“Wise Worship”

And when they (the wise men) had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:11)

The wise men (also known as Magi) are popular characters in the Biblical account of the birth of our Lord. Nativity scenes portray three royal figures bowing to lay treasure before the swaddled Baby Jesus, as their camels wait patiently outside the manger. Despite the warm feelings these images stir within us, very little of it is factual—in fact, most was introduced during medieval times. Matthew simply tells us that they were “wise men from the East”, and that they came to Jerusalem seeking the King of the Jews, “for we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” We gather that they were not there at the manger because Matthew says when they came to Bethlehem they went “into the house.” Were they astrologers from Persia? We don’t know. Did they know of the King of the Jews because they were Babylonian wise men that had been influenced by the writings of the Prophet Daniel? One can only speculate. Were there three wise men or thirty? Make your best guess. Did they arrive in Bethlehem eighteen days or eighteen months after Jesus was born? You got me. But what we do know about them—the most important thing we are told about them—is that they “fell down and worshiped Him.”

Worship is defined as reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred. Because we were made in the image of God (Gen 1:27), created to worship the Lord, man is incurably a worshiper. Sin has caused man to misdirect his worship, but we all worship something. How do I know what I worship? Whatever you spend the bulk of your time thinking about, talking about, and laboring for, this is what you worship. That is your god. By the way, we are so prone to misplace our worship that the first of the Ten Commandments addresses this very issue: “I am the Lord your God…you shall have no other gods before Me (Ex. 20:2-3).”

Idolatry is defined as reverent honor paid to any created object. Saint Augustine of Hippo stated, “Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be worshiped.” My thoughts travel to the book of Numbers, as the children of Israel are being assaulted by the fiery serpents in the wilderness. In response to their cry the Lord commands a bronze serpent be fashioned and hung on a pole, that all bitten may simply look on it and be saved. Now flash forward hundreds of years to 2 Kings 18 and the time of King Hezekiah. As this godly ruler attempts to cleanse the land of idolatry he comes across the same bronze serpent from Numbers 21. The leaders have lugged it around for centuries, but now they have it on a pole and the people are worshiping it. Hezekiah breaks it into pieces and calls it “Nehushtan”, a name of contempt, which is translated “That Bronze Thing.” So it is, that the bronze serpent in our lives–that God gives us for our good and for His glory–so often become That Bronze Thing; an idol instead of an instrument.

In the early years of Adolf Hitler’s meteoric rise in Germany, as he began to extract worship from people and the Church, he proclaimed, “In any conflict between gods, one must dominate another!” Our Lord Jesus put it another way in the book of Luke, the sixteenth chapter and the thirteenth verse. He said, “No man can serve two masters: either he will hate the one and love the other or he will love the one and despise the other.”

What/who is it that you worship? What/who is your god?  For the idolater, no matter how it appears outwardly, their god is them. While the aroma ascending from the altar may bear the odor of possessions, success, education, family or philanthropy, the incense truly rises before the idol of self. Idolatry is, in simplest terms, a search for identity. The Bible declares that we become what we worship. Idolatry strips man of his senses and robs him of life (see Psalm 115). But for those who worship Christ—who are in Christ–we go from “faith to faith”, are “transformed into His image”, and are changed from “glory to glory”. To worship Jesus, no longer can we sacrifice to the idol of self. Instead, we must give our selves as living sacrifices; we must follow His star on long journeys to out of the way places. Before Him our ambitions, our relationships, our ideas, and our stuff must be laid. It is only then that we truly come see the Child.

May you find and worship Him this season.

Merry Christmas!

Pastor Mike