Dennis Tuuri

# Epiphany Sunday Sermon – January 6, 2013
## Matthew 2:1-12

Turn this morning on Epiphany Sunday to a prefigurement of the great promises of Isaiah 60, 61, and 66, and of what we just sang. The first fruits of the Gentiles coming to the Savior are found in Matthew chapter 2, beginning at verse one and reading into the middle of the chapter. So please stand for Matthew chapter 2, 1-12.

Arise, shine, for your light has come. 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 saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.

And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this season of light. We thank you for Jesus, the light of the world. And we thank you that you call us to shine as lights in this world. May we be empowered by your Holy Spirit to understand this text, to be transformed by it, that our light might shine forth brightly into the new year that awaits us. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, this is—I guess I could say this every Lord’s day—but this is a wonderful narrative account of, as I said, the first fruits of the Gentiles coming to Christ. It is just packed with significance and meaning, and we can only unpack a little of that today, but it’s a wonderful text. I just love this time of year, and this is the feast of Epiphany. This year, Epiphany, which is January 6th, celebrated by the Western churches on January 6th, is actually the Lord’s day, and so I thought it would be appropriate to preach from this particular text and specifically on this occurrence of Epiphany.

Now, Epiphany just means the manifestation, the revelation. And so it’s part of this threefold cycle of Christmas that we’ve been in the midst of. So there’s anticipation of Jesus, right? And then there’s the arrival, the presentation of Jesus, and then there’s the manifestation of Jesus, which Epiphany represents. And so you’ve got this kind of threefold action going on: waiting, now he comes at Christmas, and then the manifestation of why he’s come—to save the whole world. The manifestation to the Gentiles is described here.

It’s a kind of confusing feast. I was talking to Howard L. before the service, and you know, you sort of get mixed up. Is Epiphany about the magi or is it about the baptism of Jesus? Well, it depends on whether you go to an Eastern church or a Western church. The Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern churches have celebrated Epiphany primarily in relationship to Christ’s baptism, and the Western churches have celebrated it primarily with reference to the coming of the magi. And there’s a third event also that’s thrown into the mix just for good measure: the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus first reveals who he is in terms of doing his first miracle. All these three events—there are miraculous things that happen, and they’re all part of this epiphany, the revelation of who Jesus is. And so they’re all appropriate parts of a celebration of Epiphany.

But we, in the Western church, we focus on the magi, and I like that emphasis because of the three—the explicit manifestation to the Gentiles, showing the salvation of the world.

The greatest, maybe the best postmillennial picturing of what’s going on with the advent of Christ is found in this account of the magi coming to worship Jesus. And so it brings together lots of the themes that come from the Bible and does that in a great way.

Now, some of you know that in reformed circles, people are a little concerned about holy days. The CRC adopted another confessional statement at our last council meeting, which was the Second Helvetic Confession. This is a very popular reformed confession in Europe and the Polish churches, for instance, and other churches. The Second Helvetic is kind of their Westminster—we think of Westminster, they think of Second Helvetic. It’s a great confession. They have, in chapter 24, a section called “On Holy Days, Fasts, and the Choice of Foods.” And the beginning of this says: “If, in Christian liberty, the churches religiously celebrate the memory of the Lord’s nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, and of his ascension into heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, we approve of it highly. We approve of it highly.” And then they warn about—we don’t really approve so much of saints’ days where we’re focusing on individual saints—but we are very big on the celebration in the liturgical season of the church and in the preaching of the word. We’re very big on these celebrations that remind us of the whole movement of Jesus.

And of course, that’s what the church year does. The first half focuses on Jesus. The second half, the work of the church. The first half has two portions to it. You know, the first season: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and then the second season: Lent and Easter, the days after Easter leading up to Pentecost. And so those are the two halves of the first half of the year.

And many churches lately have actually settled on a fourth manifestation of Jesus as the conclusion of the Sundays after Epiphany, just before we move into Lent in six or seven weeks. That would be the feast of the Transfiguration on the mountain. And so that kind of marks the end of this manifestation of Jesus. So this is kind of the place of Epiphany, and it seems like an appropriate thing to do in reformed churches to at least talk about these things, to speak on them, and then to talk about them as well in the context of what we’re doing.

And what I want to do today is to talk a little bit about this particular narrative—what it is the fulfillment of—at least a couple of texts. We can’t talk about all of them. And then we’ll talk about some of the specific details. And I love singing the song “We Three Kings,” but you know, I do a little bit of correction of that song, or maybe fleshing it out a little bit more. And then we’ll talk about some of the important lessons from the text. So that’s the way we’ll move on.

Another very important aspect of Epiphany that I mentioned, at the baptism, is this reality of the coming of light, right? And so light is kind of what the season of Epiphany is all about. And the light shines into the darkness. The narrative in Matthew 2—we didn’t move on to the rest of the story—but Herod then, of course, engages in the so-called slaughter of the innocents, the massacre of the innocents. And so he strikes out at all children ages two and below. And so we see that the light shines in the midst of a very dark season for Israel, ruled over by the king of the Jews, so to speak.

Who sees the coming of Messiah, the Christ, and that’s what his counselors tell him—it’s the Christ that’s come. He sees that as a threat to his own power. And you know, before we just dismiss that, I think that’s in many times and cases that’s our problem as well. We see the claims of the gospel and the implications of the gospel as a threat to our own personal power and control of our lives. So we don’t do so good when bad things happen to us or when difficult things happen. And that’s basically what’s going on with Herod. But in any event, he’s darkness. He’s really dark. And all of Jerusalem is as troubled as Herod is. So it isn’t just Herod—don’t blame the president or the king. The whole royal city is against Jesus from the beginning.

And that’s the way the gospel will end as well, right? I mean, it isn’t really the inhabitants of Jerusalem that are coming in on the triumphal entry. It seems to be those that have followed Jesus when he comes from Galilee through the house of his friends. It seems like it’s people coming from outside of Jerusalem who are singing his hosannas, right? The city itself is pictured as the city that kills the prophets. So there’s darkness.

So the story of Epiphany is this battle of light versus darkness. But it’s not a battle in the sense of being unclear what will happen. John’s gospel says the light has come into the world, and the world didn’t like the light. Men love darkness because their deeds are evil. There’s sin they want to protect. But the light overpowers the darkness. The darkness can’t comprehend it, can’t hold back the advent of light. As surely as our days are getting lighter, so the coming of Jesus means that in this relationship of light and darkness, light is triumphant.

So it’s a great message of hope today in this narrative—and hope, you know, hope not in the normal way we think of it. I mean, I’m kind of getting to the end of the story, but you know, if you think about just what we read just now and then what Herod is doing—all the powers of the nation are in Jerusalem. All the armies, the military might, the intrigues, all that stuff. And over here on this side, in this corner, right, we’ve got a little baby—helpless baby, as Luther has us sing about—in a little town, irrelevant. And he’s going to stay kind of obscure in a way until his manifestation of who he is in terms of miracles. But even there, you know, he’s not accepted. He’s plotted against by the ruling authorities of the nation—not just at the end of his life, but from the very beginning there’s this plot.

And from the very beginning, I think T.S. Eliot has a poem about the coming of the magi, and he says that off in the distance, you know, they see these three crosses. And over here off in the distance, they see six hands dicing for someone’s clothing. So in the story of the coming of the magi, with the representation of Herod, you’ve got this foreshadowing, right?

T.S. Eliot also wrote, “My beginning is my end.” And the beginning of the gospel here shows us what’s going to happen at the end. But just as surely as the Gentiles come as a first fruit, so the result of Christ’s resurrection and ascension will be the salvation of the world, all the nations. And how does Matthew’s gospel end? It ends with what we’ll do at the end of the service today. It ends with the Great Commission—to disciple the nations, the Gentiles, the magi—a small foreshadowing of what Isaiah 60 says: that all the Gentiles will bring their wealth, all the nations will be saved.

So Epiphany is January 6th, the 6th of January. And if you’re counting on it—you use one of your feet as well as your fingers—you count it up. That’s 12 days of Christmas, right? From December 25th to January 6th. And that’s where the idea of the 12 days of Christmas comes from. We’re like those navigators in Dune—rather, we’ve seen these machines on planet X. They’ve forgotten what Roman numerals were. So Roman numeral IX is planet number nine, but they call it Icks. And so we see this stuff and we’ve kind of forgotten what the 12 days of Christmas are, who Santa Claus is, all that stuff. But we’re remembering—our memory is coming back to us.

So the 12 days of Christmas end with Epiphany. And we’ll look at this text from Micah. Micah tells us—the prophet that was read in the text we just read—Micah tells us that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem. And Isaiah is what we read responsively, and it had those wise men coming, riding on camels, bringing gold and frankincense. So Isaiah sort of is this prefigurement, and the story of Matthew 2 is the fulfillment of it.

All right. There’s some other Old Testament fulfillments that are found here. And the first one is, returning back to Micah. So I want to read from Micah chapter 5 and put this statement about Bethlehem in context, okay? I mean, you know, the Old Testament, the New Testament—it does a verse from Micah. It’s like humming a little bit of the tune and expecting you to fill in the whole song. And so what does Micah tell us about what this event is foreshadowing? Well, before we get to the verse about “You, Bethlehem Ephrathah,” this is the verse right before it:

“Now gather yourself in troops, O daughter of troops. He has laid siege against us. They will strike the judge of Israel with the rod on the cheek. But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth for me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. Therefore he shall give them up.”

So the idea of Micah’s prediction is conquest. It’s dominion. It’s destroying the enemies of God. So we see the enemies arrayed in Jerusalem. We see Jesus, and with the reference to Micah chapter 5, what we know is that it’s not just a little town of Bethlehem—a cute romantic song. It’s that the ruler has come who will gather up his people and lead them into victory.

Now it’s a warfare that’s accomplished differently. You know, the magi don’t come with machine guns. They come with gifts to constitute a new worship place. We’ll talk about this in a couple of minutes. And what they do there is worship. And so you have this wonderful picture that the accomplishment, the fulfillment of Micah 5, the victory promised to God’s people in Micah 5, happens not in the overt way that the nations of the world exercise power. No, it comes through the service of God and the service of men. It comes through worship.

Okay. Numbers. Numbers is where we pick up this star imagery. This is the prophecies of Balaam. So this is Numbers 24, verses 15 to 23. And we read this:

“So Balaam 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 and has the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, who falls down with eyes wide open. I see him, but not now. This is Jesus. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall arise out of Israel and shatter 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, the remains of the city.’ And then he looked on Amalek, and he took up his oracle and said, ‘Amalek was first among the nations, but shall be last until he perishes.’”

So, you know, Balaam says it isn’t just a cute romantic story about a star in the sky and that reminds us about Jesus, the little baby born in the little town of Bethlehem. He says the star is a scepter, a ruler who will shatter the brow of Moab. Jesus has come to do warfare against the old creation, to usher in the new creation, right?

When Jesus breathes on the disciples at the end of John’s gospel, showing that they’re a new creation, he tells them to go forth then with that message. They’re sent in the new creation power to get rid of the old creation through the preaching of the gospel and the actions of God that accompany it.

So Epiphany is a season of victory and blessing, a season that marks the beginning of the warfare of Jesus Christ against his opponents. And so this is what he says. I could go on—you can read the references in Numbers for yourself. But the fulfillment in this text is the fulfillment of images of victory and dominion.

And as we said, Isaiah 60—the same thing. We’ll turn to that now. Isaiah 60: the glory of God draws the wealth of the Gentiles. So let me read Isaiah 60. We could go right on into 61, but that’s okay—we won’t. That would take too long. But this is what we just read responsively, and listen to what it says:

“Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations 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 carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and exalt because the abundance of the seas shall be turned to you. The wealth of the nations shall come to you.

“A multitude of camels shall cover you. The young camels of Midian and Ephah—all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.” The gospel is associated with this. The Gentiles bring the gospel to Jerusalem. See, you know, who are the real people of God here? The Gentiles bring the gospel, the good news that the king has been born, and all the nations will be converted. And the people of the capital city of Israel war against it.

“All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you. They shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my house.” The magi are bringing these gifts to beautify the house, the new house. Jesus as the temple—and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But the Gentiles are accepted. They go up on the altar, so to speak. They’re a transformed and ascension offering to God. They bring the stuff—just like the Gentiles, you know, funded the building of the original temple. And just like Cyrus funds, right, the rebuilding of the temple. Now we’ve got Gentiles again funding the building of the new temple, Jesus as the dwelling place of God, Emmanuel, God with us. And the Gentiles are accepted on the altar of God, the new altar that isn’t built with human hands.

“Who are these that fly like a cloud and like doves to their windows? For the coastlands shall hope in me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from afar, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has made you beautiful. 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. Your gates shall be open continually day and night. They shall not be shut, that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations with their kings led in procession.”

The magi led in procession, bringing the wealth of the nations by way of synecdoche—a part standing for the whole—these three wonderful gifts picturing the gifts of the treasures of the Gentiles brought in service and tribute to the Lord Jesus Christ.

“For nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish. Those nations shall be utterly laid waste. The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the pine, and the fir to beautify the place of my sanctuary. And I will make the place of my feet glorious.”

You know, we forget all this stuff. Usually at Christmas time, with Advent, you know, we say “Ransom rescue,” you know, “ransom Israel.” We think of the Old Testament stuff. We think of Isaiah 60, 61, and 66 and Israel mourning in exile. But when we sing Christmas songs, there’s not much left of the Old Testament in them. It seems it becomes these somewhat sentimentalized versions of what’s happening. But when we read these great texts that are fulfilled in the coming of Christ and then the Epiphany, this revelation to the Gentiles, well, we just delight in them hopefully. And it shows us the fullness of what’s happening here.

“The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you.”

You know, these counsel, these magi, are like, you know, court counselors and wise men from Persia. And in the book of Daniel, the wise men of Babylon and Persia work against him. The wise men of Babylon, they can’t figure anything out. The dreams—but now there’s been this transformation. The kingmakers, the counselors, the wise men of the Persians now come. They have wisdom. They’re studying the Bible. Why? Because of Jonah. Jonah, who didn’t understand the full story. Jonah, who came as a single guy, recently vomited forth from a great fish with a simple message, transformed Assyria. And Jonah then was this picture that—and what God told Jonah as he came to understand it—is that the Jews were going to be cast into the world so that those places of worship and study of the word could be set up in these various empires.

And here we see the fruit of that. We see the fruit of Israel cast into exile because now the Gentiles fulfill Isaiah 60. They come because they’ve been studying the word of God. These are gentile God-fearers in all likelihood, believers in Yahweh, believing since the time that the Israelites brought the truth of God’s word to them.

“They afflicted you in the past, but now they come bending low to you. And all who despised you shall bow down at your feet. They shall call you the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.”

We could read on, but you get the point. And did you see the identification of who’s supposed to rise and shine? Zion, the city of the Lord. Who are we? Hebrews says you’ve come today in this worship service to Mount Zion. We’re Zion. We’re the city of the Lord. We’re the people of God. We’re the ones that the light of Jesus has come to. And we’re the ones who are being commanded at the beginning of Isaiah: “Arise and shine, for your light has come.” The source of your lightbearing has come. He’s been revealed. We see it in Matthew 2. And we’re to believe the wonderful fulfillment, the postmillennial victory of the preaching of the gospel of Jesus.

And we’re the ones—you know, we read that text and we always think about Jesus—but we’re the ones who are being commanded to arise and shine. That’s what we’re supposed to do at the conclusion of our worship services: to take this light with us as lightbearers to the world.

So all these wonderful Old Testament texts of the exercise of dominion, the fulfillment of all these wonderful things—but it’s more than just that return from exile stuff. It’s a reversal of the Exodus, isn’t it? I mean, we can see it all here. And if we don’t see it here, we see it in the rest of the story where Jesus, his parents, flee the new Pharaoh who strikes out and kills the new children of the Jews to flee him. They go down to Egypt, right? And so you’ve got this reversal that’s happened, right? Israel has become Egypt, and Egypt is the place of safety now. But this is the great fulfillment of the Exodus narrative.

Okay? It’s the great fulfillment of the exile, of course. And you know where were they exiled to? Well, they were exiled up there to Assyria and Persia. They were exiled over there to the east, right? And so they had to come back from the exile from the east going to the west. When God moves you east, or when you move east, you’re moving by way of imagery away from the presence of God. Remember: Adam in the garden’s on the east, but then Adam is kicked out to the east. And Cain, he goes even further east. And those people that build Babel, they went to the east. When men are fleeing the presence of God, are being kicked away from it, they move east.

Okay? Jonah was east of Nineveh, and God sets up this orientation of direction. When you go east, you’re moving away from the presence of God. And so what’s happening with the Gentiles? Oh, westward ho, man! We’re going west now. They’re coming back from the east. Just like the Jews came back from exile, moving westward back to the promised land, back to paradise. And these Gentiles—they’re moving west now. They’re entering back into garden sort of territory. So it’s like the great, the greater return from exile that’s described. And it’s like Abraham.

Where did Abraham come from? With the destruction of the world, the confusion of the languages, so to speak—not a flood, but the confusion of the languages, Babel—and God splits apart the nations in judgment because they had moved east to challenge him. And he destroys them, right? So they can’t cooperate. He scatters their tongues and peoples. And the very next thing he does is what? He brings a man from the east. He brings Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, and Abraham moves west. And God tells Abraham that in your seed, in your descendants, all the nations of the world will be blessed.

God doesn’t come to judge the world. He comes to save the world. He didn’t come to judge the nations of the world at Babel. Yes, there was that. But the purpose was salvation. He broke them down in judgment and immediately brings the savior, the picture of the savior, Abraham, who’s going to be a blessing to the Gentiles. And in his seed, all the nations will be blessed. The great reversal has happened here. Jesus has come, and men are coming back from their expulsion, back from exile, back—you know, from the place where God had driven them out to. They’re coming back to paradise.

And paradise isn’t Jerusalem. It’s Bethlehem, the city of bread and Africa, the place of wine and fruitfulness. And paradise is found where Jesus is. And so that’s what’s happening here. God is doing this wonderful, huge picture. He mentions “from the east.” And it just becomes a little throwaway line to us. We don’t know. We don’t know our Bibles that well. We don’t know what east means in the Bible. But if you come to it, just think about it a little bit. You know what it means. You know the stories of the Bible. All you got to do is link it together to see the connections and anticipate.

When we get to the gospels, we are reading big stuff happening. We are reading the fulfillment of incredible news of great proportion. This is nothing short of a new creation, right? This is what is going to happen now. And so God tells us all that. And part of the telling of that is just reminding us: these are guys from the east. Okay? The great reversal has occurred. And so this story is one of wonderful blessings.

Now, I don’t know—I have some misconception stuff here. We don’t know when the timing was. You know, it’s too bad we’re not singing the Nunc Dimittis at the end of our service today. “Lord, now let us thy servant depart in peace, why? Because it says ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles.’” That’s what we see, and that’s what was sung in that great song from the book of Luke—that Jesus had come—that we could depart in peace. That was at the presentation of Jesus after 40 days. So because of that, we think probably the arrival of the magi might have been earlier, but probably sometime after 40 days. So it isn’t quite the way we picture it on our cards.

It doesn’t say there are three kings. It actually doesn’t say they’re kings at all. It calls them magi. Magi were kingmakers. Magi were the members of the royal assembly who were like a priestly people that understood wisdom and stuff. And they would actually create the new king where they were from in Persia. They’re kingmakers. They’re not rulers, per se. You could call them rulers or kings. But beyond that, they’re kingmakers. And so it’s kind of insignificant that they come. These are the guys that create the king of Persia, basically. They choose them. They’re like the electoral college, maybe you could think of it as. And what do they do? They crown Jesus, right? He’s our king now. He’s that. And so they’re not quite kings.

And we don’t know there’s three of them. Tradition says three only because they have three gifts. It’s not beyond thinking, not beyond reason to think that they were disciples of Zoroastrianism perhaps originally. Zoroaster was probably contemporary to the time of the exile and return. Apparently Darius or Ahasuerus in the story of Esther was personally discipled by Zoroaster. And when we think of Zoroaster, we think of bad things, and they are bad now. They’re dualistic, pluralist. But originally, evidence is that Zoroaster was taught by Jews and so was actually a gentile God-fearer. And we can’t know that about these guys. But in all likelihood, I think that’s what happened.

So they weren’t necessarily just three men, and they weren’t kings. That’s okay. And there wasn’t exactly a star. It seems like we’re to associate the star with the Shekinah glory of God. I mean, they’re bringing elements for the new temple, which we’ll talk about in just a minute. But their gifts aren’t so much, you know, “king and deity and suffering.” Well, maybe—all that stuff is somewhat true, but there’s other significance to what these particular elements are, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

So the story, the song we just sang, you know, it’s a good start. It’s a good start. But if you teach your kids the song and flesh out the details with a little more biblical thinking on things, I think that would be good.

And the first thing you want to talk about is this constitution of the new temple of the Lord. Where do we find frankincense, myrrh, and gold together? And myrrh, by the way, is not always associated—in fact, not even primarily associated—with death or suffering. I think you can see that in the narrative, right? Myrrh was used at his burial—like it is given to him at his birth. So there’s that element: that the death of Jesus will be his great act as a king, right? The great act of a king or a head of a household has taken the bullet for his wife, right? Self-sacrifice. Of course, it is. And this is what Jesus does. He stands between Satan and beyond that, even the wrath of God, and his bride. He takes that upon himself. So he’s the great activist king. And you can sort of see that in myrrh.

But myrrh is used in a lot of instances of joy as well. And so it isn’t just suffering. But the place where the three of them come together, there’s two places. And one is the temple. The temple is filled with gold. The walls are gold, right? And frankincense is burned on the golden altar of incense. And that golden altar of incense, like everything else in there, had been anointed, as the priests were, with a mixture of things, including myrrh. So it was scented up. It smelled good. It had a scent to it that you couldn’t use, you couldn’t buy at Kmart. It was only for the church service, and it included myrrh.

So on that golden altar representing really the prayers of God’s people and the whole worship of God, all these things come together. And actually, the idea then is if you’re going to build a new temple, you’ve got to have gold. You’ve got to have frankincense because that’s part of the system. And you’ve got to have some myrrh. And so it seems like these gifts are pointing us—you know, not to some kind of abstract symbol, but rather a concrete imagery where they’re constituting a new worship center, a new temple. Jesus is the temple. He’s what the temple pictured. Reality has come now. And that connection is made very right at the beginning of the gospel by these three gifts.

The other place where those three things are all mentioned is in the wedding cart of Solomon in the Song of Songs. And I give you the references on your handout, but you know, Solomon, he wants his wife, he gets his wife, he brings her up out of the wilderness, and he brings her up in this cart. And the wilderness cart—this cart is scented with myrrh, and frankincense is in there, and there’s gold in there. That’s the description. If you look at the wedding cart by which Solomon brings his wife to himself, that’s got these three components.

And so when we talk about the worship of God, we’re talking about the wedding service of God, right? We’re talking about the love of God for you, right? The love of God for you is pictured in the worship service itself. And so we have this wedding feast here at the table as an example.

So those are the two places that we’re supposed to think of if we know our Bibles. Looking at these three gifts from the magi, they’re reconstituting worship. And it’s the sort of worship that is not slavish worship. It’s worship of our king who died for us, who took the bullet for us. It’s worship of our king who loves us enough so much that he would lay down his life for us. It’s that kind of joyful worship that is pictured at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew.

So it’s a wonderful imagery when we see it—not just in terms of abstract symbols that we draw out, but where these things came together in the Old Testament. And I’ve already talked about this great reversal, but there is this reference to Joseph and myrrh in Genesis 37. You know, when they sell Joseph to the Egyptians, we read in verse 25:

“They sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold a company of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.”

So you know, it’s sort of interesting detail: when they’re going to sell Joseph into slavery with this mock execution and stuff, they’re communing over that fact. They’re eating bread over the fact of doing this, and he’s sent off with myrrh. And so that happens, and we can sort of associate that with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Him into a pit. They bring him out, and he’s got myrrh. He’s associated with myrrh.

But then in Genesis 43:11, we read that their father Israel said unto them: “If it must be so now, do this. Take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down there to the man a present—a little balm and a little honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds.”

So this is rejoicing stuff here—feast—and “take double money in your hand and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand. Perchance it was an oversight. Take also your brother and arise, go again to the man.” So now Joseph—you know, he does this trick thing and he puts money in their bags. And he wants them to bring their little brother. And so Jacob is telling him, go ahead and take him. When you take him, take along rejoicing stuff. And part of that rejoicing stuff is myrrh.

So what do we see in this picture of Joseph? We see Jesus—the reversal being portrayed from death and resurrection. He ascends to the right hand of Pharaoh and he rules over the world. And because of that, he’s moved from myrrh at his death, so to speak, to now myrrh rejoicing as ruler of the world. So the great reversal is pictured there. But now it’s come to pass. Now it’s come to pass. All the Old Testament prefigurements of this reversal and the good news to come—these are all now what happens. This is what’s going on. This is why the west—east to west—has been reversed, and we’re now headed back toward rejoicing time by moving from east to west.

The great reversal has occurred. And our response then, well, to begin with, our response should be to worship, right? I mean, if these things are part of the worship center of God, if that’s what the text is talking about, then our response to that wonderful gospel is to come here every Lord’s day to do just what our gentile forefathers did. They went to Jesus. They went to where the new house had been built by the abundance of the gifts of the Gentiles, as Isaiah 60 said it would happen. They go to that house and they rejoice with exceeding great joy and they fall down and worship Jesus. That’s just what we’re supposed to do. That’s what Epiphany is. It’s coming to the light. It’s letting yourself be led by the light of the truth of God’s word to seek out Jesus and to seek him out preeminently the first day of the week in the worship of the church.

And so our response to this wonderful gospel, these great truths—that this constitution of worship around Jesus now (he’s the one who’s the center of it)—this is responded to correctly by us when we come together. And we come together in the new creation. We come together like we’re going back to paradise, like we’re in the heavenly Jerusalem that doesn’t kill the prophets, but now the peace of God flourishes in it. And we treat each other right and we talk to each other. We try to work out things that get in the way of it. And we look good to each other. We try to put on good-looking clothes. We try to be friendly to each other. We try to fellowship together. We have a meal. We enjoy the new creation here. We act like you’re supposed to act in the new creation with love and acceptance and joy and fellowship. That’s what we do. And that’s just exactly what we’re supposed to do in response to the wonderful, incredible news of the season of Epiphany and this particular account of it found in Matthew chapter 2.

Worship is the right response, but it’s not the only response because the text in Isaiah starts by commanding us to arise and shine, for your light has come. Your light has come. You’ve come here today. You said, “I don’t care about challenges to my power. I want to serve Jesus. I don’t want to hold on to my way of doing things like Herod did. I know that’s the way of death and destruction.” And it leads to the actual killing of children. No, I want to submit everything that I am to King Jesus. You’ve come to your light. But God now commands you to arise and shine.

This is the first Sunday of a year in which your elders have decided that the plan of God for us this year is to establish groups that will encourage all of us to intentional lightbearing—that we might arise and shine in a stronger way, in a more intentional way—to bring the light of the truth of God’s word into our neighborhoods and into our cities in a concerted way where we start praying more consistently for that, where we drop our cranky attitudes. And you know, I was thinking the other day, you know, you ought to think of yourself as when you go to, I don’t know if they still have it or not, you go, you used to go to Walmart and these places. They don’t have a big button: “How can I serve you?” That’s intentional lightbearing. That’s what we should think of. We got that on our chest. We’re Christians. We’re taking the light into the world.

Now, do we know that light is going to destroy the darkness? Yes. But it doesn’t mean we go out there and punch people. It means we go out there and serve the gospel. How can we serve you? And one way we can serve you is help you quit beating your wife or quit cheating on your husband or quit doing drugs. And the answer to that, the way you’re going to succeed in breaking old creation habits is to come into new creation life in Jesus, to go worship him at church, to go worship him.

So our response to Epiphany surely should be worship. And we’ve heard that one before. And we know that worship conquers the world. We’ve heard that one before. But it conquers the world because it changes us. It transfigures and transforms us. It gives us more light, more oil, more Holy Spirit so that we might leave this place not just okay, living out our lives till the next time we come together and have a good time—so that we may be intentional lightbearers to the world. We do stuff here. We have parties and good times and stuff. That’s light. And if all we do is close the doors and make our events for us only, no, no. Oh, that’s taking the light on a hill and putting it under a bushel basket.

We want to shine forth into our neighborhoods, into our lives of our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors, the people on our street. We want to be praying specifically for each other. We’re going to be training the community group leaders in contextualizing properly the gospel message. How do you talk to a particular sort of person about it? We’re going to be training people about that. We’re going to be training about what it means really to be missional. Why are we missional? Why are we called to be missional? Because that’s who God is. That’s the nature of God, right? God sent his son. God’s missional. He’s in the process of saving the world. He only scattered them at Babel so that they might be broken down in their pride. And then he’s missional. He sends Abraham to be a light to the Gentiles. And he fulfills that now in this wonderful account.

Two thousand years ago, we are to be intentional lightbearers because God is light. We’re to be intentionally missional and evangelistic because that’s who God is. And if we’re going to be reflections of who God is and deny that, well, forget it.

Is this an apostolic church? Well, you know, how do you determine what’s an apostolic church? What’s a real church? Well, you’ve got to count back the lineage of your pastor. Was he ordained by a guy who was ordained by a guy ordained by a guy ordained by a guy who eventually gets back to the apostles? That’s one way to do it. Some churches do that. But what is an apostle? You know what the word means. Some of you do. An apostle is a sent one. That’s what an apostle is. An apostolic church is a sent church, yeah? It’s gathered in Lord’s day worship, but it’s gathered for the purpose of being sent.

And if we’re not sent into our neighborhoods to talk with our coworkers and our friends, relatives, people on the same block, people we don’t know—if we’re not sent to those people to bear light to them intentionally to reach them for Jesus—then we’re not an apostolic church. And what happens with light? If you refuse to be apostolic, Jesus takes out your lamp, right? You go dark. Well, you’ve already been dark because you don’t shine. But Jesus makes it official, puts the church out of business.

We’re going to be talking about renewal this year and the power of the Holy Spirit and what it means to apply the great truths of Epiphany in our lives. You say, well, you know, we got our problems. We’re not doing that great as a family. We got, you know, bills and we got difficulties. Can’t get along. You know, another story of Matthew chapter 2 is that Israel isn’t doing great. When the truth happens, arrives, and changes the world, right? You remember the story of Naomi in the book of Ruth. Naomi had a husband. She had sons. She had food, and then things went bad, and she goes to a foreign land, a gentile land. And her husband dies and her kids, her two sons die. She’s got nothing except bitterness going on in her life. She’s just a bitter person by now. She thinks God has treated her very difficultly. He has treated her difficultly. It’s real suffering for her. And it is at that very point that Ruth says, “Wherever you go, I will go. Your God will be my God.”

Don’t think that lightbearing means being successful and having a huge church in cathedrals. Rome converted to Christianity more and more when the church was in catacombs, not in cathedrals, okay? Ruth converts when Naomi is in a catacomb, doesn’t represent a cathedral, right? Jacob—the world converts. Pharaoh converts and is blessed by Jacob at the end of the book of Genesis. Not because Jacob says, “Let me give you my testimony. It’s been great. I’ve been wonderful. It’s a wonder.” Jacob says, “Few and troubled are the years of my life.” And in response to that truth, in response to the honest lightbearing of Jacob, that he’s remaining faithful in spite of that, Pharaoh asked to be blessed, the lesser by the greater, right?

I was preparing for this sermon. I went to my doctor on Thursday. I’ve got a health problem that isn’t clearing up, and it still hadn’t cleared up. I got a wound on my leg. I guess I should ask for prayer that I’d be more disciplined. But it’s not getting better yet. And it was discouraging. But then there was another piece of news. The bad news was my wound wasn’t getting better. The other news was my toe was infected too. And I’m like, oh, you know, these all these problems. But then I realized—and as I prepared for this lesson—no, that’s such sin on my part.

We don’t know what God’s plans are. What does he tell us? What did Paul say? You know, that God is glorified when we’re weak. When we’re weak, God is strong. He does these wonderful things, right? His strength is perfected in weakness. In an apostate Judaism at the time of the coming of the Gentiles, in an embittered lady Naomi, in a man whose life was short and troubled in Jacob: why does God do that? Because he wants the glory. If we did it because of our greatness or our abilities, we’re gonna be tempted to boast. But his strength is perfected in weakness. He gets the glory for that.

So, hey, we got a lot of problems at this church, in case you haven’t noticed. We do. Every church has problems. We’re going through a season where we need some revival renewal, I think. But hey, that doesn’t mean we stop. That means we go. That means we’re ready to evangelize. I mean, little bit of irony in that, but that’s the way it works. That’s the way it worked in our text. That’s the way it’s worked in the history of Israel, in the history of God’s people. Paul wasn’t just saying that about his own physical health or whatever was going on. He was giving a summation of the very things that we’ve just mentioned.

This is how God always works. His strength is perfected in our weakness. So we should have great joy. We should have intentionality. We should look for Christ’s Epiphany to us so that we might be his lightbearers as we go into this new year. Are you ready? I’m ready. I can’t wait to get started with the training of the community group leaders and to help them minister training to the rest of the people in this church. I can’t wait to get intentional about doing this missional evangelistic stuff and about serving to have that button on each one of us: “How can I serve you?” I’m ready, and I don’t care about this, that, or other difficulty the Lord puts on me. That’s okay. That means that I’m going to pray more and I’m going to be more dependent upon him, and God will bless us more as we go about doing that work.

Are you ready? I’m ready. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for making us ready—not the way we want it usually, but through trials and tribulations and difficulties. Thank you for the way you prepared the world for the coming of Jesus and his manifestation to the Gentiles. Thank you for the tremendous blessings that this text places before us, as well as showing us the proper response. And Father, I pray that this may be a year in which RCC shines in ways that it never has before. Forgive us for not being more outwardly focused and attempting to find ways and apply ourselves to intentional lightbearing.

And bless us, Lord God, now that you’ve given us an awareness of your scriptures. You’ve empowered us by the Holy Spirit. Bless us as we serve you and our neighbors this year and transform the fallen world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.