THE WISE MEN AND THE STAR. MATTHEW 2:1-12. BY REV NDUBUISI MICHAEL.

Jesus Army

Every child of God is born with a star that must shine outrageously, but in inarticulate to know one’s star some have missed theirs.

Star or Sun?

For the wise men, the entire journey began with a star. A tiny little point of light in the sky.

At least, we think of stars as tiny little things. But they are not. Each one of those “little stars” is as big as a sun. Our sun is over a hundred times the diameter of the earth. Over one million earths could fit inside it. Those “little stars” that we see twinkling in our night sky are actually vast balls of intensely hot nuclear reactions reaching temperatures of over twenty-five million degrees at their core. If we were to travel too close to one of those beautiful little dots of light, we would first be burnt to a crisp, and then vaporized.

We see them as tiny points of light only because we are so far away from them. And that is good to keep in mind as we contemplate, with the wise men, the star that led them to Jesus. The star that we think of as tiny is, in fact, far larger and more intense than anything our experience has prepared us to imagine.

Knowing your star is one thing, and following is another thing, which lies in your ability to look-up.

Look up!

The first thing the wise men had to do in order to see the star was to look up. None of the priests and teachers of the law in Jerusalem saw the star. Their eyes were too focused on their books and their laws and their politics to even notice the sign of the new king’s birth. The wise men were willing to look up—and they saw a star in the east that would lead them on their journey.

We, too, must be willing to look up. We must be willing to look beyond our jobs and our books and our families, and all the pressing cares of this world. We must be willing to clear our minds from time to time of all those cares, and lift the eyes of our minds beyond the things of this world to the deeper matters of spiritual life. Otherwise, like our furry four-footed friends, our gaze will be constantly fixed on the grass and dirt in front of us, and we will never notice the far greater heavenly beauties that await our wondering eyes.

Follow the star!

And the wise men were willing to do something else—something that made them not merely smart, but truly wise. Once they had lifted up their eyes and seen the star, they were willing to follow it wherever it led them. They were willing to leave behind their familiar surroundings and travel to a distant land, seeking the one who was born king of the Jews. And so they went on their journey, taking weeks, months, perhaps even a year or more to reach a destination that was still unknown.

We, too, if we are to be wise and not merely smart, must be willing to follow the star of spirit where it will lead us. We must be willing to pick ourselves up and leave behind our old familiar attitudes and patterns of thinking and feeling. We must be willing to travel to a distant new land in which we will think new thoughts, feel new loves, live renewed lives. We must be willing to relinquish our own control to the newborn king within us, journeying not where we would prefer to go, but toward the Bethlehem of our inner Holy Land.

Consult the Word of God

On the way, we need to consult the Bible, and even the teachings of the church. The wise men did not find the child on their own. The star did not lead them directly to Bethlehem. To reach their destination, they had to consult with King Herod and the priests and teachers in Jerusalem. And in the end it didn’t matter whether those leaders were holy or corrupt. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether the church is full of hypocritical leaders and imperfect people. What matters is that the church, with its most precious possession, the Word of God, gives us the detailed guidance we need to focus our journey in the right direction.

Renewed in this knowledge—the knowledge of who Jesus is and where he may be found—we can once again see the star of spiritual insight guiding us right to the place within us where we can encounter the newborn Lord for ourselves. Because our meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ is not something that happens in the church, but in our hearts.              

Rev M. U. Ndubuisi is a Dynamic preacher, a Galant Soldier, Poublic speaker for conferences and seminars. We also run advert to any who wants to excel, that needs advert, call on us, is with an Express move.