COVENANT PULPIT. Matthew 2:1-12. December 20, 2015 Pastor Bob Petterson

Transcription

1 COVENANT PULPIT The Wonder of His Heaven Matthew 2:1-12 December 20, 2015 Pastor Bob Petterson Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples (239)

2 NO, YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE! So says the tag line introducing a YouTube video that s received 10.6 million hits. Produced by someone called Morn1415, this visually stunning video shows how miniscule Earth is compared to other planets, how small our sun is related to other stars, and how insignificant our galaxy is when dwarfed by super galaxies. Do you want to feel small? Just look up at the stars. But don t do it the way the ancients did. Look through the Hubble Telescope, or calculate space using quantum mechanics or astrophysics. The more our knowledge of the universe grows, the smaller we become. Think about the immensity of the universe. If you decide to go to its outer edges, you might want to travel at the speed of light, averaging 186,000 miles per second or six trillion miles per year. But even at warp speed, it would take you 46 billion years to get there. But here s the problem: the universe is expanding faster than light can travel. By the time you got to what is now the edge of the universe, it would have expanded so much further out that you would have to travel another 50 billion years. But by then it would have expanded even farther out! Getting to the outer edge of the universe is a statistical impossibility! How vast is the cosmos? We now know that there are 10 trillion planetary systems in our universe. There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, with our sun being just one of them. There are as many as 200 billion galaxies, containing 70 billion trillion stars. Let me repeat it: our sun is just one of 70 billion trillion stars! 1.3 million Earths could fit neatly inside our sun, yet billions of stars are massively larger! Are you feeling small yet? Then try this on for size: the newest theories in quantum mechanics suggest that our universe might be just one of billions of universes! Poet Walt Whitman was right: Every cubic inch of space is a miracle. Scientist Carl Sagan confessed, To try to grasp the universe is to persist in delusion. But one thing is true: the more immense space becomes, the smaller we seem. Before he died, famous astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, Who are we? We are but microscopic specks on an insignificant planet revolving around a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of the universe in which there are more galaxies than people on earth. No wonder Morn1415 screams at each of us, YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER OF YOUR UNIVERSE! Maybe a certain guy running for President should read this. Or the Kardashian twins. Or the Housewives

3 of Orange County. Or narcissistic people who post Facebook photos of the hamburgers they ate last night. The point of the Morn1415 YouTube video is to shatter our egos. Who are we? We are nothing, just insignificant specks! I recently ran across an Atheist Website called The Church of the Churchless. Look at a few lines from one of their latest blogs: Religious belief involves lots of absurdities. The biggest one is that humans are the big deal in the Universe Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other major religions agree that the members of a recently evolved species on earth, Homo Sapiens, occupy a central place in the cosmic scheme of the Universe Even if one assumes that God or some conscious creative power cares about humans in a special way, why go to the trouble of fashioning such an immense universe if the purpose of creation had something to do with us? Why would God create such an immense universe only to focus on some microscopic specks of humanity on the surface of an insignificant planet revolving around a humdrum star lost in a small galaxy tucked away among ten trillion planetary systems in a rapidly expanding universe among more universes? Maybe we should let an ancient shepherd boy, who grew up to be Israel s king, answer that question. He didn t have a Hubble telescope, but he looked up at the stars in Bethlehem skies 3,000 years ago and wrote a song for the ages. This is the first line: The heavens declare the glory of God. Their expanse shows his glory. (Psalm 19:1) We are not the center of the universe. Rather, God is! Our Creator is infinite, so his creation can t be small enough to be grasped by mere Homo Sapiens (or even angels). He is glorified not by one, but countless suns; not by the billion stars in our galaxy, but 70 trillion billion stars in a universe; not by a single universe, but by billions of universes! He didn t create all this for the viewing pleasure of a few billion Homo Sapiens on a single planet, but for his glory and pleasure! We may have answered the question of why God has created such an awesomely immense universe, but we still haven t gotten to the heart of the questions posed by Morn 1415 and The Church of the Churchless: doesn t the immensity of the cosmos make us humans insignificant and irrelevant? It s a question as old as time. An ancient Israeli stargazer posed it some 3,000 years ago: When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that

4 You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Psalm 8:3-5 The immensity of the cosmos does not make me insignificant! Rather, it gives me immense value, bigger than the universe. It makes no sense, but I m on God s mind. He cares for me. I am not the center of the universe. God is! But I am at the center of God s heart, and that heart is infinitely more immense than a trillion universes all expanding faster than the speed of light. The Psalmist goes on to exclaim in wonder and awe, Yet you have made him [the human] a little lower than the angels, and you crown him with glory and majesty. (Psalm 8:6) The more immense the universe, the more amazing it is that God would even see me, care about me, and send his Son across the vast expanse of the universes to find and redeem me! Nowhere does this truth radiate with more wonder than in the original Christmas story: a star leads ancient Magi to a Bethlehem stable. But it is so much bigger than that. Here is the wonderful, amazing truth: God will rearrange the heavens to empty hell. Come back with me 2,000 years. A group of hell bound pagans have traveled more than 1,200 miles, inching their way over towering mountains and across trackless wastes as desolate as a moonscape. They are saddle-sore, bone-tired and weather-beaten. Yet they relentlessly push westward. What drives these ancient stargazers from the northern reaches of what is now Iran and Iraq? We read in St. Matthew s Christmas story, After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. Matthew 2:1&2 This is more than a single star (as I shall show you in a few moments). This is a rearranging of the cosmos. God has done this to draw to himself these mysterious Magi from a distant land. At this moment they may not be the center of the universe, but they are at the heart center of a God that they do not yet know. If God rearranges the heavens for them, imagine what he will do for you? When we grasp these truths, Christmas takes on so much wonder: 1) NONE CAN BE SO FAR FROM GOD THAT THEY ARE TOO FAR. Who are these Magi? Matthew s gospel alone tells their story. From his brief account, many Christmas traditions have evolved. We assume

5 there were three because they left three gifts. But the Bible never reveals their number. Earliest Christmas accounts say that there were fourteen. They weren t kings either. Nor were they there the night Jesus was born. Verse 16 says, King Herod gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity that were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. By the time the stargazers arrived, Mary and Joseph had moved into a house and Jesus was a toddler. So how do we separate the Magi from myth? We have to go to First Century writings. From them we learn that the Magi were the high priests of Zoroastrianism, the most popular religion at that time among the peoples in the borders between Israel and India. The Magi were the most powerful people in ancient Asia. We get the word magic from Magi. These sorcerers, astrologers, and practitioners of witchcraft and the occult arts, prepared daily horoscopes, read tarot cards, and told fortunes. They were also experts in the science of astronomy. As the greatest scholars of their day, they became known as the wise men. They were the scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, doctors, and legal authorities in the Middle East. From the word Magi we get our word magistrate. Above all, they were searchers of truth. They studied the religions of the world, immersed themselves in the metaphysical and were known for their amazing ability to interpret dreams. From the ancient days of Babylon, there were advisors to the courts of the Middle East. No one could become a ruler in ancient Iran or Iraq without the approval of these Magi. Some 500 years before Christ s birth, the Jewish prophet Daniel was numbered among the Magi. But for all their accumulation of knowledge, they worshipped the creation rather than the Creator. They looked for answers to life s riddles in the movement of the stars rather than in the Holy Bible of the Star Maker. They looked to tarot cards and crystal balls to predict the future. But God looked from beyond the farthest reaches of distant galaxies to see them as they looked in all the wrong places to find truth, and he drew these hell bound practioners of black magic to Bethlehem while the people of the Jewish Scriptures slumbered on in ignorance that their Messiah had been born two years earlier. And the way he chose to draw them to Jesus only adds to the wonder of Christmas. It proves that 2) THE CREATOR WILL MOVE ALL OF CREATION TO DRAW US TO HIM. The Magi followed more than a star for 1,200 miles. Historians and scientists tell us that in 7 BC Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars came together in

6 a conjunction so rare that it hasn t happened since. This juxtaposition of the planets lit up the night skies. To ancient stargazers, Jupiter was the planet of kings. Mars represented war. A warrior king was about to be born! Four years later Jupiter came into conjunction with Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo. Everyone knew that the newborn ruler would be a Lion King. In the year 2 BC, Jupiter moved through Pisces, which was regarded as the constellation of the Jews. This Lion King would be born in Israel. The Hebrew word for Jupiter is Sedeq, which means righteousness. This newborn would grow up to be a King of Righteousness. Astronomers tell us that Jupiter would have been stationary around December 25 in the year 2 BC somewhere above the Palestinian town of Bethlehem. God uses his created universe to show his glory, and draw us to himself. Even people like the Magi, in distant lands where the gospel has never been preached, can see that there is a God by looking up in wonder at the heavens. St. Paul wrote, what is known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God s invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:19&20) Yet folks suppress the truth. They pretend that all this came about as a product of chance evolution. They suppress reason demanding that such a masterpiece of perfection (the immensity of universe with 70 billion trillion stars and ten trillion planetary systems, moving in clockwork precision) must have been designed and put in motion by a Master Designer. These Magi didn t suppress the truth. Neither can we. Yet stars can only give us general revelation about God. Creation isn t specific enough to lead us to Jesus. So God must do more. This too is wonderful! 3. PROPHETS WILL BE MOVED TO POINT PEOPLE TO CHRIST Beyond stars and planets, these Magi found better answers in Holy Scriptures written by Jewish prophets. Some 500 years earlier, a Jew became a Magi in the court of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. His name was Daniel. He wrote a prophetic book about a great King who would come to Israel. The Magi had Daniel s writings among their scrolls. They also had the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Even their own Zoroastrian Scriptures had borrowed heavily from the Jewish Bible to predict that a savior would come from God, born of a virgin, to grow up to conquer evil and bring righteousness to earth. But the Magi didn t have all the Old Testament writings. They still needed help. That s why they came to Herod s palace. But verse three

7 says that everyone in Jerusalem was disturbed. These Magi were the kingmakers of Persia. In the past forty years, Rome and Persia had fought three bloody wars for control of the Middle East. These kingmakers pose a clear and present danger to Herod, a puppet king propped on a shaky throne by a Roman emperor. But the Magi had to know the exact location of this newborn king. So the court theologians frantically searched Old Testament prophesies in order to get these Magi out of town and on their way. They find the answer in the book of Micah: But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. (Matthew 2:6) For a thousand years God s Spirit had moved on the hearts of prophets to write down the most amazing prophecies, predicting Christ s birth, like, death, burial, and resurrection down to the minutest details. The odds of all these things coming true are a statistical impossibility. Yet every prophecy about Christ s First Coming was fulfilled in exacting detail! I believe that every prophecy about his Second Coming will be, too. This Bible gives us everything we need to know about Christ and salvation! It is one of the wonders of the ages. Are you as wise as those Magi? Are you putting your trust in the Scriptures, and sharing them with others to lead them from hell to heaven? But even that s not enough! 4. THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL MOVE THE UNMOVED TO BE MOVED. If the glory of the heavens were enough to convince people to come to God, or the possessing the Bible were enough, all of Israel would have gone down to Bethlehem to worship God in the Flesh. But Jerusalem didn t want to go down. They sent the Magi on their way, and then went back to sleep. One phrase in verse three sums up their only concern: they were disturbed. They just wanted peace. They weren t interested in having the status quo disturbed. But Jesus always disturbs life. He turns it upside down and changes everything when he comes into your life. Too many people have the Bible on their bed stand, but it never changes their lives. Herod is often called a madman. The truth is: he was the sanest man in Jerusalem. Jesus terrified him. He should scare us all! He was a king who had bribed his way to the throne. He was unloved by his people and surrounded by people who were always plotting to seize his kingdom. He was paranoid, but that night in Jerusalem he had a moment of clarity: there can never be two kings sitting on the same throne. Either he would have to give up his throne to Jesus, or kill him. Some of us think that we can sit on the same throne of our life with the God of the

8 Universe who has come down to rule everyone and everything, including each of us and our things. But Herod was the smart one. He knew that you must either rid yourself completely of Jesus, or bow down to him as Sovereign Lord and King. Have you made that choice yet? The Magi follow the movement of the cosmos and the words of Scripture down to Bethlehem. There they find Mary, Joseph and the boy who is King of the Universe. The Holy Spirit has moved in their hearts and they do what Jerusalem and Herod have refused to do. Verse 11 says, they bowed down and worshipped him. They knew exactly who they were worshipping. Their gifts prove it. Gold for a King; frankincense, the incense used by a High Priest, and myrrh, an embalming ointment used to bury kings, prefiguring his death for the sins of the world. They worshipped him for who the Scriptures declare him to be: Our King, High Priest, and Resurrected Savior. Then they returned home to their country. But verse 12 says that it was by another route. Once you see Jesus, you can never go home the same way again. He changes everything. These hell bound men are now heaven bound. How about you? Does the awesome wonder of the cosmos convince you that there is a God who is worthy of worship? Does the wonder of his crossing the trackless oceans of interstellar space to become a two-celled zygote in a virgin teenager s womb convince you that he cares for you? Does his life, death, and burial to pay for your sins prove to you that he finds you of inestimable worth? Does his resurrection from the dead, and promise to fill you with his presence and power (the power that created, and holds the immensity of the universe together in seamless perfection) make you want to bow down before him like the Magi, give everything you possess to him as your King, and then ask to be filled with his Holy Spirit? If so, this trip back to Bethlehem would have been worth it! May I say a word to all of you who have done all that and are bornagain Christians? Out there are billions of modern day Magi. Some are coming to your house for Christmas. If God was willing to rearrange the heavens to empty hell, what are you willing to rearrange in your little world to make sure that Magi in your life can bow down before the same Jesus who has taken possession of your life? Copyright December 20, 2015 By Covenant Church of Naples, FL PCA