May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight O Lord, our rock and our
redeemer!! AMEN!!
Let us pray! Lord Jesus Christ, tonight heralds the end of
the Christmas season where we celebrate the coming of the Three Wise Men. May our hearts be overjoyed that again we
have against the devil come again to hear Your Word preached and proclaimed in
its purity. For we know Your Word will
not return without accomplishing Your purpose and Your purpose is the
proclamation of the saving message of the Gospel for all mankind, especially we
Your saints gathered here at Emmanuel, this Epiphany night. AMEN.
On Epiphany 1532, Martin Luther preached
a sermon with Matthew 2:1-12 as the text.
Hear a quote from that sermon:
“All the
cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the Word. If in the external preaching he does not
succeed in making people unwilling to hear the Word, yet he succeeds in the
heart by persuading them not to cling to it.”
Even nearly 500 years ago the symptom we
face daily of not coming to hear the Word of God was persistent and
pervasive. Satan with the cunningness
unmatched by any wielded the means and power to ‘tear us away from the Word’
and we here today in Goodland, KS this January 6, 2012 are no different. Around every bend and every turn, we
encounter the draws of our society, our life and our world to pull us away from
the proclamation of God’s Word.
Yet, tonight we hear from sacred
scripture about three men who enter Jerusalem and find the same disdain for
sacred scripture and the prophecies of old.
The three wise men, learned men from the East in the natural sciences
thought they would encounter a people who would know who the Savior of the World
was and where He would be at. Their question
to Herod of “Where
is He who has been born King of the Jews?” was
met with such uncertainty since they were in the capital of Jews that the wise
men probably wondered why nobody knew Who or Where the King was. We know, He wasn’t born in a palace, His
entrance into the World was not on satin sheets with hot running maids and a
team of doctors. But the Savior of the
World came in a lowly manger because there was no room in the inn.
But tonight three men enter the story of salvation coming
from a far to worship the “King of the Jews.”
They bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. They enter into salvations history to offer
gifts, but take away the greatest gift of all, being in the presence of Jesus
Christ, Savior of the World. These three
men of story and song come to worship the long foretold King.
Tonight we have that same opportunity to Worship the
King. In my office, I have a very small
nativity set that I have had set up for most of Advent and Christmas. One of the traditions that has been passed
down for generations is how the Wise men always are on a journey from the
beginning of Advent until Epiphany. So
tonight the wise men finally reach the place where the star stopped
moving. Tonight we come to worship the
King, and like the wise men we bring our burdens we carry daily, they are not
Gold, Frankincense or myrrh, but we like the wise men depart having heard the
Word of God in its truth and purity. For
we know Jesus Christ came into this world to bring us salvation for all
mankind, including all of us saints gathered here at Emmanuel, this Epiphany
night. AMEN.
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