The Wonder of Worship | Matthew 2:1-12
Sermon Manuscript
Let’s pray together. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be pleasing to you O Lord our rock and our redeemer.
It’s a New Year which means New Years Resolutions. The top New Years resolutions in the US for 2025 are to save more money, to eat healthier, to exercise more, to lose weight, to spend more time with family and friends, and to quit smoking. The New Year gives us a sense of a fresh start and so it can be a good time for some to start new personal goals to have a better year than the previous. Today is the fifth day of the New Year, and I wonder how many new years resolutions have already been broken. By the end of January about 88% of New Years Resolutions will have been abandoned.
I mentioned at the start of Advent that the New Year for Christians actually starts at Advent. We start our year not with resolutions of how we will be better, but rather by looking forward to the arrival of Jesus, the Son of God made flesh. We're now through Advent. We learned of Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds as they all anticipated and celebrated Jesus' arrival in their own story. Then we celebrated the birth of Jesus and said that now WE carry His light into a dark world. We're still in the Christmas season, technically. Today is the 12th day of Christmas. (Perhaps we should have had 12 drummer drumming come perform for us.) But today we also celebrate Epiphany. Epiphany is the day that the Magi arrived to worship Jesus. There's a lot of misunderstanding around the Magi that I hope we can clear up, and then we're going to see what we can learn from these pagan Magi come to worship Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.
Let's build a picture in our mind. First of all, don't picture the nativity. They weren't there. We don't know exactly when the Magi arrived, but Jesus was not a newborn. It's said that the Magi arrived to a house and Jesus is called a child. I bet they arrived to a house with a rambunctious toddler Jesus running around, terrorizing the dog, and playing with his new Paw Patrol toys he got for Christmas. I'm certainly reading into the text with my mental image, but picture that age in your mind.
But who were these people? Why did they travel so far to meet a toddler? Surely, they had some cute toddlers in Babylon. Why come all this way? The term translated Magi or Wise Men is magus. You probably hear the word "magic" in magus. They were magicians likely from Babylon. They were pagan. Definitely not Jewish. If Luke telling us about dirty shepherds coming to meet the infant Messiah was weird for their day, magicians coming to worship the Jewish King is far weirder. Magicians are explicitly banned in the Old Testament, and their practices continue to be prohibited in New Testament teachings. Some Old Testament laws do not have to be followed such as eating clean versus unclean animals which was revealed to the Apostle Peter. But this is not one of those situations. Divination and magic are prohibited. So, what is there to celebrate these Magicians using their ungodly ways to find Jesus?
Here it is: the Magi show us that God can call us from and even through our sinfulness. God used the magicians’ astrology to call the Magi to Jesus. Their sinfulness was not a barrier to experiencing God's grace. God used even their sinful practice to draw them to His Son. I have more to say about this passage, but that'll preach all by itself. We all have sin patterns. Perhaps you have some you're trying to shake. You may even have stopping this or that sinful thing as part of your New Years Resolution. Yes, striving to avoid sin is good. But don't be surprised if God reveals Himself to you, gives you grace, and draws you to Jesus even through your sinfulness. God meets us in surprising places. But striving to avoid sin is only part of the lesson here, and the other point is far greater.
First, let’s review where we’ve been. We've said that Jesus was a toddler who may or may not have been playing with his Paw Patrol toys when the Magi arrived. We have the Magi who are magicians God called to His Son even through their sinfulness. And now we come to the question of why: why did the Magi pursue this toddler over all the other toddlers that they surely could have admired in Babylon? It's because they didn't come to babysit, they came to worship the King of the Jews. They came to worship Jesus.
This brings us to an interesting twist in this story that we've skipped over so far. The Magi followed a star to Jesus, but it seems they got lost along the way. They figured where better to go to find the new Jewish King than the current Jewish King and his host of scribes and religious experts. But rather than finding a King excited for God's Messiah to come to earth and rule with perfect justice, we instead find a Jewish King with a selfish heart who wanted to hold onto the power himself. The pagan Magi came to worship Jesus with a purity of heart, but the Jewish King sought to kill that King instead. But the Magi didn't know this. As they're on their way to Bethlehem to find Jesus, Harod plans what will become a genocide of the children around Jesus' age. While the pagan Magi demonstrate holiness and awe due to Jesus, the Jewish King demonstrates evil and hatred.
Do you see the contrast? We have pagan men who have ungodly practices, and we have a Jewish King who should be ruling with the integrity due a King of God's people. Instead, we see God-honoring Magi in stark contrast to a God-despising Jewish King. How backwards. And yet, how often is this true? How many people do you know who claim to love Jesus, and yet their actions don't support it? On the other hand, how many nonbelievers do you know who don't entirely understand Jesus, but their actions demonstrate that God is working on their heart to draw them to Himself? Are you or have you been one of those people?
These are the circumstances surrounding the Magi's arrival. It's a backwards world that Jesus was born into. Sound familiar? I’m sure we all feel like we’re living in a backwards world nowadays too. Holy pagans, and an unholy Jewish King. We know that the Magi didn't return to Harod having been warned in a dream, and shortly after this Joseph is told in a dream to flee with his family to Egypt. But the Magi did find Jesus. And they did worship Him. These pagan magicians traveled far with a God-given desire to find Jesus.
The Magi didn't have a lot of things we associate with being a God-follower. They didn't have the holy scriptures, they didn't know the evils of magic, they didn’t know the one true God when they began their quest. But when the learned of the Jewish the King, they were given a desire to find Him. God simply gave them the desire to find Jesus, and then God used the means they're used to, divination and astrology, to find Him. Not only does God meet us in the midst of our sinfulness, but in that place, God can change our desires. Though God may use our sinful circumstances to call us, God doesn't want us to stay there. And he wants to change more than just our behavior, He wants to change our desires. He gives the Magi a desire to find Jesus, and he can give you and me new desires, too. I mentioned that avoiding sin is good, but it’s only part of the equation, and a lesser part at that. This is the more significant part: allowing God to change your heart so that you desire Him, more than you desire sin.
I mentioned New Years Resolutions at the beginning. There's something in us that loves fresh starts. Whether you want to start a workout routine or spend more time with family, the habit probably won't stick if you don't have a genuine desire for something beyond modified behavior. You need to genuinely desire something different or new. The same is true in our relationship with God. Sometimes resolutions for Christians include reading the Bible more, praying more, going to church more, giving more. Those are certainly good actions and I've prompted you to do those things before as a way to experience God. But those actions aren't going to stick in your heart and mind unless they come from a genuine desire to experience God or worship Jesus. It starts with a desire for Him instead of sin. We need more than a behavior change, we need a heart change.
God called the Magi in the midst of their sinfulness, and He placed a desire in their hearts to worship the Jewish King. God can call you even in the midst of your sinfulness, and place a desire in your heart to worship Jesus, too. This is actually a step of changing the desires of your heart from sin to Him. This isn't just for non-believers. This is for anyone who knows they should pray more, read scripture more, go to church more. In other words, this is for all of us.
As we continue in this New Year, I hope you will add a simple prayer to your daily routine. Unlike a resolution which can be perhaps be broken and abandoned, you get to start fresh with this every day. A missed day doesn't mean it's broken. Just start fresh every day with this prayer. This prayer is one I've personally prayed before in times when I felt far from God, though it's a good prayer in any season. Here it is: "God, give me the desire for you." This prayer simply expresses a desire for a desire. It can be "I don't desire you, but I want to. Help me desire you." Or, "I don't want to get up to go to church on Sunday mornings, but give me the desire to worship You." Or “I desire this sin or sin pattern more than you. Help me desire you more.” Pray it every day. Just keep praying. There's certainly practices you can do to encourage your heart to desire God, but I'm not even going to tell you to do those today. Just pray the prayer. Ask God to give you the desire to worship Him, to experience Him, to follow Him. Ask God to change your desire. And here's how I see this going and how it went for me: God began to change my desires. It took time. But as I prayed the prayer, I did start to desire God more. And I desired sinful things less. It's not that I tried to quit something I knew wasn't good, but it was that my heart began to be so focused on God that I didn't want those sinful things nearly as much as I used to. This is sanctification. This is how God changes our hearts to desire God over sinful things – how God teaches us to desire Him over sin. It's more about what we desire than our actions.
I want to read you another prayer. This prayer is called the Wesley Covenant Prayer. It's a bold prayer. It's hard even for me to read at times. But it's a prayer of full submission to God and His will. If you want to take your prayer a step further beyond asking God to change your desires, I encourage you to add this to your routine. Here it is:
“I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”
Bold, right? And kind of terrifying if we really mean it. Do you really want God to put you to doing or suffering? Are we really willing to be brought low or laid aside for God? It's a bold prayer. But in praying that prayer you submit your will and desire to God, and verbally acknowledge the ways that you desire God to work through you in any way He sees fit.
Whether you pray the Wesley Covenant Prayer, or simply pray for God to help you desire Him, I hope you will make these prayers part of your 2025. Ask for a God-given desire which once lead pagan magicians to the Jewish King. Who knows what a God-given desire might do through you.
Let us pray. Oh Heavenly Father who called the Magi, put a desire for You in our hearts. Help us see that a life with you is far greater, more joyful, more authentic, than any life we could live in our sinfulness. In 2025 help us to trust you and desire you just a little more every day. Amen.