January 6th, 2013

2013Jan06 from Richard Waldschmidt on Vimeo.

Pastor Waldschmidt 1-6-2013 MATTHEW 2:1-12 SEEK THE KING Imagine you are on the way to grandmother’s house. “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go, the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through white and drifted snow. As you are singing you realize that grandmother isn’t there where you expected her to be. I would imagine that’s the way the magi felt as they made their way “over the river and through the sand to Jerusalem so far, the camels know the way to carry the sleigh they are following the star.” Then they arrived in Jerusalem and the King wasn’t there. Let’s catch up with the wisemen hop up on our camels and ride along with them in God’s Word as they seek the King! You might wonder how it happened a wiseman would ever be headed to Jerusalem to seek the King. We don’t know all of the answers but we do know that God said that Jesus would be the King and Savior, not just for a tiny country or a small group of people, but rather he would the King and Savior for the whole world. God’s word says, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” And in the Old Testament Lesson for today God promised, “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. So the Savior would draw people from all over the world. We also know that there were exiles from Israel who were scattered throughout the world. Among them would have been exiles like Daniel who was described as one of the magi. It would make sense those exiles would have talked about the Savior God had promised. They would have talked about how God had promised that “a star would come out of Jacob and a scepter from Israel would come forth. “ When Jesus was born, God put His birth put His birth announcement in the sky and worked it out that the wisemen came seeking the King. “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” Naturally the Magi assumed that the new king would be born in a palace in the capital city of Jerusalem. They sought him there. But Jesus wasn’t born there. Now normally assumptions that end up not being true end up being an embarrassment, but not this assumption by those seeking the Savior. This assumption ends up bringing comfort and peace to us. If Jesus had been born in Jerusalem, I suppose people might have assumed that Jesus was just the Savior for the Jewish nation or for the people who live in palaces. But God wanted everyone to know that Jesus was the Savior for all people so he brought these magi seeking the Savior from a distant land to a little town. The account of the magi is not so much about them seeking the king as it is about the King seeking them. The King brought them to know about and trust in God’s promises and to step out and travel to worship the new born king. That’s comforting for us because the King has done the same thing for us. By His grace he has brought us to know about the King-the king which the star of Bethlehem proclaimed came to be the Savior of all. He came to be your Savior. The Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” The wisemen would have noticed when they got to Jerusalem that this Herod guy was a little creepy. They must have seen it on the faces of the people of Jerusalem as they told them they were looking for the new born king of the Jews. If they asked would have heard stories about how he had no compunction about killing even members of his own family when he perceived them as threats to him being the king. He had even executed his wife and three of his sons. King Herod was upset with the thought of another king on the scene and so he goes after Jesus. “When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: “But you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.” What a striking contrast we see in these passages as this scoundrel King Herod, who had used and abused God’s people, inquires about the Jesus the King who would be the kind Shepherd for God’s people. Having found out where this new King was, Herod hatched an evil plot to put him to death. “Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I may go and worship him.” Herod was seeking the Christ child but not to worship the newborn king but to kill the baby Jesus. Herod viewed the birth of the Savior as something that was bad for him. Today is Epiphany Sunday. Epiphany means “making known”. Jesus was made known as the Savior of the whole world. That’s something to celebrate with the wisemen and cling to because that means Jesus is our Savior. We like to walk with the wisemen but the truth is that part of us walks with King Herod. When the light of God’s Ten Commandments shines on our lives we see a part of us that is pretty creepy. Our sinful nature looks at everything from a selfish sinful point of view. “What does this mean for me?” Then there are times when our anger, our jealousy, our selfcenterness has led us to do sinful fool things. But we have a King- who paid the penalty for them for us on the cross. We have a Savior, the Savior the Wisemen were seeking, the Savior who sought us. That brings us to seek what the King wants in our lives. Let’s try more and more to look at each situation in our lives through His eyes. Let’s look to Jesus for help that the things that come out of our mouths may be words like God’s Word talks about when it says, ”Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” The wisemen must have looked around Jerusalem and wondered what they had gotten themselves into. Now this creepy king is asking them to be his minions and rat out were the Christ child is so that he could go and “worship” him. The King born in Bethlehem did not leave them alone. IS there something you wonder what you have gotten yourself into? Are you afraid of what’s going to happen in yourfamily tomorrow? Are you afraid that tomorrow might be the day when everything in your life goes over the edge? Are you afraid of the illness of some illness that you are struggling with in your life right now? Are you afraid that your business is going to fail or that you will lose your job? Are you afraid that your sins have driven you far away from God? When those troubles bother you, seek the king. Jesus calms your fears, “Let not you hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me.” “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give you to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” “After they had heard the king, they went on their way and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.” By a miracle of God, the star went ahead of them and guided them to the place where the new born king was. “On coming to the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, and returned to their country by another route.” Look at this! The magi who were some of the most respected people of that day fell on their knees and worshiped this little baby born not in the capital city of Jerusalem, but in lowly Bethlehem- laying not in the arms of a jeweled queen but rather in the arms of a poor young woman. How could they do this? Their hearts must have seen that their true treasure was not in the gold and Frankincense and myrrh in their backpacks but their true treasure was in the Christchild. He was the one to seek. The hymn we sang a few minutes ago has special meaning for my family. In the hours when my mom was dying it seems like we sang through the hymnal. This was one of the hymns we sang at the nursing home. The melody takes a little while to get the hang of but we struck by the words, “Dear Christian friend on him depend. Be of good cheer and let no sorrow move you. For God’s own child in mercy mild joins you to him how dearly God must love you. “ The man who wrote that hymn, Paul Gerhardt lost his wife early relatively early in their marriage while he was unemployed and only 1 of their 5 children lived into adulthood. Jesus was his treasure, Jesus was the teasure of the wisemen Jesus is the treasure for us to seek more and more. “The world may hold her wealth and gold, but thou my heart keep Christ as your true treasure. To Him hold fast until as last, the crown be thine and honor in full measure. “ Amen