By Pastor Lynn Sawyer Parks

Matthew 2:1-12
On New Year’s Eve, Vandy and I took our dog Belle to the Outer Banks for the day. She had never been to the ocean before and, since we were only about an hour from there, we decided to show her the ocean. She did not like it at all. The water was moving and it was loud and she did not want to get near it. But Vandy and I had a great time. It was a beautiful day and not too cool. We drove south on the barrier island from Kitty Hawk to Manteo. But when we left to come home, we didn’t go back north to Kitty Hawk and cross back over to the mainland. Instead we continued west across the Albemarle Sound back to the mainland and returned home by a different route. We actually made a complete circuit. I’m telling you this because this is similar to what the wise men did after seeing Jesus. They returned home by a different route. Vandy and I could have returned home by the same route, but we chose not to. The wise men were not able to go back the way they came.

As we know, the wise men came to Jerusalem seeking the one who had been born King of the Jews because they had seen a star that they believed signaled the birth of this king. They went to Jerusalem because it was the primary city of the Jews. It was where the temple was. King Herod had a palace there and the governor from Rome also lived there. It was the natural place to start looking for the king. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which is just a couple miles outside Jerusalem, so they had come to the right place. These men were Gentiles, most likely from Persia, which is east of Palestine. They came to worship and to give homage to the new King. It’s interesting that these wise men knew enough about this king to want to come and honor him. I suppose it’s possible that they had access to the writings of the Jewish prophets and knew that Israel was waiting for a Messiah to be born. Whether they understood this or not, it is still a bit out of the ordinary that they would want to come and worship this King of another country. As Americans we don’t generally travel to another country to honor a royal baby when they are born and to take them gifts. So they had to have some understanding that this new King was unusual.

When they arrive in Jerusalem they start asking where the new King is and Herod, the current king, hears about them. We are told that when Herod hears about this, he is troubled, stirred up, agitated, and all Jerusalem with him. Herod doesn’t understand what’s going on. A King has been born and no one has told him? Of course, he’s a little stirred up because this is a threat to his throne. But Herod was also a bit insane. No one ever knew just what he would do, or who he would kill, and so all Jerusalem got nervous when Herod gets stirred up. The city is afraid of what Herod will do.

He decides to get to the bottom of what’s going on by asking all the chief priests and scribes where the Christ, the Messiah is to be born. It struck me when I was working on this sermon that, when Herod heard the wise men were asking about the birth of the King of the Jews, that he immediately knew they were looking for the Messiah. This should have been great news to the people of Israel that the Messiah has been born. But Herod doesn’t announce this to the people. Instead he takes steps to find out where the Messiah is so he can kill him. This is despicable. And it shows us that there can only be one King. Herod will not relinquish his power, not even for the Messiah, the one the Jews have been waiting for, for hundreds of years. He will not submit to the greater King. His trajectory will ultimately lead to his destruction.

This shows us too, that the Jews were expecting the Messiah. It was a real hope they had that the Messiah would come and deliver them from their oppressors, the Romans. And it seems that even people outside Israel were aware of the hopes of a Jewish Messiah because the wise men understand an important King of the Jews has been born and they want to worship him. When Herod tells them to go to Bethlehem to look for the child, they go on their way and continue their search.

When they leave Herod, the star which they had been following, went before them or led the way until it was made to stand over the place where Jesus was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with great joy. The way Matthew has written this, makes it sound like the star had disappeared and then reappeared again when they needed it to point out Jesus’ house. In any case, they found Jesus, they fell down and worshiped him, and they gave him their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This had been their goal – to give worship and honor to the new King. We are not told that they were surprised to find a baby or to find that he was in an ordinary home in Bethlehem. We are only told that they rejoiced that they had found the right person and they honored him. They had come prepared with gifts fit for a King and a God. They understood the importance of this King and lowered themselves before him, acknowledging his higher rank, something that Herod could not do.

Then, when they were ready to go home, God warned them in a dream not to go back the way they came, not to return to Herod in Jerusalem, but to return home by a different way. So they changed their direction to avoid the danger that Herod presented and went back to their country by a different road. Their encounter with Jesus changed their trajectory. It changed their journey. They had seen the King of the Jews, the Messiah. They had worshiped him, given him honor, bowed before him, and it changed the direction of their journey. They still went home, but not in the same way that they had come.

There’s a lot we can say about this. An encounter with Jesus will change us. We may still go on with our same routines, but there will be a change. Our journey will be different once we worship Jesus, once we acknowledge his superiority to us and submit to His Lordship.
This past week I posted a question on Facebook asking you all to be prepared to share in the service today. The question is “how has knowing Jesus changed the direction your life has taken? What’s the difference in your life now from before you knew Jesus?” If you can’t remember a time when you didn’t know Jesus, then think about how knowing Jesus has influenced the direction your life has taken. For me, as a 16 year old, my life changing encounter with Jesus resulted in more joy. I remember everything seemed new. I would go to church and sing the same old hymns but they sounded new to me and I had a new joy in singing them. It was like I had been living in a bubble before that muted everything and now the bubble was gone. For Vandy, the biggest change was his associations. He started hanging out with new people and going to church regularly. Also he had a new desire to learn that had not been there before. The both of us still had to go to school and do chores and all that, but the direction of our lives had changed and we couldn’t go back the way we had come and we didn’t want to.

Herod had wanted the wise men to come back to him and tell him where the Messiah was because he wanted to destroy the Messiah. But once the wise men had worshiped Jesus, they couldn’t go back to Herod. They couldn’t follow his directions or fulfill his expectations or commands anymore. They had worshiped the Messiah and their loyalties are different now. It’s the same with us. Once we worship the Messiah, our loyalty is to Him above all else. This means a change in our journey. We now follow the leading of the Messiah. For Vandy and I, we ended up going into Christian ministry, going to Europe to work in missions and then eventually coming to Philadelphia, all the while seeking to fulfill what we believed were Jesus’ instructions to us for our lives. We raised our child in ways we thought would be honoring to Jesus, not necessarily in the ways our families would have liked us to raise her. We’ve tried to honor Jesus in how we’ve managed our finances and it hasn’t always looked like how the world says to handle your finances. When we worship Jesus, we have to do what He says, even if conventional wisdom says to do something different.

In looking at the journey of the wise men, we see a change in the hopes of the people of Israel, even if the people of Israel still don’t recognize this change. The wise men leave Jerusalem, the city of David, the site of the great Temple, and they go to Bethlehem to where Jesus is. Their hope of meeting this great King moves from Jerusalem, the City of David, to a particular house in Bethlehem where Jesus is. For everyone who seeks the Messiah, their hope has to move away from the city of Jerusalem, away from the Temple, away from political or military hopes, and move towards Jesus. If we seek salvation, we have to leave Jerusalem and go to Bethlehem and find Jesus. We have to stop relying on all the other things we rely on for hope and instead place our hope in Jesus. This can seem very counter intuitive. Shouldn’t we place our hopes in the many professionals who exist to give us advice about everything? Shouldn’t we place our hope in the leaders of governments or in the business leaders of the world? After all, they are the ones in positions of power and authority.

The wise men were not to place their hopes in Herod there in Jerusalem, and neither are we. Our hope is found in the Messiah who is Jesus. He is the King of Kings, the highest authority and power that there is, and if our hope is in him, we need not place our hope in anyone else.
For the Jews, their hope was to be found in Jesus, their Messiah, not in their nationality, not in their descent from Abraham, not in the Torah. The covenants God had made with them and the Law God had given them all pointed towards Jesus and He is where their hope of salvation is to be found. It is the same for us. Our hope of salvation is not to be in our own efforts, in our own goodness, in our family or church or ministry or anything else. Our hope of salvation is found only in Jesus.

So now, going back to the question I asked earlier, how has knowing Jesus changed your life? What is the difference in your life from when you did not know Jesus? We’ve seen that the wise men met Jesus and their journey then took them in a different direction. Their loyalties changed. Their hopes changed. I shared briefly how Vandy and I both experienced change in our lives when we made a commitment to Christ, when we bowed before Him for the first time, submitting to His Lordship over our lives and worshiping Him as our King. So what has been the difference in your life?

Everyone’s journey is different and we can be encouraged by every story we hear of the difference it makes in our lives in knowing Christ. We are at the beginning of a new year but our journey is still with Christ. We don’t know all the adventures that await us this year as we follow Him, but we know His presence will be with us. I’m looking forward to what God will do here at OCMC this year as we continue to bow before Him and worship our King