Will Vaus - Matthew

The Man Born to be King: The King's Family Tree

Matthew 1:1-17

This morning we are going to look at what some people think is one of the most boring parts of Scripture, a genealogy. In particular we are going to look at the genealogy of Jesus, what I am calling the King's family tree. And you may be wondering, "Why should I listen to a sermon about somebody's family tree?" The answer is: because family trees can actually be very interesting.

Most people find their own family tree to be of some interest. For example, I learned a number of years ago that the Vaus family moved to Virginia from England in 1640. There is even a book about our family tree in the state library in Richmond.

My mother's side of the family is even more interesting. On my mother's side my first ancestor to come to America was a forger! He had lived in England and was found guilty of forgery and sentenced to either hang, or move to the colonies. He chose the colonies-which also shows the great intelligence of my mother's side of the family! One of the descendants of that forger was my fifth great grandfather Charles Willson Peale, the famed colonial portrait painter and founder of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

However, you may not be convinced by that little story that genealogies are all that interesting. So why does Matthew begin his gospel with one? First, he did so because genealogies were not uninteresting to the Jews. Without a properly researched family tree the Jews could not prove their tribal membership or right to inheritance. The Jews to whom Matthew was writing would be very impressed that Jesus could trace his lineage all the way back to Abraham. Secondly, Matthew begins with a genealogy because it summarizes Old Testament history in a memorable way and serves as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. Thirdly, Matthew's genealogy establishes Jesus' real humanity. As one Bible commentator put it: "Jesus is no demigod from pagan mythology, but a real man with a family tree." (Caird) Fourthly, Matthew's genealogy establishes Jesus' kingship, tracing his ancestry, as it does, right back to King David. And finally, Matthew turns what could be a boring family tree into an exciting statement of God's love for all people. But to see how he does that we really must read Matthew 1:1-17. Hear the Word of God. . . .

A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:

[2] Abraham was the father of Isaac,

Isaac the father of Jacob,

Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

[3] Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,

Perez the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

[4] Ram the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

[5] Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,

Obed the father of Jesse,

[6] and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife,

[7] Solomon the father of Rehoboam,

Rehoboam the father of Abijah,

Abijah the father of Asa,

[8] Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,

Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,

Jehoram the father of Uzziah,

[9] Uzziah the father of Jotham,

Jotham the father of Ahaz,

Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,

[10] Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,

Manasseh the father of Amon,

Amon the father of Josiah,

[11] and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.

[12] After the exile to Babylon:

Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,

Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,

[13] Zerubbabel the father of Abiud,

Abiud the father of Eliakim,

Eliakim the father of Azor,

[14] Azor the father of Zadok,

Zadok the father of Akim,

Akim the father of Eliud,

[15] Eliud the father of Eleazar,

Eleazar the father of Matthan,

Matthan the father of Jacob,

[16] and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

[17] Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.

What can we learn from the King's family tree? Jesus' family tree teaches us five things about our faith.

First of all, it teaches us that we have a faith rooted in history. Myron Augsburger tells the following story:

During a preaching mission in India in 1969, I learned of a young Hindu man who came to Christ by reading the first chapter of Matthew. When asked what there was about the genealogy which led to his conversion, he stated that for the first time he had found a religion which is actually rooted in history in contrast to the mythology of Hinduism and Buddhism. Matthew roots his Gospel in history, beginning with the lineage of the King.

However, it is precisely at this point, with Matthew's genealogy, that many people question the historical accuracy of the Bible. Many people ask: How do we account for the differences between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke? Both trace Jesus' lineage from Abraham, though Luke goes even further back-to Adam. But the rub comes in when both authors trace Jesus' lineage from David. Matthew traces Jesus' lineage from David's son Solomon, whereas Luke traces Jesus' lineage from David's son Nathan. How can both of these accounts be correct?

What many Bible commentators believe is going on here is that Matthew traces Jesus' lineage through Joseph, while Luke traces Jesus' lineage through Mary. Notice what Luke says in his gospel, chapter 3, verse 21: "Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph." In other words, Luke suggests that he is not going to trace Jesus' lineage through Joseph, because Joseph is not the physical father of Jesus. Rather he traces the family line through Mary.

A second thing we can learn about our faith from Matthew's genealogy is that we have a faith which rejoices in the King!

Matthew's genealogy begins: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham." Christ means "anointed one". And there were three types of people who were anointed with oil in the Old Testament before assuming their respective offices: prophets, priests and kings. Jesus fulfills all of these offices. That is why he is called the Christ, or the Messiah. He can rightly be called: King Jesus.

Matthew's whole point is to prove that Jesus is the son of David and the rightful heir to the throne. It is interesting to note that in numerology the number 14 is the equivalent of the name David. Matthew is telling us in the structure of this genealogy, with its three segments of 14 generations each, that Jesus is another David, the Messiah par excellence - Jesus is the King of kings. Or another way of looking at this genealogy is to say that there are six segments of seven generations each and Jesus is at the beginning of the seventh segment of seven generations. The number seven in numerology is a number representing God and God's holiness and perfection. So the person occupying the place of the seventh seven in a family tree is a very special person indeed.

A third thing we can learn from this genealogy is that we have a faith which recognizes divine providence. The three stages of this genealogy form, as it were, a slanted N, moving upward to Jesus. First you have the upward movement from Abraham to David. You have the great time of the patriarchs moving to the golden age of David's kingship in Israel. But then you have a downward trend, following David's sin with Bathsheba, and Solomon's apostasy, which leads to many wicked kings who follow in Solomon's footsteps, until those footsteps lead all the way into exile. But then the Lord shows his faithfulness to his people by bringing them out of exile and back into the Promised Land in time for the Messiah to be born in just the right place according to the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Some people question Matthew's mathematical accuracy at this point. But it is important to recognize that Matthew purposely does not record every generation. He does this in order to fulfill his own didactic and mnemonic purpose. Matthew is trying to provide a genealogy that can be remembered by those to whom he is writing-people who wouldn't have copies of his gospel to carry around with them. They must carry the message in their heads and in their hearts. So Matthew is also writing to make a theological point-namely that God can bring good out of evil-he can bring the Messiah out of the wicked kings of the past and thus bring his people out of exile.

Fourthly, we see in this genealogy that we have a faith which revels in God's power. Matthew's genealogy begins with a supernatural birth-Isaac born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. And Matthew's genealogy ends with another supernatural birth-Jesus born to the virgin Mary. Notice that Matthew says, "Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." In strong contrast to the rest of the genealogy, Matthew never says that Joseph begat Jesus, because he didn't!

Finally, we see in this genealogy that we have a faith which relies on God's grace. It is highly unusual to find women's names in a genealogy of this time period. And yet we find the mention of 5 women here: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary.

All of these women, except for Mary, were Gentiles, alien to the people of God. Judah got a wife for his son Er, presumably from among the Canaanite people, and her name was Tamar. Rahab was a Canaanite. Ruth was a Moabite, a descendant of the incestuous Lot, the nephew of Abraham. There was a curse on the Moabite people. Bathsheba had been married to Uriah who was a Hittite. This shows us that our God is no narrow nationalist or racist. If even Gentiles could be included in the family tree of the Messiah, then all types of people can be included in God's family.

4 out of 5 of these women were suspected of, or actually committed adultery. Judah and Tamar committed adultery with one another, resulting in the births of Perez and Zerah. Rahab had been a prostitute in Jericho before Joshua and his men took the city. Bathsheba and David committed adultery with one another. Ruth was not an adulteress. But then there was Mary who was suspected of adultery. I think that Matthew is trying to tell us that God works in some mysterious ways and through some surprising people.

Jesus' genealogy also includes some of the most evil kings of the Old Testament: Joram, Ahaz, Amon. What are we to make of this? We may conclude that God did not stoop into our sordid human story at Christmas only; he was stooping all the way through the Old Testament.

When I was in high school I acted in a play by Oliver Goldsmith entitled: She Stoops to Conquer. I played one of the lead characters, a young, single man who was very shy around high society women, but was very forward with women of the lower class. One of the high society women whom young Marlowe met actually fell in love with him. However, she couldn't seem to connect with him because he was always so nervous when he was around her. Her solution was to dress up as one of the servants. Thus the title of the play: She Stoops to Conquer.

Stooping to conquer is exactly what our Lord did throughout the entire Old Testament, and that is supremely what he did in his incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas. In order to conquer sin, God stooped down to become a human being. He became part of sinful humanity. The reason why he stooped in this way was in order to conquer sin, by paying sin's penalty for people like you and me. He had to be fully human to pay that price, but he also had to be fully divine, and sinless, in order to pay for the sins of humanity. Matthew's genealogy of Jesus reveals to us a God who stoops in love to conquer sin.

What application is there for us in all of this? First of all, be patient when dealing with Bible difficulties. We have seen how some people use Matthew's genealogy to try and malign the character of Scripture. When we encounter seeming contradictions or seeming inaccuracies in the Bible we should be patient as we seek an answer to the apparent problem.

James Boice used to tell the following story: "Years ago a Bible teacher was riding on a train and went into the dining car for dinner. A man sat down across from him who, as it turned out, was an atheist. Finding that his companion was a Bible teacher, the atheist began to rehearse the difficulties he perceived to be in Scripture. He gave one after the other, but the man who was being attacked went right on eating. He was eating New England cod, a very bony fish, and as he ate he pushed the bones aside. Finally the atheist said, ?Well, what do you do with that? What do you do with all those difficulties in the Bible?'

"The Bible teacher said, ?I do with the difficulties just as I am doing with this cod. I eat the meat, and I put the bones aside for some fool to choke on.'"

Boice concludes: "A story like that can be overdone if we suppose by it that we do not have to grapple with difficulties. We do. We have to give the best possible answers we can give. But if, in a given period of history with a limited amount of knowledge, we come to a difficulty we cannot resolve, it is certainly not dishonesty, but merely a mark of humility to push the problem aside temporarily until more data comes in."

There is also a second application from this genealogy: Be patient in waiting for God's answers; God always keeps his word. God promised in the Old Testament times that he would send a Messiah, a king, to save his people from their sins, and he did. God will keep his promises to you as well.

A third application from this Scripture is this: Matthew's genealogy helps us to recognize that all Scripture has value. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful . . ."

When we were living in Ireland a few years ago I taught a Bible study in the home of Doug and Merrie Gresham. Doug Gresham has been a friend of mine for a long time and he is the step-son of C. S. Lewis, so I have great respect for his opinion on different matters. I told Doug that I wanted to teach on the Gospel of Matthew in their home Bible study. He said, "Fine, but why don't you skip over the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew." I said, "No, I think we should start from the very beginning of the Gospel and not skip over anything." Doug agreed, reluctantly. Interestingly enough, when I taught on Matthew 1 and the genealogy of Jesus it led to a very emotional time of sharing amongst the people of the group as I talked about how God includes the outcasts in his family. In fact, there was a woman attending the Bible study that night who gave her life to Christ as a result.

So you see, all Scripture can be used by God to bring people to himself and to make us more like Christ. God can even use a seemingly boring genealogy to transform our lives and touch us with his grace.

Have you come to the God of grace who stoops to conquer sin? Have you come to the one who reveals himself as king through this wonderful genealogy? You may feel like an outcast today, but God wants to include you in his family through Christ if you will just receive his love and forgiveness.

The Man Born to be King: The Birthday of the King

Matthew 1:18-25

What does Christmas mean for you? In a December issue of a leading magazine the following ads were displayed: "What greater treasure of Christmas could you give than sheets and pillowcases?" "Crowning gift of all: Our lovebird scarf of Russian sable, $9,000." "Christmas everywhere! And in America it's-Cashmeres." Does Christmas simply mean a time for giving gifts to one another?

Perhaps for you there is a deeper meaning to Christmas. Perhaps for you Christmas is supremely a time for family. A time to "go home for the holidays". Christmas to you may mean the warmth and love of home.

Or maybe for you Christmas is one long line of parties. You run here. You dash there. Perhaps Christmas is one unending, disjointed bit of superficial conversation shared over eggnog.

Or perhaps Christmas to you is a time to do something for others who can't do much for themselves. That is a wonderful focus to have at Christmas as well as all year round.

However, I would like to suggest to you that Christmas is much more than any of these things. Christmas is first and foremost . . . a birthday! It is the birthday of King Jesus. And that is what we read about in Matthew 1:18-25. Hear the Word of God. . . .

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. [19] Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

[20] But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. [21] She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

[22] All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: [23] "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."

[24] When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. [25] But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

The birth of King Jesus brought change to world history. His birth brought a change in our calendars. Now all events in history are dated according to B. C. or A. D. Some scholars have changed that method of dating to B. C. E. and C. E., before the common era and common era. Still, history has been changed by the birth of Christ.

But what are the personal implications of Christ's birth? What changes will result in our lives if Christ is born and growing in us?

First of all, I believe the birth of King Jesus in our lives will mean a change in plans. Mary and Joseph had to change their plans dramatically because of the birth of Jesus into their lives.

Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph. This meant that Mary and Joseph would be referred to as husband and wife, but they would not yet have come together to have any sexual relationship. They would not yet have been living together in the same house. In fact, Joseph may have been working at this time on building the house in which he and Mary would live.

Think of how Joseph and Mary's plans must have been disrupted by the birth of Jesus into their lives at that time. I am sure they must have been looking forward to time alone together before having children. Then suddenly Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant. The Scripture does not tell us how Joseph found out. Presumably Mary told him. Can you imagine how difficult that conversation must have been? The Scripture tells us nothing of Mary trying to tell Joseph about the miraculous conception of this child. Perhaps Joseph was not ready to hear about it. All he could see was that Mary was having a baby that was not his, and that this spelled the end of their relationship. All of his plans were changed. His hopes were dashed.

If Jesus is born and growing in our lives, then there will be disruption for us as well. Once Jesus comes in we cannot go on with life as it has always been. All of us naturally want to control our own lives. We may have all our plans made for what we want to do. But then Jesus comes and asks to take control. And he deserves to do so, doesn't he? After all, he is the King. Yet, even as Christians, we try to make Jesus conform to our plans rather than making our lives conform to his plan. James Dittes has written,

For it is not easy for Christ to come to us, nor for us to serve him, when our lives are neat and stable. We try so hard to be strong men and undivided and to bind the Lord, his church, his ministry, in swaddling cloths, and to lay them in a stable place. But our full and ordered house shuts them out-just as the inn at Bethlehem. Perhaps it is just to a divided nation, a ruptured community, a torn family, a split self, a chaotic sense of vocation, an impossible church, that Christ and his call comes.

If Jesus has been born into our lives then there is going to be disruption, there is going to be a change of plans.

Secondly, if Jesus has been born in our lives there will also be a change in righteousness. Jesus' conception caused Joseph to rethink his concept of righteousness. Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man and did not want to expose Mary to public disgrace. Therefore, he decided to divorce her quietly.

If Mary had conceived a child by another man during betrothal then it would have been adultery. Betrothal was a serious engagement. The only way it could be broken was by divorce. Years before this, Mary's apparent act would have been punishable by stoning, but the Jewish legislation in this regard had been tempered by this time. So Joseph had two conventional choices. Either he could expose Mary to the humiliation of a public trial, or he could divorce her quietly-signing the necessary legal papers.

The Scripture says that Joseph was a righteous man. In other words, he sought to obey God's law as best he could. According to Joseph's concept of righteousness he would have to divorce Mary, even though he loved her. There was no other way to resolve the matter according to conventional wisdom. But Joseph's understanding of the law, as well as his own heart, dictated to him that he should be merciful.

All that changed after Joseph's encounter with the angel. He was challenged to live out a kind of holiness deeper than this superficial, legalistic righteousness. Joseph was prompted by the messenger from God to do something radical. He was asked to take Mary as his wife. This act would, most likely, not be understood by Joseph's family or friends, given the situation. Why would any man, in that day and age, take as his wife a woman who was with child by another man? It was unthinkable. But once Joseph received the revelation from the angel about the true identity of the child in Mary's womb, Joseph opted for radical righteousness. He simply did what the Lord told him to do, even though he knew no one, other than Mary, would understand or agree with his decision.

I believe God wants us to live out a deeper righteousness. Being Christians does not mean that we are members of the Kingdom of Niceness. Our king calls us to do some radical things. However, in real life, most of us prefer to play it safe.

Wilbur Rees has written:

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

What demonstration of radical righteousness is God calling each one of us to perform? Maybe it is saying "no" to certain unethical practices in the workplace. Maybe it is reaching out to neighbors or co-workers who know nothing of Christ, rather than remaining comfortable in our holy huddle at church. I don't know what act of radical righteousness God is calling you to perform. However, I imagine each of us can think of some areas in our lives where we need to go deeper in our commitment to the king and his kingdom. I pray that the Lord will give you courage to respond to his calling, whatever that calling may be.

A third change which will be taking place in our lives if Jesus has been born in our hearts is a change of focus. The angel told Joseph that the child in Mary's womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He also told Joseph that this child should be named "Jesus" because he would save his people from their sins.

The name "Jesus" means "Yahweh saves". "Yahweh" is the personal name of God, meaning "I am". God is the self-existent One; he is not dependent upon anyone or anything else but himself. Thus the name "Jesus" means "?I am' saves".

Many Jewish children at the time of our Lord's birth were named "Jesus". "Jesus" is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name "Yeshua" or "Joshua". So the name of Mary's child was not unique. But when combined with the other things that the angel told Joseph about this child, it is clear that this child was to be unique. He was given the name "Jesus" by an angel for a unique reason. The angel said the reason for the name was because he would save his people from their sins.

What is sin? The word in the Greek means simply to fall short of the mark. God has set a certain mark, a certain standard for our lives, and we all fall short of it. Romans 3:23 says, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

Sin is basically self-centeredness. God created us to be centered in him, to have him as our focal point. But we have all become self-centered, both by heredity and by choice. The good news is that Jesus has come and by his birth, life, death, resurrection and intercession at the right hand of the Father he enables us to return to a God-centered focus in life.

The story is told of an alcoholic who became so intoxicated one night that he stumbled through the open door of a stable. He woke up the next morning bewildered by his strange surroundings. Finally it dawned on him where he was. He was very hungry and so tried to think of a neighbor who might give him a meal. "No," he muttered to himself, "I'm afraid they'd say I've fallen too low." Just then he heard some bells ringing, and he suddenly realized it was Christmas Day. "What was that story again? About shepherds, the manger, a child born in a stable and an angel's message? I'm not the first one to sleep in a stable," he thought. Recalling his childhood training in Christianity, he remembered that God had come into the world through Jesus to save his people from their sin. He wondered and pondered, "Had Jesus appeared in a stable to remind the world that the Lord could help a poor man like me?"

That alcoholic found God in a manger and we can too. Alcohol abuse may not be the particular area in which you fall short of God's plan. But we have all fallen short in some way. The good news is that when God became human in Jesus of Nazareth he went all the way down; he was born in a stinking stable that he might rescue you and me out of the depths of our sin and self-centeredness.

A fourth change which Jesus can bring to our lives is a change in companionship. Matthew correlates the event of Jesus birth with Isaiah 7:14 which says, "The virgin shall be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"-which means, "God with us".

Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is the "with us God". That means we don't have to "go it alone" anymore. One of the greatest needs of human beings is to find an answer to the problem of loneliness.

A school boy in London won first prize for an essay contest. One of the lines from his composition went like this: "I believe so many twins are born into the world today because little children are frightened of entering the world alone!"

The world IS a frightening place. But we don't have to go it alone anymore. God wants to walk with us through the struggles. He will be there with us in our joys and in our sorrows once King Jesus has been born in our hearts.

What a contrast there is between Christianity and other religions at this point. In Islam God is always the "above us God". Allah sends-angels, prophets, books-but he is too holy to come himself. By contrast, in Jesus, God has come near. And that makes all the difference.

There was a woman who was having difficulties in her marriage. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. She walked out on her husband and two children. But the husband came after her, got her, and lovingly brought her back home. After they reconciled the wife had this to say about her husband's previous protestations of love: "Before, they were just words . . . but then you came."

Jesus took the word of God's love and fleshed it out for us when he was born as a babe in Bethlehem and when he died on a cross for our sin. I imagine that before Jesus was born, God's words seemed to some to be only words . . . but then he came on our earthly scene in person.

Finally, the birth of Jesus in our lives will lead to a change in lifestyle. Jesus' birth led to a lifestyle change for Joseph. Joseph obeyed God's revelation and he took Mary home as his wife. But Joseph's lifestyle change didn't stop there. He went the extra mile and restrained himself from sexual relations with Mary until she gave birth to Jesus.

Now why did Joseph do this? He didn't have to. Perhaps he did it so that no one could ever say that Jesus was his son. Perhaps he wanted Jesus' true identity to be as clear to others as it was to himself.

What lifestyle change is God calling us to today? What extra mile is he calling us to walk in order that Jesus might be made known to others through our lives?

One thing is for certain-if we are to be like Joseph then we need God's gift of purity in our lives. Ephesians 5:3 says, "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality." That applies to what we say and think as well as to what we do with our bodies. And only Jesus can give us that kind of purity by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That is only one lifestyle change God may be calling us to today. There are many others. But what it all comes down to is this: HAVE WE ANY ROOM FOR JESUS? Do we have room in our lives for a Jesus who will change our plans, our righteousness, our focus, our companionship, our very lifestyle? As the old hymn puts it:

Have you any room for Jesus,

He who bore your load of sin?

As He knocks and asks admission,

Sinner, will you let Him in?

Room for Jesus, King of glory!

Hasten now, His word obey;

Swing the heart's door widely open,

Bid Him enter while you may.

Perhaps Jesus has not yet been born in your life. Perhaps you have not yet swung your heart's door widely open to him. But you can do so today. Bid him enter while you may.

Or perhaps you have invited Jesus into your life, yet you are keeping certain rooms of your life shut and locked against his entry. Maybe it is the work room you are keeping closed to his presence. Maybe you are one sort of person in church and a different sort of person on the job. Or maybe it is the family room that you are keeping shut to him. Maybe you are not allowing his word to govern and guide your family life. Perhaps it is the play room that you are keeping closed to Christ-the room where you entertain yourself in ways that grieve the Holy Spirit. Or is it the kitchen door that is shut to Jesus? Does he have control of your eating habits? Or what about the attic-where you keep hurtful memories of things long past, the place where you keep grudges against those who have wronged you?

Jesus wants to come in and clean house. He wants to sweep out the attic, the kitchen, the play room, the family room, the work room, and whatever other room there is in your life, and he wants to re-decorate! Will you let him do that beginning today?

When Jesus comes in, he brings change. And none of us like change too much. But the change Jesus brings is worth it. Do you think Joseph and Mary would have exchanged Jesus for anything or anyone else once he was born to them in the stable? I doubt it. And I don't think you will want to trade Jesus for anything or anyone else either.

The Man Born to be King: Seeking the King

Matthew 2:1-12

Mother, Mary Farwell, writes: "I was listening to my 5-year-old son, Matthew, as he worked on his ?Speak and Spell' computer. He was concentrating intensely, typing words for the computer to say back to him.

"Matthew punched in the word ?God.' To his surprise, the computer said, ?Word not found.'

"He tried again with the same reply. With great disgust, he stared at the computer and told it in no uncertain terms, ?Jesus is not going to like this!'"

We can, from our human perspective, identify at least 3 types of people. There are those who have found a relationship with God and are seeking to know him better. There are those who are seeking God but have not yet found a relationship with him. And there are those who, like the "Speak and Spell" computer, live their lives without any reference to God whatsoever.

This morning I would like to look with you at 8 signs of a seeker which we find in the account of the Magi who sought the new-born Christ child. Hear the Word of God from Matthew 2:1-12,

2:1After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2and asked, "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."

3When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ 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 be the shepherd of my people Israel.'"

7Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8He 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."

9After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11On 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 and of incense and of myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

The first sign of a seeker after God is hunger. If you are a seeker you will have an all-consuming hunger for Christ.

In this passage we see three different reactions to Jesus the King. First there is the reaction of Herod who hated Christ. Herod did not want anyone else to be King of the Jews, so he hated any other potential king. Herod himself was not a legitimate heir to the Jewish throne because he was only a half-Jew. He had members of his own family killed if he thought that they might possibly take his throne away from him.

Now we think, "How horrible! What a despicable man!" But isn't there a bit of Herod in each of us? We, like Herod, want to be on the throne. We want to be in control of our own lives and we tend to walk over anyone who gets in our way, even if that means walking over God.

The second reaction we see to Christ in this passage is that of the priests and scribes who were indifferent to the reality of the Messiah. The priests and scribes knew what the Old Testament said about where the Messiah was to be born, but they had no interest in going to see him. They were apparently more interested in playing their own religious game than in actually meeting God.

The third reaction to Christ which we see in this passage is that of the Magi who hungered after Christ. These Magi were foreigners from the east. Originally the Magi were Medes who tried to overthrow the Persians. They failed in their attempt and thereafter became priests. They in fact became teachers of the Persian kings. They were king-makers, if you will, and perhaps that is where the legend of the three kings originated.

These Magi, or great men, may well have been from Babylon. It may be that they learned about the Messiah by reading the book of Daniel. For the Old Testament prophet Daniel had lived for a time in Babylon and had been a teacher of the Babylonian wise men. (Daniel 2:48) Or else these Magi may have learned about the Christ from the Jewish community which still existed in Babylon at the time of Christ's birth. We do not know for certain how these Persian wise men found out about the Christ. But one thing we do know, having heard of him, they hungered for him. Why else would they have embarked on such a long journey and asked everywhere they went, "Where is He who is born King of the Jews."?

In the Antarctic summer of 1908-9, Sir Ernest Shackleton and three companions attempted to travel to the South Pole from their winter quarters. They set off with four ponies to help carry the load. Weeks later, their ponies dead, rations all but exhausted, they turned back toward their base, their goal not accomplished. Altogether, they trekked 127 days.

On the return journey, as Shackleton records in The Heart of the Antarctic, the time was spent talking about food-elaborate feasts, gourmet delights, sumptuous menus. As they staggered along, suffering from dysentery, not knowing whether they would survive, every waking hour was occupied with thoughts of eating.

Jesus, who also knew the ravages of food deprivation during his adult life, said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." We can understand Shackleton's obsession with food, which offers a glimpse of the passion Jesus wants us to have for a relationship with him.

The Magi hungered after some kind of relationship with this Christ of whom they had read. Are we hungering after a relationship with Christ? If so, our hunger reveals the fact that we are seekers.

The second sign of a seeker after God which we see in this passage is a miraculous journey. If we are seeking after the one true God then our spiritual journey will be miraculous - a sovereign work of God. The Magi were miraculously led by a star to the place where the Christ child was living.

How gracious it was of God to guide the Magi in a way that they could understand. For you see, many people in that day, in the ancient east, believed in astrology. The Magi were apparently star-gazers themselves who tried to read various messages in the stars. In fact, the Bible tells us that the stars do have a message for us. Psalm 19:1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." The heavens are constantly telling us of the reality of God. But God, on this one occasion, chose to speak through the stars in a special way and guide the Magi by one special star to where the Christ child was living. How gracious, and how miraculous of God to guide the Magi in this way!

Now you may think, "I wish God would speak to me like that and show me what he wants me to do with my life." Well, God does speak to us today. He speaks to us especially through the Scriptures and he supernaturally guides the circumstances of our lives, whether we realize it or not. Even when our circumstances seem the worst, that may be exactly where God is bringing about his special purpose for us.

John Yates writes, "The only survivor of a shipwreck washed up on a small uninhabited island. He cried out to God to save him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming.

"Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a rough hut and put his few possessions in it. But then one day, after hunting for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened; he was stung with grief.

"Early the next day, though, a ship drew near the island and rescued him.

"How did you know I was here?" he asked the crew.

"We saw your smoke signal," they replied.

God may not be using a star to guide your life. In fact, you may feel right now as though God is totally absent from your life. But your present difficulty may be the very instrument that God is sovereignly using to bring about his best purpose for your life and the lives of others.

The third sign of a seeker which we find here is joy. Joy will be overwhelmingly present in our lives if we are seeking after the one true God. We read that when the Magi saw the star they were overjoyed.

There was a little boy who was in his first Christmas pageant. He was 5. He was one of the shepherds-you know, the ones who wear bathrobes and sandals and carry cardboard crooks-not a lead shepherd, just a common shepherd standing in the back. But when it came time for the birth of Christ, he crowded around to the front so that he could see. Then, having seen, he stepped to the footlights and, looking out, cried to his parents, "Mommy! Daddy! Mary had her baby, and it's a boy!" (Bruce Thielemann)

We need to recover that kind of childlike enthusiasm and joy over the birth of Christ. Those stabs of joy, stabs of inconsolable longing for something which cannot be had in this world, will be present in the life of a true seeker. And those stabs of joy will reveal that we are on the right road in our search.

The fourth sign of a seeker is knowledge. When we find Christ we will know him and not be deceived.

That was the case for the Magi. When they came to the house and saw the child with his mother Mary, they didn't then leave and go looking somewhere else for the Christ. They knew, supernaturally, that they had found the one they were looking for. They knew that they need search no longer. They knew because one look at this child satisfied all the hunger they had ever experienced. In his presence was fullness of joy.

In our day and age it is popular to exalt doubt and to debunk certainty. We are like the family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. To them in their piano world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music- though invisible to them-above, yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see.

Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated. They must revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative mouse could any longer believe in the Unseen Player.

Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth. But the pianist continued to play. (The London Observer)

How would it be if one of the mice should crawl out of the piano and meet the piano player? Well then, the mouse who crawled out would certainly know he had seen the piano player and he would not be deceived.

Or how would it be if the piano player were to crawl into the piano? Certainly he would frighten the mice by his mere size and they would run in fear. So if the pianist wanted to have a relationship with the mice he would have to become small like them. In fact, he would have to become a mouse. How then would the mice react to one mouse among them who claimed to be the pianist? Some might recognize in this mouse something beyond the merely mouse-like in nature. Those same mice might even bow down and worship this piano-player-become-mouse, just as the Magi worshiped Christ. Other mice might execute this piano-player-pretender as a crazy mouse, just as Christ was crucified upon a cross. But the sign of a true seeker-mouse would be that he would recognize the piano player when he met him.

Christians are not being narrow when they say that Jesus is the Christ and that he is the only way to God. They are simply recognizing the piano player when they see him and repeating the claims of the piano player himself. And that is the sign of a true seeker.

The fifth sign of a true seeker is courageous confession. If we are truly seeking after God we will make a clear, courageous confession of truth. The Magi made a clear, courageous confession of truth when they told everyone in Jerusalem that they had come to worship the one who had been born the king of the Jews.

Again, we see three responses to Jesus the King. Herod told the Magi that he wanted to go and worship the Christ child too. But this was a false confession. Herod only wanted to know where the Christ child was so that he could eliminate him.

Many others in Jerusalem at that time were probably afraid to openly confess faith in Jesus the child-king. They were afraid of what Herod would do to them if they confessed their allegiance to this new king, this usurper of Herod's throne.

And then there was the response of the Magi. They were oblivious, at first, to all of Herod's machinations. All they cared about was finding the King. And so they told everyone about their search. Clear, courageous confession of truth is the sign of a true seeker.

In Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Chuck Swindoll writes:

"On Sunday, believers arrived at a house church in the Soviet Union in small groups throughout the day so as not to arouse the suspicion of KGB informers. They began by singing a hymn quietly. Suddenly, in walked two soldiers with loaded weapons at the ready. One shouted, ?If you wish to renounce your commitment to Jesus Christ, leave now!'

"Two or three quickly left, then another. After a few more seconds, two more.

"?This is your last chance. Either turn against your faith in Christ,' he ordered, ?or stay and suffer the consequences.'

"Two more slipped out into the night. No one else moved. Parents with children trembling beside them looked down reassuringly, fully expecting to be gunned down or imprisoned.

"The other soldier closed the door, looked back at those who stood against the wall and said, ?Keep your hands up-but this time in praise to our Lord Jesus Christ. We, too, are Christians. We were sent to another house church several weeks ago to arrest a group of believers . . .'

"The other soldier interrupted, ?But, instead, we were converted! We have learned by experience, however, that unless people are willing to die for their faith, they cannot be fully trusted.'"

The believers who remained in that house church, fully expecting to be executed or imprisoned, were making a clear, courageous confession of truth, albeit a silent confession. What about us? How might we fare in the same circumstances? How do we live now? Are we clearly and courageously confessing faith in Christ? If we have been presented with the evidence of the claims of Christ and we are still sitting on the sidelines, it is time to make a decision.

The sixth sign of a true seeker is Christ-centered worship. We read that upon seeing the Christ the Magi bowed down and worshiped him.

Today in Bethlehem on the site of Jesus' reputed birthplace there stands The Church of the Nativity. It is an interesting fact that to get into the Church of the Nativity you must enter through a small door that forces you to bow down. This reminds us that the only safe way to approach Jesus is on our knees.

In Touch and Live, George Vandeman writes:

"A young stranger to the Alps was making his first climb, accompanied by two stalwart guides. It was a steep, hazardous ascent. But he felt secure with one guide ahead and one following. For hours they climbed. And now, breathless, they reached for those rocks protruding through the snow above them-the summit.

"The guide ahead wished to let the stranger have the first glorious view of heaven and earth, and moved aside to let him go first. Forgetting the gales that would blow across those summit rocks, the young man leaped to his feet. But the chief guide dragged him down. "On your knees, sir!" he shouted. "You are never safe here except on your knees."

In the same way, we are never safe in the presence of Almighty God, even the God-Man Jesus, unless we approach him on our knees. The Magi must have sensed this, so they bowed down and worshiped the Christ.

The seventh sign of a true seeker is giving. If we are true seekers then we will give Christ what he is worth.

The Magi gave to baby Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold is a gift for a king. Matthew tells us Jesus is the great King, the Son of David. And he wants to rule in our lives.

Frankincense is for a priest. Jesus is our great high priest who has offered the sacrifice of himself upon the cross for our sins.

And myrrh is an appropriate gift for one who is going to die for it is an embalming spice. Jesus was born to die upon the cross for sinners like you and me.

The Magi gave to Christ what he was worthy of. That's what worship is all about, giving Christ what he is worth. Being a Christian means giving as much as we know of ourselves to as much as we know of Christ.

I love these lines from Christina Rosetti's A Christmas Carol . . .

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd,

I would bring a lamb,

If I were a Wise Man,

I would do my part,-

Yet what can I give Him?

Give my heart.

That's what Christ is worthy of. He is worthy to receive our hearts and our lives.

The final sign of a seeker which we see here is protection. The Magi were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. And so they returned home by another route. God was protecting them because of their clear, courageous confession of the truth.

When my father became a Christian and left his work in organized crime some of the gangsters he had been working for came calling on him. My dad explained to them that his life was under new management, then the gangsters turned and walked away. That was an unexplainable phenomenon by the standards of this world, but not unexplainable in God's reckoning. For my dad had claimed the verse, "When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him."

If we make a clear, courageous confession of faith in Christ we can be sure that God will protect us. And even if we must make the ultimate sacrifice, which few of us are called to make, of giving up our life blood for what we believe, then won't the sacrifice be worth it? Won't it be worth it to gain heaven, rather than to deny Christ?

So there you have them, the 8 signs of a seeker. But there is a problem. The Apostle Paul tells us that there is "no one who seeks God." (Romans 3:11) In and of ourselves, none of us ever seek after God. C. S. Lewis says that if we did, it would be like the mouse seeking after the cat.

A little boy wrote a letter to Santa that went like this: "Dear Santa, there are three little boys who live at our house. There is Jeffrey; he is 2. There is David; he is 4. And there is Norman; he is 7. Jeffrey is good some of the time. David is good some of the time. But Norman is good all of the time. I am Norman."

But we aren't Normans. We aren't good. We don't seek after God. If we are ever going to seek after God he must first seek after us. He must first come into our lives and change our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Let's pray and ask God right now to change us so that we would seek after him every day.

The Man Born to be King: Escape & Return From Egypt

Matthew 2:13-23

Today I want to look with you at a Christmas story seldom told. At Christmas time we always focus on the Babe in the manger, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men. But what happened to Jesus after he was born in Bethlehem?

Raymond Bakke has written, "Jesus was a Palestinian refugee. As a matter of fact, Jesus was an Asian-born baby who became an African refugee. The Christmas story is about an Asian-born baby who becomes an international migrant.

"Half of the babies born in the world are born in Asia, and Jesus was one of them. Half of the 18 million migrants in the world are Africans, and Jesus touched the African migrant experience. Twenty percent of the babies in developing nations died the first year from water-borne diseases; whole villages of babies died before Jesus had an opportunity to die for them on the cross.

"Jesus was born in a borrowed barn and buried in a borrowed grave and was homeless most of his life. The authentic Gospel has enormous power for the whole world when we tell it the way it really is."

Today I want to tell it to you the way it really is. I want us to look together at what happened to Jesus after he was born because I believe there are some lessons we can learn from Jesus' early life about our sovereign God. Hear the Word of God from Matthew 2:13-23. . . .

13When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."

14So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

16When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18"A voice is heard in Ramah,

weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more."

19After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead."

21So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."

The first lesson about God's sovereignty that we can learn from Jesus' early life has to do with The Pattern. We learn that the divine pattern is revealed to receptive hearts.

God's pattern was revealed to Joseph because he had a receptive heart. After the Magi left Joseph and his family, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to take Jesus to Egypt because Herod was going to come after him to kill him. It is interesting to note that every time Joseph received a command from God he obeyed immediately. As we learned a few weeks ago, Joseph was a righteous man. He had a right relationship with God and always sought to obey God's law. When we are walking in God's way he reveals the next step to us.

There is an interesting story in the Old Testament about Abraham sending his servant back to his homeland to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant was unsure about being able to find his way to Abraham's relatives. But Abraham promises that God will guide his servant. And God does guide the servant. Then, at the end of his successful journey the servant makes this statement, "I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren." (Genesis 24:27 KJV)

Have you ever heard the statement, "Even God can't steer a parked car."? It is true. If you want God to guide you, if you want him to reveal the next step in his pattern for your life, then you have to be walking in God's way. You have to be walking in obedience to his revealed will. You have to be receptive to his guidance through his Word, the Spirit, and your circumstances. You have to be stepping out in faith. This is the way that Joseph apparently conducted his whole life. And so God revealed his pattern to him.

How does God reveal his pattern for our lives today? God doesn't usually speak to us through angels and dreams. The way he usually reveals his pattern for our lives is through the Holy Spirit applying his written Word in the Bible to our circumstances.

Bob Mumford, in Take Another Look at Guidance, compares discovering God's will with a sea captain's docking procedure:

A certain harbor in Italy can be reached only by sailing up a narrow channel between dangerous rocks and shoals. Over the years, many ships have been wrecked, and navigation is hazardous. To guide the ships safely into port, three lights have been mounted on three huge poles in the harbor. When the three lights are perfectly lined up and seen as one, the ship can safely proceed up the narrow channel. If the pilot sees two or three lights, he knows he's off course and in danger.

God has also provided three beacons to guide us. The same rules of navigation apply-the three lights must be lined up before it is safe for us to proceed. The three harbor lights of guidance are: the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and circumstances. Together they assure us that the directions we've received are from God and will lead us safely along his way.

But don't expect God to reveal his pattern for your entire life to you in one instant. That is not the way he usually works. He did not work that way with Joseph. He only told Joseph the next step: take Jesus to Egypt. And Joseph obeyed.

Helen Roseveare has written,

As I came home from church one evening, I was struggling to recognize God's guidance for my life. Suddenly, I drove into dense fog and could see nothing. Poking my head out the window, I noticed a tiny light from the road ahead. As I inched my car forward, it blinked out and another set of oncoming headlights took its place some yards ahead. I crawled along, following just the short distance I could see-one light after another-until the fog cleared. Then I realized that this is how God guides me. He shows me how far I need to go at any given moment. And step-by-step, I move from one light to the next. Confident of God's guidance, I let go of the need to see his complete plan.

The second lesson about God's sovereignty that we learn from this passage has to do with The Pilot. If God pilots you into exile, he can also pilot you out.

The Father led Jesus into exile in Egypt, but he also called his son out of Egypt. Here we see God the Son identifying with us in all the ambiguities, complexities, and perplexities of human life. Jesus experienced the worst that this sinful world could hurl at him, and he triumphed through it all.

On March 5, 1994, Deputy Sheriff Lloyd Prescott was teaching a class for police officers in the Salt Lake City Library. As he stepped into the hallway he noticed a gunman herding eighteen hostages into the next room. Dressed in street clothes, Prescott joined the group as the nineteenth hostage, followed them into the room, and shut the door. When the gunman announced the order in which hostages would be executed, Prescott identified himself as a police officer. In the scuffle that followed, Prescott, in self-defense, fatally shot the armed man. The hostages were released unharmed. (Greg Asimakoupolos)

God dressed in street clothes and entered our world 2,000 years ago, joining those held hostage to sin. He identified with our hostage, our exile experience. But he also brought us out of exile, he brought us out of bondage to sin, by dying on the cross for us.

John Calvin put it this way,

We must still remember God's purpose, to keep His Son, from the beginning, under the elements of the cross, as this was to be His means of redeeming the Church. For this reason He underwent our weaknesses, He was brought up to risk, He faced alarms, in order that He might give eternal peace to the Church, and deliver her from these things by His divine power. Thus His risk was our assurance, His alarm our confidence: not that at His present age He could understand fear, but because it was for fear that Joseph and Mary were dragged off here and there, it may well be said that our fears were taken over by Him, that He might obtain untroubled confidence for us.

Do you feel like an exile right now? Do you feel lost, alone, forsaken by God? The truth is, you are not. God sent his Son into exile that he might release you from exile. And if God has led you into the wilderness for a time of testing, he will also bring you out of the wilderness in his time.

David says in Psalm 23, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." God never dumps us in the valley to leave us there. He always leads us through the valley. And he is with us as he leads us through.

The third thing we learn about our sovereign God in this passage has to do with The Purpose, his purpose. It is important that you not misunderstand Christ's purpose.

Herod misunderstood Christ's purpose and that's why he sought to kill the Christ child. Herod thought that Jesus had come to take away his throne. Jesus didn't come to take away Herod's earthly throne; he came to be king of Herod's life, and your life and my life. Jesus wants to give us eternal life, not take away our present life. Today people are often afraid that Christ wants to take things away from them when, in reality, he wants to give us real freedom, peace and joy.

In 1981, a Minnesota radio station reported a story about a stolen car in California. Police were staging an intense search for the vehicle and the driver, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief.

On the front seat of the stolen car sat a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had intended to use the crackers as rat bait. Now the police and the owner of the Volkswagen Beetle were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car.

So often we run from God, because we are afraid of his punishment. But what we are actually doing is eluding his rescue.

Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (John 10:10)

The fourth thing we learn here about our sovereign God has to do with The Plan. We learn here that no one can thwart God's plan. As the prophet Isaiah asks, "For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?" (Isaiah 14:27)

Herod tried to thwart God's plan. Herod gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in order that the Christ child might die and be unable to usurp Herod's throne. But Herod failed in his attempt because God's plan could not be thwarted.

We often struggle with passages in the Bible like this one and ask, "Was the murder of these children a part of God's plan?" I believe that while God allows evil, he doesn't condone it.

In regard to blaming God Martin Vis tells the following story:

It was still light out, when the young woman left the campus library to walk to her car in a well-lit parking lot. She was accosted, brutalized, raped. God is not to blame for that. Could God have stopped that man from doing what he did to that girl? Yes, I believe he could have. Then why didn't he? Because he gave us the kind of world we want to live in. It is a world where people can touch us to make us feel good or touch us to cause us great pain. He made us free spirits in a world of free spirits. God is not to blame when people choose to abuse that freedom.

Though Herod exercised his freedom in a sinful way he still could not thwart God's overall plan. It was not part of God's plan for his Son to die at that point and so he did not die. The Father protected him by telling Joseph to take the child to Egypt.

Are you concerned about God working out his plan for your life? You don't need to worry. Just submit yourself to God's revealed will in the Bible and he will bring about his plan in your life. And no one will be able to stop him. As Paul says in Philippians 1:6, ". . . he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

The fifth thing we learn about our sovereign God in this passage is about The Protection.

If God protected his Son, and he did, then he will also protect us who are in Christ. God protected his Son from Herod, and from Herod's son Archelaus, and he will most certainly protect you if you are a believer in him.

The Coney is a rock badger, a bit larger than the prairie dogs that infect the state of Colorado. Coneys are gray, the color of the rocks. As long as the coney, the rock badger, is on the rock sunning itself, it's almost impossible to see. When a predator comes to attack, the Coney will run into a hole, the crag in the rock. If a vulture or an eagle wants to sweep down on the coney, it has to knock down a mountain to get at it.

One thing about Coneys, they know where their security lies. If a coney decides to go off on the prairie, venturing away from the rock, then it's vulnerable. It doesn't matter how courageous the coney is. It doesn't matter whether or not it's been taking body building lessons at the local gym. The most courageous coney falls victim to the smallest wolf or lion. When it wanders away from the rock, a Coney is dead meat. (Haddon Robinson)

If you and I have the wisdom of the Coney then we will recognize where our protection is. It is in Christ, the Rock. As Paul says in Romans 8:1, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." And in Romans 8:39 he says, ". . . neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." This doesn't mean that we will never experience pain or persecution as Christians. It just means that through it all God will be protecting us so that nothing will ever separate us from his love, and if we are in Christ we will always be protected from God's just wrath against sin.

The final lesson we learn about our sovereign God from this passage has to do with The Place God has for us. We see here that God can make the worst of places serve the best of his purposes.

God took his Son down to Egypt, a place of exile, but he made it serve his purpose. Then God led his Son Jesus to Nazareth, a place that was not greatly respected among the Jews, but God made it serve his best purpose.

Nazareth lay along one of the greatest caravan routes in the ancient world. Jesus was brought up in a town where the ends of the earth met. From his boyhood days he was confronted with scenes which must have given him a vision of love for his Father's world. Yes, God can bring about the best of his purposes in the strangest of places.

When Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he was stripped of everything-property, family, possessions. He had spent years researching and writing a book on the importance of finding meaning in life-concepts that later would be known as logotherapy. When he arrived in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, even his manuscript, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, was taken away.

"I had to undergo and overcome the loss of my spiritual child," Frankl writes. "Now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! I found myself confronted with the question of whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning."

Frankl was still wrestling with that question a few days later when the Nazis forced the prisoners to give up their clothes.

"I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn out rags of an inmate who had been sent to the gas chamber," says Frankl. "Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat a single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, which contained the main Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael (Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God. And you shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.)

"How should I have interpreted such a ?coincidence' other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?"

Later, as Frankl reflected on his ordeal, he wrote in his book Man's Search for Meaning, "There is nothing in the world that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. . . . He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

Yes, God can bring about the best of his purposes even in the worst of places, whether it be a Nazareth or an Auschwitz.

Do you feel like you are in the worst of circumstances right now? Then let me encourage you to lift up your head to your sovereign God. There is still hope!

When making a dessert for our family several weeks ago I made the mistake of using unsweetened chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate. Have you ever tasted straight unsweetened chocolate? It is very bitter to say the least. But when mixed with the right amount of sugar it is delicious.

Much of life is like that unsweetened chocolate; it isn't sweet at all. That's why it is important to note what Paul says in Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Paul doesn't say that all things are good. He doesn't say that all experiences in life are sweet. He says that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. Some of life's individual ingredients don't taste sweet at all, but when mixed with the grace of our sovereign God the end product will be good. There is hope for those who have a positive relationship with the sovereign God through Jesus Christ his Son.

Prepare the Way for the King

Matthew 3:1-12

I well remember meeting Billy Graham before he preached at Anaheim Stadium in California in 1985. I accompanied Mr. Graham's photographer, Russ Busby, who wasn't certain exactly when we would be able to greet Mr. Graham. I was astonished to see the elaborate preparations which had been made for his arrival at the stadium, similar to the President of the United States. Mr. Graham had a police escort. There was an ambulance at the ready just in case an attempt was made on his life. The route that Mr. Graham would take through the stadium was clearly planned out, his every move was accompanied by an entourage of protection.

Now I want you to transfer your mind back 2000 years. We are in the hot, dusty desert of Palestine and the way is being prepared for another preacher, but not just any preacher. This preacher will be the Messiah, the King.

How should the people get ready for the Messiah to come. There is no police escort, no ambulance at the ready. There isn't even a road. So here comes a forerunner, shouting to the people in the desert: the king is coming! Make a road for him! Make it good and straight!

This is the message which had echoed among the Jews for hundreds of years, from the time that Isaiah 40 was first written, until the coming of John the Baptist. This was part of the great message of hope, of forgiveness, of healing for the nation after the horror of exile. The Messiah would come bringing comfort and rescue. That's what John says is happening now. It's time to get ready. The king, who is God in person, is coming. Get ready for God's kingdom! The problem is, the people aren't ready, just as many of us are not ready today.

How would you feel if you knew that Jesus was coming back today? How would you prepare? How can we prepare the way for Jesus the King to come afresh into our lives and how can we prepare the way for Jesus to come again to the earth? I believe that the ministry of John the Baptist gives us some clues. Hear the Word of God from Matthew 3:1-12 . . .

3:1In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea 2and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." 3This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

"A voice of one calling in the desert,

'Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for him.' "

4John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. 5People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

7But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

11"I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

How can we prepare the way for the king? Think about what you would do if you knew an earthly monarch, or even a president, was going to visit your house today. I bet you would be off to clean house before this service was even over! And that suggests, in a small way, what we need to do to prepare for the coming of King Jesus.

First of all, we need to repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. That was John the Baptist's message as he prepared the way for the coming of Christ, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

What is repentance? Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change in direction.

Wabush, a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada, was completely isolated for some time. But recently a road was cut through the wilderness to reach it. Wabush now has one road leading into it, and thus, only one road leading out. If someone would travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush, there is only one way he or she could leave-by turning around.

Each of us, by birth and by choice, arrives in a town called Sin. As in Wabush, there is only one way out-a road built by God himself. God sent his Son into this world to build a road out of sin city for us.

How did he do it? C. S. Lewis once described it this way:

This process of surrender-this movement full speed astern-is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves in for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person-and he would not need it. . . .

. . . unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all-to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, he has not.

But supposing God became a man-suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person-then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.

This is what Jesus accomplished for us and it is the work he can still do in us: repentance, a complete about-face, without which there is no way out of sin town.

John the Baptist not only preached repentance, he modeled in a small way what Jesus would accomplish more completely. John lived a life that was counter-cultural; he was going against the flow. Rather than living a life of luxury as some religious leaders did in that day, John the Baptist chose to live out in the Desert of Judea. He wore simple clothing, ate simple food, and led a simple lifestyle. He was a visual protest against self-indulgence.

John preached and lived out his life of repentance in the presence of all different types of people: Pharisees, Sadducees and even irreligious people. The Pharisees and the Sadducees to whom John preached belonged to two different sects within Judaism. The Pharisees were the religious progressives of the day. They had come to believe in the resurrection of the body, whereas the Sadducees were more conservative; they held to the old view of Sheol, a place of darkness and shadows after death. The Pharisees accepted all of the Old Testament as the Word of God and they were very serious about applying that Word in everyday life. However, in their attempts to obey the Word of God they often added their own man made rules. John the Baptist and Jesus criticized the Pharisees for being legalistic and hypocritical. They added to God's law and they expected perfect obedience from other people in areas where they could not even render perfect obedience.

What did the Pharisees need to repent of? Pride was one of their main problems, pride in their own, supposed, religious purity. They needed to get pride out of the way to make way for the coming of the king.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, were in control of the Temple cult; they had a great deal of political clout in the Israel of John's day. John criticized them for using religion to advance their political position.

John attacked both the Pharisees and the Sadducees for pride in their ancestry. He warned them that being children of Abraham would not be enough to rescue them in the day of the Messiah's appearance. John told them they would need to produce fruit in their lives in keeping with repentance.

If we are honest with ourselves we will recognize that we have some of the same problems that the Pharisees and Sadducees had. We too are often guilty of religious pride. We are often tempted to think that being born into a Christian home and growing up in the church is enough to save us. But if that were true then being born at McDonald's would make you a Big Mac. Salvation is not that easy.

Salvation requires a total change from the inside out. Religious or not, we all need change. As Helmut Thielicke once wrote: "A salty pagan, full of the juices of life, is a hundred times dearer to God, and also far more attractive to men, than a scribe who knows his Bible . . . in whom none of this results in repentance, action, and above all, death of the self. A terrible curse hangs over the know-it-all who does nothing." That's why John preached so radically against the Pharisees and Sadducees.

But why should we repent? Why should we turn away from our sin and our selfish ways when they can be so "fun" sometimes? John says we should do it because the kingdom of heaven is near.

The kingdom of heaven was near in John's day because Jesus was physically near. It is near today because Jesus can reign in our hearts and lives by his Spirit. As the Apostle Peter instructs us in 1 Peter 3:15, "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord." Jesus' kingdom is near whenever we allow him to rule and reign in our hearts, whenever we allow him to have control of our lives.

Furthermore, the kingdom of heaven is near today because Jesus is coming back soon. The Apostle Peter has this to say about Christ's second coming in 2 Peter 3:3-4,

3First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."

Many people today wonder about the claims of Christ's second coming. He hasn't come back for 2,000 years. Is he ever going to come back? How can we say that the coming of Christ's eternal kingdom will be soon? Peter gives an answer to this just a few verses later in the same chapter. He says,

8But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

God doesn't count time like we count time. Christ is coming back soon according to God the Father's schedule. He could come back today. But meanwhile he is giving us time to turn from our sin and get ready for his coming, because when he comes back he is going to judge the living and the dead. There will be no further chance then for us to take up sides. Our side will already be taken.

And there is a second thing which John tells us we need to do to prepare the way for King Jesus, something that goes along with repentance. We need to confess our sins. We read that the people who came out to hear John's preaching confessed their sins and were baptized in the Jordan river as a sign of their repentance and confession.

Confession of sin means to say the same word, to agree with God that you have fallen short of his demands. When King Frederick II, an eighteenth-century king of Prussia, was visiting a prison in Berlin, the inmates tried to prove to him how they had been unjustly imprisoned. All except one.

That one sat quietly in the corner, while all the rest protested their innocence. Seeing him sitting there oblivious to the commotion, the king asked him what he was there for. "Armed robbery, your Honor." The king asked, "Were you guilty?" "Yes, Sir," he answered. "I entirely deserve my punishment." The king then gave an order to the guard: "Release this guilty man. I don't want him corrupting all these innocent people."

Confession of sin means to agree with God that we are guilty of breaking his law. Furthermore, confession and repentance are essential to finding God's mercy and forgiveness. Proverbs 28:13 says, "He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy." David writes in Psalm 32:5, "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ?I will confess my transgressions to the Lord'- and you forgave the guilt of my sin." 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." In fact it is God's assurance of his love and forgiveness for us that encourages our confession.

Early in 1993 British police accused two ten-year-old boys of the brutal murder of two-year-old James Bulger. The two boys pleaded innocence. The young defendants responded to police questioning with noticeable inconsistency. The climax came when the parents of one of the boys assured him that they would always love him.

Confronted with irrefutable evidence linking him with the crime and the assurance of his parent's love, one of the boys confessed in a soft voice, "I killed James."

The miracle of God's love is that he knows how evil we are, yet he loves us. We can confess our worst sins to him, confident that his love will not diminish, because he gave his Son for us.

You see, it is not as though God blinks at sin and says, "It doesn't matter." Sin does matter. God cannot tolerate evil because he is absolutely holy. The amazing thing is that our holy God, out of love for us sinners, took our sin upon himself and vanquished it's power and penalty through the cross. That is the only reason why we can receive forgiveness from him when we repent and confess.

And there is one more thing John says we can do to prepare the way for King Jesus; that is to receive the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Without the Holy Spirit, repentance and confession are not possible; they are gifts of the Spirit. 2 Timothy 2:25 says that it is God who grants repentance and the acknowledgment of the truth. Only God can get rid of sin; he does not expect us to clean up our act before we come to him; cleaning up our act by the power of the Holy Spirit is a description of what coming to him looks like!

Paul says in Titus 3:4-5, "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." We need the Holy Spirit if we are going to live the changed lives that Jesus wants us to live.

J. B. Phillips once wrote, "Every time we say, ?I believe in the Holy Spirit,' we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it."

The Holy Spirit wants to come into our hearts and be the legs in our pants. Our lives are like empty pants. Pants cannot do anything by themselves; they can't walk the road of repentance; they can't kneel in confession. However, when there are legs in the pants they can do many things. The secret is not in the pants, but in the power of the legs in the pants. It is the Holy Spirit in us who is like the legs in the pants of our lives; it is the Holy Spirit who makes us what God the Father wants us to be. What we need to do is simply make room for the Holy Spirit to do his work.

The Holy Spirit is not someone we can manipulate. Nathaniel Hawthorne described happiness as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you. And it's like that with the Spirit of God. He cannot be seized. Rather, he must be received. Will you receive him today?

I believe God is calling us into a fresh relationship with him today. He says in his Word, "Now is the day of salvation." (2 Corinthians 6:2)

The Jordan River where John baptized was a place where the Israelites, historically, were called upon to renew their covenant relationship with God. John called them to renew their relationship through baptism. I call on you today to renew your relationship with God. Or, if you have never had a relationship with him, begin one today by receiving the Holy Spirit, confessing and repenting of your sin.

You know, sin is like garbage, if we don't confess it and get rid of it, then it begins to stink. And as Sir Thomas Fuller once said, "You cannot repent too soon because you do not know how soon it may be too late."

The Baptism of the King

Matthew 3:13-17

I invite you to imagine with me that you are going to a large concert hall to hear a grand symphony orchestra. As you are waiting for the program to begin you look around and notice that every seat is filled. A hush falls over the enthusiastic crowd as the concert manager comes on stage. He announces that the famous musician/conductor has arrived. But as the world renowned conductor takes the stage to thunderous applause, there is a surprise. The conductor is holding in his hand, not a baton to lead the orchestra, but rather, a small flute. The great musician begins to play a haunting, lilting melody-something no one has expected. But as he continues to play you begin to recognize a bit of the melody here or there. It is not like the triumphant music of battle, or song of victory that the concert manager promised, and yet there are similarities. And before you know it, the music has touched and transformed your heart.

I am indebted to N. T. Wright for that illustration of the concert which, I think, gets us ready for some of the surprises we are going to encounter in our text for today. Hear the Word of God from Matthew 3:13-17, and get ready for the surprises in store. . . .

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"

Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

There are at least three surprises in this text. The first surprise is that Jesus came to be baptized. As we saw last week, John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. When people came to John to hear him preach and to be baptized by him, they confessed their sins. What sins did Jesus have to confess? What sins did Jesus have to repent of? Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet was without sin." If Jesus was without sin, why did he come to John to be baptized?

Apparently John was just as surprised as we are that Jesus came to him for baptism because John tried to prevent him! "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" Somehow, for some reason, John sensed that Jesus, in and of himself, was not in need of baptism. John sensed that Jesus was holier than him. John sensed his own sinfulness and need in the presence of the sinless one.

So why did Jesus come to John to be baptized? Jesus himself gives us the answer. He says, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented to the baptism.

Matthew is very interested in the subject of righteousness. Already we have met Jesus' step-father, Joseph, and we have been told that he was a righteous man. Our text for today is the second time that righteousness is mentioned in Matthew's Gospel. The righteous and righteousness will be mentioned 16 more times before we have read all the way through this Gospel. In one of those verses, in Matthew 21:32, Jesus says, "For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness . . ."

Usually when righteousness is spoken of in a Jewish context it has to do with fulfilling the law. But what law was Jesus fulfilling by coming to John for baptism? In Old Testament law there were numerous ceremonial types of washing which were prescribed. However, this sort of immersion in the water was something that was done by proselytes, Gentiles who wanted to convert to Judaism. In fact, there were three requirements for Gentiles who wanted to fully identify with the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. First, the males had to be circumcised. Second, all members of the proselyte's family had to go into a bath to wash away supposed Gentile impurities. They were then said to be like newborn babies. We can see where the New Testament later picked up this same emphasis in regard to Christian baptism. Third, the proselyte had to offer a sacrifice, though this requirement was changed after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

The baptism of proselytes is significant to the background of our text for today for at least three reasons. First of all, proselyte baptism united the proselyte, symbolically, with the Israelites in their "baptism" in the Red Sea, the place where the Egyptian army experienced God's judgment but the Israelites experienced God's mercy and deliverance.

Secondly, proselyte baptism is significant because all members of the proselyte's family received it. This may be where the practice of infant baptism in the Christian church found its origin.

Thirdly, proselyte baptism was not undertaken by all proselytes to Judaism. There were two different kinds of proselytes. There were so-called "proselytes of the gate". These were people, like Cornelius in the book of Acts, who worshiped the God of Israel, but had not yet submitted to circumcision, baptism and sacrifice. Those proselytes who did take these three steps were known as "proselytes of righteousness". This may be one reason why Jesus talked about fulfilling all righteousness.

However, what is really important to note is that Jesus was fulfilling all righteousness, not for himself, but for us. As Paul would later say, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus wanted to identify with us in our sin, in our exile. He is the one who shows us the exodus, the way out, the way through the wilderness, the way through the judgment of the Red Sea; he is the one who delivers us from bondage, from the exile of sin.

There has been much scholarly discussion regarding proselyte baptism and whether it existed in the time of Jesus. But I think it is almost certain that it did exist at that time because two of the great rabbis, Shammai and Hillel, argued over the requirements in regard to proselyte baptism just prior to Jesus' time, and even Jesus talked about the Pharisees making proselytes (Matthew 23:15). It also seems clear that John's baptism derived its origin, at least in part, from proselyte baptism. However, there were three striking differences between proselyte baptism and John's baptism.

First of all, John's baptism was given to Jews. John was trying to show them in a dramatic way that their lineage from Abraham could not save them. Those of you who have been members of the church all your life, imagine if someone told you that you had to go through a new member's class and be baptized and make a profession of faith all over again. Then imagine that at the same time someone told you that you had to go through a course to become an American citizen even though you were born a citizen. Put these two together and you begin to get a small picture of the rebuff that John was giving to the Jews. He was clearly saying, "It is not enough that you have Abraham as your father. It is not enough that you belong to the Jewish nation. It is not enough that you have followed the Jewish law all your life. You must begin afresh." Jesus identified with John's message. He agreed with him. And so, in our behalf, he began his life afresh as it were, through baptism.

Secondly, John's baptism was different from proselyte baptism in that it was not self-administered. Proselytes had to give themselves a ritual bath. But John was asking people to submit to him for baptism. Jesus was willing to humble himself in that way, in our behalf. John's baptism teaches us that if we are going to be fit for God's kingdom we cannot make ourselves fit. Someone else must do it for us.

A third way in which John's baptism was different from proselyte baptism was that it was eschatological; it was looking forward to the end of this age and the new age to come. John's baptism was a preparation for rescue from the coming wrath of God's judgment. John's baptism was administered in the running water of the Jordan, not the still bath of the proselyte. The river, like the Red Sea, was a picture both of judgment and of mercy flowing from the throne of God. Jesus submitted himself to the water of judgment on our behalf that he might gain for us God's eternal mercy.

Jesus' baptism was a symbolic foretaste of what he would undergo for us on the cross. According to some ancient manuscripts Jesus referred to his future death on the cross as a baptism he would have to undergo (Matthew 20:22-23). The bottom line is this: Jesus experienced the hell of God's judgment for us on the cross. That is part of what we mean when we confess in the Apostles' Creed that Jesus "descended into hell". Jesus' body went through physical "hell" on the cross, but one might say that physical hell was minor compared to the spiritual hell Jesus experienced in his soul. Jesus cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) Jesus felt forsaken of his Father on the cross and he felt it for you and me so that we need never feel forsaken by God.

If you or I experience rejection or judgment from a stranger or a casual acquaintance that is one thing. If we experience a sense of judgment or condemnation from a friend, that hurts a lot more. If our spouse walks out on us, that is one of the worst kind of human hurts there is. The longer, the deeper, the more intimate a human relationship is, the more it hurts when it is broken.

However, if the New Testament is correct, then Jesus' relationship with his heavenly Father was from everlasting to everlasting. His relationship with God was infinitely more intimate than anything we can imagine. And yet on the cross he felt forsaken by the one with whom he had been most intimate from all eternity. And he went through that experience of exile and judgment for you and me. Jesus fulfilled all righteousness for us so that his righteousness could be put into our spiritual bank account, and he experienced judgment against sin for us, paying our debt in full.

That's the first surprise in this account, that Jesus submitted to baptism, and he did it to fulfill all righteousness for us. The second surprise in this account is the dove. Can you remember back to last week and the preaching of John the Baptist? There was some pretty tough talk there. John called the Pharisees and Sadducees a "brood of vipers". And John promised that there was one coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The one coming after him would have his winnowing fork in his hand. It was time for the harvest, time for judgment. The wheat was going to be gathered into the barn and the chaff burned with unquenchable fire.

Where is the fire when Jesus show up on the scene? Where is the sense of judgment? Instead of fire there is a dove, a symbol of peace, as well as being a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Instead of judgment there is mercy because, as we have already noted, Jesus is going to take our judgment upon himself. That is the second surprise of this text.

Jesus is indeed going to accomplish all that John promised, but he is going to do it in an unexpected fashion. He is going to humbly identify himself with God's people, live out their repentance, and ultimately die their death. In Jesus, judgment itself will be judged, and we will receive his peace, his mercy, instead of judgment.

The other thing that is surprising about the descent of the dove is that it symbolizes the descent of the Spirit on to Jesus. "Didn't Jesus already have the Spirit?" we want to ask. Matthew's answer is, "Yes." After all the angel told Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife because what was conceived in her was from the Holy Spirit.

So why does Jesus have to receive the Spirit again if he already has the Spirit? After the Israelites came through the Red Sea they received the law. But after Jesus comes through baptism in the Jordan he receives a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Why? It is to empower him for his ministry. And we need the same empowerment as Jesus' followers today.

David Huxley owns a world record in an unusual category: he pulls jetliners. On October 15, 1997, Huxley broke his own record at an airport in Sydney Australia. He strapped around his upper torso a harness that was attached to a steel cable some fifteen yards long. The other end of the cable was attached to the front-wheel strut of a 747 jetliner that weighed 187 tons. With his tennis shoes firmly planted on the runway, Huxley leaned forward, pulled with all his might, and remarkably was able to get the jetliner rolling down the runway. In fact, he pulled the 747 one hundred yards in one minute and twenty-one seconds.

We can do some amazing things as human beings. But what we can do on our own power is nothing compared to what we can do under the power of the Holy Spirit. The church is kind of like that 747. Sometimes we try to depend upon the strength of a few extraordinary human beings to pull us for a relatively short distance. But we have a much better alternative. We can ask God to start up the powerful engine of his Spirit which will enable us to fly for eternity.

Have you been trying to live the Christian life on your own power? We all try to do that from time to time, but it doesn't work. If Jesus needed the empowerment of the Spirit, how much more do we? "?Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty." (Zechariah 4:6)

The final surprise of this passage is the voice that speaks after Jesus' baptism and the descent of the dove. "And a voice from heaven said, ?This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.'" No one was expecting to hear a voice from heaven that day, but they did. And what the voice said was curiously like two verses from the Hebrew Scriptures.

Psalm 2 was a royal psalm composed for the coronation of Davidic kings. Psalm 2:6-7 says,

"I have installed my King

on Zion, my holy hill."

I will proclaim the decree of the Lord:

He said to me, "You are my Son;

today I have become your Father."

The thought behind this psalm was that the Davidic king would be adopted by God as his Son. This Psalm also provides part of the origin for the concept of the Messiah, the anointed one. In Psalm 2:2 we read another portion, later quoted in the book of Acts,

The kings of the earth take their stand

and the rulers gather together

against the Lord

and against his Anointed One.

Putting this all together we learn that the phrase "Son of God" is another title for the Messiah, the anointed one, God's appointed king over Israel, his people. And here in Matthew 3 that title is being given to Jesus by a voice from heaven at his baptism.

The second scriptural allusion we hear from the heavenly voice comes from Isaiah 42:1,

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen one in whom I delight;

I will put my Spirit on him

and he will bring justice to the nations.

Isaiah 42 goes on to say,

He will not shout or cry out,

or raise his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break,

and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.

And so it all ties together: the reason for Jesus' baptism, the dove and the voice. Jesus indeed comes to execute justice, but he does so in a gentle way, as gentle as a dove, taking our judgment upon himself, by entering into the waters of judgment in the Jordan, and bringing out with him God's mercy to pour out on his people. And at just the moment Jesus needs to hear a confirming word from his heavenly Father, he hears it: "You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased."

The good news of this text is that we, who follow Jesus through baptism and along the road of repentance, will also hear, if we listen quietly, that voice from heaven speaking to us and saying: "You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased."

Do you remember the story of Elijah from the Old Testament, how he called down fire from heaven on the sacrifice on Mount Carmel when the 450 prophets of Baal couldn't do it? And then he had the prophets of Baal slaughtered. That got Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, hopping mad, so much so that she threatened to kill Elijah. Amazingly enough, Elijah was afraid, even after the great courage he displayed on Mount Carmel. So he ran for his life into the desert. We read in 1 Kings 19:4 that he sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. Then he fell asleep, but an angel woke him up, telling him to get up and eat. So Elijah did what the angel told him to do and then laid down again. The angel came back a second time and had Elijah eat and drink again in preparation for a journey to Mount Horeb, another name for Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments. When Elijah got to Mount Horeb the Lord spoke to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" In other words, the Lord asked him why he ran away.

Elijah replied, "I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

The Lord said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."

Then we read that ". . . a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper."

That is often the way the Lord speaks to us, but too often our lives are filled with busyness, or our hearts are filled with fear, or our bodies are too tired to hear the Lord. We are just like Elijah. And so, like Elijah, and like Jesus, we need to take time apart from our busyness, we need to go out into "the desert" where we can be quiet before the Lord and hear his gentle whisper.

When the Lord speaks we should not expect earthquake, wind and fire. He may not speak in the way we expect at all. In fact, he may not say what we expect at all, or say very much at all. But his word will strengthen us, as it strengthened Jesus for the trials that lay ahead of him.

Paul tells us that "In love he [God] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ." (Ephesians 1:4-5) And "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." (Romans 8:16)

The Lord is saying to you today, "You are my beloved child. In you I am well pleased." Receive God's Word, receive God's love. Believe in the surprises of the Gospel. Trust in the one who was baptized for you to fulfill all righteousness.

The Temptation of the King

Matthew 4:1-11

This week one of my children asked who Martin Luther was. As a Protestant pastor I was ashamed that my child did not know who Martin Luther was, so I explained to him that Luther was the man God used to reform his church five hundred years ago. That said, here is my favorite Martin Luther quote. Luther once said: "You can't keep the birds from flying over your head; but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair!"

Luther was talking about temptation and the fact that we are all tempted from time to time. It is no sin to be tempted. As we will be reminded this morning, even Jesus was tempted by the devil. What is important is how we handle temptation. The Lord can help us keep the birds from building nests in our hair.

So let us read together the story of Jesus' temptation and see what we can learn in order to handle temptation more effectively in our own lives. Hear the Word of God from Matthew 4:1-11,

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. [2] After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. [3] The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

[4] Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

[5] Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. [6] "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:

" 'He will command his angels concerning you,

and they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

[7] Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

[8] Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. [9] "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

[10] Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"

[11] Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

What can we learn from the experience of Jesus about how to handle temptation appropriately? First of all, we need to recognize that we WILL face temptatio