talk about ourselves and what’s our view for the future and our hopes for the future and Governor Huckabee certainly brought a biblical message of hope for the generations to come in what he said and in his campaign.

And as he said another thing he said was that we are to be more concerned about going up instead of just going to the left or to the right. And this is something phrased in a different way I’ve been saying ever since I’ve been involved in politics. We need a godwing, not a leftwing and a rightwing. The left loves mercy, but they go about it wrong. The right loves justice, do justice, but they kind of go about it wrong with prisons instead of restitution.

And neither party is necessarily all that humble in reference to God. And so I appreciate Mr. Huckabee’s emphasis in that as well.

There are many other things that he said about the future and I’ll talk a little bit more about it in two weeks when we talk about the next generation at RCC and what’s going on and what do we hope and how one of our responses to the lack of hope in the western world—I’ll talk about this in two weeks—is to have hope and to have children as a result of that hope and to believe that the generations to come indeed will be more blessed than this generation because they’ll become more faithful.

So we’ll talk about that in the future but today we want to talk about Epiphany.

Epiphany is on January 6th every year which happens to be Sunday this year. There are 12 days in Christmas and Epiphany is the celebration of the finding, the culmination of those 12 days.

Now to understand what happens here in this story in Matthew correctly, on your outline, I’ve got some Old Testament postmillennial optimistic prefigurements of Matthew 2:1-11. And we’ll go through this stuff quickly, but in Micah 5, this is where Bethlehem is cited as the birthplace of Jesus. It’s pretty sad that the king of the nation didn’t know that. Didn’t know his Bible well enough.

Hopefully one of the things we’re doing at this church is to raise a generation with a far better grasp of scripture than Herod had or didn’t have. But his advisers at least knew that it was the prophet Micah. But Micah’s prophecy wasn’t just about the city. It was in the context of victory. Micah 5 says, “Now gather yourself in troops, oh 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, 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.”

So what we see celebrated in Bethlehem is the ruler in Israel, whose going 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 his God, and they shall abide for now. He shall be great to the ends of the earth, and this one shall be peace.

So here we have those as symbolically at least representing the ends of the earth. So the fulfillment of Micah 5 isn’t just Bethlehem. It’s that the one who is born in Bethlehem will be ruler, king, as the magi knew. But more than that, it means the establishment of a worldwide kingdom. He’ll be great to the ends of the earth.

Another citation that is involved here is how did they know that a star was related to the coming of this one? Well, they knew the prophecy in Numbers 24. Numbers 24 is where Balaam was asked by Balak to curse Israel and he said he couldn’t curse whom God was blessing. And so he blessed instead.

And in verse 17, he says, “I see him, but not now.” This is Balaam speaking prophetically, God overcoming Balaam, having him speak the truth. “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, and batter the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult, and Edom shall be a possession. Seir also, his enemies shall be a possession, while Israel does valiantly. Out of Jacob one shall have dominion and destroy the remnants of the city.”

And then the prophecy goes on to describe the destruction. So the star, you know, that we see at the top of the Christmas tree is reminding us of that star over the house in Bethlehem that the wise men were led to. They knew that light meant the king had come because of Numbers 24. And God wants us to—he plays a few bars of the tune and he expects us to know all the verses.

And the rest of the verses from Micah says He’ll be a ruler and he’ll be great through all the ends of the world. And the rest of the tune from Numbers is that he’s going to conquer all the other nations as has been predicted over and over and over again throughout the Old Testament that Messiah will come and be a conqueror.

And we read responsively from Isaiah. Isaiah is the text that is most directly related to Epiphany, the text from Isaiah 60 that we read responsively because it talks with all the kind of specific details of what actually happened that first Christmas.

In Isaiah 60, we read in verse 2, “But the Lord will rise over you and his glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light and 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, and your daughters shall be nursed to your side. Then you shall see and become radiant.

So they see the light, the Gentiles, they come to it and God says that as a result of that you will become radiant. So the ones that come to Jesus Christ who is the light become radiant lightbearers themselves as they go into the world.

“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. The multitude of camels shall cover your land. The commodities of Midian and Ephah.” And so these men come from the east from the area of Midian. They come on camels. This is why they think they come on camels because of the prophecy from Isaiah 60 of this coming to the light.

“All those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and incense, which are two of the three things that are brought here. They shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.” We’ll talk about that in a minute. But their coming to Jesus is in the context of bringing praises of the singing the praises of the Lord.

“All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together to you. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you. Now listen, they will ascend with acceptance on my altar.” So the Gentiles are coming and they’re ascending with acceptance on God’s altar. We’ll talk about the significance of that in a little bit.

“And I will glorify the house of my glory. So again, Isaiah 60 talks about this. And then it says you’re going to bring your sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord your God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you. The sons of foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you. For in my wrath, I struck you, but in my favor, I have had mercy on you. Therefore, your gates shall be opened continually. They shall not be shut day or night, that men may bring to you the wealth of the Gentiles.”

And so again here, and then in verse 14 also, “To the sons of those who afflicted you shall come bowing to you.”

So these texts from the Old Testament that are related to Epiphany are postmillennial texts. They’re texts of great optimism for the future. They’re texts that describe the coming of a king whose reign would begin and who the characterization of that reign is all the Gentiles coming up to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see that right here with these magi.

Now second point of the outline—Roman numeral 2—correcting other misconceptions about Matthew 2.

First is the timing. We always think of the magi there at the birth of Jesus Christ. And these are two separate events. Some people think that the timing is that Jesus is probably two or close to two because Herod of course kills all the babies there two years and younger. So it’s possible that the magi came quite a bit later.

However, there are also good arguments to be made that the magi came quite quickly after the birth. The biggest argument against that quick coming of the magi is that when 40 days after Jesus is born in accordance to the law they bring him to the temple. Now 8 days after they circumcise and name him. 40 days after he’s born there’s the presentation in the temple because every firstborn—God said is and Jesus is the firstborn here. So they go to do that and there’s an offering that’s prescribed and the type of offering they give is a poor person’s offering and now the magi had made them quite wealthy with gold, frankincense and myrrh.

So they were wealthy people but when they present their offering they present a poor person’s offering. So indications are that it probably wasn’t in those first 40 days.

But another piece of evidence in terms of this that actually would say probably they come right after the presentation of the temple is what we sing frequently at our church at the end of the service—the Nunc Dimittis, the song of Simeon.

So 40 days later they bring Jesus to the temple they present him they do the offering and the Bible tells us that there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon this man was just and devout waiting for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was upon him and it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. So he came by the spirit into the temple.

And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace.” Nunc Dimittis—nunc means now, dimittis depart. Now departing in peace, Lord, you’ve made me. So that’s the Latin version, but the actual text in the Bible in verse 29 of Luke—what is this? Chapter 2. Yeah, Luke Chapter 2, verse 29.

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace. In other words, he’s been waiting to die, but he didn’t want he wouldn’t die until Jesus had come. And now he can depart—die, in other words, in peace.”

“Why? According to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.”

And right after this, he says also that he is going to be for the rising and falling of many in Israel. Well, he’s going to be for the death of Herod or falling of Herod and the rise of more of his kingdom. But anyway, the point is that I think John S. is preaching for the first time at the new work in Menlo Park, California. And he’s preaching on Epiphany as the fulfillment of Simeon’s song.

So Simeon says, “Well, the Gentiles will come to your light.” And right after that probably—so you know, a couple of months—Jesus is a couple of months old, the magi come and the Gentiles come to the light of the rising of his light. And so the timing, it probably wasn’t the birth night with the shepherds when they’re there. It was probably a month and a half, two months later, but we’re not sure when.

“We Three Kings”—I encouraged Jonathan today to have those boys sing that song. It’s a great song, but they’re not really kings. It’s a common misconception. These men were king makers. The magi were a particular class of people from the east that were more priests than kings and they were actually those that would have influence upon who would become kings. So they’re king makers more than they are kings.

They may have been Zoroastrian god-fearers. Zoroaster was a man who had lived much earlier. Zoroastrianism today is a form of dualism. They believe in a god of light and a god of darkness. But Zoroaster himself was probably influenced by the Jewish scriptures. Maybe have been a believer. And these men with their particular devotion to light, the manifestation of light, they may have been Zoroastrians. If they were, they were god-fearers because they’re coming to worship him that was born king of the Jews.

Why do we say three kings? Well, we say three kings. The text doesn’t tell us how many came, how many magi were there, but they brought three gifts. And so tradition has said, well, there’s three kings. They’re not kings, and we don’t know that there are three, but they did bring these gifts.

Additionally, following Yandel Starr, now Diana Brooks has read a book on to CD for me that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to read yet. It’s been a kind of a busy time with Christmas and health concerns, but hopefully by next year I listen to this book. And some people think this was an astronomical event which were quite common in the time—God used astronomical events to portray the rising and falling of rulers. So maybe a star but the way the text describes this star is that it moves and it settles over a house. So it seems like an unusual star.

Seems like a good case could be made that what this is the Shekinah glory of God. The light of God himself that shines out on day one of the creation rather than the reflected lights of day four of creation. This may well be the Shekinah glory of God. And I’ve got a bunch of texts there that talk about the importance of light that God shines forth his Shekinah glory and changes the world.

And I don’t want to get into all that, but the word for star means to blaze forth. And again here, when we read in the Old Testament about God blazing forth, it’s to conquer people. Okay, it’s not, you know, just kind of nice. It has a judgment aspect to it. And in a very real sense, the magi are conquered people by God. Not conquered through death, but conquered through conversion. So they come to worship Christ. The light God blazes forth and they come to that light.

But again, the idea here is that the Old Testament texts about God and light show that God is quite powerful in his light. And what we have again here is another indication of optimistic future that the kingdom begins then—the kingdom that in Daniel’s book will have no end. It continues to grow to fill the whole world.

Gifts. You know, “We Three Kings”—that song portrays the gifts as relating to the three offices of Christ. God is Jesus is divine. He’s also a king and he’s also a priest and offering himself on the cross. And so the life of gathering gloom as the song goes. Well, Jesus is these three things of course and you can look at those kind of associations and it’s legitimate to make those kind of associations but I think that a little more biblical approach reminds us again of what I mentioned earlier that the focus is on worship.

What’s happening here is we’ve got a new priestly order. Jesus the priest not after the order of Melchizedek of Leviticus but after the order of Melchizedek was a type of him he comes now and everything changes the laws of worship change and whenever this big change in Jewish government or Israelite government happens there’s gentile co-sponsors of that okay so if you look at old testament history there’s always some gentiles involved in building the temple for instance Hiram of Tyre and so here what you have are the gentiles bringing three particular items.

And in the scriptures, there’s only two places where these three items are all mentioned together. And one place is in the wedding cart of Solomon. In the Song of Solomon, he brings his bride up in his wedding cart. And in that wedding cart, there are gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It’s a representation of Solomon’s temple because the other place where all these three things come together is in the temple.

They come together at the golden altar of incense. The altar of incense is made out of gold. Myrrh was part of the specific ingredients used to anoint the golden altar of incense like it was everything else in the temple. So it’s part of the anointing oil. So you got myrrh on there. And frankincense is what specifically was burned on that golden altar of incense.

You know, there’s two altars. There’s the bronze altar in the outer court. That’s where the animals are burned and ascension happens. But as you get close to the Holy of Holies, right up next to it is this golden altar of incense representing access to God through prayer. The frankincense, the Bible tells us over and over again, of the prayers of the saints.

So here we have this golden altar of incense representing access kind of the opening into the holy place representing the prayers of the people. And this altar of incense has these three elements brought together. So it appears to me at least that what’s going on here is not evidences of the three offices of Christ. But rather evidences of a new worship establishment.

What’s being done here is the Gentiles once more are cooperating in the building of a new worship facility. We could think of it that way. But of course, the facility, the building part is going away. But it draws this association from the old temple to the true temple which is Jesus Christ. And of course, he identifies in that way throughout the Bible. He identifies, you know, tear down this temple. I’ll raise it up in three days.

So we have a change of law because we have a change of priest. Worship is going to change. We should worship differently in the specifics from the Old Testament because of this—because worship now has changed. And what it tells us is that as the Gentiles approach Jesus, they approach him doing homage and obedience, but they approach him worshiping.

So all those prophecies, “they’ll ascend on my altar with acceptance.” You see, that’s what’s going on in Epiphany. So they’re ascending with acceptance on God’s altar. So the temple and Solomon’s wedding cart are the only two places these things come together.

Myrrh was used to anoint the temple items, including the golden altar of incense, and frankincense was burned on that golden altar. Jesus said that his temple was to be a house of prayer for all the nations. And that’s what we have here. We have the constitution of the golden altar of incense. We could say the prayers of the Gentiles ascending on the altar to do obeisance to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so I think that’s the primary imagery going on here in Matthew Chapter 2. So there’s this constitution of the new temple of the Lord.

If we associate Joseph to this, we see the great reversal has been affected. I won’t look at those references, but there Joseph is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who brings salvation to the Gentiles, to the whole world, right? Genesis ends with Joseph feeding the whole world at Pharaoh’s right hand. And the brothers bring these gifts to Joseph and among the gifts they bring to him are myrrh. So the reversal has happened.

True reign has been established in the world and the coming of Jesus Christ the greater Joseph. So we have this constitution of the new temple as the means by which this reversal—this change in the context of the world is happening.

Well, what’s our response to all of this?

Well, our response, if we understand the significance of the Gentiles ascending the altar with acceptance, I think that our first response to Epiphany Sunday is a renewed commitment to worship.

To worship. So we are like those Gentiles ascending on God’s throne. What do we do in worship? Well, from one perspective, what we do is we create the world of the future. How do we do it? Well, we get together on the Lord’s day and we renew our relationships in the context of the body of Christ. It’s relational. We don’t worship individually. We do that in our homes during the week. But the corporate worship that’s being described, I think, on Epiphany is what we’re talking about here.

And what it is you recognize that your primary worship of God happens in the context of community. You rebuild relationships with one another. You get together and when you get together, you go through a series of ritual actions here that the Lord has given to us. You got this meal and he tells us how to do it. It’s quite simple. Do it every week. It’s a ritual. And based upon that, the church goes through ritual activities.

These relationships aren’t enough to produce the sort of change in us to make us good lightbearing Christians. The relationships are good, but we need practice. We need ritual activities that bind us together in community and help us to achieve change in our lives. And then finally, what this is all about in worship is reorienting ourselves in terms of a heavenly perspective.

The Sursum Corda—lift up your hearts. We come to a heavenly perspective of what the world is like. And so that heavenly perspective shows us that this epiphany thing is quite significant that the king has come. His kingdom will have no end. It’ll manifest itself increasingly. Gentiles will ascend first and foremost in worship to Christ. He’s going to conquer the world through the preaching of the gospel. And we reorient our view then of what’s going on in our world. Okay?

So we have relationships, we’ve got rituals in worship, and we have the reorientation, reframing who we are. And these are elements that allow us then to move into the world tomorrow changed, changed, reorganized together, caring about others.

On the children’s outline, in worship we act as we should toward others and our problem is that apart from the light of Jesus Christ we don’t do that so God says when you come together in worship you kind of act more carefully you treat each other with a little more love and respect honor and glory don’t you. Try to encourage each other in the Lord’s day of particular obedience we live life as it should be to others.

In worship we practice good habits. You may not read your Bible every day. You may not pray every day. But the habit, the habitual reading of the scriptures in the context of the worship and the prayers that you enter into are intended to form habits that will go off into your lives.

This is a new year. This is a new year sermon. And New Year’s, you know, in our country, it’s about resolutions. That’s good. One of the resolutions I made, you can pray for me: going to read the Bible every day. We’re reading the chapter of Proverbs. Praying together, Christine, Charity, and I, and Elijah as he has as he’s around. But the three of us are going to do that. And it’s hard to do it.

You know, I almost missed it last night. I figure Saturday that’s easy. The rest of the week kind of hard. People are busy. Charity one night I had to actually read Proverbs to her over the phone on her way home because I knew she had to get to bed time to get up to school the next day and pray with her over the phone.

And I thought Saturday be easy and I just forgot about it till about midnight. And I’m getting my notes together for the sermon. And lo and behold, here comes my wife. She went to bed 2 hours ago. Can’t sleep. And then lo and behold, minute later, here comes Charity. Well, there we are. So we read the Proverbs and we pray together. So we’ve made it four days, five days—five days, we’ve made it.

I would encourage you that the habits that we engage here in terms of Bible reading and prayer, that these become habits in your life. The way you treat people here in worship—worship see, this is what you should live like in your homes. And then finally, you know, on the children’s outline, in worship we reframe our view of the world.

And let’s not forget that framing. The frame today sends you on a mission to be lightbearers for the Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t forget it.

The reframing that goes on today is you associate with the magi. You’re the Gentiles coming up on the altar of God with acceptance. You’re doing homage to the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re bringing the best of your time and the best of your money and the best of your capacity and labor. You see, you’re the gent who you’re in these magi today and you’re worshiping Christ and you want that to inform the rest of your world.

You want to remind worship is about reminding yourself about who you are. And this is who you are and the text of scripture today reminds us about who we are.

Now I want to move toward one other area of who we are. I want to talk about names. I’m kind of jamming together two sermons here because if I would have preached last week, I would have preached on the circumcision of Christ again and his names.

And names are important. They kind of identify us. So who are we?

First of all, so in the outline, we’re at point sub point two that we want our response to Epiphany Sunday should also be deliberate lightbearing. Remember what those early texts said that we’ll become radiant coming to the light of Jesus. We come to worship. We come to the light of Christ and we become lightbearers then going off into the world.

And we—you’ve heard this couple of weeks now in a row. This should be getting in there into your souls. And I say deliberate lightbearing.

Did you notice the prayer requests are empty today on the announcements? It’s Angie’s fault. She never— No, it isn’t really. I was told to tell her I would make that joke. But I deliberately said, “Let’s not put prayer requests in. Let’s let everybody write in their own prayer requests.”

Those are the four areas on the announcement sheet—are the four areas that we think our vision and purpose as a church exist coming out of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. That’s what it’s about. Worship that drives mission, that drives discipleship, and drives community. So you write in there what you should pray about this week as a family. You’ll probably be more prone to do that this week than just reading the ones that we come up with here.

But I want you to think of one thing particularly: deliberate lightbearing. We’ve talked about the need to engage as sent ones into the communities where God places us with the normal relationships we have as lightbearers for Jesus. Right? I want you to write down a name or two of a neighbor, a friend, an associate, somebody that you would really like to do a better job of being a lightbearer of Christ to that particular person—non-Christian. In other words, pray for that person. Pray for the opportunity to get to know what makes them tick, to be able to communicate with them, dialogue with them. Deliberate lightbearing.

We’ve encouraged you to generally see your relationships for Christ. That’s great. That’s good. But I think that the way tasks are normally accomplished is one thing at a time. And so I’m encouraging you to write in a specific prayer request that you will pray for and look for opportunities to dialogue as a lightbearer for Christ as some person in darkness in one of your normal relationships.

So deliberate lightbearing. We’re Christians, right? We’re to honor our family name. We’re Christians. We’re Christians by baptism. And don’t let that freak you out. There’s nothing magic about the water of baptism. But the word Christ means anointed one. And in the Bible, we’re referred to a couple of times as Christians. And that’s who we are.

Well, what are Christians? They’re anointed ones. Where do you get anointed? You got anointed at your baptism. For a lot of us, that was when we were infants. God doesn’t wait for you. He grabs you. I’m going to talk about Abraham here in a couple of minutes.

God blessed Abraham with knowledge because he knew that Abraham would direct his family. He knew that Abraham would obey him in capturing his children for Yahweh through circumcision. He wouldn’t wait to see what the kids would decide. He didn’t bring them up in a neutral position. He captured his children for the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that’s the model for us.

We’re to see our children as anointed ones, Christians. We’re to apply the anointing of the Lord Jesus Christ through the waters of baptism at the earliest days of their lives and claim them for Jesus Christ and claim them to live in relationship to that name of who they are. They’re Christians. They’re lightbearers. Jesus was the anointed lightbearer. And that’s who we are. We’re Christians, anointed ones.

But there are some other names in the Bible that I want to talk about very briefly as well. You know how we’ve said that in worship the New Testament model of worship what we do in worship is really representing the one offering of Jesus Christ for sin—not presenting it but focusing on that, looking back 2,000 years ago to that one offering.

There’s really only one offering for sin that affected transformation of mankind and those who are chosen in Christ perpetually. But in Leviticus there’s five offerings. Why? Because that one offering—behold the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world through his bloodshed. That one offering, you see, has all kinds of important truths about it that are refracted out in Leviticus to multiple ways.

So Jesus purifies us for worship. He removes even the most rebellious acts of us, the transgression or sin offering. He purifies us. He causes us to be transform by the ascension offering. He causes us to exercise dominion over the world and bring the world back to him in worship. The tribute offering and his offering has affected peace between us and him and each other. The peace offering eaten in community.

So the one offering of Christ is refracted. I think that’s what a prism does to light. Light goes into the prism and different colors are refracted out. Well, the one offering of Jesus is refracted out in Leviticus. And then when Jesus comes with the one offering that will accomplish all these things, we have one focal point of the offering of Jesus Christ that all that is refracted back into it means all these things. So it helps us to understand what Jesus did on the cross.

Well, there’s a sense in which Christians can be refracted into some other names. There are three major names used to describe God’s people before they were called Christians. And it’s interesting in where is this? 2 Corinthians 11.

Now listen. So Paul’s saying he’s got opponents, Jewish opponents, right? So that’s the context of this. But he says, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they imitators of Christ? I speak as a fool. I am more.”

“In labor is more abundant. In stripes above measure in prisons more frequently in death often. From the Jews five times I received 40 stripes minus one.”

So he’s given us the three names here that the Old Testament saints were referred to after Abraham. He’s given us Hebrews, they’re called Israelites, and they’re called Jews. And actually the order in which he presents them—Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews—that’s the order they’re presentation in the Old Testament.

Now the names are a little bit transferable. I mean, there are parts in the Bible where they’re called both Hebrews and Israelites. But for the most part, these three names reflect the name of God’s people through three different people.

Hebrews, first of all, they’re called Hebrews. Well, what does Hebrew come from? It comes from Eber. Eber was a man and his descendants were called Hebrews.

Now the word Eber means to move around and it means somebody from a distance. And one of the descendants of Eber was Abraham. So the sons of Abraham were referred to after a little while in the Old Testament as Hebrews. So when you see Hebrews, it’s relating back to Eber and his most famous descendant Abraham. So children of Abraham are Hebrews.

So that’s one of the names of the Old Testament. The second name is as the covenantal history moved on—are Israelites, right? They were called Israelites. Well, Israelites are those that come from Israel. Israel is the name that Jacob’s name was changed to by God. And so Jacob’s descendants are called Israelites.

The word Hebrew is used in Egypt when they’re in Egypt to describe the Hebrews. It’s kind of interesting. And they’re kind of people from afar, but they’re descendants of Abraham. And then the word Israelite is typically used more in the context of Israel itself, but it’s another name, as Paul tells us, for the people of God.

Now you know you’ve seen your own family lineage maybe and you know you come from this family and that family and your wife’s your mother’s family and your dad’s family and there are these family names and you want your family name to be held in honor. You want your kids to honor the memory of your family names.

Well, that’s what I’m doing here. I’m calling us back to understand who we are as Christians. We’re like Paul. I mean not just like Paul, but a true Jew is one who is one inwardly, right? We’re the true children of Abraham, Hebrews, and we’re those who rule for God, which is what Israel means. So we’re Hebrews, we’re Israelites, we’re Jews, and now we’re called Christians.

But that’s our family tree, you see. And I’m calling you today as a lightbearer to remember your family tree and represent that family tree with a good representation, a good image in the context of your world. And if you do that, here’s the point. If you maintain light through being a good Hebrew, a good Israelite, a good Jew, as a result, a good Christian, a good anointed one, then you’ll be a lightbearer for Christ.

And people will come to your light. They’ll come to Christ’s light through you bringing the light of Jesus Christ to them. And this deliberate lightbearing will have more impact. Now God is sovereign. He can use you whether you’re doing whether you’re acting like a good family member or not. God can use whoever he wants to use. But more often than not, God uses people that are consistent that hold the family name in honor to affect change in the context of the people you live in context in.

So you should be good Hebrews. You should be Israelites, descendants of Abraham, descendants of Jacob. And then the third group—Jews. Jew is a shortened form of Judeans or Judahites. And the Judahites were the southern kingdom, but they’re named after Judah, right? And Judah had a particular calling.

So we’ve got three men, three periods of covenantal history, and these culminate in Christ. And if we’re going to understand who we are as Christians, we should probably understand these other guys.

Well, who were they and what’s important? Well, there’s lots of things about them. Can’t go into all of it, but I want to just touch on a few things.

As Hebrews, we’re descendants. We’re children of Abraham. And the scriptures make that connection quite clear, don’t they? That we’re sons and daughters of Abraham. Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons. You know the song. That’s who we are as Christians.

What was Abraham? Well, he was a man who would command his household. Number one, right? God says, “I’m going to reveal to him what I’m going to do because he’ll command his household.” As Hebrews, we should be those who command our households.

But I think the most important character quality that the New Testament tells us about Abraham is that he was patient. Now we talk about the patience of Job, but in Hebrews, it says that God promised things to Abraham. Abraham believed them and it says he patiently waited for the promise.

Now it’s important because you know Abraham comes along right after the Tower of Babel and another decreation happens like the flood. The Sethites—the good guys—are trying to build this pagan altar, this weird thing, you know, to be like God. And God destroys them all and scatters them. And Abraham’s like Adam. He’s like the beginning of a new world again.

Well, Adam’s sin was primarily impatience. He didn’t want to wait to maturity in order to rule to determine good and evil. Children, you are impatient. You want to do things too quickly. And adults, in our day and age, with the revolt against maturity that our culture has spawned, we are—I know I am—but I know a lot of you are. You’re impatient.

Abraham was patient. Why was he patient? He was patient because he believed God. He believed God even though things didn’t work out. God calls him into Israel. He promises in the land, then he sends him to Egypt because there’s no food in the land. And Abraham’s got to go wandering around. He comes back. I mean, he never really—he does receive the promises, but not really in his lifetime.

But he’s a patient man. Why? Because he has faith. As we’re being lightbearers to our friends and companions at work, let’s be good Hebrews. Let’s be good descendants of Abraham that people can see that our family has got its act together a little bit. And secondly, let us be patient people when things are deferred, when things don’t work out like we want them to do.

You know, patience produces hope in those people that see it. You can be a tremendous lightbearer for the Lord Jesus Christ just by being a patient man or woman in what is otherwise an impatient culture. When we do that, we’re acting as lightbearers, anointed ones who are good Hebrews.

Now Jacob, he was a guy that lived with adversity. In fact, his name was changed to Israel at Peniel. He’s called by God to come back into the promised land. He’s run away from Esau. Esau wanted to kill him. His dad, Isaac, was—until he repented—was a bad guy, preferring the ungodly pagan Esau. So Jacob had to go away.

What does he find there? He finds Laban there. He tries to marry the woman he loves and Laban sneaks in another wife. Behold, it was Leah. That’s good marriage counseling. Your wife is never who you think she is. It’s always Leah. Anyway, that’ll probably get me in trouble. But, you know, we’re never quite what we marriage is like the Spanish Inquisition—nobody’s prepared for it, but it’s a wonderful thing. Fortunately, God doesn’t give us who we want to marry. He gives us somebody that’s really helpful for us.

Anyway, got off the track. Jacob had all these troubles and then he comes back into the land and he’s about ready to go to the promised land. Okay, maybe all the troubles are cleared up. Got to work out that Esau thing as I go across the river. Maybe they’re cleared up. He sends everybody ahead and then he starts to come across and some guy in the middle of the night grabs him and starts wrestling him. And he’s in a death struggle here, right?

And he wrestles all night with this man. Who is this? Is this Laban? Laban kept coming after me. I thought I’d cheated him. Is Laban trying to kill me? Does Laban hire somebody to come beat me up? Is it that Esau who snuck across when I didn’t see him and he’s going to kill me now even though I’ve been away a long time? I thought his anger would subside. Who is this guy wrestling me all night?

Then of course the guy is God. And Jacob wrestles and prevails. Actually, now God touches the socket of his hip to remind Jacob that he didn’t really win. God let him win the way dads will let their kids win at wrestling sometimes to encourage him. But God said, you know, because you have striven correctly, because you’ve done correctly in these troubles, your name will be changed from Jacob to Israel.

Israel—what does it mean? To rule? Be either ruled by Yahweh or you ruled by Elohim or to rule for God and it can mean either one and it means both. The only ones that can rule for God are those who are properly ruled by God. And what Jacob’s life is all about is he recognizes his weakness after God touches his hip and he wins and now he gets to go into the promised land.

The text tells us specifically that the sun is coming up. Okay, he’s wrestled in darkness, but he’s persevered in those relationships and hasn’t sinned against his dad. And we don’t have time to get into why it wasn’t, but he didn’t sin against Esau. Didn’t sin against Laban. He wrestled correctly. And all of his wrestlings and all of his difficulties, God says, “You’re wrestling with me all those times because I’m sovereign.” And because he persevered, God let him be Israel, ruled by him but ruling for him in the land.

And he goes into the future limping. I know what that’s about. You know, limping on my leg. God makes him weak, but he makes him a victor because he’s going into the sunrise and he’s going into the promised land. And indeed, Esau’s going to meet him. And Esau’s going to bring tribute to him. Esau’s going to accept his secondary role. That the only way he can get blessing is through Jacob, but through the greater Jacob, Christ to come. Esau’s restored to him that way.

Abraham’s the reversal of Adam’s patience. Jacob is the reversal of Cain’s hatred of his brother. He killed his brother. Jacob didn’t do that.

Now what’s he got to do with you? Well, don’t kill your brother. But more importantly, persevere. All your troubles and trials and difficulties and struggles, go about them the right way, the godly way, right? You don’t just give up. I’m not calling you to be, you know, just whatever, a fatalist. No, you got to do what’s right. Like Jacob did.

He’s given you the covenantal promises. You got to go into victory. But you can only have victory. You can only rule for God if you’re limping. Maybe not physically, but if you recognize your dependence upon God, and if you go about persevering in the right way, in a godly way.

When we’re patient, we’re good Hebrews. When we command our children, we’re good Hebrews. When we bring them to the waters of baptism, we’re good Hebrews. And when we persevere in troubles, and when we recognize our weakness is really our strength in Christ, then we’re good Israelites.

You see, Judah—what does that mean? Well, Judah the man wasn’t such a great representation of it, but the name Judah comes when his mother—one of Jacob’s maidservants bears him. Or maybe it was Leah. I might be wrong. But in any event, she has Judah and she names him Judah because she thanks the Lord—she said for what he’s done for her. He’s given her a child, a fourth child. And so Judah’s name means praise and it’s directly linked in the text to thanksgiving.

And so it’s praise and thanksgiving. And indeed in Judah’s in the announcement to Judah of his blessings in the Bible it says your brothers will praise you. Now see, you can carry the family name well or you can do it poorly and Judah is a reminder that he carried it poorly and his brothers didn’t praise him at the end. He was a bad guy. I mean, he repented, I’m sure, but he didn’t carry it well. And so the blessing itself became kind of a curse upon him as his brothers didn’t praise him.

But the name means praised and to praise. And so if we’re going to be good Jews, we’re going to be those who praise God and give thanks to God in the context of our lives.

When we live lives in relationship to our neighbors and deliberate lightbearing, patiently, good family people, we persevere in difficulties, trials, and troubles. People see our weakness, but they also see us succeeding because God is in control. And as we praise God and give him thanks in the context of our lives, now we’re Christians. Now we’re anointed ones bearing strong testimony to the light of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So deliberate lightbearing, upholding these family names, being patient, persevering, and praising. If you want to make three P’s out of it, this is who we’re called to be.

God says that the wise men, they came and worshiped Christ and but they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. And so it says they departed another way. Well, we come to worship and we worship the same person they were worshiping. We ascend on the altar with acceptance. We worship Christ. And when we leave here, God wants us to depart another way.

He says that worship is about improving you. To be changed by worship is what worship is about. As we worship God, as we live as we ought to live with each other, as we perform the ritual actions and get trained to read our Bibles and pray and all that and to dedicate our food to him, you know, as we do that, as we reframe our lives, God is sending us out then another way than when we came in—a better way.

Our light gets stronger. We can burn a little brighter. And when we go out from this place today, may we go out another way. May we go out more strengthened, you know, to be patient, to be family people, to be persevering, to be those who are ruled by God, and as a result can then engage in the servant rulership that God calls us to be. And maybe be those people who praise and thank God in the light of our neighbors and our fellow workers.

May that be the context for the discussions, the conversations and the relationships that we have with those that we seek to bring acceptably up on that altar as God has brought us.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for Epiphany. We thank you for this wonderful text of the Magi and how filled with meaning it is. Thank you for our history. Thank you for reminding us today about who we are as Christians—that we’re Hebrews, we’re Israelites, we’re Jews. Help us, Lord God, to be good at each of these things.

Give us, Lord—we know that apart from you, apart from the transforming work of your Holy Spirit, we won’t go out another way. We’ll come out, go out the same way we’ve come in, impatient, not persevering, not thankful, and not praising you in the context of our neighbors. Send us out, Lord God, with those who bear light for Christ through patience, through being good family people, persevering, and praying.

In you in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.