A King Comes Home (Matthew 2:1-12) • Paul Deschamps

Good morning again, everyone. Can you guys hear me? There we go.

Now we're going to turn our attention to God's word. If you would join me turning either in your Bibles or you can follow along in the printed bulletin we have for you this morning, we're going to please join me in reading aloud together from Matthew 2. We're going to read verses 1 through 12. I'll be reading from the CSB version.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem saying, "Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him." When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. So he assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Christ would be born. "In Bethlehem of Judea," they told him, "because this is what was written by the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.'" Then Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search carefully for the child. When you find him, report back to me so that I too can go and worship him." After hearing the king, they went on their way. And there it was, the star that they had seen at its rising. It led them until it came and stopped above the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy. Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and falling to their knees, they worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route.

— Matthew 2:1-12 (CSB)

This is the word of the Lord.

Let me pray for us this morning. Heavenly Father, thank you for coming. Thank you for giving us your word. Thank you that you delight in our knowing you, that you took every step needed so that we could do that. We pray that you send your Spirit to us this morning, meet us in your word, and bless us through it. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Well, good morning again, CTK, and a Merry Christmas Eve to everybody. My name is Paul Deschamps, and here's a fun fact: we just witnessed the first ever pageant in CTK history. It was a great one too. I was so impressed. I loved it. What an amazing job these kids did, giving glory to God and leading us in worship this morning.

Now I'm going to take a risk here. I'm going to risk open and public scrutiny by a room full of proud parents and grandparents. I do think there was something missing: wise men. There wasn't any wise men in our pageant. We need to have some wise men come during this Advent season.

I know there's a lot going on this morning. Everyone has got their brain in like 10 different places with the pageant. We've got kids in the room. We're so excited. It's Christmas Eve. I know everybody's got a list of things going on. I'm going to do something right up front. I'm going to give you the main idea of what we're going to talk about right here.

You ready? Wise men still seek him.

I know. It's shocking. I just quoted to you a bumper sticker that you all have seen, and I can't believe I did that as my main idea for this message. I'm still kind of dry heaving a little bit from doing that. But it's true, and this morning I want us to look at three short lessons from the wise men and lean into how cliché that was—all three of my points start with W. So here we go: wise men wonder, wise men wander, and wise men worship. Wonder, wander, and worship. That's what we're going to talk about this morning.

Wise Men Wonder

Wonder is a word that gets thrown around a lot during Christmas, and for good reason. There's a lot of wonderful things this time of year. When we experience wonder, what we're experiencing is something that inspires this feeling of surprise, of astonishment, of amazement. And when we encounter something wonderful, we come face to face with something that's miraculous, something that's incredible, something that invites us in, invites our curiosity, invites our awe.

Now I think for many of us—self included—some of our biggest experiences of wonder come through experiences of the majesty of nature. Things that we live and see and experience. I'm talking about a perfect sunset on a beach, or you go out at night on a clear night where there's zero light pollution, and you see those stars—the ones that you can see, like not just the Milky Way, but it feels like you can see through it.

You take that beautiful hike, and you end up at this waterfall. These are jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring moments. I will also include, because it's Christmas, the wonder of a freshly fallen snow. We can walk in a winter wonderland. Those are all W's, by the way. We live in a world that is constantly inviting us to be a people of wonder, a people who live in wonder and witness little miracles every day, wonderful moments that we experience, and we try to make meaning of them.

Now at Christmas, we focus so much on wonder, not just because of the beauty of the season and the lights and all the things going around, but because of the most miraculous, awe-inspiring, astonishing thing that has ever occurred in history. That God himself, the one who would create everything that we marvel at, would come in the form of this baby. The one who created jaw-dropping displays of all would become a person. And for a very good reason, because we needed him to—because we needed a rescuer to come.

And so in the coming of Jesus, the real king for God's people in the line of David is finally here. That God is making good on all of his promises, that the hopes and the fears of all the years are met today in this baby. In the city of Bethlehem, in David's hometown, the long-awaited king came home.

The Wise Men

And so the wise men we encounter in our passage today, they go and visit him. Now these men are professional wanderers. The Greek word that's used to describe them is the word magoi, for which we get the word magi. They were a group of scholars, a group of astronomers, most likely from Persia, and they had devoted their lives to the study of interpreting signs, including magic and alchemy and dream interpreting and astrology. They had this deep sense of belief that was taking over the ancient Near East that by studying the stars and their relationship to the sun and the moon and other planets, the things happening in the cosmos were predicting and interpreting important events here on earth.

These are intelligent, powerful, learned men. They're not like folksy soothsayers doing this weird mystical thing that everybody's laughing at. No. These are like tenured professors of the ancient Near East, doing research for the ancient world, looking at the stars, and discerning that there's something really significant happening. They look up and they notice an anomaly.

They were also wise in that they were learned beyond the context of their own schools of the mystical arts of Persia. And it takes them on this journey. They go to Jerusalem, and they ask a very important question:

"Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star, and we came to worship him."

Now how did they know that? It couldn't have been just from the stars. It wasn't like written in the constellation, "Go to Bethlehem." But they had studied their foreign kingdoms. They'd studied their neighbors. They knew their history. They knew important events that had happened.

We've been spending some time this fall in the book of Daniel. Perhaps it was the long-lasting teachings of Daniel, who in his book prophesied in Babylon of the future of a coming king. A king that would be greater than all the other kings and all the other kingdoms. Maybe they were remembering an older story than that. All the way back in Numbers, there's this story about this Babylonian magi named Balaam. He gets sent to pronounce a curse on Israel, and instead of that, he pronounces a blessing. He says in Numbers 24:

"A star will come from Jacob, and a scepter will arise from Israel."

They had a rooted knowledge that something was going to happen. So it was commonly held belief, not just in Persia, but at this time in Rome as well, that there was a really strong connection between kings and stars. When Julius Caesar died, there was a comet, and it was proclaimed that Caesar's comet, as it was named, was actually Julius Caesar himself ascending to the throne room of the gods.

Now we don't know what these men saw. We don't know what the actual star that they saw was. The Bible doesn't tell us. There's a lot of theories as to what celestial event they witnessed. Was it a comet? Was it the conjunction of a couple of planets that met in a bright, powerful symbol of the zodiac? Was it a supernova exploding? We don't know. Was it even the glory of God coming down? It could be any of these things. But what they saw was something wonderful, but what they did with what they saw is important. They began to ask questions.

See, I get a lot of encouragement from the wise men because Christmas is a time, I think, many of us that brings up so many questions. When we speak of the wonder of Christmas, if we're honest, sometimes it doesn't feel super wonderful. I think it feels busy. I think it feels confusing. It feels stressful. And then when we remember this story, it feels impossible. I mean, could it really be that what we witnessed here, that a baby was born to a poor virgin unwed teenager? And the baby shower that she received was angels and shepherds and these weird guys from the East that brought a really strange set of gifts? And then there's the whole bit that we didn't read about the murderous king, Herod. And, I mean, Christmas is hard. Christmas looks kind of crazy. And I bet there's many of us here who spend as much time wondering if this is true as we do pondering the holy beautiful mystery of all of this.

And if that's you this morning, you're in the right place because God invites our questions, and he can handle our hardest ones. See, not only does God invite our questions, but he delights when we ask him hard things. He's not asking us to passively receive things. He's asking us to investigate and dig and know him. He can handle the questions that we still wonder about. See, faith is an invitation to ask questions, and a vibrant faith is one that's asking real questions all the time, real questions of God.

You know, Martin Luther once said that faith is just a wrestling match with doubt, that they're two sides of the same coin. And when you see the Christmas story, which side of the coin do you find yourself on? Are you holding on to the faith that the Lord has given you as you behold this wondrous mystery in awe, or are you wrestling with your doubt that all of this might just be too good to be true?

Now, you know, for being so called wise men, the Magi are actually incredibly humble with their wisdom. They don't hold on to their knowledge to be superior to growth. They're willing to learn something new. And we know that because they wander on their way down to Jerusalem. So what are we to do with our questions? Where do we turn to find answers? So often we turn to other places of wisdom.

The Limits of Human Wisdom

The study of philosophy is obsessed with answering these kinds of questions. Questions like, who am I? What gives my life meaning? Is there such a thing as truth? Is there a moral obligation to right the wrongs in this world? How do I know what those are? You know, quite literally, the term philosophy means love of wisdom. And in a broad sense, philosophy is an activity that people undertake when they seek to understand the fundamental truths about themselves and the world in which they live. And they're trying to make meaning of this relationship that they have to the world and to each other.

And yet the problem with turning to the bank of wisdom of the world is that it always seems to be going out of date. There's always something new. Now if you go and read the so called wise men of, like, even a hundred years, fifty years, twenty years, you're probably going to read some op ed pages or some articles in the Atlantic, and you're going to read some really important thoughts for the time. And you're probably going to cringe a little bit. And you say, how could they have thought those things? You know, the cancel culture that a lot of us have experienced and some of the revisionist research that's happened loves to look back, and they have a field day ripping apart these guys. People that have poured their lives into exploring wisdom, adding and gaining new things. When we examine them through a modern lens, through our own experience, we find their teaching lacking. And why is that? Because the wisdom of this world has an expiration date.

CS Lewis once said that all that is not eternal is eternally out of date. See the wisdom of the world, it's not all crock, it's not all made up, it's not all unhelpful. There are so many wonderful scholarly contributions that have blessed our lives through common grace. It's wonderful, but it's insufficient. It's not enough. Because the wisdom of this world can only take you so far. It can only transform your mind, but it will never transform your heart.

The apostle Paul backs this up in his letter to the Corinthians.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn't God made the world's wisdom foolish? For through God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, but he was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what we preach. — 1 Corinthians 1

I mean, friends, what could be more foolish than Christmas? Well, probably the Easter story. And yet it's through the cross that Jesus offers us the greatest gift of eternal life.

There's only one way to be truly wise, and it's not through the pursuit of more wisdom. It's through the pursuit of the one who created wisdom. And the wise men know there's a king, but apart from scripture, they can't find him. So they go on this massive journey—some probably 800 miles, maybe more, by camel—to the only place that they can get answers.

When they get to the palace, I mean, that's where a king's born, right? A king's born in a palace. They expect to see this new king, and there's a party. And we learn he's not here. We don't know what you're talking about. So the wisdom of the world can only lead them so far.

They engage the chief priests and the teachers of the law and the scribes, and they say, "Well, the Messiah is gonna be born in Bethlehem. That's like six miles from here. It's just this little town down the road."

Now, when we think of the pageant version of this story, we like to think of the star as being like the spotlight that hits Linus in Charlie Brown—you know, moving and guiding, following along the way. Here's the star with the spotlight, leading him right up to the manger. But I don't think that's true. I think the thing that leads them to come face to face with the real person of Jesus is God's word. We can't stay put and sit in isolation with our questions. We have to wander to the sources that bring answers to get real, eternal answers.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Now I have another bumper sticker quote for you this morning. I love this one. It says, "Not all who wander are lost." You've seen that one?

C.S. Lewis went out to prove that there was no God. That was his work. And he became one of the most celebrated evangelists and defenders of the Christian faith in modern history. Why was that? Because he saw Jesus. He went out of his own wisdom, and he found Jesus.

This is what happens to the wise men too. They see Jesus, and they worship him. This was their plan all along. It says in the text, they set off to go worship him. But what that really means is they just went to pay homage. This was a really common and customary thing that you would do for a new king. You would send a delegation to pay their respects to the new king and the new administration.

But in Bethlehem, when they finally get to the house and they see Jesus, I don't believe that they're merely paying respects anymore. In trusting God's word, they find the place. They're filled with joy. They don't find a palace. They find a meager home. They don't find a royal court. They find a little family living in poverty. He's not a king. He's a peasant.

All the pieces of their story have been working together to point them to this one beautiful moment. The star, the king, the prophecy from long ago. It finds its connection through God's word, and it leads them to Jesus. And so they worship him. They offer up their greatest gifts to him.

What Does It Mean to Worship?

What does it mean to worship? I think it's a recognition of equal proportions of humility and awe. In seeing Jesus, they recognize the awe of something so great being in the form of something so humble. They offer their gifts. They offer their service.

I think that worship in its action is at the core of the human experience. It's what we were made for. We were made to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. It's our heart's natural desire to recognize that there is something bigger, something greater than ourselves.

Culturally, we do this in all sorts of ways. Of course, people gather all around the world to offer up and worship. They go to different spaces. And we also worship things like sports teams and bands and celebrities. We worship time with our family. We worship time with our friends. We introverts in the room worship time by ourselves. We worship comfort and pleasure and success and money and relationships.

We seek the one thing that will allow us the feeling of making meaning and pleasure and joy in our life. You know, Blaise Pascal, a wise man of old from the seventeenth century, a philosopher and mathematician, he says that there is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each person which cannot be satisfied by any created thing, but only by God the creator made known through Jesus Christ.

In other words, our desperate search to have an object to worship will only be finally and completely met in the person of Jesus. And until we come face to face with Jesus and we worship him, we'll keep running on the hamster wheel of our own self-serving idolatry.

Herod never saw Jesus. All we know is that he died wanting to destroy him. Jesus was only ever a threat to Herod. And the religious leaders point the wise men to Bethlehem. They couldn't be bothered to travel six miles. It's like a fun run to Bethlehem to see if God's promised king had arrived. They remained in Jerusalem, and what does it say about them? They were distressed. Meanwhile, the king of glory was humbling himself to take this lowly form, the true shepherd who would come and love his people, the true king who would not defeat his enemies with a sword but with a cross.

An Invitation to Come and See

So my invitation for you this Christmas is this: just come see him. True worship happens when we allow the gospel to change us. The path of the gospel, it's not linear. It's not neat. It's not a straight line. It's not this clean, tidy road. The gospel is a mess. It pulls us into places that we never thought we would go because God meets us there.

And so my hope for us this morning is that we would be a people who have seen and been changed by Jesus, that we would feel Christ's invitation to join him in seeing the work of loving the dark places in our life back to life, by shining the light of Christ like stars.

We Are Witnesses

I've got a secret fourth "W" for you this morning. It's this: we are to be witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ. And the star didn't change the wise men, but it was the first thing that they noticed. A bright light shining in the darkness, an anomaly, something that was out of the ordinary that would lead them to Jesus.

Philippians 2:15 says that we are to shine like stars in the world. How? By holding firm to the word of life.

What was a star for you? What pointed you to Jesus? Most likely, it was a person. For me, that person was my mom. I had chosen to live in darkness. I had tried really hard to run away from the Christian faith when I was a teenager. I was really good at it. And yet it wasn't my mom's wisdom or apologetics or well-reasoned arguments that challenged me to understand who Jesus was. No. It actually took her living like Jesus had actually changed her life. She was living like a bright star.

It was her love and her forgiveness. It was her grace and her hospitality, her patience, her joy—it was so attractive. It was her willingness to humble herself to the point that all she wanted wasn't for me to be reconciled to her. It was that I would be reconciled to Jesus. I knew that I had been a jerk of a kid to her. But what she cared about most was that I knew Jesus. My star was my mom.

Who's your star? God provided that person in your life to point you to Jesus. And why? So that you too could be a star, that you could shine bright for somebody, that you could reflect the glory of God. God gave us all a purpose. He gave us a purpose to be a witness to his glory. You've got a unique story that God has worked in your life, and he's working out continually in your life.

A Closing Challenge

I've got one application for you this morning as I'm closing. It comes in the form of a question. I'd love for you to think about this: Where are you on this path that we've walked this morning? This path of wondering and wandering and worshiping and witnessing. Would you ask yourself that today?

I know we've got a million things to do between finishing wrapping presents and planning amazing meals. Maybe you're jumping on a plane. You're driving somewhere to travel to see family. In the midst of all those things, would you pause for just a few minutes and allow yourself to ponder that? Where are you on this path? Be honest.

And once you know, once you can say that, can I challenge you here? Don't stay there. Don't get comfortable on your spot on the path. Would you just take one step? Just try the next step of curiosity and wonder.

Maybe you've been wondering about Jesus. Is this real? Is he the real deal? Would you try to take one more step and ask better questions? If you've been wondering, would you ask what his word really says about him? And if you've been searching God's word, if you've come to a place that you see Jesus for who he is, you see his love for you, his care for you, the life that he offers you, will you take a step and allow yourself not to congratulate yourself but to worship him?

And then through your worship of him, would you hold everything in your life like this with an open hand? And would you allow your life to be transformed by the gospel so that the light that he has filled you with, like a star, it overflows out of you as you witness—not of your own goodness, but of his glory.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let me pray for us. Father, what good news.

What good news the gospel is that you do not ask for us to be these perfect people that are polished and wise and presented, but you are a God that is so good and so gracious that you would stoop so infinitely low as to welcome us back into your kingdom. That we could know you, that we could worship you, that we could have a relationship with you, and that you would change us and use us to bring more and more people into your kingdom.

Jesus, we thank you for Christmas. We thank you for what it cost you, and we thank you that you were willing to pay it because you love us. Bless us this morning. I pray this in your name. Amen.