Shining Witness

Listen this week as we explore Matthew 2 and Epiphany—Christ revealed as the true Light. 

Transcript

Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter two. The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter two. And when you found Matthew two, go ahead and stand with me for the reading of our Gospel text this morning.

Notice these words as found in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter two. And it will start here with verse one.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, asking, where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage. When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him. And calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet.

And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage. When they had heard the king, they set out, and there ahead of them went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.

On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left their own country, left for their own country by another road.

Jesus, thank you for your holy word. And we pray now that by the power of the Spirit, you would enlighten us today. To know you, not just to think about you, but to know you, to encounter you, that's only done by you. So help us. We pray in your name.

Amen. And you can be seated.

Well, here we are on the 11th day of Christmas with the epiphany, as it's so called, on Tuesday, January 6th. And we are really between two holy moments. On the one hand, Christmastide, the days of Christmas, the season of Christmas, remembers the incarnation that is the Son of God, who is immaterial, taking on human nature, assuming human nature, and becoming flesh. What is spiritual and unseen becomes physical and seen. This is the incarnation and of course, the Incarnation technically begins nine months before he's born.

So when we're celebrating his birthday, the Incarnation has already occurred. The conception by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary, which we just recited, by the way, in our Apostles Creed, did we not? It is a critical point in our faith, in fact, and we celebrate in Christmas that God became flesh. Now, of course, we could ruminate on that for quite some time. It's not entirely the point of today's sermon.

However, it's worth considering over and over again that God became man, as Athanasius said long ago, that man become God. Let me say that again because it's shocking, as it should be. God became man so that man can become God. Now you say, pastor, are you saying that we can become divine? No, I'm saying just as God took on a human nature, now we as humans, meaning we can never be God because we can't all of a sudden become eternal once we have had a contingent, a particular being brought into existence, right?

But no, we now can participate the nature of God. So he brings Himself down to us, not us, up to Him. Every other religious search of all the other religions of the world always end up the same way. And that is us searching for God. But what we realize in Christianity is that God comes searching for us.

It's not us who seek out God first, and then we find Him. It's God who makes himself available, makes Himself known, and then we go seeking him and realize that he's been seeking us actually all along. He's made the way. He's always the first move. He's always first.

And so God becomes man so that man can become like God, his nature. This is why in Second Peter, first or second Peter, forgive me, he says, we are now partakers of the divine nature.

Now, that's only possible because of the incarnation, that God came after us to become one of us. We can never any longer say that you're alone in this world and no one understands. That is a lie. God understands fully because he became man. Now, he didn't learn anything by becoming man.

He is raising us up by becoming one of us. He's coming down to us to save us. He doesn't need it. We do. And he makes this available to us in the incarnation, literally in flesh.

He tabernacled with us.

Now, that's what Christmas celebrates, okay? And remembers pretty deep stuff, to be honest with you. Pretty remarkable things. Now, epiphany, oftentimes is lost in the mix of holy days or, you know, that Term holiday, like happy holiday, just. Just means happy holy days, right?

So holiday actually comes from the term holy days. Okay? So when we say a holiday, we're actually technically saying a holy day. It's a different day, right? I mean, that's the reason it's different.

You know, it's holy. It's set apart, you know, which is part of what holy means. Other. Okay. It's not just a normal day.

It's an other day. Okay? And as humans, you know, we mark time and the scripture teaches us to mark certain days. Some people say, well, I don't do all that Christmas stuff or I don't do all that Easter stuff because, well, I just remember the Incarnation all the time. It's probably hogwash, to be honest with you.

If we're really honest, you probably don't remember stuff all the time. You know, every day is the same to me. Well, what a dreary way to live life. I don't really mark my birthday because, you know, it doesn't matter. I think it does matter, in fact, which is why we mark Jesus birthday, isn't it?

So point is, we as humans, we don't just live from day to day as if every day is just the same old thing. No, every day is not the same old thing. In fact, things have happened on certain days that don't happen on other days. And we're moving somewhere, aren't we? To our own death, yes, but also to the second coming of Christ.

So we are particularly positioned where no one else in human history is. Think about that for a moment. We, as the Church, have an opportunity that no one else in human history has. We are in this decade. We are in this particular year of 2026, God has called and ordained for you to be here in flesh in 2026.

Now that's a calling. That's by his divine providence. You didn't decide that, did you? And it's not just left up. To quote the universe.

What a ridiculous way to live. No, it's guided by a shepherd. It's guided by a loving Father.

Now, that kind of changes things, doesn't it? In other words, you're not here brother or sister by accident, but by God's order. That's what ordained means, to be ordered. Every single one of us are ordained to his purposes. If we could, which we can't, go back and read that Ephesians passage.

He destined, predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. So at the very beginning of time, when he created humans for the first time we were already predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son. Notice. Think about that. He already knew in the beginning that he was coming to rescue us, to become one of us.

And what a remarkable thing again to meditate upon. God is not just some immaterial energy in the universe, but a human.

Anybody? It's a great place to say wow or amen or.

I get it. It's super shocking. Thank you. It's super shocking to say such words. And yet that's exactly what Christianity has proclaimed.

Not just 2,000 years ago, but Job foresaw it, didn't he? Remember, I will see with my own eyeballs my Redeemer lives and he will stand on the earth even after my flesh does away with. Then I'll see him with my eyeballs. How? Resurrection.

This was always the plan. We're not just cyclical beings where every day is just the same old thing, people never change, blah, blah, blah. That is a lie from the pit.

No, with Christ, we are a new creation, not just better people. It's not about just trying to dress ourselves up. I want to try to do better. No, no. It's about Christ now being in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's a new person. In other words, you don't just make decisions on your own, but now with God, not just cerebrally. Is that a tough word to say cerebrally? Cerebrally, I don't know. Who knows?

No. But instead he's in us. Influence and speaking. He still speaks today. He can still guide you today.

So here we stand between the epiphany, which means the manifestation or the shining forth of Christ to the nations, to the gentiles, not just to the Jews, to the gentiles, to all peoples. We stand here today between both of these, right here at the doorstep of epiphany, where we remember that the flesh that was incarnate, the Son who was incarnated in flesh, now has been revealed to all.

Remember, he is the John one says light that lights every man coming into the world. In other words, the light of Christ touches every person that has ever existed.

Every person.

Now not all of us follow it.

That's the problem with sin and selfishness.

And so we talk of epiphany as, like, I had an epiphany, right? Which is kind of like a private insight, like a revealing, like a, you know, coming to, if you will, you know, in. In the. Always. Like how the commercial.

Not commercial, the cartoons show this, you know, when. When a character has an idea what happens, right? You know, here's a light bulb, right? The light comes on. Have you ever had that happen where you're like, you're, you know, somebody's explaining something, you're like, ah, I don't know.

I don't see. You know, here's. Even the way we say it, even though we're thinking in our head and they're not, like, putting on a show for us, we say, I don't see it. I'm sorry, I don't see what you're saying. Think about that.

I don't see what you're saying. We never see what anybody's saying because it's, you know, sound waves. But the point is, we do see it in our mind's eye, don't we? And when the light goes off, all of a sudden we see it. It's like, I got it.

Oh, my goodness. I had an epiphany, right? An appearing of the light, a shining forth of understanding, enlightenment.

So we use it in this way. But today we're not talking about an epiphany like you having some personal epiphany or me having a personal epiphany. No, no, no. We're talking about the epiphany, the one and only epiphany of Christ, the King of kings to all the nations, to all peoples.

You see, this epiphany is not subjective to me or to you, but it's objective, as the object of it is Christ. Not me, not you, no one else but Christ. It's not a feeling, but a fact. Think about that. It's not a feeling.

Oh, yeah, I feel God in me, so he must be there now. It could be a lot of things. We need to be careful what we let in. In fact, we let a lot of things into our life, don't we? We need to be careful of that.

We can't follow our feelings alone. Feelings indicate something. Yes, but feelings come and go. And anybody who's had feelings before knows this. And you know that feelings are not within our control entirely, are they?

If they were, then we would want to feel happy all the time. And, well, good luck. Good luck. I mean, imagine going to a counselor and you're like, you know, I just don't feel happy anymore. Don't feel happy in my marriage.

I don't have my job. Like, well, what's wrong with you? Just feel happy.

Hopefully you would get your money back. No, this is not a private insight, but a public revelation to the world. They say, pastor, where are you getting this from where are you getting the epiphany? From the wise men, the magi. That's what's happening here.

These are kings. What we believe from the east.

Now, do you remember where we go as humans? When we fall from grace, when we're kicked out of Eden, where do we go? East. Which is why we often refer to it as east of Eden. We all are east of Eden.

We're not in Eden, we're east of Eden. Where do these guys come from? From the east. What does this teach us? We're all wise men on a search for the light.

But we have to follow the light. We have to get up and move as it is moving over Christ. In this way, nature itself is bending over to the incarnation. It's participating in its expression with a sign, a star. We just sang about the star.

It's expressing itself. Nature is. And pointing to the true light. It is a light that can be followed, but it's not the true light. The true light is in the manger.

The true light in this instance, because the wise men come after the Nativity, is in a house with his mother sitting up in her lap.

And so the star did not rise in someone's heart. No, not in someone's head. It rose in the heavens as a physical sign. You know what? Even today, there are physical, material signs that point to God.

In fact, all of nature points to God. Now, we could go down that road and those roads are hard to follow for first time goers, for second time goers, for 2000 time goers like me. But nevertheless, everything that has a cause, it was caused by something else. And you get the unmoved cause that has to cause everything. So Aristotle, who's not even a Christian, can come to this realization along with other philosophers for thousands of years, because why the light of nature?

If you follow nature, just like following a cord, then it might be winding and you know, all crazy, but eventually you're going to get to the source. And the source is always God. It's actually really simple. When we step back and actually look at it, But we refuse to look.

And I don't think, sometimes I don't know how to put this exactly, but I think you'll know what I mean. Sometimes we're just so distracted, we don't take time to think about it. We're so used to artificial things. I mean, everybody picks on these devices. But isn't it good to do so?

We need to remind each other that this is not our life, that this is not the most important Thing that even what happens and appears on this screen is not as important as the people that are appearing in this room right now. And these artificial ways to exist aren't natural. And that's fine, okay? So long as they participate in what is natural. As soon as they don't, then it creates a facade of false.

What could we say? Vapidity, Making up words now. So a life that is vapid. Okay, that's what I'm getting to. Emptiness.

Like. Have you ever spent three hours on your phone doing whatever it was you were doing and thought to yourself, man, that was a good use of my time. Now, that just changed the world.

Have you ever gone to lunch with a friend or visited with family and thought, man, that was something meaningful? Have you ever been to church and thought, man, that was something real? Yes, we need this kind of stuff in our life. And not just the other.

We need not artificial light, but true light.

You know, you can sit under these LED lights that are shining down. And we did that for cost because they're cost effective, right? Like, you can touch them and they're not hot, you know, because they're not the realest kind of light. The most natural form of light comes from the sun, comes from fire, both of which produce heat, warmth.

If your diet is only artificial light, blue light from devices and screens, let me tell you, there's no warmth there.

Warmth must come from the light of Christ. And that light shines through us when Christ is in us, so that others may be thawed out, if you will, by his glorious light. I love that scene in Chronicles of Narnia. You remember the statues in the Lion, The Witch in a Wardrobe? Anybody ever read that book?

Or you've seen the movies? Perhaps The Wicked Witch turns everybody to stone. Remember? Freezes them and it's sad, right? They can't move.

And when Aslan resurrects, what does he go and do? He breathes on them. Warmth. And it melts away and they're able to move again because of this world. We can get petrified, stupefied and frozen, unable to move, feeling like everything is going nowhere.

But let me tell you, with the breath of God, you remember Jesus when he's with his disciples after the resurrection? What does he do? He breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit. How many of us need Christ to breathe on us afresh and anew with his Holy Spirit to melt away the frozen parts of our life so that we can freely move and have our being?

Let me tell you the good news is this the light has come and it's never going to stop shining. There's nothing a nation, a country prime minister could ever do to stop this light. This light is way above their pay grade.

Herod tried to stop it, didn't he? The killing of the innocents. Remember? Every baby to and under, throw them in the river to try to kill this baby who snuck in on a night in which no one even recognized. Isn't it interesting here?

The religious leaders and all the people who knew the scriptures knew exactly where the Messiah was to be born. He was already born at this point. They missed him.

Don't think just because you've been in church all your life that you know him just by being around people that know him.

E. Stanley Jones, I think said it best. He says God has no grandchildren.

He only has children, sons and daughters. He's not extending it out two generations. It must be first generation in us. We must be born again. I can't be born again for my sons and daughter.

You can't be saved off of my faith, off of Emily's faith or anybody else in this church. You must be born again. Born anew. Born of the spirit. And there will be a fire that comes in that will never stop burning.

A desire that lifts us beyond all these other desires that we know can never fulfill us. You know, one good thing to reflect on at the end of a year and the beginning of another one is this fact. Am I completely satisfied? No, I'm not. All the things, all the food.

I just think about all the food I ate in 2025. Not a bit of it satisfied me for life. Not a bit.

Listen, it's an indicator. It's actually a sign. Like the star was our desire, is a sign that we were made for another world. That we were made for more than wealth, pleasure, honor, those aren't high enough for us. Keep looking higher.

To the one who alone can satisfy the human heart. Which is why St. Augustine so long ago said this. Our hearts are restless. Ever feel that restlessness? Like, I don't know, my marriage just isn't satisfying me.

My family not sat my job, how much money making, not satisfying me. Yeah, right. Yes, good. Like that's a good thing to recognize. I can never satisfy the desire of my bride.

It's impossible. And when we demand other people do it, that's a sin.

No one can but God.

No job ever could. No amount of money ever. You ever notice how all these people who have just. I mean, it's astronomical how much money gets thrown. Billions.

You know it's insane. And yet what do they do when they have it all? Well, Zuckerberg goes on a tour, giving it all away. Like, what's that about, you know? Elon Musk works his brains out.

Never sleeping. Just always works. You think, man, I'd just sit back and relax if I had that much money? That's probably why you don't. You know, we're created to work and not just work for a company.

We're created for good works. And we need to bring those good works. We need to bring character and virtue into the workplace because it's light in a dark place. In our workplaces, there's a lot of people suffering. There's a lot of people that don't know that marriage or family or wealth or these types of things that they don't satisfy.

They don't know that. They still think, if I could only just do this, if I could only just. No, no, no, no, no. It doesn't matter what you have, it'll never be enough. But that ought to lift us up to the one who is enough, even when we don't have anything.

You see, we can have nothing and have Christ and have everything, or we can have everything and not Christ and have nothing.

Like, if you could just talk to your old self ten years ago, you'd be like, man, I didn't know you were going to make this much money. I didn't know you were going to have this kind of thing in your life. Wow. And yet here we are and we're just, eh, eh. Yeah.

Didn't do much, did it? Didn't do much. Why? Because our desire has to be more than the things of this world. The star is up in the heavens, unreachable.

Yeah, that's it. That's right. We can't reach it on our own. We must follow the star to the true light who comes down. Notice we're not climbing our way up.

He comes down to us. So has he come to your life? Have you recognized Christ in your life? His grace in your is always first. Salvation is by grace.

And yet he in his sovereignty, in his providence as king, chooses to let his light shine through people like us.

Now, you might disagree with that. I'm supposed to see Christ in other people in the church. I mean, you ever been to church before? Oh, I know. Been in church all my life.

I get it. Church hurt is a real thing.

But the church is not holy because of the people in it. It's holy because of Christ.

And secret of secrets, there's a Lot of people in church that don't know Christ.

God worked through Israel, the nation, now he works through the church. The nation of Israel, we are told, was to be a light to the nations. What? Is the church a light to the nations? Yes.

Yes. Was Israel perfect in their execution of that light? No. Is the church perfect in its execution? No.

But as my dad always says, and I think it's true and right, you can either go to church with hypocrites or you can go to hell with them. I would tackle on this point. One is temporary, the other is eternal. You're not going to get away from hypocrites until heaven. Jesus says this clearly to his disciples.

I'm not pulling up the weeds with the wheat. Not going to right now. They're going to remain.

That's his doing, not mine. Not your decision, but his.

And I would never want to think that I know more about God, how to run the universe than God. No. He's delivering us from hell itself. From a living hell? Yes.

And an eternal living hell where we're always desiring but never able to come to Beatitude to happiness. And true happiness is always through holiness and the Holy One.

The point is, Christ continues to manifest himself in the world through the church, through gatherings, just like that. I know it doesn't feel like it all the time. Like what? I look at my life. How.

How does any light shine through?

And yet if God can use a donkey, he can use us. Can he? We're kind of emblematic of donkeys, by the way. I'll just leave that one there and move on. But just think about that for a minute.

Stubborn. Yes. Yes. And yet appearing at the Nativity, a donkey and an ox, and carrying Christ to the cross.

That animal among all the animals gets that honor. Yeah, that's us. That's us.

You see? How do we show the light of Christ? Show and tell, that's how. Show it and tell it, and probably in that order. You ever had somebody tell you something but their life didn't match it?

That's what we call hypocrite, Right? An actor. That's what hypocrite means. Actor just putting on a show.

You know, I saw this the other day and I thought it was hilarious. Somebody. Well, I don't know what it was. It was something that we went to love. Can't remember.

But anyway, all these people were like, yeah, hi, nice to meet. Nice. You ever had that happen? You know, like, meet and greet or whatever? It's like as soon as they turn away, all that was fake.

They weren't actually happy to meet you. They were just putting on a smile because they knew they needed to put on a smile as soon as they didn't have to. Straight, straight face, donkey face.

Show and tell.

Now I get it. Sometimes the showing part, that's the hard part, right? The telling, that's the easy, you know, the theology doctrine. It's the easy part, really. The hard part is living that doctrine out, living our theology.

And you know what I found? I found the same thing in people that I found in restaurants. I was in Indianapolis recently and I went to this little hole in the wall place because I saw good reviews on my device. I was like, okay, check this place out. Great hamburgers, good onion rings.

I love onion rings. You know, I can't remember the name of the place, but I show up, they don't even have parking lot. People are parking all over the street. They. There's mud everywhere.

It looks like a dump, you know, looks like a warehouse or something. And people are going in. I'm like, I don't even know where to go in. It looks like a bar. It was odd.

I go in though, and, you know, service is great. And when they brought out those onion rings, literally, like, I've never had this happen, but it was like a marshmallow melting in your mouth. But an onion ring, fried onion ring. Oh, man. Wow.

Like, hole in the wall, like, doesn't look great on the outside, but what's in there, glorious.

And actually we have the pictures, like developing or showing up on our screen at the house. And every time Jessica see that, that place is a dump, you know, and I'm like, yeah, well, that's the way I feel about my life. The outside, the outside actions, a dump. But on the inside we have a treasure beyond treasures, glorious treasure. Who is Christ in us?

We don't have to look perfect on the outside to have that treasure. Isn't that great? We can be a little muddy. And you know, some of the realest people I know, you never know it on the outside, unassuming. And yet within is a beautiful character.

The character character of Christ himself.

And some of the most put together people, some of the most bitter, unhappy. Wasn't this the problem with the Pharisees? Jesus looks at them and says, you are like whitewashed tombs. Beautiful on the owls of man. What a tomb.

What a tomb inside dead man's bones. Don't let that be you. Listen, don't let that be you. Let's allow Christ to find a home in us. And then let's show and tell.

Let's show the world. Living our principles become a living theology. Because here's what Jesus Sundays in John 13:35. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you love one another, you can't love one another from a distance.

You can't love one another in general. You say, I'm just a part of the church, like universal, you know, I can just worship whenever I want with whomever I want. Good luck. I think we're supposed to be grounded in somebody's life in order to love them. You say, I just love all of humanity.

Cool. I'm a citizen of the world. BA Bull no. You have a particular existence, particular people around you that Christ wants you to love.

Some of them are in this room. Some of them are sitting beside you. And we ignore some of the most beautiful gifts God has given to us. He didn't give them to somebody else. He gave them to you.

He gave them to me. And we'll be judged on how we steward what he has given us.

Well, I have a lot more to say, but I'm going to skip over it because I like you.

But there's really three Kings in our text. And it's not the three wise men only. It's Herod and his awful reaction to Christ. It's the wise man and their correct response to Christ. Which will you be?

Does Christ's coming worry you? I have to love them. I have to forgive people. Is that a problem? It is a problem until we meet grace, God's grace.

And when he forgives us, we can forgive other people.

So has Christ appeared to you? Because the epiphany isn't over. It's continuing to shine. The fact of his coming, the fact that he was revealed and made manifest to the Magi means that he continues to let his light shine through us, his bride, His Church.

But in order for his light to shine through you, you must know Him. You must have a personal encounter with Christ and come to know him as your Savior, as your Father, not as a grandchild, but as a son or daughter of the King.

The star is still shining. Will you follow? Will you follow to the Christ child who can be born in you? May it be so. In the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, Amen.