The Festival of Epiphany
January 5, 2014
I Kings 10:1-9
The Star that Draws All Nations
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Amen. (2 Peter 1:2)
What would you walk 500 miles for? Anyone alive in 1993 knows exactly what members of the band, “The Proclaimers,” would
walk 500 miles for and tell me that you don’t hear the music when I speak the lyrics, “But I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500
more just be the man who’d walk 1000 miles to fall down at your door…da…da…da…” Maybe you’d walk 500 miles for love, too. Would
you walk 500 miles for the meaning of life? Or for wisdom? Or for your Savior? I think we’d say “yes” to all of those.
The people in our lessons for today said “yes” to those questions as well. In the text we just read, the Queen of Sheba travelled
to see Solomon because she had heard about his incredible wisdom and his relationship with this god called the LORD and she wanted
to stump him with her questions – that’s literally what the text says. Where is Sheba? Well, we don’t really know. Some archaeologists
believe that it’s right at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Some believe that it’s just across the Red Sea from there. Though
there is strong evidence that Sheba might have been located in the south of Egypt: there was a female pharaoh reigning during
Solomon’s time and of a temple that was almost identical in dimensions to the temple the Queen would have seen in Jerusalem on her
visit. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The point is that it was a long way away and it would have taken months to get there. If it was the
southern Egypt location, that would be a walk of about 500 miles. And when she walked back home, this previously heathen queen
confessed faith in the one true God.
Doesn’t that strike you as incredible? Just think of what God needed to do in order for this one queen to come to the city of
Jerusalem. God caused King David to conquer all of the surrounding nations during his reign so that they were subject to him – word
spread around the world that this little strip of land in Palestine had a great king and a great God behind that king. Then God raised up
this king’s son, Solomon, and had him build an extravagant Temple, the likes of which the world has not seen since. Then God blessed
Solomon with so much wisdom that the word had spread as far as Sheba that there was something spectacular in Jerusalem that she
just had to see. Why? So that these 13 verses could be recorded about a relatively insignificant queen from a place called Sheba who
isn’t mentioned again in the Old Testament - Solomon was a star and the queen was drawn to him. God did that not to save the world,
but to save this queen. It wasn’t just “luck” that she heard about the LORD.
And it wouldn’t be the last time God used a star to draw foreigners to Jerusalem. Nearly 1000 years later, Magi (or wise men)
from the East would be drawn by a star to Jerusalem as well. They were likely from the area of Babylon, which was about 500 miles
from Jerusalem as the crow flies. Have you ever thought about all the things God had to do to bring those Magi together with their
Savior? How can wise men who live 500 miles from Jerusalem even know that when a star appeared hanging over Israel that it marked
the birth of the Savior of the world? How would they even know that?!
Well, 950 years before Jesus’ birth, God used the wise King Solomon to build a Temple which formalized the worship of the one
true God in Israel. For 350 years, it served as a beacon to draw the nations and pass down the wisdom about the one true God. Then
six centuries before Jesus, a nation from the East, called Babylon, invaded Israel and conquered it. They destroyed the beautiful temple
and they carried off the most intelligent and talented young men of Israel to be slaves in Babylon. One of them was this incredible
prophet who could interpret dreams from God and tell the future. The Babylonian king recognized that and said, “You are a valuable
asset. You will not be a slave. You will be my advisor and I will give you a new name – you shall be called Belteshazzar.” You know him
as Daniel, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament.
Daniel was so appreciated by the kings that he served that he became not just an advisor, but the head advisor – a Jewish boy
from Israel was the chief advisor to the most powerful king in the world at that time! And do you know what those advisors were
called? Magi…wise men. Their job was simply to study all the science, literature and religion of other nations so they could serve as a
think tank to advise the king. Those magi would hand down that information they collected from generation to generation. So when
Daniel, the head of the Magi, was talking about religion – which one do you think he talked about? He talked about his God, the God of
Israel, the LORD. He talked about the One who was going to send his Son into the world and that Son’s birth would be announced by a
massive star hanging over the land of Israel.
Think about what God did to save these magi. We normally think there were 3, but we don’t know – churches in the East have
the tradition of 12 wise men. The point is to save this small group of men, God intervened in history allowing one nation to conquer
another. God intervened in nature, creating a star that would never exist in nature – the star didn’t move, it hung there and was so
precise it pointed out the exact house. God did that not to save the world but to save 3 guys. God cares not just about the whole
world, but he cares about individuals.
And today, I don’t want you to think that he moved mountains to save just the Queen of Sheba or the Magi. God has done the
same for you. We don’t think of that all the time. When we think of what God did to save us, we think of Christmas: Jesus was born, we
think of Lent: Jesus suffered and died, and we think of Easter: Jesus rose again. But none of those things means anything unless people
know about it and believe it. A solution to a problem is only a solution if you know the solution! To save those magi, God needed to do
more than send his Son to live, die and rise. He needed to intervene in their personal lives. And he did so in a very big, spectacular way.
And he’s done the same for you. What is it for you? Maybe it’s the family you were born into. On any given day, ½ million
babies are born. 14% of them are born into Christian families. Think about that – when you were born, you had a 7 out of 8 chance of
being born into a family where today you would be worshipping Allah or Buddha or nothing at all. But many of you were born into a
Christian family. That isn’t by accident. God made your parents stars in your life to lead you to Christ. God manipulated history for you
just as he did for the Queen of Sheba and the wise men.
For some of you, it wasn’t your mom or dad – your mom and dad maybe couldn’t care less about church. But then you were in
your twenties and you met this pretty girl and she was smart and she was sweet and you wanted to spend your life with her and she
said to you, “That’s great but there is always going to be one Person that I will love more than I love you.” And she told you about her
God. Do you not realize that God created a star to guide you to your Savior? Not one that hung in the sky but one that looked really
good in a wedding dress. But that’s still God intervening in your life just for you!
For others of you, it came through conflict. For you, there may have been a war going on inside of you as you fought against an
addiction or a war with depression as a loved one of yours died and yet God allowed a star, a Christian, to come into your life and
explain to you how it is that we can have peace and hope even when life seems to hit rock bottom. That was no accident that someone
came into your life – that was God working in your day to day affairs so you would know who Jesus was. For some of you it was through
the working of this church and that wasn’t an accident either – that was God working through the people who are gathered here all for
your benefit.
We need to see God’s working for what it really is. If I give a gift to all of you, you’d say, “That’s nice.” But if I pull one of you
aside and say, “You mean so much to me, I just needed to give you this.” That’s different. We need to realize that God didn’t just give a
gift to the world, he doesn’t just think about the world, he thinks about you as individuals. Before the earth was formed, he looked
through time and space – he knew you and he loved you and he decided to save you.
Why? Because you were so good? You know that’s not the reason. It’s because God is so good and we needed saving for
being so bad. He thought you were worth the trip, not just 500 miles, but the trip from heaven to earth. Jesus came, yes, for the world,
but also for you individually. At your baptism it was just you and the Holy Spirit as he brought you to God. At the Lord’s Supper, yes,
your fellow Christians take it with you, but they cannot take it for you. When you stand here there are two people – there’s you and
there’s Jesus and you are touching his real body just like the wise men did so many years ago. And the reason God lets you do that is
the same reason he let the magi – God wants you to know that he doesn’t just love the world, he loves you. He knows everything about
your life – all those secrets you think no one else in the world knows, he knows…and he loves you anyway. And he intervenes with
stars, sometimes in spectacular ways, to lead you to him.
Solomon was that star for the Queen of Sheba. She came and asked him all the questions that were on her heart and Solomon
shared the wisdom of God with her. And God used that wisdom to bring her to faith so much so that she exclaimed, “How happy
(blessed) your people must be…who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!” It is what Solomon’s greater Son, Jesus,
would one day say as well, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” Solomon knew those answers because he lived
in his life his own Proverb, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10) Solomon understood that to be able to
give wisdom, he needed to listen to God’s wisdom. And God made him into a star that led the Queen to travel 500 miles.
Friends, God has made you a star to draw the people in your life. You do realize that because of God’s blessings to you, you
have the answers to all of life’s toughest questions. You know where you came from, where you’re going, what your purpose in life is
and so much more. There are people that God wants to lead to the child at Jerusalem through you. God has given you wisdom to
share. But to be able to give wisdom, you need to listen to God’s wisdom.
We started by asking whether you would walk 500 miles for wisdom, for the meaning of life and for your Savior. The Queen of
Sheba did. The wise men did. And they were so blessed by what they saw and heard. Make the trek with them by searching out God’s
wisdom in his Word. I want to tell you about one way that I’m going to try to do that and I’d invite you to come along with me if you’d
like. I’m not a big believer in “New Year’s Resolutions” and so that’s not what this is. ☺
This month you heard about the “NIV Live” audio version of the Bible. It’s an audio Bible that you can get by CD or podcast that
is narrated by a host of celebrity readers. I started something this past week. I went jogging at the YMCA and started listening to the
podcasts. You can make it through about 8 chapters of the Bible if you run or walk for 30 minutes. There are 1189 chapters in the Bible.
That means if you run/walk for 3 days per week for 30 minutes each time, you’ll finish listening to the entire Bible in just shy of 51
weeks (i.e. by the end of the year). And just for the fun of it, I figured out that if you run 6.5 miles/hour (a little over a 9 minute mile)
during that 30 minute listening session, guess how far you will have travelled by the time you finish the Bible? About 500 miles! ☺ If
you’re interested in taking the trek with me, just sign up through the church office for either the CD or the podcast and let’s get the trip
started! I’m only a few miles ahead of you – I’ll wait for you to catch up.
The wisdom of the Bible is the star that is meant to draw all nations because it tells you about the star, Jesus. The more and
more you search it out, the better you can point people in your life to that star…the better you see that you have a God who if it was
necessary for your salvation would cause a nation to topple. You have a God who if it was necessary just for you to be saved would
create a burning ball of hydrogen in the sky 10,000 times the size of earth. How can we be sure? Because he took his one and only Son
and let him hang on a cross for you. Lead others to that star – the star that draws all nations. Amen.
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.”
(Philippians 4:7)