How Will You Choose to Respond to King Jesus? (Matthew 2:1-12)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

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 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 Heron 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.

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 worshipped 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.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

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.

Let's pray.

Lord God, we give you thanks for the great gift of your word and holy scripture.

We thank you for the witness of those who have come before us, who testify to your works and history, that you, Lord Jesus, took on our flesh to reconcile us sinners with our loving and holy God.

Lord, we thank you for the witness of these three wise men and the gift of the gospel.

We know that your word had power in its day when it was written, and it has power in our day as well.

So, Lord, Holy Spirit, would you illumine this text to our understanding that we would glimpse a greater vision of the good news and worshipfully bow with a knee to our Lord Jesus?

We pray in his precious name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Recently I saw a Christmas card that looked something like this.

Center stage was Mary, and just off to the left were the three wise men with their backs turned.

They've clearly deposited their gifts, and they're making their way back to their home country.

And Mary is in the middle with the three gifts that she's received: the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh in hand, and she's got a puzzled look on her face.

And she's thinking to herself, she's got a thought bubble, and it says something like this If they were three wise women, they would have known to bring diaper's formula and chocolate.

The three wise men are kind of puzzling figures, aren't they?

They show up year for year in our Christmas pageants, and we probably take their presents for granted.

But what purpose do they serve?

Why are they there?

And what is the deal with these three strange, seemingly arbitrary gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

What is the deal with these wise men?

Matthew chapter one, pardon me, chapter two, where we are this morning, we have an announcement of good news.

That's what the gospel is, after all.

It is good news.

It's not good advice about what you have to do to earn God's favor, it's good news about what God has done through Jesus for your sake and for my sake.

The announcement of good news is this: the king of the Jews has been born.

The Messiah, the anointed one, the Lord, the Savior, has been born to his people.

And what God has promised to do, to save his people, to restore his people, to complete the renewal of all creation, all of this is happening now that the newborn king has arrived.

That's good news.

That's what the wise men arrive in Jerusalem announcing.

And the wise men demonstrate who the gospel is for.

Who is the gospel for?

It's for everyone.

Not just one people group, not just folks living in a specific place and a specific time.

It is for everyone.

Paul puts it like this: the mystery is that the Gentiles, non-Jews, are fellow heirs, heirs with the Jews, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

We are all brought together into one body, one faith, one Lord, one baptism together.

The wise men come from the East, is what our text says.

And by the East, it probably signifies something like Persia or something like Babylonia.

The idea is that these aren't Jews, they're Gentiles.

And for a first century Jew, it would have been, they would have understood that they stand outside the covenant community, that God's promises for salvation and for renewal apply to them, pardon me, to apply to the Jews, but not to the Gentiles.

It doesn't apply to folks like these three wise men.

And yet it's these three wise men who come seeking the king of the Jews.

The wise men tell us who the gospel's for, it's for everyone.

This announcement rings out today.

The king has been born.

But the question Matthew wants us to consider is this the gospel might be for everyone, but how do we choose to respond to this announcement?

How do we choose to respond to the newborn king?

We see at least three different responses to the news that the king has been born in our gospel text today.

It was true in Matthew's day, it is true in our day as well.

When we hear that the king has arrived, that Jesus is the Lord and Savior, we can choose to respond with apathy or with antagonism or with adoration.

Apathy, antagonism, or adoration.

How do we respond to the news that the king has arrived?

Today I'm hoping that we can see the gospel, the good news, through the wise men's eyes and see just how good our God is.

How do we respond to the king?

Let's open up our gospel text this morning.

If you've got your Bibles, if you've got your order of service, open up with me to Matthew chapter 2.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

How will we choose to respond to the king?

Here's the first option.

We could respond with apathy.

Verse 3.

When Herod heard this, when Herod heard what the wise men were announcing, that the king's been born, 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, the prophet Micah.

And so you, so you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the ruler rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel.

So a couple things are going on here.

Herod's troubled, and he gathers together the most learned scholars of Scripture.

And he asks them this question: where is this king, this Messiah, supposed to be born?

And they know God's promise.

They know their scriptures.

They know that in Micah chapter 5, verse 2, they are promised that this Messiah will come from Bethlehem.

Micah 5:2

They know exactly where to go to look for this Messiah.

They know that God has made this promise.

And it's their purpose as Bible teachers to preach and teach that God will fulfill his promise.

They're aware of what's happening too.

We see it's not just Herod who's troubled by this news, but all Jerusalem with him.

I don't take it that that means every last person who lived in Jerusalem heard the news.

I take it that that means those who are movers and shakers in Jerusalem, kind of like the news would say, Ottawa made such and such a decision today.

We're not talking about every last person who lives in Ottawa.

I lived in Ottawa and I can guarantee that.

We're talking about the seat of government, right?

The seat of power.

And that's definitely what the scribes and the and the priests, chief priests, are involved in here.

So they've certainly heard what the wise men are proclaiming, that the king's been born.

They know God has promised to send his Messiah.

They know that God will send the Messiah to Bethlehem, and they know that it's happening right in front of them.

But how do they respond?

They don't respond at all, do they?

They know the answer to Herod's Bible question, but they themselves do nothing.

We can have an intellectual interest in the things of God without a commitment to faith or obedience, can we?

C.

S.

Lewis writes a book called The Great Divorce.

It's a great slim volume.

I probably quoted from it a handful of times in my sermons, my favorite C.

S.

Lewis book, and C.S.

Lewis is one of my favorite writers.

It's got a number of great vignettes in it.

And uh one of these, so the premise of this book, The Great Divorce, is that there are uh ghostly, wispy, self-interested uh souls who have chosen hell over heaven, and they've now been given this reprieve, this vacation from hell, and they've come into heaven, and they have found heaven a more miserable place for them than hell.

The reality of heaven is too real for them.

The glory of God is too bright for them.

And they're finding, they're having a more miserable time there than where they came from.

The Great Divorce has a number of, we meet a number of different characters with different interests, and one of them, one of the characters, is actually a clergyman.

He's a clergyman on vacation from hell to heaven.

Believe it or not, there's no guarantees for clergymen either, only the grace of God.

This clergyman's an interesting fellow.

Uh he bel he would have been a the sort of clergyman that C.S.

Lewis would have been very familiar with.

He is a fellow who very obviously has a lot of pride and very little self-awareness.

He is a clergyman who has long ago rejected the authority inspiration of God's word and instead substituted his own revisionist ideas of what Christianity ought to be, of what Christianity could become.

In fact, in hell, he's leading a Bible study.

And he's leading a Bible study premised on the fact that the great tragedy of Christianity is that Jesus didn't live longer than his 30s because his religious genius was just blooming.

This is the idea here.

He is prefers his own intellect to God's word.

He prefers pride over humility, he has chosen sophistication over submission, and so he can say, for me, there is no such thing as a final answer.

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

See, for this clergyman on vacation in heaven, he sees no fulfillment to God's promises.

He only has an intellectual interest in things of the faith.

We can have an intellectual interest in God, but fail to submit ourselves to God in faith and obedience.

And that's what's happening here with these scribes and priests.

Bible commentator Michael Green writes that the Jewish chief priests and scribes knew their scriptures and had no problem in answering Herod when he wanted to know where the child was to be born.

But did they go and greet him?

Did they lift a sandal?

Not at all.

They knew it all, but they did nothing.

That is a characteristic danger for clergy and scholars in any age.

It's a warning that knowledge is no substitute for obedience.

I might suggest that this is not just a warning for clergy and scholars, though it certainly is, but it comes as a warning to all Christians.

We can have an intellectual appreciation, interest in the things of God without handing God our very selves, our very heart, and pursuing God's promises revealed in Jesus.

So the question is: can we be apathetic?

When we read God's word, which we do every Sunday, and I trust we do it on our own as well, day for day, when we open God's word, do we have a casual interest in the words there, an appreciation for the significance that this has had on Western civilization or what have you?

Or do we read these words and appreciate the context in which they were first spoken, but also recognize that through them, God is addressing me.

God is speaking to me.

God is illuminating this word to my understanding.

And that's true for God's word in law, when he says, Be holy, for I am holy.

That's a call for us to grow in personal holiness, but also his word in grace, when Jesus says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

That's not just a word for those Jesus is speaking to.

And we think, wow, what a compassionate fellow Jesus was.

We think Jesus is compassionate to me, because that's a promise that I cling to.

Is God's word just words on a page, or does it incite faith and obedience?

Do we submit ourselves to it?

Do we respond with apathy, or do we respond to Jesus in faith?

The scholars have chosen apathy.

The invitation is to respond in faith.

But we can respond in another way.

Matthew understands that we can respond in apathy, but we can also respond with antagonism.

Verse 7.

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 found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.

So Herod, we know, is troubled from verse 3.

Why is he troubled?

He's troubled by the announcement of the wise men.

When the wise men show up, they say, The king's been born.

Where can we go find him?

That's troubling for King Herod.

That's troubling for King Herod, not just because he's a king, but specifically, he claims the title for himself, the King of the Jews.

The wise men show up and they say, Herod, can you show us where the king of the Jews is to be found?

You can understand why he feels a little threatened.

And so troubled Herod starts plotting.

He summons the wise men to him and he's disingenuous with them.

Go and find the child.

Tell me where he is.

You know, I want to pay him what he's due.

That's the idea here.

And we know that Herod doesn't just plot, he reacts violently against this announcement.

We know that because of what follows this passage in verses 13 to 18, we find what's traditionally called the massacre of the holy innocents.

Herod exterminates every Hebrew child, every Hebrew son under two years of age in the region to secure his power, to secure his supremacy as king of the Jews.

Matthew's drawing a parallel there.

Matthew is saying that Herod is behaving far less like a leader of Israel, a leader like Moses, who followed God's leading in fire and in cloud and delivered God's people to God's promises, the fulfillment of God's promises.

That's what the wise men are doing.

That's what Gentiles are doing, followed God's lead.

No, Herod's behaving a lot more like Pharaoh, exterminating children to secure his own political power.

Herod reacts antagonistically, violently, to the announcement that the king has arrived.

So Michael Green writes that Herod's response to the gospel was hatred and fear.

Hatred of anything and anyone that threatened his self-centeredness and fear of a possible rival, however improbable.

Either I'm in charge or Jesus is in charge.

But it can't be both.

That's what Herod understands.

That was true for Herod, and I think that's true in our day as well, don't you think?

When I was in junior high school, I had a very uh dear friend named Nick.

Nick was a great friend, and he and I had a lot in common.

We sat at the back of the class and we cracked lots of jokes.

We got together and we played PlayStation as often as we could, blow off our homework.

And over the years of knowing Nick, I had the opportunity of sharing my faith in Jesus with Nick and sharing the significance of my Christian faith and why it is that I choose to follow Jesus.

Nick had no knowledge of the gospel, he had no church background.

But one day in eighth grade, Nick came to me and he says, Great, I want to become a Christian.

Because I believe the Lord, Jesus is the Lord and the Savior, and I want to become a Christian.

So we prayed together.

We prayed a prayer, acknowledging that we're sinners, acknowledging God's forgiveness and thanking him for forgiveness in Christ, and committing our lives and Nick's life to follow Jesus as the Lord and Savior.

And I was thrilled.

And Nick started joining my family and I, coming to church and coming to the youth group, even though his family was not particularly supportive of his choice to become a Christian.

And all this was going great until one day I came home and found from school and found my mom weeping in the living room.

And I said, Mom, what's wrong?

And she said, I got a call from one of the pastors at our church.

And I knew this pastor was a gracious, godly, gentle, but and kind pastoral soul.

I trusted this pastor.

And she said, uh, Nick's mom decided to give the church a call because she's become more and more concerned about uh what this church means when it says it's a gospel church.

And she had a number of questions that she wanted to talk to a pastor with about, so she talked with this pastor and asked, Do you really believe in something like sin?

Do you really believe that God's wrath is against sinners?

And she asked a number of questions that how these different social issues relate to the gospel, etc., etc.

And this pastor did his absolute best to answer her questions and to proclaim the gospel to her.

Yes, God's wrath burns against sin, but he has provided his son for us to be, pay the penalty of our sin, and to offer us the hope of new life.

But Nick's mom didn't want that for herself, and she didn't want that for her son.

She knew that either Jesus is in charge or I'm in charge, and she didn't want Jesus to be in charge.

And so the next day when I got to school, Nick handed me his Bible and he said, My mom told me I'm not allowed to be a Christian anymore.

It's pretty devastating.

But Nick leaned in and he says, But I'm still gonna be a Christian.

The truth is, things were never quite the same between Nick and I after that.

And over the years we lost touch, and I see when he comes to mind, I still pray for him, but I know a couple of things.

I know number one, God loves Nick, and he loves his mom, and he loves this whole family.

And number two, none of them are beyond the grip of grace, and I am not beyond the grip of grace, and you are not beyond the grip of grace.

God is not done working in your life and mine or in these lives as well.

And I know this is.

Well, that Nick's mom took the gospel seriously.

She knew that the gospel was a claim.

Either Jesus is in charge or he's not.

She wasn't willing to be apathetic towards Nick's Christianity.

She knew that this was an either or.

And she responded accordingly.

See, friends, we can respond to the gospel.

We can respond in submission or we can spawn in antagonism, but we must respond.

We cannot stand idly by.

That is not what Jesus came to be.

John Calvin, church reformer, writes this: so long as ungodly men think that it is taking nothing from themselves, they will yield to God and to scripture some degree of reverence.

But when Christ comes into close conflict with ambition, covetousness, pride, misplaced confidence, hypocrisy, and deceit, they immediately forget all modesty and break out into rage.

When Jesus is at a distance, that's fine enough.

But when he comes to make a claim on us, that's when we have to respond.

So what's the cure for this kind of antagonism?

The question we want to ask is what kind of king is Jesus?

Jesus is not the sort of king who comes and claims supremacy to crush us.

He is the kind of king who claims supremacy to free us, to serve us.

He's the there's an interaction between Jesus and another particularly powerful person named Pilate later in Matthew's gospel.

And Pilate asks Jesus, Are you the king of the Jews?

And Jesus responds with, You have said so.

This is right before Jesus goes to the cross.

Jesus reveals his kingship, not in power, but in submission.

He pays the penalty for our sins.

And so after he is raised from the dead, Jesus can say, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

And behold, I'll be with you even to the end of the age.

Jesus is not a king who has come to crush us, but to free us.

This is who Jesus is.

His authority is not self-serving, but it serves his people to God's glory.

This is why we want to submit ourselves to Jesus as our King.

When Jesus is in charge, when Jesus is in charge, our lives become ordered rightly, and we relate ourselves rightly to our glorious God.

So we can respond with apathy, we can respond with antagonism, or Matthew says, we can respond with adoration.

Very briefly, after listening to the king, the wise men went on their way.

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.

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 and worshipped him.

Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

So here we see the wise men, or they're often called magi, which is more of a transliteration of the Greek there.

Couple of things.

There's no guarantee that there were three wise men.

Sorry to sort of destroy any of our Christmas crushes or something we have at home.

They do bring three gifts, which is why tradition says that there's three wise men.

But we do know that there's wise men and that they bring gifts.

These wise men, these magi, uh wouldn't be, I know we sing three kings.

It's likely that they're not kings, but they are involved in the royal court.

They would be like the king's uh scholars.

They would have a well-rounded um knowledgeableness, let's put it that way.

And one of the things that they would have a lot of knowledge about is what we would call divinization, or divinity, let's put it that way.

And that would include things like the interpretation of dreams or the prediction of the future and astrology, which might sound kind of strange to us, except that for us Canadians, no matter how secular we may understand ourselves to be, astrology and horoscopes and all these sorts of things are only on their rise in popularity in our moment.

So I want to take just a brief digression and address that, because here the wise men are following a star.

They're following the star by on the basis of their knowledge of astrology.

Now, this could be a sermon all on its own, so I'm gonna be trying to be as brief as I can here.

And if I can grab if you want to grab a cup of coffee and talk more, I would be delighted to do that.

Now, a couple of things I'd want to say about these wise men and about their relationship to the astrology that they're doing here.

Number one, these wise men would know something of scripture, but they wouldn't have a comprehensive knowledge of scripture.

They'd have a limited knowledge of scripture.

They would know scripture through the Jews that they've interacted with, through the Jews in uh in dispersion around uh Persia or the Babylonian Empire.

So they would know something of Scripture.

They might even know that there's a prophecy in the book of Numbers that a star will arise in Judah.

They would know something of that.

But they would have more knowledge of astrology, of reading the stars in the way that they're accustomed to.

And as they're reading the stars, they understand that this star indicates that God is fulfilling his promise, and they want to know what that's about.

They're looking at the stars, in other words, try and understand who God is and how they can relate themselves rightly to him.

So, number one, they've got a limited knowledge of scripture, but God is using a means that they are accustomed with to grab their attention and to draw them to himself.

That should suggest to us not that we should be all about astrology, but rather that no one is beyond God's own self-revelation, that he's going to grab their attention and draw them to himself using whatever is meaningful to that person.

That's number one.

Number two, we should notice the wise man's motivation.

They are seeking the fulfillment of God's promise and not their own self-interest.

I know a ton of folks who read horoscopes or even practice astrology.

I've never once, when I've asked, you know, what's your interest in that?

Why are you interested in that?

I've never once heard someone say, Well, you know, I want to understand who the creator of these stars is, and I want to understand what his will is, and I want to do that will, and I want to relate myself rightly to that God.

Usually the response is something like, Well, I just really want to know, you know, uh, I want to know that I'm gonna prosper.

I want to know that my the outcomes of my life are gonna be good outcomes.

You know, I just want to know that I'm gonna be happy and successful.

It's usually a fairly self-interested uh interest in something like the pseudo-spirituality.

And so at best, astrology or horoscopes or whatever become some kind of, at best they become some sort of trivial, frivolous, kind of fluffy spiritual sentiment, and none of those things relate to authentic biblical Christian spirituality.

Or at worst, they become an expression of our confidence that our outcomes are secure without any reference to Christ's lordship or to the promises of God.

So we should not draw from this passage that you know we should start going reading our horoscopes just like the wise men did.

No, we should recognize instead that the wise men are seeking after God's promise, and we need to do the same.

For us, the fulfillment of that promise is in Jesus.

So we go to where Jesus reveals himself, which is through his word in Scripture.

One Bible commentator writes that even supernatural guidance like this star can take astrologers only so far.

For more specific direction, they must ask the leaders in Jerusalem where the king is to be born.

That is, their celestial revelation was only partial.

They must finally submit to God's revelation in the scriptures.

And so we do.

And with them, when they encounter this promised child, they bring gold and frankincense and myrrh, which seem like strange gifts to bring.

What do you do with that?

But even here, whether conscious or not, these wise men are bearing witness to the goodness of the gospel.

Gold befits a king.

It communicates kingship.

Frankincense is an incense, a spice associated with altar sacrifice.

In other words, if God is going to reconcile himself with sinful people, it's going to smell like frankincense.

That's what you'd be accustomed to in the temple.

And then myrrh is involved with embalming.

Jesus is anointed with myrrh before he is buried in the tomb.

So these three wise men, pardon me, these wise men, bear witness in their three gifts that Jesus is a king, that Jesus is a king who has come to die, and Jesus is a king who has come to die to reconcile God with his wayward people.

That's what these gifts are all about.

And so following the wise men's example, we come to receive God's own self-disclosure in Scripture.

And we follow where that scripture leads to Jesus Himself.

And we, like the wise men, offer gifts suitable to this king and savior.

Not gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, but ourselves.

Paul writes in Romans 12: I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

There's an invitation here.

How do we respond?

These wise men demonstrate who the gospel is for.

It's for everyone, but how do we respond?

With apathy, with antagonism, or with adoration?

Matthew is inviting us.

He is inviting us to investigate the good news for ourselves, to come to the Lord Jesus, and to bow the knee, and to know his grace and goodness and promise for ourselves.

Come behold the wondrous mystery in the dawning of the King, he the theme of heaven's praises, robed in frail humanity.

Come, let us adore him.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.