Blessed to Bless(02Jan2011)

Series: Missions 2011
Missions M1
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Blessed to Bless
Texts: Psalm 67; Numbers 6:24-26; Genesis 12:1-3; Isaiah 42:1-6, 49:6; Romans 9:6-8
BIG IDEA: God blesses us so that we would be a blessing to others.
(Refer to the offering picture. On the first Sunday of Advent, I spoke briefly about how we at Tenth like lots of churches and nonprofits had fallen short of our giving targets and I said, “If you are a regular here would you prayerfully consider making a gift over and above your regular giving and as we close the year?” I said, “If you’d like to trust God more, but are not in the practice of doing so, please consider raising your giving to a tithe (a tenth) for the coming year. You’ve really excelled in the grace of giving… In the month of December alone, offerings totaled about $480,000 (yes, it's close to half a million dollars) and by God's grace and your responsiveness to God we are ending the year, our financial position is in the black. So thank you for being a blessing! As result of your giving, though of course we want to be careful in our spending in the new year, we won’t have to lay off staff we feel are called to serve here or cut back ministries we feel called by God to pursue. Thank you for being a blessing.)
Just before Christmas I was interviewed by one of Vancouver’s news radio stations on why church attendance swells at Christmas. Why do people who never go to church at any other time of year attend at Christmas and Easter?
After the interview was done, I was curious and so I asked the reporter, “How did hear out about Tenth.” I’m not sure if she is a follower of Christ, but she said, “A friend of mine invited me to Tenth and I’ve come a few times. I’ve been so impressed with your work in the community that I said to myself, ‘I want to do a story on Tenth some time’.”
If we’ve done any good at all in our city or in a place like Cambodia, it’s not because we’ve initiated anything, it’s because God has blessed us so we can be a blessing.
During January, as we often do here at Tenth, we’re going to focus on God’s call for us to bless the world through our participation in God’s mission locally and around the world. Please pray that this will be a powerful month here at Tenth as God commissions and sends us anew into the world.
Today as begin our new missions’ series, I want us to turn our attention to Psalm 67:
(If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s word.)
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
3 May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples with equity
and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
6 The land yields its harvest;
God, our God, blesses us.
7 May God bless us still,
so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.
Psalm 67

This Psalm is a prayer of blessing, or what we call a benediction for the community of God’s people. The Psalmist in verse 1 says, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us.”
Here the Psalmist is drawing on the classical benediction expressed first by Moses’ brother Aaron in Numbers 6:24:
24 “‘“The LORD bless you
and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’
Even if you are fairly new to Christianity, you have probably heard this benediction at the end of a Christian service. It is a beautiful blessing where the person offering the blessing invokes God to make his face shine upon his people. When that happens, God’s grace, his undeserved kindness, pours over people and he grants them peace. The Hebrew word for peace being used in his famous blessing is the word “shalom.” It means wholeness, complete wellness, peace with God, peace with other people.
In the next part of the verse the Psalmist prays that this would happen as a result of God blessing his people.
In vs. 2
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
Here the Psalmist is alluding to another great passage of Scripture where God called Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3:
1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
As we read on in Genesis and throughout the Scriptures we know that when God says, “All peoples on earth,” will be blessed through Abraham—we know that God is not just referring to blessing all the peoples on earth directly through Abraham himself. We know God intends to bless the world, but indirectly, through Abraham—i.e., through his offspring.
But, we read in Genesis 15 that Abraham thinks that it is impossible for God to bless the whole world through Abraham’s offspring since he has no children, and his wife Sarah who is well beyond child-bearing years is barren. But miraculously when Abraham was 99 years old and his wife Sarah was 90, this couple who had struggled with infertility for decades miraculously conceived and gave birth to a son, and they called him Isaac which literally means “laughter”-- because when God told Sarah she would conceive, she threw her head back and laughed (that’s a good one!). Isaac their son would marry Rebekah and they would have twins, Esau and Jacob. And Jacob, who was later renamed Israel, would have 12 sons and several daughters. So Abraham’s descendants became known as the children of Israel.
God had called Abraham’s descendants to be a blessing to not just their own family and nation, but to the whole world. He called them to be a light to the whole world. In Isaiah 42:6 we read God saying to Israel:
“I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles.
In Isaiah 49:6 God says to the people of Israel:
“I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
God calls his people, the descendants of Abraham, to be a light to the whole world so that his salvation, his freedom, might be experienced by all the peoples on earth.
But, how did Israel do in its call to be a blessing to the whole world?
If you read the Scriptures, you see that for centuries the descendants of Abraham, the people Israel failed to be a light to world.
But as God had supernaturally fulfilled his promise to Abraham thousands of years earlier and enabled Sarah to miraculously conceive and give birth to Isaac, so 2000 years ago God would supernaturally fulfill again his promise to Abraham again that his descendants would be a blessing to the whole world by enabling a teenage girl named Mary to miraculously conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to a son.
The Gospel of Matthew begins with these words:
1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Matthew begins his gospel this way because he knows that the birth of Jesus Christ is a fulfillment of God’s ancient promise to Abraham that through his offspring God would bless the whole world. God fulfils this promise to Abraham by becoming a son of Abraham, an Israelite by becoming a human being in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is the light of world. Jesus Christ is the one who can and does bless the world by bearing in his body on the cross the sins of the people of the whole people of the world so those who come to him might receive forgiveness and eternal life; that is, God’s life, now and forever.
In one of the messages in last fall’s Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus in Scripture and Prayer series I told a story of how when my wife Sakiko’s mom, was pregnant with her, Sakiko’s father had expressed clearly he wanted a boy and not a girl and was disappointed that he had a girl. Then growing up, Sakiko’s father was so often absent from home because of his work, she grew up with a sense that she wasn’t wanted by her father.
Then out of the blue on day, a few years after giving her life to Christ as a young adult Sakiko had a sense that God was naming her Isaac. Sounds strange, I know. She didn’t get any explanation as to why she was being named Isaac. But, as she reflected on this and prayed over it, she felt God was saying to her, “You are a desired, promised child.” This word has helped her realize how much she is loved by God. Later she discovered that the word was not unique. Paul, in Gal 4:28, says those who belong to Christ are the children of promise. We are Isaac. We are children of Abraham.
In the book of Romans 9 Paul makes it really clear in verse 8 that God considers the true descendants of Abraham, not necessarily those who can trace their physical descent to him, but those who have been adopted into God’s family by Abraham’s great great great grandson Jesus Christ.
Paul says in Romans 9:8: “It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”2X And if we have been adopted into God’s family by Abraham’s great great great grandson Jesus Christ, we too are sons and daughters of Abraham. We are God’s people.
We are called to step forward, receive God’s blessing, and pray that God would be gracious to us and make his face shine upon us (Psalm 67:1) Why? Not just for our personal success, but “so that God’s ways may be known on earth and his salvation among the nations, so that the peoples would praise God and the nations would be glad and sing for joy” (Psalm 67:2, 4).
God is not our personal savior—he is the savior of the world.
Several years ago there was a popular book, a book that sold millions, called The Prayer of Jabez. In fairness to the author, he didn’t intend to convey this message, but many people took the message from that God wants to literally increase our land and make us financially rich. When this book was at the height of its popularity, someone was walking across a university campus in Los Angeles with a t-shirt that said, “I prayed the prayer of Jabez and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
When we ask God to bless us, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are going to get more land, or a bigger condo or house, a faster car, more money. It might mean that, but it might not mean that. It might mean we are a blessed capacity to face suffering with a greater sense of peace and perspective. Being blessed might mean God is doing something powerfully transforming, even as we suffer and wait, which is a huge theme of advent.
The original blessing from which Psalm 67 comes is in Numbers 6:24. In that passage we read the words: 24 “The LORD bless you and keep you… (and closes with the word) and give you peace.” I mentioned earlier that the word “peace” is the Hebrew word “shalom”-- meaning “wholeness, complete wellness, peace with God, peace with other people.” Sometimes the shalom God gives us is marked by bounty and visible prosperity and success. At other times God gives us his shalom as a sense of welling being and peace in the midst of suffering. Jesus and John the Baptist were two of the most blessed by God people who have ever lived. Neither was financially rich. Both were poor by worldly standards. Both suffered. Both were blessed by God’s peace.
So being blessed can mean that we are materially blessed, and given say the gifts of good health. But being blessed as we see in the cases of John the Baptist and Jesus can also mean that we have peace and a sense of perspective and purpose, even in the midst of our affliction.
And we pray that God is gracious to us and blesses us so that God’s ways may be known on earth and his salvation among the nations.
Like the Psalmist, we pray that God would bless us so that other people might know him.
We pray that we would be blessed in order that we might be a blessing to others. We are blessed to bless. If we hold on to God’s blessing and don’t become a blessing to others, like the Israelites who hoarded the manna (manna was the honey wafers God provided for his people while they were traveling in wilderness en route to the promised land, after God deliver them out of Egypt where they had been slaves), if we hoard our blessing those blessings will rot. If we hoard our blessings we will become spiritually bloated. We will become stagnant.
At New York University there is a child study centre, a research centre for studying children and families. One study came out of this centre at NYU (New York University) about families and households with incomes of $75,000-160,000. So these are studies involving children of professionals. Over the last 20 years there has been a sharp rise in the psychological problems of the teenagers who come from these families. Suicide rates have doubled in this group in the last two decades. According to the study, these kids have complete financial security, excessive freedom to learn and explore, and a provision of a very wide range of interesting opportunities for entertainment, recreation and education. But, these factors have often led to apathy, laziness and an inability to commit to goals, attitudes of entitlement, indecisiveness, moodiness, irritability without provocation, low self-confidence and insecurity.
If kids are snowed over with affirmation, prosperity and blessing, but they are not taught to sacrificially serve some cause bigger than themselves, they rot. They become spiritually bloated and fat.
Even if you have not read a study like this one from NYU, many of us have observed young people who have been raised in good families with ample amounts of money and lots opportunity for entertainment, recreation, and education, but are unable to commit to a relationship or to a vocational path. They seem to be in a malaise. Part of that may be attributable to the economy, but part of that malaise is also caused by kids frankly in some cased being spoiled and having a sense of entitlement.
Young people and older people paradoxically will never be happy if they make their personal happiness their goal. If we don’t make our personal happiness our goal, but rather make it our aim to bless others—we will paradoxically be much happier. Jesus said that it is in losing our life in love and service for others that we find it.
I am reading the bestseller Another Country. In this book Dr. Mary Pipher, a psychologist, says that in the previous generation psychiatrists would ask their clients, “What are others doing to you, and how are you feeling?” Now it’s more helpful to ask, “What are you doing for others, and how are others feeling about you?” Even secular people recognize that serving others is a good and healthy thing to do.
The Psalmist here (Psalm 67:2) specifically talks about being blessed so that others may know God’s salvation and so that the nations will be glad and sing for joy. We engage in mission so that others will worship God and find their joy in him.
Many people, particularly in a place like Vancouver, feel that it is fine to pursue spirituality, and even to follow Christ. But many people in Vancouver and probably a lot of people here at Tenth feel that it is inappropriate to talk about your faith with someone else, especially with a hope that other people will actually believe in God as well.
Isn’t it true that when we experience joy in something that we want other people to experience that joy, too? And so to not do it is unnatural and perhaps even unhealthy. One night a man that I know came home and his wife was watching a DVD of a ballet. She was weeping as she was watching the ballet DVD. She said, “This is the best thing that I have ever seen. Please, I know that you don’t like ballet that much, but I have never seen anything like this. I would love for you to see it. I think that you would like it. It is 30 minutes, but would you please watch it all because it gets really good near the end. Please sit down and watch it.” She is weeping experiencing real joy. She says, “I know you are not into this, but this time I think you will see.”
The husband sits down. He watched it. Later, his wife Kathy asked him, “So what did you think?” He said, “It was alright.” Part of the reason that Kathy wanted her husband to watch the ballet DVD was for her. She wanted him to enjoy something she enjoyed, but she also wanted her husband to experience joy through something that she considered to be very beautiful.
There is nothing wrong with what she did. Now if he watched and didn’t really enjoy it much, if she had picked up the jacket of the DVD and slammed it over his head and said, “You ignorant brute! You Cultural Philistine! What’s wrong with you?” That would have been a problem.
But, everyone in some way says, “I want you to watch this.” It may not be a DVD of a ballet, but it might be yoga or running or snowboarding … something you experience a lot of joy in. You want others to experience it, too. You want them to convert--and become a Mac user (iPad user).
So it is with our faith. If we have experienced joy and meaning in our faith through Jesus Christ, it is natural to share it with others. There’s nothing wrong with that—as long we don’t slam people over the head with the DVD cover if they’re not interested.
The Psalmist says, “May God be gracious to us and bless us so that the peoples will praise you and the nations will be glad and sing for joy.”
In the last two weeks there have been a couple of examples in our community where I have seen this happen.
Here’s an email I got a week ago from someone in our community. He works for a famous company you’ve all heard of. He sent this e-mail to his colleague, most of who don’t believe in God.
He gave me permission to share this with you:
Hey guys, a lot has been going on in my life recently, and i wanted to share it with you, a few weeks ago i had some surgery because i had an infection that wouldnt clear, when the doctors cut me open, they found a cancerous tumor and removed it, i am now waiting for a CT scan to see if the cancer is gone from my body or i will be going for some chemotherapy.
My faith and relationship with God has kept me at peace knowing that He will take care of me and is with me every step of the journey. My wife has been an amazing strength to me and my 2 year old daughter has been praying for daddy's owwee every day. i know i will be in your thoughts and prayers, and i will update you with results as soon as i get them. I know this isnt the happiest email you ever got from me, but on a lighter note, there is a good chance i may win the Tour de France next year.
This guy feels so blessed knowing that whatever comes down the pike at him, he’s going to face it with God. He wants to share this blessing in a sensitive, respectful way with his colleagues. BTW, he just found out he’s cancer free. But, he has shared with me even if he had to do chemo (before he knew he was free)—he would be blessed knowing that he wouldn’t be going it alone, but God would be walking through it with him.
Here’s another email I got last week from someone in our community. His permission to share…
He’s the head chef at famous restaurant here in Vancouver.
The other day one of my cooks (Carlos - named changed for privacy) approached me in the office and broke down in tears. Carlos confided in me about an alcohol and drug problem that he's been dealing with. He had no one else to talk to. No friends, no family. He said that his only conversations he had outside of work was with the homeless person he feeds outside his home.

We spoke for two hours. I listened to him. Supported him, empathized with him, encouraged him. I felt in my heart that I needed to help Carlos. I told him that he doesn't have to fight these battles on his own, that our team will support him and that we will get him some counseling. Carlos was also struggling with depression.
Carlos mentioned he needed something in his life, something spiritual. At this point, I told him about my belief in Christ and how he has changed my life. I gave him the example (from a recent Sunday sermon) of how if you put God on the throne of your life, everything else seems to fall into place. I also told him that I would pray for him.

Carlos came into my office expecting to get fired for missing a shift, instead he left looking like he had a huge weight lifted off his shoulders…
When we find our self blessed with Christ and then out of that sense of blessing, bless others so that people are drawn a little closer to God, whether we know it or not, we are, as Abraham’s great great great grandsons and daughters, part of the fulfillment of God’s promise that through his family he would bless the whole world.
Part of the reason we serve the homeless and the poor in our city, part of the reason we are investing in Cambodia for 10-15 years working with groups who advocate on behalf of women and boys and girls who are being trafficked into the sex trade, part of why we are supporting people like Pastor Abraham in Cambodia as he works in Christian community development in this very poor village of Andong, is because as the grandsons and granddaughters of Abraham, we are called to be a blessing to the world.
We don’t believe we are doing these things just because they are good things to do. We believe we are doing these things as part the fulfillment of a larger plan of God to promise to Abraham.
I got a small glimpse of this 2 weeks ago—but let me back up and give a little context.
Back in 1996 when I first came to Tenth our church was a lot more formal than it is now. Everyone who participated on the platform in a service, whether they were preaching or taking the offering or giving the pastoral prayer, would sit on the platform behind the pulpit. We used to have a pulpit back in those days. I remember sitting on the platform and looking out at the congregation which on some low attendance Sundays there would be 100 and something people in here. (This auditorium seats fairly comfortably 600-700.) I remember seeing a lot of gaps, and therefore a lot of wood, as I looked out in the pews.
But then something strange happened over a few Sundays. I rarely get literal visions. I get “vision” as a leader…seeing a preferred future. But I rarely get vision visions where I actually see something while I am awake. I got these visions of this place being full. I just tried to shrug them off, but they just kept coming over a few Sundays…of this place being full. I never spoke of this. I didn’t know for sure where the vision came from.
Then for the last Christmas concert this past December this place was packed with close to 1000 sitting here in that one concert alone. Every pew filled…people sitting in the stairwell…sitting several rows back in the balcony… on the floor…standing on the sides. Before the concert started I knew that it would be inappropriate for me to take a potential seat from a guest, so I just gave up my seat and stood out in the foyer. Just before it was my turn to speak I took the stairs down to the first level, walked under the sanctuary on the first level, took the stairwell over at this corner, and then walked around the back over some choir members, and I just stood right there (point to the place).
As I looked out and saw how full this place was, I was reminded of the vision I had 14 years ago that this place would be full. I had a sense that we here at Tenth had been part of something that wasn’t just something that we did, but the fulfillment of a promise that God gave years earlier.
So it is when we are blessed and then begin to bless others. It is not just something that we are doing, but we are fulfilling part of God’s plan to bless the world that he made thousands of years ago to Abraham. We as his grandchildren are fulfilling that promise. At Tenth, we have been blessed to be a blessing in Vancouver and in Cambodia and wherever God leads us in the world.
Let’s Pray…
How has God blessed you?
How is God calling you bless others, to share the light?
Take a moment to pray:

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
3 May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy….

The King and I(19Dec10)

Series: Advent 2010
Advent M3: Sermon Notes (10 12 19)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: The King and I
Text: Matthew 2:1-12
BIG IDEA: We can either resist or submit to the Messiah.
Perhaps you have heard the story of the twin boys who looked identical, but their personalities were so different. One of the twins tended to be gloomy and saw things in a negative light. The other boy was much more hopeful and saw the good in things. As Christmas approached, their father was curious as to how they might respond to the very different gifts he would give them.
Early on Christmas morning he quietly loaded the gloomy boy’s room full of amazing toys and games. He loaded the other boy’s room full of horse manure. About an hour after the boys had woken up, the father walked by the gloomy son’s room and found him surrounded by this new toys crying. “Why are you crying?” asked the father. “Well, now that I have all these toys my friends are going to be very jealous of me. I’ll soon have to replace the batteries on them. And one day all of my toys will get broken.” The father went to his other son’s room and he found him frolicking for joy in the manure pile. “Why are you so happy?” asked the father. “I know there has got to be a pony in here somewhere!” his son answered.
We all know of people who respond very differently to their experiences—even when those experiences are similar or even the same.
We have seen people who have experienced a financial windfall, and in some cases they become more materialistic, superficial and greedy. In other cases, people become radically generous with what they have.
We have seen people who have experienced personal tragedy in their lives, perhaps the loss life of a loved one. Mysteriously, for reasons we don’t fully understand, some become bitter and hardened with their lot. Others deepen, become wiser and more graceful as a result of their pain.
This morning as we look again at Matthew 2 we are going to look at two very different responses to the one who has been born king of the Jews and king of the world. We are going to look at the Magi again, but today we will contrast their response to Jesus with King Herod’s.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Matthew 2:1-12.
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Tradition has cast the Magi as the three wise men. We don’t really know whether there were three or more. Some of the oldest traditions say there were twelve Magi, but we don’t know for certain. It is not likely they were kings themselves, as tradition also suggests, but more likely advisors to the kings. The Magi were specialists at decoding the messages in the stars and would have likely helped the kings interpret the signs in the heavens. It is likely however that they came from some kind of royal or priestly lineage. We know that they travelled from Persia, modern day Iran, on a journey that would have taken six months to a year. In all likelihood, they had an elaborate entourage. They would have come in a caravan of camels and servants and supplies necessary for their long journey.
They had seen the star rise announcing the birth of the king of the Jews. And that star guided them to Jerusalem, but they did not know how to proceed from there. So when they made their way into the market in Jerusalem, and they began to ask people, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw a star announcing his birth, and we have come to worship him.” Word gets back to King Herod that the Magi from Persia have announced that they have seen a star which has proclaimed the birth of the king of the Jews. This was at a time that people believed the birth of great kings was announced by a star.
King Herod was threatened by this news. After all, he was not a Jew, nor was he a Roman. He was an Edomite. So he called together the chief priests, or the senior pastors, the teachers of the law, the long-time Bible believers. He asked them, “Where is your messiah going to be born?” They responded by saying, “In Bethlehem.” They quote the prophet Micah to him:
5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod secretly summoned the Magi and then offers Scripture that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. He told them, “Go and look very hard for the child, and when you find him, come back and tell me where he is.” When the Magi had finished their audience with King Herod, they left. The star reappeared and moved ahead of them until it came over the place where the child Christ lay. They felt this deep profound joy. When they came to the house and saw the baby Jesus with Mary his mother, they fell down on their faces and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and brought him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
At this time, contrary to church tradition, Jesus is likely no longer in a stable, but in a house. He is likely closer to being one year old than a newborn. The star that the Magi saw likely announced Jesus birth, and then they travelled about a year from Persia to find him, to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem.
They open their treasure gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What do these gifts symbolize? We know that gold then as now is precious treasure. A gift fit for a king. Frankincense was an ingredient for sacred incense. (According to the book of Leviticus, it was used in worship.) Myrrh was a holy fragrant oil also used in incense. The gifts of frankincense and myrrh are gifts fitting not only for a king, but for a god. The Magi falling on their faces prostrate before Jesus Christ, as a one-year-old, and then offering their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh symbolized their loyalty and submission to this new king.
King Herod’s response to the one who has been born king of the Jews is markedly different. King Herod also receives the gospel or the good news. He hears directly from the Magi the news that a star has announced the birth of a great king. This was at a time that people believed that stars announced the birth of the great king. He has heard from the senior pastors and the Bible teachers that, according to the Scriptures and specifically the book of the prophet Micah, this great king, this Messiah, would be born in Bethlehem.
So Herod receives news of the star. He hears God’s Word in Scripture. Herod, like the Magi, received the invitation to the birthday party of Christ, God’s Son, but he does not receive this news with joy or gratitude, but as a threat.
Herod becomes intensely anxious about the threat of this new-born king. As I said, Herod was not a Jew after all, nor even a Roman. He was an Edomite, with a record of killing members of his own family out of fear that they posed a threat to his power. He tells the Magi to go and look really hard for the child. (Herod can’t bring himself to call him a king. He refers to Jesus simply as “the child.”) “When you find him,” he said, “come back and find me so that I too may come and worship him.” But Herod doesn’t want to worship him. Herod wants to kill him.
(Let me say in parenthesis Herod does not have to respond like this. He too can receive the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life from this new King. Though Herod’s sins have been great--he was notorious for his lavish, extravagant life style, his setting up of idols and shrines to all the gods, and his murderous impulses, because he lived in fear of being overthrown. At this point in history, he had already killed his wife, three of his sons, his mother-in-law, his brother-in-law, his uncle, and many others. But despite his great sins he was not beyond God’s grace and mercy. If he had received direction from the star, the Scripture, the guidance to Bethlehem and like the Magi bow down before the King and surrendered to him, he would have received God’s mercy, forgiveness and new beginning. But Herod doesn’t do that. Instead he does all he can to murder this new king.)
We read in Matthew 2:16 that when Herod became aware that he had been tricked by the Magi (the Magi were not going to tell him where Jesus was), he was furious and commanded that all the infants in Bethlehem, and the whole surrounding region, who were two years old and under, to be slaughtered. (Some of you here just returned from our mission in Cambodia, and you have been confronted with the genocide that occurred there under the Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Part of what the Gospel of Matthew tells us is that long before Jesus had the opportunity to die for anyone, a whole village of babies in effect died for him. So Christ knows what it is to be confronted with the suffering of genocide. He suffers with the slaughter of the innocent.)
I know that this example of Herod’s response to the Christ is extreme, but there is some of Herod in me, as well. Like Herod, there is a part of me that recognizes I cannot sit on the throne of my life and have Jesus on the throne at the same time. I cannot rule over my life and have Jesus ruling over it, as well. It is one or the other. In our hearts we can say “you can have leadership over these areas, but not those areas of my life.”
Many of us here likely have great respect and admiration for Jesus, but there are also many of us here who are hesitant about utterly surrendering like the Magi to the Christ, falling on our faces, offering up our gifts, which indicate the submission of our lives to the King. Unlike Herod, none of us wants to kill the Christ, but like Herod many of us prefer to occupy the throne of our heart, rather than Christ; or to use language that may be a little more current, to occupy the driver’s seat of our car.
Some years ago I met a pastor from the San Francisco Bay area while we were teaching together at a conference. This pastor, named John, gave a picture of his own life which illustrates how we like to be in control.
John has shared about how he and his wife Nancy were in a part of the country they had never been before.
He said, “We were going to be driving on obscure back roads, so we got a rental car, and the guy at the counter said to me, ‘Along with this car, if you want, you can also get a GPS system’." John said, "No. That is going to cost something. I don't need that. I can find where I'm going without that." His wife said, "Get the GPS." They got the GPS.
John continued, “At one point when we were driving in this car, I was quite sure the lady (the GPS voice) was wrong. She said to go left, and I didn't go left. I went right, because I knew she was wrong. Then as an interesting response, she said, ‘Recalculating route. When safe to do so, execute a U-turn.’ I knew she was wrong, so I unplugged her. That's the beauty of that little box. You can unplug her.
I got lost as a goose. My wife enjoyed that immensely.
So we plugged that GPS back in, and you know what the lady said? ‘You idiot.’ (not really). She said, ‘Recalculating route. When safe to do so, execute a U-turn’."
Like John we resist anyone, including God, directing us.
Pastor John says,
As soon as you're ready to listen, as soon as you're ready to surrender, God will say, "Here is the way home. Execute a U-turn." That's repentance. "I'll bring you home." That is grace. That's Jesus. He is the only one with authoritative wisdom about how to live. He is the only one who brings about the possibility of forgiveness for your sin and mine. He is the only one to give any kind of realistic hope of conquering death, of life beyond the grave.
Jesus does not present himself as a good, spiritual teacher to be admired from a distance. He is a King, one to be followed, obeyed, and worshipped.
Do you admire Jesus, or do you follow him?
Will you let him take the wheel of your life, surrendering to him? I know it takes a great deal of faith, but to live the Christian life only works if you are willing to surrender.
I mentioned one Sunday that I am interested in doing a triathlon one day and have been taking some swimming lessons. I don’t know if you recall learning how to swim for the first time when you were a child. It is counter-intuitive. If you are on your back and your swimming instructor tells you to relax, and surrender to water, and take deep breaths, your instinct is to grab on to something, to take control. But it turns out if you try to be in control, you find yourself sinking. It is as you surrender to the water…relax…breathe deeply…that you will find yourself floating.
And so it is in our relationship with God, it is when we surrender to God that we find ourselves floating in that relationship. The irony, as in swimming so with God, we find ourselves most free and most fully ourselves when we surrender.
Denise Levertov in her wonderful poem the Avowal writes:
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

This fall we encouraged members of our community to grow in their trust of God by becoming part of the practicing the presence movement and committing to regularly meeting Jesus in Scripture and prayer. It is our hope this will not only be a time when we gain more knowledge about God and wisdom and peace, but an opportunity for us to express our desire to submit to God…to float in the Spirit’s embrace.
Here at Tenth we encourage people to offer their talents up to God. And it is our hope that we will do that, not just as a way to develop our talents (though that will happen); not just as a way to experience fulfillment in the exercise of our gifts (that will likely happen as well); but also as a way for us to offer our submission to God.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked briefly before the offering about trusting God through tithing, offering the first tenth of our income. It is our hope this practice is not just a means of securing God’s blessing on our finances (though God invites us in Malachi to do just that), but as a way to express our surrender to God. If we offer these things to God, if we offer our educational path, or our careers to God, if we offer our love life to God, our families to God, every part of us we will find ourselves floating in God and most free and most truly ourselves.
But would we do it? Why would we, like the Magi, offer our submission to Christ? Unlike Herod, we may not want to kill Christ, but we may think it is entirely more rational to maintain control of our lives, to be on the throne, to be in the driver’s seat of our lives.
I am more willing to submit to God than I would be otherwise because God became a human being in Jesus Christ. He left his throne and gave up control so that we might be forgiven, free, adopted into his family as sons and daughters.
That first Christmas the infinite one became a baby again: he gave up the ability to talk, to eat solid food and control his bladder. The Maker of all things became a helpless, dependent newborn.
Then 33 years later God, in Jesus Christ, allows himself to be stripped naked, have his arms stretched out and nailed to this wooden beam, utterly surrendering himself—why? So that he would serve as a sacrifice for our sins and so we would experience the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life—God’s life right now.
In a sense God submitted to us, in a sense he surrendered his control… so we are set free, we can surrender to God and experience freedom…
Liz Curtis Higgs was a famous disc jockey life with a wild lifestyle. In fact, Howard Stern was the A.M. show, and Liz Curtis Higgs was the P.M. show. And one day Howard Stern said to Liz, “You know, you need to clean up your act.”
And because Liz had been burned by so many men, and her heart had been broken so many times…she understandably became a militant feminist.
She had a Christian girlfriend who kept inviting her to church. So one day after a long, long time, she said, “Okay, I will go to church one time and one time only.”
So she went to church one time with her friend. And that week, her friend’s pastor just happened to be teaching on the Bible verse that says, “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands.” Not exactly a good verse to start for Liz (very inflammatory especially if you are not aware of cultural context that Paul is speaking into). Liz got understandably angry, but she continued to listen, and she actually heard the second part of the verse.… which says, “And husbands—you sacrifice yourself; you give yourself for your wives just as Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for the church and died for her.” Who is asked to give their life up? The husband.
When Liz heard that part, she leaned over to her friend and said cynically, “I’d gladly give myself to any man if I knew he would die for me.” And her friend leaned over and said, “Liz, there is man who loved you enough to die for you. His name is Jesus Christ. That’s how much he loves you.” And it was not long after that that Liz, surrendered her life to God in love, and became a follower of Jesus.
Surrender tends to be a very negative term. We don’t like to surrender and most of the time we probably shouldn’t surrender. But there are rare instances when it is a very good thing for us.
To put the story I’m about to tell in context, I am not an American. I am a Canadian citizen, born in Japan. Growing up, my parents, who are Japanese, talked about how good it was that the Japanese surrendered to the Allied Powers.
On September 2, 1945 in Tokyo World War II officially ended. Signing on behalf of Emperor Hirohito, Japan’s foreign minister unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers. As result of that surrender, Japan emerged from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and experienced a rebirth of of its economy, some Japanese learned how to play baseball (without the surrender you don’t get an Ichiro), and some, of course, were exposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There were lots of atrocities on all sides of the war. I don’t mean to justify or minimize what happened.
All I am saying is that even the Japanese would tell you today in the case of World War II surrendering worked in their favour.
So it is with Christ. When we surrender to the Christ, ironically it works in our favour.
Like Magi we experience deep, profound joy, life, more energy to give, more wonder.
Will you be like Herod and try to retain control of your world?
Or will you be like the Magi?
Will you bow down?
Will you offer your very best gifts?
Will you offer all of you to the Christ?
And in losing your life, you will find it in the end?
Prayer:
Do you sense God saying to you:
"Come home. Execute a U-turn."
Perhaps there’s been a part of you that is afraid to surrender to God.
Perhaps you think that if you did surrender, you’d miss out—or that God would send you to Cambodia.
God loves you more than you know.
Liz’s friend whispered, “There is man who loved you enough to die for you.”
So, if you want to come home to God.
Pray this prayer:
God,
I offer you my life.
Like the Magi, I surrender.
Forgive my sins and give me a new beginning.
Guide my life from here forward.
(As an expression of their desire to surrender the Magi fall face down before God. I am not going to ask you do that. But, I will ask you to do something. If you prayed that prayer, as an outward expression of your desire to surrender to God, please quietly raise your hand. As way to say to God and yourself, “I’m yours, God,” quietly raise your hand.)

Christmas Concert, Homily(12Dec10)

John 1:1
Advent 2010: Christmas Concerts: Homily (10 12 11&12)
Dennis talked about how tired he is… tired of the Christmas rush, tired of the whininess, tired of being consumed by consumption, he talks about how he sometimes feels like a dead man walking and how he longs to have more desire.
The antidote? In his words, not taping yourself up with more caffeine.
For some of us, a dose of wonder might help.
Wonder… being lost in wonder.
If you saw the invitation card for our concerts this year, you saw that word: wonder.
You saw the green, blue, and white northern lights. I’ve never actually seen the northern lights. How many of have you have seen them in person?
Actually seeing the northern lights must invoke a sense of wonder and awe.
I would love to see them sometime in my lifetime.
After 33 men were trapped deep underground in a small, dark mine in Chile for nearly 70 days, we experienced a sense of wonder when one by one, men slowly rose from the earth in a bullet-shaped pod. The men wore sunglasses to protect their eyes from the daylight.
The first miner to be rescued was 31-year old Florencio Silva. He was embraced by his wife and his young children who had been waiting more than 2 months for him, wondering if they would ever see him again.
From deep beneath the earth, Esteban Carrizo, sent up a note on scrap piece of paper to his girlfriend whom he had been with for 25 years. She opened the note and read, When I get out, we will buy a dress and get married.
Of the 33 men underground, many spoke of a mysterious, other-worldly presence protecting them while they were trapped underground. Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Sanchez wrote a note shortly before the rescue mission began: There are actually 34 of us because God has never left us down here.
When a 4-inch tube was lowered half a mile and finally reached them, one of the things that the miners requested was T-Shirts with these words in Spanish across the front: Thank you, LORD.
Those miners experienced a sense of wonder while trapped in the darkness—and of course as they were lifted toward the light.
If you’ve ever experienced being rescued or have seen others rescued on TV, a sense of wonder may have been born in you.
If you have ever fallen in love, you’ve experienced wonder being birthed in you. You have the energy of adolescence, the aliveness of youth all over again (and likely some of the angst and insecurities too!).
If you have had a baby, you’ve no doubt experienced wonder coming to life in you.
A couple of years ago, after my wife went through a few hours of hard labour, our son Joey came into the world with the sound track of Chariots of Fire playing. I held his long, thin pink body with lots of hair on his head—and I experienced a hushed awe.
With the birth of our baby, wonder was born in me.
But, the greatest wonder of all…. is the birth of the One we’ve been celebrating….
Incredibly, the Maker of all things shrank himself down, down, way down--so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and divide until a fetus took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager.
The choir sang that God in becoming a baby was “sentenced to be nine months dumb, infinity walled in a womb.”
The Maker of the stars is made under the stars.
The greatest event in history is not a human being taking a small step on the moon, but God taking an enormous leap to Earth, the infinite one--walled within in a teenager’s womb.
That first Christmas, the light of world was born in a dark cave, under the steamy breath of the cows and sheep, and placed in a bed of hay.
This is the greatest wonder of all.
As the infinite one was born in Mary, so he can be born in you.
If we want to become people who live with more desire, more life, and with more to give, we can invite the source of all life to be birthed in us.
Because God became a human being in Jesus Christ that first Christmas, God’s life can be born in you. When this happens, the path to eternal life opens for you—not just life forever, but God’s life for you now.
So if you would like the Christ Child to be born in you, please pray with me.

Jesus Christ,
I don’t understand it all, but I pray
that as you were born in Bethlehem that first Christmas
Come and be born in me today
Forgive me my sin and enter in
(this is possible because of Jesus death at age 33 on the cross as sacrifice for your sins)

May your life from here forward, guide mine.
Amen.
If you’ve said yes, to Christ, I’d encourage you let someone know, and to a way to deepen your friendship with Jesus Christ.

Journey to Jesus(5Dec10)

Series: Advent 2010
Advent M2: Sermon Notes (10 12 05)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Journey to Jesus
Text: Matthew 2:1-12
BIG IDEA: God uses stars and Scripture to lead us to Jesus.
This summer, with Joey in the stroller, I walked to the playground area of a park. I noticed a young girl about 4 or 5 years old, whose eyes were watering, she seemed quite emotionally upset. I turned to her mother and asked, “Is your daughter OK?” Her mother said, “She’ll be OK. She’s just upset. She’s upset because a girl who she thought was one of her best friends did not invite her to her party.” “Wow!” I thought. “Even for a girl 4 or 5 years old, whether she is included or not is really important.”
When I was an adolescent, I was apathetic about a lot of things. As I shared recently, I was probably most apathetic about my school work. But one thing I was really passionate about was being accepted by a certain group of peers. It was extremely important for me to be accepted by particular peer group. I worked really hard to make that happen.
We may think that as adults we are beyond all that.
C. S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar, wrote an essay entitled The Inner Ring. He writes, “You discover gradually in almost indefinable ways that it [this inner ring of inclusion and exclusion] exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, you are inside it. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside…I believe that in all of our lives at certain periods… between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the drive to be inside the local ring and the terror of being left outside it.”
Last Sunday as Mardi spoke on the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew 1 she described how inclusive God is; how he invites people like Tamar, a discarded woman, Rahab, a prostitute, Ruth, a member of a despised minority group, Bathsheba, a woman mired in scandal, a woman who would have been featured on the cover of the National Enquirer had she been alive today. Mary, who though revered today, at the time she was pregnant with Jesus would have been suspected of being unfaithful to her fiancé.
Today, as we continue our advent series through the Gospel of Matthew, we are going to be looking at how God invites the Magi to the birthday party of His Son.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Matthew 2:
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Who were the Magi? They were men who came from the east, literally men from the land of “the rising” sun (not Japan, but the general direction from which the sun is seen to rise, the east). Scholars believe that they were likely from Persia, modern day Iran or Iraq.
The Magi have been described by people across the centuries as wise men. Were they wise? Yes, but not in the way we would typically think of as wise. They were specialists in discerning the meaning of the stars. They were astrologers. Contrary to the popular Christmas carol, the Magi were probably not kings, but gave guidance to kings by decoding the messages of the stars.
How would a Jewish person have regarded these Magi? A typical Jewish person would have regarded these Magi, these astrologers, as idolaters, sorcerers, magicians—in fact we get the word “magician” from the same root word as Magi. From a Jewish perspective these Magi were Gentiles—racially, culturally, and spiritually outsiders to the one true God.

So, why does Matthew include these Gentiles in an account written primarily to Jews? The same reason he includes women Mardi spoke about last week in his genealogy of Jesus in a culture where women were marginalized.

Matthew wants to show us that God invites “outsiders” to the birthday party of his Son.

We read of the Magi making their way toward Jesus. Why? What possessed the Magi, to take such a long journey, a journey that might take 6-12 months? What compelled the Magi to set out on a journey, which according to T.S. Eliot, would require them to travel during “the worst of the time of the year… in the dead of winter”? God.

We see in this story that long before the Magi ever took one step toward Jesus, God had been taking steps toward them. Long before the Magi ever sought Jesus, God had been seeking them. He had been wooing them to the birthday party of his Son.

C. S. Lewis writes, "I never had the experience of looking for God. It was the other way around. He was the hunter; I was the deer. He stalked me, took unerring aim, and fired."
A friend listened to Ann Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, speak in North Carolina. In her talk she described her conversion experience.

She said, “I have a black cat who follows me around the house. Wherever I go (the kitchen, my bedroom) my black cat follows me around. God felt like my black cat, always following me around. So, I finally just said to God, ‘ah F ___, come
on in!”
We see in this story that long before the Magi ever took one step toward God, God had been taking steps toward them. Long before the Magi ever saw Jesus, God had been seeking them. He had been wooing them to the birthday party of His Son.
What did God use to draw the Magi to Jesus? Not a trick question. He uses the star. We don’t know what kind of star God used to point these people to his son. Some commentators have suggested that it may have been a comet, a Supernova, or some kind of shooting star. A couple of the very best commentators on the Gospel of Matthew, Davies and Allison, point out that prior to the renaissance understanding of astronomy most commentators understood the star to be animate—an angel. They point out that people in the ancient world, the ancient Jewish world, in particular, identified stars with angels. So the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem may have been an angel. (Just a little trivia: If you have a Christmas tree, to put either a star on the top of the tree, or an angel, may be appropriate because the star may have been, in fact, an angel.)
Are there stars that God has brought into your life who have drawn you closer to Jesus? Anne Lamott describes some of her stars, in the book Traveling Mercies (she describes her stars as Lily Pads), “My faith did not start with a leap, but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned me and they held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land and this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear. When I look back at some of these early resting places—the boisterous home of the Catholics, the soft armchair of the Christian Science mom, adoption by ardent Jews—I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet, each brought me closer to the verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today.”
Do you have stars or lily pads that have led you closer to Jesus?
As I look at my own life, sometimes I trace the stars that have led me closer to Jesus. I think about how when I was a young boy our family moved from Tokyo, Japan to Vancouver (via New York City and London, England); and I came to a place where I would be more likely to hear about Jesus. As I referred to in our series on the Ten Commandments, as a young teenager I was caught shoplifting. When I recognized how much pain and shame that I had brought my parents, I realized I had to chart some kind of new path in life. I didn’t know what it would be, but that opened me up to Christ.
When I was 15, I attended a summer camp down in Washington State called The Firs. Our counselor was a young named Bam Bam, aka Ken Hamilton, a guy from California who spent the week taking us rappelling, driving the water ski boat for us as we skied, playing basketball with us. At the end of that week he shared from John 10:10 how Christ didn’t come so that our life would be boring, but so that we could live our lives to the maximum. Seeing the joy of Jesus Christ in his life moved me to commit my life, as fully as I knew how, to Christ. There are other lily pads, but those are a few.
Perhaps as we draw closer to Christmas, or perhaps at the turn of the New Year, take a few moments to reflect on the lily pads that have drawn, or are drawing you, closer to Jesus.
The French mystic, Simone Weil, has said there are just two things that pierce the human heart—beauty and affliction. I suspect that the lily pads that have drawn, or are drawing you closer to Jesus are pads of either beauty that you see in people, or affliction and pain. Even after we initially meet Jesus, God continues to use both beauty and affliction to draw us to him.
To quote Simone Weil again, she says that in Christianity we are not promised to be delivered from all of our troubles, but we are assured that God will supernaturally use our troubles for his purposes. We are not promised that we will always be delivered from trouble, but that God will use our troubles for our ultimate good and his eternal purposes in us. I don’t want to sound glib, but our scars in the hands of God can become stars that lead us more deeply into God’s love.
As we look toward Christmas and the New Year, if you know Christ, take time to pray about how God might use you as a star in the life of someone else.
God is calling those of us who know Christ to be a light to others. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” He also said in the Sermon on the Mount, “(If you know me), You are the light of the world.” He wants you to be a kind of a star that would lead people to Bethlehem—to Jesus.
Paul talks about this in Philippians 2:14-15:
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky
God calls us to be a star in this our time. The greatest gift is to be led to the Christ. If that is the greatest gift for us, what a gift it is to shine like a star and point others to the Christ.
In the story of the Magi, we see how God uses a star to draw people to his Son, but if we continue reading the text, we see that the star is not quite enough. We see that the star led the Magi to Jerusalem, but could not get them to Bethlehem—to the place where Jesus was. Only God’s Word could do that. A star can guide us to the target, but the Word of God gets them to the bull’s eye of Jesus Christ.

According to the passage, the Magi came into the street market in Jerusalem and they started asking people (Matth. 2: 2), "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."
As a result, King Herod heard a rumor that a King for Jews had been born. Herod was deeply troubled by this news. After all, he was not a Jew, nor a Roman (he was an Edomite). Naturally, he was threatened by this potential rival to his throne.
So, Herod called together the chief priests and asked them, “Where is this King who was to be born?”
Matthew, in Matthew 2:3-6, tells us that the priests referred Herod to words written by the prophet in Micah (chapter 5, vs. 2.): “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”

After Herod heard these words, he summoned the Magi and told them where Jesus would be born. With this information, the Magi set out to Bethlehem to meet the new King Jesus.

The Magi were led by the star to Jerusalem, but didn’t know how to proceed from there… it’s Scripture that points them to Bethlehem. As they set out the star reappears and brings them to Jesus.
The star can get us to Jerusalem, but it’s Scripture that leads us to Bethlehem—to Jesus. It’s great that God uses creation and the stars. As Anne Lamott’s and other people’s stories, show us, even other religions can act like stars making us more receptive to Christ. But the vehicle that God has used most powerfully, clearly to lead people to His Son, is Scripture. Are we allowing Scripture to point us to Jesus Christ? Stars can lead us to Scripture; and Scripture can lead us to Jesus.
Let me say on the side that simply having access to Scripture, however, even studying Scripture, doesn’t guarantee that we will be led into a life-changing relationship with Jesus. In Matthew 2:3-6 we read:
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.
We see in this text that King Herod summons the chief priests and the teachers of the law.
This is a rebuke to me because if we were to translate this into contemporary language, we might say, “And King Herod summoned the senior pastors and all the Bible study teachers and the long time believers in God, and asked them where Christ was going to be born, and they reply ‘In Bethlehem,’ because this is what is written in the prophet Micah 5:2.” The senior pastors and the Bible teachers, the long time believers in God; i.e., those who had been exposed to the Scriptures, those who considered themselves followers of God, those who knew that Christ is going to be born in Bethlehem. There are signs that lead even the pagan Magi and the evil King Herod to believe that the Christ is about to be born. Surely the senior pastors, the Bible teachers, and those with the Word would also have had that intuition; and yet why are they not the first ones in Bethlehem? These people have been waiting for centuries for the Messiah, for one who is a son of David to become their king… and you think they would be running to Bethlehem.
But they don’t do anything with the knowledge from the Scriptures that the Christ will be born in Bethlehem. The outsiders—the Magi and Herod seek out Christ—but the long time believers literally sit on their knowledge. They are not moved by the Scriptures. They are not moved by the signs in the world that Christ is about to be born.
It is possible to have all kinds of knowledge of the Scriptures like the chief priests and the keepers of the law had back in the day of Jesus’ birth, but not to do anything with it. Jesus, thirty years after this, was speaking to the religious leaders of his day, some of whom who have actually been around when he was born. They would have been a generation older than him. Some of them may have been children of religious leaders who were around when Jesus was born.
And Jesus says to them in John 5:39-40:
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you possess eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
It is possible to have knowledge about the Bible, even a lot of knowledge about the Bible, but to not do anything about it.
Here at Tenth we have been inviting people to join the practicing the presence movement. We are encouraging people to connect with God at least 4 times a week, 15 minutes per day, in Scripture and prayer. We have intentionally called it Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus in Scripture and Prayer because we don’t want practicing the presence to be an just academic exercise where we gain more knowledge about the Bible, but a spiritual practice through the Bible and through prayer and with help of the Holy Spirit where we are actually led into a life-changing friendship with Jesus.
Jesus after having taught his disciples some important truths in the Upper Room the night before he was crucified said, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:17).

Jean Leclercq observes that in the ancient secular usage of the meditari [to meditate on a text] meant to reflect, but more than this implied “an intent to do it.” (emphasis added) Books were also rare in the ancient world. In the sixth century, for example, to have a book would have meant you would have had to slaughter a whole flock of sheep to pay for it—the equivalent of thousands of dollars today. Because books were so rare and precious in the ancient world, meditari (to meditate on a text) was viewed as something that would lead to something we did and not merely something we thought. Medical doctors in the ancient world prescribed meditative reading to their patients as physical exercise on an equal level as walking or running or playing sport.
Today we live in a time when people don’t necessarily believe that meditating on something means that it leads us to actually do something. But we experience true blessedness when we do the things that God calls us to in Scripture. One day when our son is a little older I’d like to do a triathlon. I enjoy biking, running, swimming. I took swimming lessons all the way through junior high. At the encouragement of a friend who is training for a triathlon, I recently decided to take a couple of swimming lessons at the centre. My swimming instructor has been able to help me improve my stroke (example, don’t slap the water with your hand down, come into your water with your hand at a angle, stretch as far as you can reach, make an S curve with your hand). But, it is not enough to just know about what to do. I have to get into the pool and start practicing. It is true of any sport.
The same is true of music or art or a craft like carpentry. It is not enough to just study these things. You have actually got to do it, so they become part of your muscle memory.
And so it is with Scripture. We can’t just study it to gain more knowledge about God and about coming to Christ and about following Christ. We have to do something with it.
Jesus said, “Now that you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
Eugene Peterson is a pastor and Bible teacher that I have a great deal of respect for. He translated the contemporary version of the Bible called The Message and he is a very trusted guide on matters of spiritual life.
Eugene Peterson says if you feel stuck in your spiritual life, if you feel like you are not moving forward, he says: “Find a commandment in the Scripture. Just start obeying it—doing it. It may not be the biggest commandment, but find a commandment; find something to obey, something to do, and you will find yourself moving forward.”
We have just come through a series on the Ten Commandments. I have been hearing from a number of people in our community by e-mail and in person how much they have appreciated the Ten Commandments. In many cases this is the first time they have heard the Commandments. I am grateful that this series has been helpful to some. But it is not enough just to know the Ten Commandments, but with God’s help we need to live them. We know some things, as a result of this series, about Sabbath, about God’s call to pursue sexual purity, to live generously, to speak the truth. It is not enough to know these things. We are blessed as we actually do them.
Unlike the insiders—the pastors, the teachers of the law and those who had had access to the Word for a long time, and like the Magi—like the outsiders—let’s follow the Word and allow the Word to bring us to Jesus.
One year the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York ran a series of ads on posters all over the city for Christmas. The posters were decorated for Christmas and had a simple caption—COME HOME. What a great message, no matter what your background ethnically, socio-economically, spiritually. No matter what you have done. No matter what your history. No matter how long you have been away from home. Come Home…
God is saying to us--by inviting the marginalized women of the genealogy of Jesus and drew the Magi--God is calling each of us home—home to Jesus Christ.
Like the Magi, may our stars of beauty and affliction and the Scriptures lead us to seek and find the bright and morning star, Jesus Christ.