Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Matthew 2:1-2 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?"
KING AND SACRIFICE AND SAVIOR
When the Wise Men came to Jerusalem looking for the King of the Jews, they came from a country far to the East of Israel. They were, as far as we know, the first Gentiles to receive Jesus as the promised Savior. This is significant for us using these devotions, not just because most of us are also Gentiles, but because we also are included among those Scripture describes when it says "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23). We rejoice with the Magi because Jesus is born to be the Savior from sin for Jews and Gentiles alike.
The Wise Men did not miss by much when they came to Jerusalem seeking the newborn Messiah-King. What's 4-5 miles when you've come hundreds! Besides, while Bethlehem was the city of His birth, Jerusalem would be the site of much of His ministry . . . and the city of His death. More than that, Jerusalem was the center of the divinely prescribed worship of God's Old Testament people, for here was the Temple with its sacrifices and ceremonies. And its very center was the Holy of Holies or Most Holy Place, that inner chamber that once held the Ark of the Covenant, the lid of which was the Mercy Seat of God.
When the Wise Men knelt before the Christ Child, no Gentile could have come anywhere near the Most Holy Place. No Jew either, for that matter, but only the High Priest. But the day would come when the Child of Bethlehem would in His maturity open the way to God for Jew and Gentile alike. When that happened, when Jesus died to set all sinners right with God, the hand of God reached out and tore from top to bottom that curtain which symbolically separated us from the LORD.
When we daily come to Jesus for assurance of forgiveness, as He urges us to in the Lord's Prayer, we come to the Mercy Seat of God. For the blood of the Old Testament sacrifices pictured in advance how atonement for all sin would be made by the shed blood of the Lamb of God. Let us not only continually come to Christ for this forgiveness, but continually look for opportunities to show others the Way to God in Christ.
"He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).
As with joyful steps they sped, Savior, to Thy lowly bed,
There to bend the knee before Thee whom heaven and earth adore,
So may we with willing feet Ever seek Thy mercy-seat!
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 127:2)
