Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Matthew 2:1-12 “Intentional Light-bearing”

The sermon text is the fulfillment of what we just read responsively in Isaiah 60. It is found in Matthew 2:1-12. Today is the 11th day of Christmas, the day before Epiphany. And so we’re designating this as Epiphany Sunday in Matthew 2:1-12, of course, is the ultimate verse to read at the Epiphany season. So please stand for the reading of 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 and 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 wondrous text and this wonderful season. Thank you for the wonderful turning point in history that the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ was and is. Bless us, Lord God, so that we might be intentional lightbearers. Bless us, Lord God, that we might understand this text, be transformed by it, and make decisions to go into this year as lightbearers for our savior. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. There’s a tremendous power to song. So we sang at the beginning in the processional this morning, appropriately so, “We Three Kings.” I mean, that’s sort of what we’re doing, right? We’re streaming up to the temple of God to worship him when we come to Lord’s Day worship. So we can see this resonance between us and what we read in today’s text, and I want to talk about that in a couple of minutes in a bit more detail.

But songs have a tremendous power. That particular song written in the 19th century for a Christmas pageant has sort of formed our imaginations, our understanding of this particular text in ways some ways that are appropriate and good, and some ways that are not necessarily all that accurate. But it has power over us. And I’m going to mention some details today that some of you may know, some of you may not know. Many of you have heard these things over the last few years, as long as you’ve been here. But it’s hard for them to stick with us as much as the song that we sing, particularly if we sing it repetitively.

I don’t know if you noticed, but there was a slight change to the confession of sins this morning. We changed the word “assist us” to “empower us” because John accurately pointed out, I think, that the implications of “assist us” is sort of, “we can do it, but we need your help,” as opposed to “empower us,” which means it’s all God’s grace and blessing to us to live in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. Small little words are significant in the rituals that we repeat regularly over time and form us in terms of who we are.

So this song is one that has formed our understanding of this particular text, and I want to make a few corrections to it. And I want to draw out basically the implications of the text today. I’m always intrigued whenever I come to this text, and I preach on it regularly this time of year—not always, but more often than not. I’m always intrigued by that last little phrase, right? “They departed another way.” So they come one way and they leave another way. And it’s talking directionally, right? I mean, they’re warned about Herod.

I almost expected the young children when I read that about Herod saying, “Uh, come tell me where he is ‘cuz I want to worship him too.” It’s almost as if that’s the cue for everybody to boo and hiss because we know what a scoundrel he is. We know that this is a complete lie, that what he does after the wise men depart is to slaughter all the children two and younger in Bethlehem that he can find, trying to kill Jesus.

I mean, it’s such an interesting story and indication of who we are apart from the grace of God. God shows up and we kill him, or we try to kill him. That’s it. That’s what Adam, in the fallen nature of Adam—that’s what we do. We suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. And when he comes incarnate, the way to suppress it is to try to kill him. So Herod does that. So they’re departing another way because they know who Herod is. God tells him in a dream, which is interesting, too.

If you think about Herod, if he had the NSA working for him, probably would have known where Jesus was. Cameras on every block, chips, whatever it is they track from, and maybe all the donkeys had kind of integrated circuits. I mean, today it would be much easier for a ruler to find someone and deal with them and dispatch them quickly. Not so easy for Herod. So it’s sort of frightening to know that the Adamic nature of fallen men, and particularly rulers, is to attack Jesus when they see him threatening them. That includes the church today, of course, if the church troubles the city—which it doesn’t seem to trouble much. But if they did, what can you do to suppress a people whose God speaks to them even in dreams? I don’t think the NSA will get there on that one. Be able to direct people from their dreams.

So it’s a very interesting story. And as a result, they depart another way. And there’s a sense in which, you know, what we try, what the goal and prayer of your pastors are is that we would sort of depart another way every Lord’s Day. I mean, we come in, we’re transformed, we grow and mature in Christ and sanctified, become more sanctified, and we depart another way. Not totally another way, but we depart more mature. Some of you that come here may not have really believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior. And the people that were to be lightbearers to—we expect them after their encounter with Christ and the light of Christ through us—to depart a completely different way, to be totally changed by the transformational power of God through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus.

So this departing another way is kind of a beautiful phrase to think of what the scriptures do to us in the grace of God, and we pray that God would grant us that today.

We have a wonderful illustration up here, right? This is it. This is kind of where, as I said, the 12 days of Christmas, you know, mark the celebration of his birth at Christmas. Twelve days later is Epiphany. Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ to the world. And so the event that sort of tied to in church history is the magi coming. So the whole world, represented by these wise men from the east, come to Christ, and this manifestation of Christ is this light that draws them. And so this is Epiphany. Tomorrow, January 6th, is the actual date of Epiphany for us in the history of the church, the church calendar.

You know, the church calendar moves through the life of Christ. And the next few weeks up to Lent would be Sundays in Epiphany—Sundays in which frequently churches will talk about the gospels, Christ’s manifestation to humanity in his life. But very importantly, is that the church year moves from that, and the presence of Christ through Advent and Christmas and the Epiphany, the Sundays of Epiphany, to the Gospels, to the absence of Christ at the end of the first half of the church year, Pentecost, right? So Ascension first. So Jesus leaves, comes, leaves. What’s the deal? It seems odd. But he’s still here and present through the little lights, right? That’s you and I. We ought to put names on them up there—Dennis, Keegan, Doug—because that’s what it is.

Epiphany is the recognition that the light of God has come in Christ, as pictured in our text today, the fulfillment of Isaiah 60. And then we’re to arise and shine. We’re to be the lights that flow out of that. And so when we come together to the place of worship of Christ, we’re to come to have our fuel fueled up by the Holy Spirit through the worship of Christ so that we can be lightbearers into the world. So this is sort of the message of Epiphany, and our light gets brighter. So we depart a little different way.

And we call people to the light by calling them to become radically different, to enter one way in terms of an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, to be troubled by his presence, and then to submit to him as king and savior and to depart another way. So this is the text.

Now, let’s look at the text and just talk through some of the specific details in it. So if you have your Bibles, Matthew 2:1-2. “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, how long after?” We don’t know. Many people think a couple of years. And so again, the liturgies of our culture tell us that they were there with the shepherds in our nativity scenes, but that’s not what’s going on here. They don’t go to the manger. We read here they went to the house where Jesus was. So this was sometime later.

Okay, and there are various reasons we won’t get into it to think that it might have been as much as two years later. Herod’s killing all the children two and under is an example of that. So the star had appeared at a particular time. Well, in any event, so this is after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the house of bread of Judea, those that praise God. That’s what Judah means.

“In the days of Herod the king.” So the text wants us to see two kings here. We see Herod the king and we see the king of the Jews. Well, who’s the king of the Jews? Herod—what’s he king of? Well, he’s king of the Jews, being appointed so by the Roman government. Herod is not actually Jewish. He’s an Edomite, the enemies of the Jews. But he’s king. Okay? So it wants us to know that it’s setting us up for that. When we, as those that bring the light of Christ, go to our cities, we will encounter people that consider themselves kings or rulers of various dominions and areas in the city, in our towns, in the country. And so when they rule autonomously, we see them in relationship to Herod, or we should based on this text.

So Herod is a king. “Behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.” So one of the huge, you know, these Christmas narratives, these stories, they’re so beautiful. They’re so rich. They’re the culmination of so many events that it’s really hard to plumb—it’s impossible to plumb—the depths of them. But they’re coming from the east. Why is that important?

Well, in the Bible, you know, when people get moved away from God, they go to the east, right? When Adam is kicked out of the garden, he’s sent east of Eden, out there. And when people come back to God, back to the garden, geographically, the movement is east to west. And so, you know, Abraham, for instance, comes out of the east, and he heads west. But he’s from the east. So he’s moving toward the presence of God. You know, the new Adam will come back to the presence of God. Abraham’s a picture of that, the new humanity.

When Joshua, you know, in the time of Joshua, when they reenter the land, even though they’re down there sort of to the south, they come up north. But then in the providence of God, they have to bend around in terms of the geography. So they actually come into the promised land, God’s people do, from the east again. They’re headed west because God wants us to think directionally that way—that this is a movement back to God. It sets up the symbolism, the typology, telling us that the reversal of the fall in the garden will be a movement from the east to the west. Okay?

Israel, when they go into exile, where do they go? They go to the east. God sets it up so that they got to come back from exile, you know, from the east going back to the west. From the east to the west is movement toward God. And so what we have here with a recognition that these wise men are coming from the east is we have wonderfully presented in this narrative the great reversal that has been effected, that we sang about the Magnificat the last week, that we see in Jesus—that great reversal, the renewal of humanity, the new Adam, you know, has come—and men will worship him, and by worshiping him they’re brought back into the presence of God.

So when you come to church, you’re always sort of headed east or west rather. That’s kind of so that’s the way God has set it up. So these guys are from the east. And so it’s a great picture of the tremendous events that are happening now because of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The world has waited 4,000 years for the reversal of the fall. And now in Jesus, that has happened. And everything is new. Humanity is new. And all that should come to our mind as we read about these wise men coming from the east.

By the way, they’re wise men. They’re not kings. “We three kings of Orient”—Orient is the east. That part’s right. But they’re not kings. And it doesn’t actually tell us how many wise men there are either. The wise men were king makers. They weren’t kings. They had influence. They were kind of more like priests, you could say, but they were, you know, wise people that would understand things, and they would actually be king makers—the power behind the throne, so to speak.

And when we read of these wise men, we think of Daniel, right? Daniel. There were wise men in Babylon where he was taken captive. And the wise men weren’t so wise. Remember, they couldn’t figure out the dream or the handwriting. Daniel could. And now the wise men, and again, in a picture of reversal, are coming to the source of all wisdom in Jesus. Now we don’t know what was going on in their heads, but the scriptures draw this narrative for us. And they want us to read this text and say, “Praise the Lord. Wow. Humanity gets to come back from the east now because of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.” And we get to submit our wisdom to the King of Kings.

And so that’s what the text is sort of telling us here. “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” they ask. So they declare to Herod rather that there’s been the birth of the king of the Jews. “For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

So “star in the east,” what is that all about? Well, this was prefigured in Isaiah 60 that we just read responsively—”Arise and shine for your light has come.” And more explicitly, the star is declared in the prophecies of Balaam. You know, Balaam was the guy hired by Balak in the book of Numbers chapter 24 to curse God’s people, but he couldn’t. And in the fourth prophecy, I think, of Balaam, he speaks of the coming of Jesus. He says this: “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.” So the star is connected to rule.

Now, if we know our body, our Bibles, we know that fourth day, sun, moon, and stars—He makes some clocks and rulers, right? To rule the day and rule the night. And rulers are always indicated by astronomical symbols, stars, suns, etc. And explicitly it said that “a scepter shall arise out of Israel, and he will batter the brow of Moab and destroy all the sons of Tumult, and Edom shall be a possession. Seir also, the enemies, shall be a possession.”

So this is a reference, this star, to the fulfillment of the prophecy of Micah. And it’s a prophecy that means a lot more than just a cute little thing on a Christmas card, right? It’s a prophecy that says when the star rises, when Jesus, who is the bright morning star, when he comes, he’s not just a star, he’s a scepter. We got a double witness to his being the ruler. And not only that, but he will beat the brow of Moab and he will bring Edom to submission.

And now we’re saying all this stuff is being said to an Edomite king who thinks himself, or portrays himself, as the king of the Jews. So he’s got an opponent to what he sees himself as the great ruler. And if he understands the prophecies, and he might have or he was probably advised by the wise men that he calls to figure things out, then he knows probably a lot more than we do what that star in the east, or the star rather, that draws them in from the east means. It means the end of him. It means the end of autonomous rule. It means the end of trying to do things in autonomy apart from submission to Jesus. That’s what it means.

His only response is to try to kill the light, to extinguish it. Of course, he can’t. But that’s what it means. So when we read about, you know, when we see the beautiful imagery and stuff, understand that the star is a ruler. These wise men knew this prophecy. So they knew that the star meant that this king of the Jews was now born. He was now arrived, finally, after all these centuries of waiting. And they knew that things would change, that the king of the Jews would batter the brow of Moab and bring the Edomites and the rest of the nations into submission. They understood that.

And so these guys come, and they their response is they want to worship him. Now, we don’t know what that means exactly. The word just means to bow down to. It could mean they were worshiping him as they would any king of any nation. But it seems if they knew the prophecy enough to know that he had come, then I think worship is fuller here. I think it means the submission of their knowledge and understanding of the world and their kingmaking ability is submitted now to Jesus. I think it means that. Maybe it doesn’t. We don’t know. It could be, as D.A. Carson says, that the wise men worshiped better than they knew.

And it could be that there are people here. It could be that all of us at different times worship better than we know. We come and worship God. But do we worship with a full appreciation of who he is and what he’s doing in the world? I think a lot of times we don’t. A lot of times, you know, in our culture, you know, Jesus is this nice addition to our lives, and we submit some of our—oh, we’ll give them a day a week. Most people won’t do that. We’ll give them 10% of our money. Most people don’t do that. But do we recognize that the day stands for all of our time? And do we recognize that the tithe stands for all of our money being used for the purposes of Christ in his kingdom?

You know, we fall short. Now, God is gracious. But you know, that’s what’s going on here. I think that they understood more than just that this is another king. They knew the prophecy. They knew that Micah didn’t just say a king of the Jews was coming. It was a king of the Jews who would bring all nations into submission. So “when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.”

Now this is fascinating to me. There’s another verse. Just a second. Yeah. So now, if all we had was this text, maybe I couldn’t say the things I’m going to say. But we also have Acts 17. Pretty familiar with that text ‘cuz I named one of my sons after this guy, Jason. And Jason, you know, has been harboring the apostles of Christ. And we read the account of him, that we read in Acts 17:7: “Jason has harbored them. And these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king, Jesus.” And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things.

Another city, another crowd, another ruler troubled. Now I think the implications of this is that the evangelistic efforts of the church, the lightbearing mission that we’re set on from God as we leave this place, is supposed to trouble the city. I don’t think, you know, the current model that we’re just supposed to be, you know, kind of getting with the city’s program and beautifying their buildings or cleaning up their schools—okay, great. I understand service, you know. But my question is, is the emergence of the church in the cities, towns, and villages of America, is it troubling anybody? Doesn’t seem to be.

Got the ex-mayor of Portland, you know, on tour with one of the big city transformation. It didn’t seem to trouble him. Okay. He given assurances that, well, we’re not going to be overt with the gospel when we do this stuff in the schools. Now, you know, people are trying to do the right thing. I’m not trying to put people down. There are things that we do that are that don’t hit the mark or maybe they hit the mark partially. I’m just saying that based upon this narrative, I think the appearance of Jesus Christ through his people, through the lights that stream from him, is supposed to trouble people that don’t rule for Jesus.

And so to the extent that rulers, the population of a town aren’t submissive to King Jesus, if we’re really bringing the light of Epiphany as we go into our places, there should be a degree of troubling that happens. I think that’s true. And I think that Epiphany this season is a reminder to us of that. “All Jerusalem with him. The crowd and the rulers in the city where the apostles went and were housed by Jason troubled.”

Why? Same message. There’s a king, another king who sees himself as above Caesar, who sees himself as above Herod, and then later sees himself above the Roman authorities. If we don’t assert the crown rights of King Jesus as we go about doing our work—now, I’m not saying, you know, you do it in an offensive way. You don’t. The point is not to trouble people. The point is to be honest in lightbearing. And the end result of that, I think, will be manifested in some ways with somebody being troubled by the whole dogone thing. And if that’s not happening, you know, I think there’s some shortcomings that are going on in our lives.

So Epiphany brings this message that now history has changed because there is another king, another king of the Jews, a superior king. The King of all kings has come. That’s the message that they bring. And that message faithfully represented by the wise men here and faithfully represented by God’s lightbearers, the church, brings trouble with it. We’re not looking for trouble. We want people, you know, to believe reality, that Jesus is their creator and redeemer. But when they don’t, they’re not going to be happy with that message.

So “all Jerusalem with them is troubled.” 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.’”

A ruler who will shepherd. Again, here, this is a bit of a correction to us. We think of shepherds just as kind of mild, meek people that don’t have rule. But in the Old Testament, the kings were shepherds. Now, that works both ways. Okay? So it corrects in a wrong impression that shepherds are just mild and make and don’t ever give commands or orders. We are to command people not to sin as shepherds. And you know, if you got kids, shepherding your little flock involves rule as well. So it corrects us if we fall into the ditch of “all shepherd, no rule.” And it corrects us if we think of ourselves as rulers without being shepherds, right?

So this wonderful message that comes from the prophet—actually Micah is the prophet being quoted here—is a reminder, well, a statement that when Jesus comes, he comes as Jesus Christ the savior king. That’s what those names mean. Jesus because he’ll save his people from their sins, Christ because he’s the anointed king, he’s messiah. He is Lord and Savior, and Lord. And if we get that wrong, if we don’t keep those things connected, then we’re not proclaiming a savior who isn’t at the same time Lord.

People aren’t being saved from what they need to be saved from. What they need to be saved from is being the ruler of their lives. It doesn’t work well because you weren’t created to do that. It creates all kinds of problems in your life. You have to submit your rule and authority to King Jesus. If we don’t give people that message, right, that Jesus as lightbearers, if we’re not like the wise men who are following this prophecy that declares that Jesus comes as king of the Jews, to which all other kingdoms have to submit, and Jesus comes and he’ll come as ruler and shepherd, then we’re ministering a truncated gospel.

And if we give a truncated gospel that just says Jesus is here for the common good, for a pluralistic good of the culture, we’re just here to help things out a little bit and make your lives better, okay?, without calling you to repentance from your autonomy. Was it any wonder why we haven’t troubled anybody.

Now, pray for me. Pray for us. The next three days I’ll spend the bulk of the next three days with 15 or so, maybe 20 pastors and some other ministry leaders from Oregon City. We’ll be at the Canby Grove campground, pretty close to my home, and we’ll be praying for three days. It’s a prayer summit that Kent Walton, you know, spent a lot of time and effort organizing. Amazing. Now, I hope that we’ll see ourselves praying together and becoming more united in wanting to bring the light as lightbearers of the message that Jesus is savior and Lord to Oregon City. And I kind of hope, I don’t want trouble, but I kind of hope that the end result of that kind of united prayer together and coming together is that Oregon City gets a little troubled by us because it’s full of rulers and people that haven’t submitted themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior and Lord.

So this is a quotation from Micah, and like the quotation from Balaam’s prophecy, the it isn’t just a nice little thing on a Christmas card that Jesus was born in a place, Bethlehem, without more context to it. The context in Micah—and I’m having a hard time finding the verse—but the context in Micah is oppression. It’s difficulties. And what Micah says is that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem, and he’ll be this savior and ruler, and he’ll defeat his people’s enemies, and he’ll bring into dominion the nations that were oppressing God’s people. Can’t find the verse right now, but in Micah 5 is where that prophecy comes from. And it’s the same thing.

You know, our songs and our stories kind of make all this a little bit romanticized. We got a star that’s nice. We got a city of Bethlehem, a little town, that’s great. But those things are pictures that Jesus comes. Jesus comes not just as savior, but as king. And he’s going to come and defeat all those who exalt themselves against him and against his rule in the context of the world. That’s the good news. The great news of this text is that the light has come and Jesus is in the process now of very actively discipling all the nations of the world.

“All authority has been given unto him. All the nations are to be taught to observe all things that he has commanded us.” That’s our job. That’s our job as lightbearers for the Lord Jesus Christ. So light, the star, Bethlehem—great, nice, romantic kind of version of Christmas. But in its fullest sense, it gives us a little different impact.

Then “Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them where 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.’”

You know, the rulers are liars. What can you say? This is it. This is the Adamic man. This is a picture of who we are, right? You say, “No. Herod was like Hitler.” Yeah, he was, because we know the very next narrative in this story in Matthew 2 is he goes and kills a bunch of babies. You know, it’s interesting because in the providence of God we sort of go from Epiphany and the celebration to within two weeks we’ll now be at anti-abortion day of the Lord, talking about the slaughter of children in our country for reasons that are similar to Herod’s slaughter.

People don’t want Jesus to reign over them. Herod didn’t want it. God shows up. If he troubles us, we try to kill him. That’s who we are in Adam. That’s you and me, apart from the grace of God. Well, that’s quite a statement, Dennis. I’ve never really thought about killing anybody. Well, who’s the kind of the preeminent saint in the New Testament who writes most of it? It’s Paul. What did Paul do? Same thing. When the lightbearer came, not Jesus, you know, but Stephen—when the lightbearers of God’s people come and bring the word—what does Paul do? He tries to kill him. He conspires together with the Jews. He holds the coat so people can kill Stephen. That’s who we are in Adam.

Now, if you don’t understand who we are in Adam, you miss the incredible blessing of what salvation in Christ is all about. You’re not who you are because of you. You are who you are because of God’s grace and mercy to you, right? He’s sovereign. We’re, you know, in Adam, we’re the light comes in and the darkness, you know, tries to overpower the light. That’s what John says in John 1. And the good news is it can’t. And that God—some born not of our will, but born of the grace of God—he births some and expands the light into the created order. All the created order, the world is becoming light because he sovereignly is saving people like you and I from our sins and bringing us into intentional lightbearing for him.

So Herod is yeah a bad guy. We should hoot and whistle when we hear his name. We should, you know, think bad thoughts about him because that’s what God does. He wants us to discern evil in the world and try to resist it with all of our might by prayer, by hoping to convert them, but other than that, to pray that God would remove them from the world.

So Herod does this thing. He lies. He’s actually going to engage in wholesale murder of innocent babies. “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. I don’t know how that works, but you know, just like the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, right? God leads his people. Where does he lead them? He leads them from the east to the west, right? It’s what he’s doing. And here it’s the same thing.

I don’t know what that star was or what it looked like, but I know it led them to the very town which had been told them. So God doesn’t need, you know, to know necessarily the prophecy or to hear it from Herod—men, the wise men—he, for some reason, God stops the movement of that star long enough to give us this record to help us to see what happens when fallen man is confronted with another king, the one that we must submit to. It pauses long enough for this story to unfold. And then it takes up its movement, leads them right to where they’re going to go.

God doesn’t need us, but he uses us. And they then “rejoice with exceedingly great joy, right? Great joy.” With my whole heart, I will worship you. This is what we read in Psalm 138 last week. When we engage in the worship of God on Lord’s Day, this is what should be what we’re worshiping—the exceedingly great joy for such a great deliverance, for such grace and mercy to us who, apart from Christ’s grace, are miserable sinners who, if God showed up in our living room, we’d get out a pistol. That’s what the Bible says about us in Adam. And God has saved us from that. God has saved us.

“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, you know, this is what we do. We follow the star of this place. We come to get more light in our lamps and we give God our treasures. The treasures represent the whole. The wise men were submitting to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. They opened their treasures to him.”

“When they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Again, here the song tells us, you know, prophet, priest, and king. And that’s okay. Those are good associations. But there’s two places in the Bible where gold, frankincense, and myrrh come together. The one place is the temple. Much of the inside of the temple is made out of gold. Myrrh is part of the anointing oil that’s used for the priests. And frankincense is part of the incense that’s burned on the golden altar of incense—the bronze altars where the animals were sacrificed, but the gold altar. There was a special incense that was burned that included frankincense.

So what’s happening? Well, we just read in Isaiah 60, you know, “the camels will come.” That’s why we see pictures of camels in terms of the wise men. It’s not from Matthew, but it is okay, because Isaiah 60 is being fulfilled with the coming of the magi and the camels come. And it actually says in Isaiah 60 that they’ll bring gold and frankincense. So but those gifts, that come as I say are only two places where they’re all three listed together in one particular place, and that’s the temple. The other place is in the Song of Songs, and it’s in Solomon’s cart.

Solomon’s wagon, his thing that he sends for his bride to come and marry him, you know. So in this delightful love song, you know, he prepares a conveyance for her. And this conveyance is gold, and it’s also got frankincense and myrrh in it. These frankincense and myrrh are also linked with love. And so the temple is like Solomon’s cart. It’s like a picture of us coming together in worship. Isaiah 60 says they’ll descend upon you. They’ll come and ascend to your altar.

So the wise men are bringing the things that the new temple, the new dwelling place of God, will be built of. Now there won’t literally be a new temple constructed. But the imagery here is that they’re coming to the dwelling place of God, right? That’s what the temple was. The temple was a picture of God marrying his people. It’s where he dwelt. It was that conveyance cart. It was the temple was the place where they would meet, and those things are now brought to imagery here by the gifts to Jesus.

So it’s not so much “prophet, priest and king.” I don’t think it’s a picture rather of the of the new place of worship will be where Jesus and his people gather.

So they do that. They bring these gifts. Now I would be remiss, and next week we’ll talk more about this. We’re going to talk about offerings next week. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there is another way some of you maybe should go as you leave this place. You came here not necessarily honoring God with your money self-consciously. I can say this—it’s got nothing to do with me—but you know, God wants you to tithe. He wants you to be like these wise men who open your treasures to him.

I know some of you just don’t do that. Now, you know, I’m suggesting to you that you think through that, you discuss with your spouse if you need to. But you come to a position of when you come here on the Lord’s Day to receive light from God, that you can be, you know, lightbearers to the world, troubling the world and bringing him to salvation, that you come and open your treasures to him—that you use that money again to build the house of God, that is the local church.

So this is a statement. We’re at the beginning of the year, right? It’s the time for New Year’s resolutions, and New Year’s resolutions should be pretty simple. One good New Year’s resolution is to honor God with your tithe this year. I don’t want to talk about the past with you, but I do want to encourage you at the beginning of this year to be like those who really submit to Jesus as the King of Kings by trying opening your treasure to him, giving him a part for the whole, giving him the tithe, trusting him for your money and finances at the beginning of the year. This is what the wise men did. This is their act of worship—to open their treasures to him.

And those treasures are used for the same purpose as your tithes and offerings are here, to build the manifestation of the kingdom of God, particularly in the context of the local church and then the mission of the church as well. And so that’s what they do. They open their treasures. So some of you have come here not really opening your treasures, giving occasionally, but no, you know, not really honoring God with the tenth of the part for the whole. And I would ask you to consider departing a different way, departing with a New Year’s resolution to be more steadfast in your honoring of God with your money. And not just the tithe or not even first the tithe, but the whole point is submitting your finances to the kingdom of Jesus Christ and using them for his purposes.

That’s what we want to do because ultimately these wise men, you know, what they show us is that we’re calling the world to submit to the king and to the savior. But we’re also saying that’s who we need to be, right? The resolution at the beginning of this year is to be more self-conscious in following the Lord Jesus Christ in being an intentional lightbearer to where you go. Intentionality is significant here. The wise men were intentional. The church of Jesus Christ is to be intentional. If you’re not intentional as you leave this place, of meeting with God and his people, your light gets dim, maybe doesn’t shine at all.

But if we have a commitment to intentional lightbearing for him, which means what? It means acknowledging his saving grace in our lives, and it means acknowledging his lordship over us. Then we’re going to bring about what is pictured in this text, the coming of the Gentiles, the salvation, the discipling of all the nations, that begins and is shown forth in a little symbol form here as to what we’re going to accomplish.

Now you say, “Well, those cosmic realities, what can I do? What can this church do?” Couple hundred people. So what? We’re in a metropolitan area of a couple million people, right? Well, Jesus—what’s the other message of this text? We’ve got a powerful king with all kinds of advisers with an army. Go kill. They go kill, right? We got the wisest guys in the Ed, and we got a little baby. He can’t do nothing, right? I mean, physically speaking, can’t speak. I mean, he’s a baby, right? What does it show us? It shows us what the whole of the Bible shows us, which is that God is not interested in strength. He’s interested in humility. He always uses the weak.

Ruth didn’t desire to follow Naomi and her God because she was so blessed. Naomi was barren, husbandless, right? And that’s when Ruth converts. Naaman the Syrian—a slave girl, a Jewish slave girl, who gets him interested in following Yahweh. Pharaoh, right? Joseph, a guy that come out of prison. And then when Joseph’s dad shows up and says, “Man, I’ve had a really tough life. It’s been few and troubled in the years of my sojourning.” And Pharaoh bows down and worships the God of Joseph rather.

See, God is always using the weak things of the world. And 1 Corinthians tells us that the reason he does that is so that we won’t boast. You know, if we were powerful and had all the money in the world and all this stuff, we would think somehow we did it then. But God says, “No, simple submission to him, simple opening of your mouth, intentionally bearing light to your neighbors and friends and co-workers in the culture, that’ll trouble them, and it will eventually bring those that are called by God to grace in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What’s happened for 2,000 years? The weak things of the world have transformed the world, and the world has become largely Christianized. Now it’s fallen away. But now it’s our opportunity to arise and shine, for your light has come. Your light has come. And so your response is to arise and shine into this world as lightbearers flowing from the Lord Jesus Christ, the great light of all lights, the King of Kings.

God always uses the weak things, weak the weaknesses of men. We’ve got a brochure out there with the Beatitudes. I mentioned the significance of songs and rituals and stuff. Beginning next week for several months, we’re going to be singing and reciting the Beatitudes for our responsive reading. And so we’ve got as many as you’ll need copies in the track rack at the back of the foyer, kind of giving you a little overview of the Beatitudes. Nothing profound, but a good thing for you to take home.

Now, what I mentioned them because what’s the very first blessing? “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The world says, “Blessed are those with power and strength and spying capability and military might and all that stuff.” And God says, “No, blessed are those who recognize that apart from me, they can do nothing. They can do nothing. Those who know their poverty in spirit, right? The humble, the weak things of the world. God says, Blessed are those for theirs is the kingdom of heaven made manifest now on the earth. The meek inherit the world,” right?

This is the day before Epiphany. Epiphany also happens to be the anniversary of the death of Louis Braille. He died on January 6th in the 19th century. Little boy at the age of three working in his dad’s leather workshop ended up putting a knife or something into his eye and accidentally in those days it was not that uncommon for such problems to develop infections, and the afflictions to develop in both eyes, and within a year or so he was totally blind. A little boy, totally blind, right? But he loved God, worshiped God, learned to play musical instruments in spite of being blind.

And other, Louis playing musical instruments and played the organ in church sometimes as blind, and he wanted to, you know, open up sight for those who, like him, were blind. And you know, of course the rest of the story, right? I mean the rest of the story is that he invented then a system of communication using a series of dots that opened up the world of books and reading to people that were blind, right? And so Louis Braille, a one person loving God and desiring to serve him and to bring light to other people, accomplished tremendous things that are still recognized, you know, two centuries later.

I heard a program on NPR. January 4th was his birth. And I heard this program celebrating the birth of Louis Braille and all the devices now that you can use with smartphones and computers and tablets and stuff—that are little portable Braille devices, so you can read things off the internet, etc. So you know, it’s still being used, the system that Louis gave to mankind.

Now at the end of his life, he died early, in the early, for, in his early 40s, I think he got, as I recall, pneumonia. And the last thing he said as he was on his deathbed on January 6th—as he lay there—he said this: “God was pleased to hold before my eyes the dazzling splendors of eternal hope.” After this, doesn’t it seem that nothing more could keep me bound to the earth? God was pleased to open in my eyes the brilliance, the exceeding brilliance of hope.

Matthew chapter 2:1-12 is a story of hope. And hope isn’t, you know, wishing and hoping and thinking hope. In the Bible, it’s the assurance that God is bringing the brilliance of his countenance to this earth and opening the eyes of the blind that they might behold his countenance.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that you would send us forth from this place empowered to be your people. We thank you, Lord God, that the incarnation was for the purpose of manifesting in human flesh the brilliance of the Holy Spirit and who you are, Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we thank you that in that incarnation, Jesus empowers us also in our lives to reflect forth the brilliance of his light. Bless us, Lord God, that we might be intentional lightbearers this year in our world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.