O Come Let Us Adore Him
Download MP3Invite you to open your bibles to Matthew chapter 2. Matthew chapter 2. We'll begin reading in verse 1. 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 was has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
Jeffrey Heine:When Herod, the king, heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them when where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, oh 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.
Jeffrey Heine: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 dill 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.
Jeffrey Heine:And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped 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 word of the lord. Thanks be to god.
Jeffrey Heine:Pray with me. Our father, we do want to come and adore your son, Jesus. Lord, but we bring so much baggage into this place, so many distractions. And when we do so, there's a temptation for us to just try to put them all aside, and, through our own effort and ability, try to worship you. But but we wanna just bring those things to you, bring to you all of our distractions, bring to all of our hurts, all of our anxieties and say, here they are.
Jeffrey Heine:Take them Lord And Lord, give us through your spirit, a heart that can now see more clearly and worship you more dearly. Lord, I pray in this moment that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Last night, I did 2 things that no sane man should do.
Jeffrey Heine:First, I went to the Galleria. At during this season, it was just I'm not sure exactly what I was thinking, but went there. 2nd is I got, my my kids and some of our neighbors in the back of, our truck, and we went around from house to house caroling. And we would run and ring the doorbells and people would like open their doors and kind of stand there awkwardly as we, as we sang them songs and they were just trying not to be too embarrassed for us. And I would sing songs that I would never normally sing.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, deck the halls with bowels of holly, fa la la la la la la la la la. And I'm singing fa la la la with, like, all my heart, with great gusto. And, the Christmas carols are so cheesy. Have you noticed that? You know, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your toes, Yuletide.
Jeffrey Heine:No. Sorry. Nose. They nip at my toes, your your nose, Yuletide something. As you can see, I pay a lot of attention to the words.
Jeffrey Heine:What what is a Yuletide?
Caleb Chancey:All
Jeffrey Heine:right. You know, have any of you ever when it's frosty, you know, chilly outside gone, gosh, Jack Frost is nipping at my nose. Any of you ever roasted chestnuts on an open fire? Any of you? All right, we have 3.
Jeffrey Heine:Yet the power of Christmas is such that we, we sing those songs and that's the mental image we have of Christmas. This kind of Norman Rockwell Christmas. I have had, I think, 3, maybe 4 white Christmases. Yet in my mind, when I think of Christmas, I think of, of 1 horse and a sleigh going over snow. And I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, even though that's been a rarity for me.
Jeffrey Heine:Nostalgia is kind of strange that way. And that we we think back and we imagine Christmas being so much, more than it really was in all the years past. I would go to my aunt Red's every Christmas. She her her last name wasn't really Red. She just wore an enormous red wig.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we called her aunt red and every year she gave me socks and underwear for Christmas. That was my gift from her. I look back at that with such warm memories. And yet I know at the time, every time I get this and I'd be like, what the heck? You know, I'm getting socks and underwear from my great aunt.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, and I just I know that when she gave it to me, I was thinking, oh, this is terrible, but I look back so fondly. But if I think back really hard and I try to go through the the fuzz of nostalgia and try to remember things clearly, I think back in Christmas always had disappointment for me. And it did for you. Even in those Christmases that you know, you were the best, you know, when I got the Millennium Falcon, you know, when I was a kid in Star Wars and I was got all these Star Wars figures and it was the absolute best. I got all of this stuff.
Jeffrey Heine:I still remember after having opened everything, having it before me, feeling just this tinge of disappointment. Like, is that it? I mean, I got everything I wanted, and yet I still kind of wanted a little bit more. And that's why Christmas Eve is actually better than Christmas day. Because Christmas Eve, we buy into the lie once again.
Jeffrey Heine:We're like, alright, tomorrow, you know, everything Christmas has promised. All the good things are remembered from the past are about to be fulfilled again. And so, Christmas Eve, we put all of our chips in, but then Christmas morning after everything, we we kinda have that little bit of disappointment. The problem is all of those things, you know, family sitting by the fire, drinking hot cocoa, singing carols, all, all, all those things are a shadow. They're not the substance.
Jeffrey Heine:And when you begin worshiping the shadow, you're left feeling empty. God didn't create you to worship a shadow. He created you to worship the substance, which was him. You know, God's greatest adversary is always his gifts. The things that he gives us are his greatest adversary because we began focusing on them and worshiping them.
Jeffrey Heine:And it says, no, your enjoyment of these things should point you to me, should lead you to me. And if they don't, if you try to find fulfillment in those things, you're gonna be left hungry. C s Lewis, says it better than I ever could. He he said that I find in myself desires which nothing in this world will satisfy. The only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
Jeffrey Heine:We were made to be with God. We were made to worship him, to enjoy him forever. That's what our hunger points us towards. Jesus is the substance that will not disappoint. He's he's the one who could fill that god shaped hold that's in every one of us.
Jeffrey Heine:Worshiping him is why we were made. That's what this story here in Matthew 2 is about. It's about worshiping the substance and not the shadow. It's about being filled with great joy, not in the season, not in the holidays, not in all the things that they go around during the Christmas season, but being filled with great joy because of Jesus, the substance. Let's take a closer look at this text.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's read the first two verses again. 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 saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. And these wise men or Magi as some of your translations might have, they were likely from Babylon, which is to the east. It lay about 900 miles to the east.
Jeffrey Heine:So this was quite a journey. And traveling 900 miles would take several months, lots of preparation, lots of money. We don't know how many wise men there were. You know, tradition says 3 because of the 3 gifts. But, likely there was an entourage, likely more, as a caravan came this way over 900 miles.
Jeffrey Heine:These wise men were they were the stargazers. I guess the best word we have now is astrologers, but that doesn't really do it justice Because it's not astrology as we completely think of astrology. They were a mix between astronomers and astrologers and philosophers. Basically, they were the educated elite of the day. Everybody respected these people, looked up to them, and one of the things that they focused on was a study of the stars and trying to derive meaning from different star formations, different new stars, or or supernovas, and things like that would appear, they would they would give those things meaning for the people.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, these wise men had just seen a very unusual star and when they saw it, they interpreted it to mean a king is born. A king in Judea has just been born. Now, we don't have any idea. You might read a whole lot about what exactly the star was. We don't know if it was a supernova.
Jeffrey Heine:We don't know if, it was an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, which which happened at this time. We don't know if it was something supernatural that God put up there. We we do know that God caused this light and the wise men noticed it. And they left where they were and traveled 900 miles to go see the Messiah. And it's here that they met Herod.
Jeffrey Heine:Now next week, we're gonna take a much longer look at Herod, and I think it's it's quite appropriate for us to look at him just even in the the massacre of children being part of the Christmas story. And, and how does Christmas fit into that? And we're gonna, we're gonna study that more next week in the hope that we have in that A lot can be said about Herod. The the guy was paranoid, crazy. He'd been in power for quite some time.
Jeffrey Heine:It is likely he's gonna be dead within weeks or months after the birth of Jesus here. He was so paranoid about people taking over his throne. He would he would kill he would kill many of his sons. Caesar Augustus had this famous saying. He said, it's safer to be one of Herod's sows than his sons.
Jeffrey Heine:Because his sons get slaughtered. He once drowned the high priest in his own pool. He actually had to go on trial for that in Rome, but all you have to do is just bribe your way out of that. And so, he just paid his money, came back. He killed many of the priests during his reign.
Jeffrey Heine:Anybody, any priest, any religious scribe who said something he didn't agree with, something he didn't like, something that didn't stroke his ego, ego, he killed them. And and so we actually know of more than 30 priests that were killed during his reign. Normally, a high priest reigns for their entire life. He actually had over 30 high priests. It would last a couple of months each.
Jeffrey Heine:We looked a couple of weeks back how he was paranoid that somebody would come and say that they had a better genealogy than his. They had a more legal right to the throne, and so he had all the genealogies burned of every rival. No one would take his throne from
Caleb Chancey:him. And
Jeffrey Heine:so here come these wise men to King Herod, who is the king of the Jews. That's his title. He is the king of the Jews and they come in and they're excited, and they're like, can you tell us? We just saw a star. Where is the the king of the Jews?
Jeffrey Heine:The one who was born, king of the Jews. And I picture that scene, and I cringe for these guys as they come in. You can almost see the Herod's little, you know, neck just bulging. Because they're saying 2 things. 1, you're not the king.
Jeffrey Heine:They don't say, Tell us where's the one who will be the king of the Jews. Who tell us where is the person who is born king. This is presently the king of the Jews. Where is he? And then they're saying that this king was born.
Jeffrey Heine:This one had the right heritage, the right genealogy. Tell us where we could go worship him. And they're so excited. They have no idea who this Herod is. Well, Herod gathers all the scribes and chief priests together because all of Israel is trembling at the news now.
Jeffrey Heine:Herod is greatly troubled by it. And you could just tell, probably, these chief priests and these, chief her scribes are terrified as well. And he gathers them all together because they would have been in the court. And he says, tell me, where exactly is the Messiah to be born? And they know the text.
Jeffrey Heine:They they don't miss a beat instantly. They quote from Micah 52. They say, Bethlehem, the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem. Now, Bethlehem was a little town that lay just 4 miles outside of Jerusalem. If Herod were to walk outside his palace door, he could walk and be there in 1 hour.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? Took a horse and his chariot. He could be there in 30 minutes. Bethlehem is not the town that you, you envision. It's not like it is today, or have you seen Christmas pageants or in Christmas movies.
Jeffrey Heine:It was a teeny, teeny town. It likely consisted of about 12 families. Okay? We are larger than the town of Bethlehem. It was a very small, small place, insignificant.
Jeffrey Heine:Its name, which I think, I love leads me to worship is just, Bethel means house. Lohim means bread. It is the house of bread. And so when the bread of life is coming to this world, he finds this little house of bread and says, I am coming there. This little insignificant place.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm coming to feed the world of its hunger. Herod sends the wise men to Bethlehem and he's, he's a really good liar because somehow, the wise men don't pick up on it that he is really, really angry. And he says, oh, yes. You know, I'm basically, I'm too busy to go an hour down there, but you go find this Christ child and report back to me, and then I'm going to come and I will worship him. And so he sends the wise men on their way.
Jeffrey Heine:And so the wise men head to Bethlehem, and they're they're walking this short distance. And as they're walking there, this this light appears again. And this time, it's likely not a star because it's leading the way before them and it rests over where Jesus is. And I don't know if you've ever tried driving following a star, but the star is always gonna leave you somewhere. Trying to figure out exactly what it's over would be really hard.
Jeffrey Heine:So likely it's either maybe an angel. Some people think it's the Shekinah glory of the Lord returning from Babylon. If if you go and read through Ezekiel, you'll see 600 years earlier, the Shekinah glory of the lord. That was this luminous presence of God went away from the temple and it flew east. And now as a lot of people think that now this Shekinah glory is coming back, which represented God's presence and his glory and is going over the Christ child.
Jeffrey Heine:But we're, we're, we're not sure what, what the slide is, but it's, it's clear to them that this is where the Messiah is born. And so they rejoice. Actually, they don't just rejoice. Look at verse 10. When they saw the store star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
Jeffrey Heine:This is either really bad writing, or Matthew is trying to get a point across because he's being triply redundant here. Because they don't just rejoice, they rejoice exceedingly. And they don't just rejoice exceedingly, they rejoice exceedingly with joy, but not just with joy, they rejoice exceedingly with great joy. So you get the picture. These are really, really happy Magi, alright?
Jeffrey Heine:As they're going, they they are bursting with joy as they go to find Jesus. Contrast that with Herod and all the religious leaders who are troubled, deeply troubled. This is what the birth of the Messiah does because when he arrives, it disrupts everything, For those in power, for those who are sitting on a throne, the arrival of Jesus says, you must get off your throne. For those who are in power, for those who have places of prestige, just saying, well, you have to come down from that. You have to lay it all aside.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus's arrival disrupts all of that for those who are in charge. Things are hard to give up. This is what Christmas means though, because Jesus wasn't just born. Jesus was born king. He was born our ruler, which means we submit to him.
Jeffrey Heine:We worship him. We obey him. Listen. We have a lot of titles like Herod and these religious leaders. We have a lot of titles that we hold on to.
Jeffrey Heine:Just the title of American, let's say. We're Americans. That means we are, we're in the land of opportunity. We have freedom. We have our rights to pursue the American dream.
Jeffrey Heine:We're Americans. Well, you know what? You don't carry a title before Jesus. You lay it down and you say, all right, I'm, I'm, I only pursue what you want me to pursue. I don't pursue an American dream.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't claim that I do. I could do these things because it's my right. I lay that title down. When Christ came into this world, he was born our king. We don't share rule with him.
Jeffrey Heine:And we need to joyfully lay these things down. I find it astonishing when I, when I look at this, that the chief priest and the scribes, people we should be identifying with here. The ones who knew their scripture, they would not take an hour walk to see if everything they've been studying their whole life was true. I mean, that's that's astounding to me. They're going through all of their religious services.
Jeffrey Heine:They're working in the temple. Now, we got I don't I don't wanna leave my worship service to go and actually see if the Christ child is born. That's astonishing to me. You have these Gentiles, these these wise men, they come 900 miles with great joy to worship the king. You have these Jewish leaders.
Jeffrey Heine:You won't go in your own backyard to worship him, but are instead troubled. So what is Matthew teaching us here? He's teaching us a lot. I think one of the things certainly is this, those who have the, the best opportunity to work worship Jesus are often the ones who miss out. Those who have the best opportunity to worship him are often the ones who miss out.
Jeffrey Heine:It would be easy for me to make the comparison, of how in this culture, people spend a whole lot of money to travel a great distance on Saturdays to worship what they love. Yet, I have a hard time going a few minutes away to gather with God's people to worship the Lord. It would be really easy for me to make that comparison, so I won't. It goes so much deeper. We live in a Christian culture.
Jeffrey Heine:I have a bible in every room in my house. You you probably have a number of bibles in your house. A lot of you grew up going to church, hearing the songs, singing the hymns. A lot of you have Christian neighbors, churches right down the street from you. Yet, I bet for many of you, you cannot relate to these wise men.
Jeffrey Heine:At a time you've ever come before the Lord and rejoiced exceedingly with great joy because you're worshiping other things and you refuse to get off your throne and to come humbly before him. Now, how is it that these Magi from Babylon got it? How did they get it? How were they able to worship this way? And the religious leaders didn't.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, they are astrologers in Babylon, and they know about the messiah and want to worship him. To understand that, you've got to go back about 586 years to the time of Daniel. Most of us are familiar with the story of Daniel and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were young Jewish men who who were sent off in exile to Babylon, to the east. Nebuchadnezzar when he came in had killed families, killed probably most of their friends, but deported them, stripped them away from everything they knew and loved, and took them to Babylon.
Jeffrey Heine:And so here they find themselves in a strange pagan culture, pagan school systems, pagan government, unfamiliar songs, irrelevant or, pagan holidays. Just they couldn't be in a more foreign culture. And so there's this temptation when when they are there and living in the city of their enemy to just say, alright, guys. Let's just gather together. You know, forget this city.
Jeffrey Heine:Let it go to hell. Alright? But we're gonna keep ourselves pure. We're gonna form our own little holy huddle, and we're just gonna wait this thing out. But they got a letter from Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah that said, don't seek the destruction of the city.
Jeffrey Heine:Seek the prosperity of the city. The word is seek the shalom, the peace, physical, emotional, spiritual peace of the city. For when it prospers, you will. And so that letter transformed them formed them. Instead of just becoming this little holy huddle that never went out, they said, okay.
Jeffrey Heine:We're going to work for the very people who've killed our families. We're gonna work for the people who know nothing about god. We're gonna seek this city's good. And so, they gave themselves to their work. They gladly served King Nebuchadnezzar.
Jeffrey Heine:And a matter of fact, Daniel served so well, he became a wise man. Not only did he become a wise man, it says that he rose up the ranks and he became the chief of all the wise men in Babylon. And as the chief of all the wise men, that meant he got to teach all of the other wise men. What do you think he taught them? I I I love this.
Jeffrey Heine:He so brilliant. He he points to them because they're astrologers. They they study astronomy. He points to them numbers 24 verse 17. And let me just set the context for this.
Jeffrey Heine:This is how brilliant what Daniel does does. He's in this pagan culture, and so what he does what he does is he picks out a non Jewish prophet and has them study it. He says, Hey, listen. You know what? If you're gonna look at the stars, you really need to know about this prophet named Balaam.
Jeffrey Heine:He he he was he's not a Jew. He's not from my religion here. Balaam, he he made this prophecy. He was asked by his king to prophesy against Israel, and he said, I can't do it. And he blessed Israel.
Jeffrey Heine:So, the king Balak came to him and said, Balaam, prophesy again against Israel. And he went, and he actually blessed Israel. Again, The third time the king says, you better prophesy against Israel. And he got up there and he said, this prophecy, this non Jewish prophet, the soothsayer, if you will, said a star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. And it goes on to say that a king will be born that will reign from generation to generation.
Jeffrey Heine:And I believe what you are seeing here 586 years later, maybe by this point, 550 years later, is the fruit of that, The fruit of Daniel giving himself to the city, giving himself to the pagan environment in which he found, Giving himself to this pagan profession and saying, even in this, you know what? I will find a way to share with you Jesus. I'll find a way to teach you about the Messiah. If you want your worship to burn hot, if you really want it to to to burn hot, you you know what you might need to consider is not just always being around your your group of little Christian friends, singing all your Christian songs, only wanting to do only Christian things. What what you might need to do is branch outside of that and be salt and light in a dark and dying world.
Jeffrey Heine:To try to preach Christ in the midst of your pagan profession, what we would see as a pagan profession. Try to share Christ with your lost neighbors. Be missional in your living because let me tell you what, if you seek Jesus in a place outside of church, you will find him when you come to church. You will find him in your worship. You will rejoice exceedingly with great joy when you gather with god's children to seek his
Caleb Chancey:face.
Jeffrey Heine:Back to the story with the wise men here. I couldn't imagine their excitement after waiting 100 of years for this. And finally, they come to the house. It would have been probably pretty obvious where the child was. For 1, it was such a small town.
Jeffrey Heine:2, earlier, you had shepherds come whether it was, days earlier, weeks earlier, or months earlier, you're not really sure. But of course, with the angelic choir, the shepherds, everything, there would have been a great buzz in a small town about, you know, I'm looking for the Messiah. Well, everybody knows he's right here. And so they found the Messiah, and it says they knelt down and they worshiped, and they gave him gifts. I don't think you can really make anything of the 3 gifts other than they represented the finest from their land.
Jeffrey Heine:They were costly, they were sacrificial. The family will later need these to flee for sure. And what you're seeing here is a foretaste of so many passages of scripture, which talks about when the king comes, all the other kings, all the other leaders from all the lands will come and offer their worship before them. They will come and they will kneel before the messiah. Here you get just a taste of what awaits us in Jesus's final advent.
Jeffrey Heine:It's easy for us to, when we read a story like this, and I'm in danger of doing this, to make the Magi the focus. Because it is easy to apply to us.
Caleb Chancey:But that
Jeffrey Heine:would be wrong because the wise men are not really the focus of the story, Christ is. And so we should not focus so much on how far the wise men came to worship Jesus. We should focus how far the son of God came to come to us. How far, how sacrificial, what great cost it was to be almighty God and then to be a helpless babe in a manger. We cannot fathom the distance in which he came so that we might not worship him invisibly, but that we can reach out and touch him and hold him.
Jeffrey Heine:That we could literally see God face to face in Jesus. Pray with me. Our father, I'm convinced that there is many here who have had every opportunity to worship. Everything laid out before them and yet have failed to do so. Forgive us.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus, forgive us for wanting to sit on your throne. And when we think of worship, when we think of being a good Christian or things like, we think of everything we have to give up, and we tremble and are troubled. We don't think of what we gain. Jesus, I thank you that we get to experience you. For those who have not experienced you, I pray that in this moment through your spirit, you would make yourself known to us.
Jeffrey Heine:And May we hear you speaking to us in this moment? Jesus, we pray this in your name. Amen.
