O come let us adore him

On a recent visit to the National Gallery in London, I was struck by the many beautiful pictures depicting the Adoration of the Magi. Many artists painted these pictures in different ages and the details vary greatly yet the theme of adoration is the same; wise men kneeling before the infant king offering him gifts.  

One of my favourite songs this Christmas has been Adore by Chris Tomlin. It set me thinking about adoration. To adore means to love someone very much, especially in a way that shows a lot of admiration or respect. It can also mean to worship which of course is what the Wise Men did.

They were highly educated astrologers probably from the area of southern Arabia or Iran. They spent their lives studying the heavens and the movement of the stars and planets, believing they could tell the meaning of events or give indications about the future. Their observations led them to notice a new star yet one that was so unusual that these magi knew it signified the birth of a new king – the King of the Jews.

These were wise men indeed for they did not just note this star and study it, they took action. This was a king they must find so they could worship and adore him. Many would think the King of the Jews was irrelevant to them, but not these magi. They knew this king had come for everyone, Jew and Gentile.

So they set off on the long, arduous journey across the Arabian Desert to Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews. They would have travelled with a large, luxurious and exotic entourage. I am sure they caused quite a stir when they arrived in Jerusalem, let alone little Bethlehem.

The magi’s unfortunate meeting with Herod led to the slaughter of many innocent children but what is also of concern is that though the religious leaders heard about the birth of a new king, possibly the Messiah, not one of them went to Bethlehem, only 5 miles away, to investigate. Surely if there was any chance that the Messiah had been born, they would want to go and find out, even to allay false rumours. There was certainly no adoration in their hearts.

It would seem from reading the account of the magi’s visit that the star re-appeared after their visit to Herod otherwise why were ‘they overjoyed’ when they saw it. This is strong language in keeping with those who have travelled long and hard to adore the new king. The star, probably hanging low in the sky stopped over the house where the child was. The magi went in and adored the infant Jesus offering him costly gifts. These gifts had religious significance – gifts offered to God – as well as gifts to royalty. They were not just birthday presents.

The wise men’s journey was a incredibly costly visit in terms of time and money and maybe even dangerous yet I am totally convinced they would have considered this visit to adore the child Jesus, the Messiah, one of the highlights of their lives which would have significant impact on the rest of their days.

I am sure there were many visitors to see the new baby, there always are but Matthew and Luke each highlight the two extremes of society. Matthew tells of the magi the religious outsiders and Gentiles and Luke emphasises the social outsiders, the shepherds. The contrast between the humble, illiterate, rustic` Jewish shepherds and the highly educated, foreign, exotic Gentiles is obvious. Jesus came for everybody to save us all from our sin. Jesus’ offer of salvation is open to all; rich, poor, Jew, Gentile, male, female – all are welcomed by this king into his kingdom.

As Christmas disappears for another year and the sound of carols fades away, let’s make sure that the words O come let us adore him are still found on our lips and in our hearts. If wise men travelled for many months to adore Jesus we too can easily adore him from our homes. He is worthy of every bit of worship and adoration we can offer. He gave up everything and suffered terribly, died and rose again because of his incredible love for us.

My New Year’s resolution is to adore him with everything I can muster in 2017.

  

Kings and kingdoms will pass away

My last blog was about Mary and Joseph and their Godly response to the call of God on their lives. The next two people involved in this amazing story but in a very different way were both ungodly rulers. One was an Emperor and the other a Roman appointed king and tyrant. One never knew he was fulfilling God’s plans and the other never realised he was opposing the Lord God Almighty.  They are of course Caesar Augustus and King Herod.

Mary and Joseph lived in despised Nazareth but Jesus needed to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. It was to King David that God promised ‘Your house and your kingdom shall endure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever’ (2 Samuel 7: 16). This baby was going to fulfil the prophecy. 

Every Jew knew that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem because Micah had prophesied this ‘But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.’

So how did God get Mary and Joseph to the right place? Surely he could have sent Gabriel to tell them to pack their bags and go stay in Bethlehem till the baby was born? They would have understood. Or why not get a relative to invite them to stay? No. God chose a much more significant way.

Enter Caesar Augustus. He was known as Gaius Octavian, his birth name, till he became Emperor in 27BC. He was well thought of because he restored peace and order after 100 years of civil war and he reigned quite benevolently compared with many of his successors. However it is doubtful if anyone other than historians would know of him if he had not decided at ‘just the right moment’ to order a census of the entire Roman world for taxation purposes.

This was not a small-scale event, this affected all the known world - people both great and small. Everyone had to return to their home town to be registered and this included Joseph and a heavily pregnant Mary. They had to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem, 111 kilometres or about 70 miles, quite a long way when you have to walk it.

God orchestrated that a pagan, unbelieving emperor in Rome miles away from the Holy Land would do his bidding. Why did Caesar Augustus choose that moment for his census? Because God wanted the Messiah born in Bethlehem.

Every year as we read the Christmas story, the name of Caesar Augustus is mentioned. He has become famous even though he had no idea that his census would be so important.

Another interesting though very unrighteous king also played his part in the birth of Jesus. King Herod was a nasty piece of work. He was appointed king of Judea by the Roman Senate and considered to be king of the Jews even though he was a non Jew, an Idumean. He was ruthless and murdered his wife, his three sons, mother-in-law, brother-in-law and uncle and a few others.

He has many similarities to other megalomaniac rulers over the centuries. Apart from killing off all opposition, real or imagined, he was an avid builder in his own honour of course.  He erected many splendid theatres, amphitheatres, a port, palaces, monuments, pagan altars and he even started the re-building of the temple in Jerusalem, paid for through a heavy tax burden on the local population.

In the context of the Nativity, apart from helping date the event, Herod was most definitely the bad guy. He was the one the magi visited, not unreasonably, in Jerusalem. They asked him, ‘Where is he that is born king of the Jews?’ That unwitting question led to the tragic events that followed. Herod was the king and he had not sired a baby recently so any new-born would be seen as a threat.

Having established that this unwelcome king would be born in Bethlehem, Herod tried to trick the magi to revealing his exact location. The magi though were warned in a dream not to return to Jerusalem.

Herod then in a great rage ordered the killing of all baby boys under the age of 2 in Bethlehem. This would probably not have been a large number, possibly less than 20, as Bethlehem was a small village but that does not detract from the brutality of the act.

So we have a Roman Emperor far removed from the action yet unintentionally arranging that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem. And we have a Roman appointed king trying to slay the infant Jesus.

God used the mighty to serve his purposes and ensure the birth of the King over all creation happened in the right place. However it is tragic that Herod, the ruler over the Jewish nation, had the opportunity to welcome and worship this new-born king but instead tried to kill him and in the process murdered innocent children.

Christmas Eve 2014

During Advent this year I have been reading J John’s daily devotional Advent Reflections. I have been struck again how God fulfils his purposes in often quite unexpected ways and uses the most unlikely and sometimes downright ungodly people to achieve his plans.

In particular I marvelled that God would use a Roman emperor who thought he was a god to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and used one of the most evil, wicked rulers, Herod the Great, to get the magi to their destination.

What is incredible though is the reaction of the religious leaders when the magi arrived at Herod’s court and asked, ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’ Herod called them and they correctly told both Herod and the magi that the King of the Jews, the Messiah, would be born in Bethlehem.

The magi then hotfooted off down the road to Bethlehem. So why didn’t the religious leaders go as well?’ It was only 5 miles away.

If an entourage of Middle Eastern magi pitched up on your doorstep, having travelled months to get there to come and worship your Messiah, you might think the religious leaders would want to investigate what was going on. They dismissed it though out of hand. They assumed, quite wrongly, that these magi couldn’t possibly know what they were talking about. The very people that the Messiah came to save couldn’t believe that God would talk to some Gentiles rather than to themselves, the religious leaders of the Jewish faith.

Too often, as Christians we wrongly assume we know how God works in a given situation. But God is God and he will do things his way. He will even use ungodly leaders to fulfil his purposes. Too often our prayers are for God to raise up Christians to places of influence and my goodness don’t we need that? Our societies and leaders need the Josephs and Daniels at the highest levels of government, media, education and so on.  However we also need to be open to see God working and answering our prayers in the most unlikely ways, using the most unlikely people.

The sad thing is that though the Jews have been praying for their Messiah for centuries, only a few recognised him when he came. Despite every indication given both at his birth and then during his ministry that Jesus is the Messiah, only a handful believed it.

My prayer is that our prejudices and short-sighted assumptions do not prevent us from seeing what God is doing in our day and that we do not limit God to working the way we think it should be. May our eyes be open to all he is doing and our hearts ready to receive him however and with whoever he chooses to use.

Pride and prejudices

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 in the east and have come to worship him.” Matthew 2: 1 – 2

Have you ever asked a question or said something and the minute the words were out of your mouth you realised you had said the wrong thing? Maybe there is an awkward silence or embarrassed looks but you feel really bad and may not even know what it is you have said wrong.

I think the Magi must have experienced this.  They were astrologers probably from modern day Iran and having studied the stars for years they realised that the new star in the sky meant a baby had been born who was King of the Jews. Naturally they had gone to Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people and to King Herod’s palace, assuming he would know all out it.

Having asked the question they could immediately tell from the reaction of their audience that this ‘good news’ was in fact a complete and unwelcome surprise.  Herod was an unstable megalomaniac who murdered a large part of his close family and anyone else who he didn’t like. To tell him that a new king had been born was probably the worst possible thing to say.

Herod realised that the magi were talking about the long promised Messiah so he called the religious leaders to ask them where the baby would be born. They assured him the prophecies spoke of Bethlehem. At this point it is very surprising that if magi from 1000 miles away had taken the trouble to come and worship the king of the Jews, why didn’t even one religious leader want to go to Bethlehem, only 5 miles away, to check out the story?  This was the Messiah – spoken of by the prophets for hundreds of years – and they aren’t even interested?

I assume they didn’t believe the magi because they were Gentiles. They assumed God would speak to them and he hadn’t so the story could not be true.  Of course this assumption played out for the next 33 years. Jesus could not be the Messiah because God had not spoken to them about it. They never believed Jesus was the Messiah and most Jews still do not believe it even today.

We may be confident that Jesus is both our Saviour and the Saviour of the world but it is very easy to miss out on things God is doing because they don’t come at us in the way we expect or God hasn’t spoken directly to us. God will raise up all sorts of unlikely people to do his work and we must be careful not to be so offended by the messenger that we miss the message. I know of situations where people will not listen to a message or prophecy because they do not like the person speaking or they will not receive a healing or miracle because of the person praying for them.

The magi were right and they found Jesus the Messiah. The religious leaders were so full of their own self righteousness that they missed one of the great events of history. It was shepherds and magi who got to see Jesus, the Saviour of the world, and kings and religious leaders who missed it.

Let’s keep humble hearts and be open to what God may be doing. If it is in the Bible, no matter how unlikely, it is God so let us ask him to challenge our pride and prejudices so we don’t miss anything that He is doing.