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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, a blessed epiphany to you as we celebrate how the Lord Jesus reveals himself also to the Gentiles. And we remember tonight how the Lord sent the wise men from the east to find the child Jesus in the home in Bethlehem and fall down and worship him.
Now, this story, this biblical history, has always, to me, created more questions than it’s answered. It’s going to be one of the joys of the resurrection to sit with the wise men and ask them to fill in some of the details. For example, how many of you actually were there? Three? Here’s my best guess. We say three because there’s three gifts, and you would hate to be the fourth wise man who, like, didn’t bring anything. My guess is that there were three of these wise men and kings, but they would have been accompanied by a great host. I mean, you wouldn’t travel across the desert without having security guards there, a little band of soldiers, servants who would pitch the tent and cook and go along with you as you traveled.
In fact, the prophecy from Isaiah says that they filled Jerusalem with their camels, and the gospel text tells us that not only was Herod afraid, but that the whole city was afraid. So, while there might have been three of these wise men, they came with this big, huge group looking for the king.
Or I want to ask him, how did you know that the star that appeared indicated that the king of the Jews was born? How did they have any indication? They’re from Babylon as best we can figure, and our best guess to that, you know, maybe they’ll tell us and we’ll be like, ah, that’s what I thought, is that Daniel, the prophet, had this prophecy that the star indicated the birth of the Messiah. He established a little university there in Babylon, and generation after generation they studied the Scriptures, and they were looking forward to this promise being fulfilled. And then one day they saw it, and they packed up all their stuff and went to see the child Jesus?
Or I’d love to ask him about how it went with the star, because it seems like the star kind of indicated they should go to the east, but they went to Jerusalem, and then the star appeared again. What happened there? Because at first when they follow the star, they end up in Jerusalem, right, the capital of Israel. It didn’t seem like the star had more precision, but it seems like then in the text after they’ve heard the promise of Micah that the star goes to rest right over the house where Jesus was. I’d love to hear about that.
Or I’d love to ask him, when they asked Herod where the one who was born King of the Jews is, did they know what they were saying? Herod, remember, had that title. It was given to him by the Roman Caesar, the King of the Jews. You can imagine walking up to the one who has on his, you know, embroidered on his royal throne, “king of the Jews,” and saying, “Hey, where’s the new king of the Jews?” It doesn’t seem like they were, and this is maybe another question that I’d like to ask. Did they really think that Herod also wanted to worship him? It seems like it.
You know, Herod pulls them aside after he’s going to send them to Bethlehem, and he says, “Hey, when you guys find him, come back and get me and I’ll come and worship him also”—with a sword. It seems like the wise men believed Herod, which is a little indication of how wily Herod was, how tricky he was. He was an utterly wicked man, but he had a large amount of earthly wisdom. He reshaped the whole countryside. He was bloodthirsty, but he seemed pretty savvy. And maybe they were tricked. The angel had to tell them in a dream, “Don’t go back to Jerusalem; go home another way.” I would love to know all these details.
I’d love to know, and this I think we can figure out, maybe we should ask Pastor Mitwoody who was over in Bethlehem last week I think. Someone told me that there’s a place that you can stand in the city of Jerusalem and see Bethlehem. You just look down from the palace of Herod; he could look down and see the little village there. It was very close; it was only six miles away, and it’s an amazing thing to think that there was the child, the Messiah.
But Herod and especially the Pharisees just couldn’t be bothered to go down there. They could see it from where they were standing, but they couldn’t be troubled to go and check it out themselves. Now, God be praised, they didn’t, but the wise men did. And the wise men had this divine inspiration, not only from the star, but also from the scriptures, the prophetic scriptures, that this child who was born was more than what he appeared. That this child who they found in the lap of the Virgin Mary was God in the flesh.
And we know that they thought that because when they go into the house, they fell down and worshiped Him. Now of all the things that we don’t know about the text, of all the things that are very mysterious about this account, this is not; this is clear, and this is the point that we want to have, that the wise men worship the child Jesus just like you and me, or maybe to say it another way, we worship the child Jesus just like the wise men.
Now I can’t, every year I mention this sermon from Luther, I just can’t escape it; it’s stuck in my mind because Luther imagines how it would have been on that night in Bethlehem, January 6th or whenever it was, if you were just out walking your dog in Bethlehem and you turned around the corner and you get to the street and it’s so crowded with all these camels, you know? You know, like sometimes you go home and there’s all these cars in the street, and you’re like, “Oh, a neighbor’s having a party; I wonder whose house it is.” What are all these camels doing here?
And so you go and you go to track it down, on what’s all the hubbub, and you find all these servants kind of milling around with all these soldiers out in the street, and you’re like, “What’s going on in there?” And so you go and you look in the window, and there you see this astonishing sight. You see three wise men, kings from the east, and they’re down on their face on the ground in front of this little baby.
And Luther, as he imagines it, says, as you’re walking by, you would say, “What great fools these men are to fall down and worship a baby. Don’t they know that we worship God in the temple? Don’t they know that we worship God in majesty and glory? Don’t they know that we worship God in Jerusalem? What great fools!” And this is also the same for us. If someone were to walk by the church and kind of, I don’t know, prop themselves up and look through the stained-glass window and see you and about 20 minutes from now, they’re gonna see you down on your knees in front of this altar taking a little piece of bread and drinking a little sip of wine with such great piety and fervor in your hearts and in your minds and they would say, “What are those people doing? They’re kooks. They’re nutty. What great fools. It’s Friday night. Don’t they know there’s better things to be doing than this?”
But this is the wisdom, dear saints; this is the wisdom of God. That we worship Jesus in humility, in poverty, in lowliness, knowing that this is our God and Savior. Now there’s a part of this that I just cannot escape, especially today, thinking about it. So I don’t know how this has been for you, but I’ve talked to a number of you even just before the service, and it occurs to me it just seems to me it feels to me like a very heavy time, that a lot of you are suffering, that a lot of you are praying for people, that a lot of you are feeling the weight and the burden of this life of sin, that a lot of you are weary, that a lot of you are crying out to God, that a lot of you are wondering what the Lord is up to.
And it seems to me, as I was thinking about this text and I was thinking about all these things today, that the Lord always takes many more risks than we ever would. It seems to me like if it was me planning this whole thing that I would have made sure that Jesus was born a lot farther away from Herod than He was. Six miles is not enough margin. It seems to me like I would have made sure, not just an impression in a dream that the wise men didn’t go back, but I would have caused some sort of earthquake to make sure that the road back to Jerusalem was blocked. It seems to me like I would have made Jesus a little safer so that the swords of Herod’s soldiers couldn’t have pierced him through.
But the Lord is always willing to go right up next to the edge in all his workings and dealings with us. Now I don’t know why. I don’t know why He does it this way, but I know that if you are feeling like you’re on the edge, that you just can’t possibly see how things are gonna work out, you can’t imagine what the Lord is doing, that you should remember Jesus in the hands of Mary, wrapped up against the cold by Joseph as they flee to Egypt, and to know that no matter how tenuous things seem, the Lord is working, and his will is done. He would escape Herod; he would grow up, growing in favor with God and man, he’d be baptized by John in the Jordan River, and he would at the right time be nailed to the cross for you.
So we rejoice in the wisdom of the wise men to worship Jesus, but even more, we rejoice in the wisdom of God to accomplish in this child, in this man, in this Jesus our Savior, to accomplish our rescue, deliverance, and eternal life. May God grant us this comfort and this peace.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
