Sermon Tone Analysis

*Follow That Star*

*December 23, 2001*

* *

*Introduction:*

 

Driving with his uncle Tim one evening before Christmas, my six-year-old grandson Raymond noticed Venus brightly shining in the southern sky.

Tim asked if it might be the star that led the wise men to Bethlehem.

"Maybe," Raymond answered, "but we don't have to go and search for Jesus.

They found him already!"

   -- Levi Dueck, Morris, Manitoba.

Christian Reader, "Kids of the Kingdom."

Who is your favorite star?

What star do you follow?

Many look to astrology for their hopes, dreams, and answers to those dreams.

But that is false worship.

The Bible condemns such things.

Dt.

17:2  If a man or woman living among you in one of the towns the LORD gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the LORD your God in violation of his covenant,

3  and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars of the sky,

4  and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly.

If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel,

5  take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death.

Others look to the rich and the famous, the stars of Hollywood, as those they follow and would like to become.

But we are reminded of their true nature every time we go to the grocery store checkout.

The tabloids make it their business to expose their moral failures of fornication, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, sexual diseases, and drug use.

It makes big news and sells magazines because we somehow continue to be shocked at the failures of those we follow in our culture.

Even some of our popular religious leaders have fallen victim to their stardom.

Indeed, even a few evangelical pastors of well known churches have failed to be the shepherds that their sheep had hoped –even in this past year in Chicago.

Perhaps the politics of government is your chosen means of hope?

We can't say that most of our political leaders have fared any better.

We can probably all list the names of those whose character qualities have sorely disappointed us these last few years – those who have placed selfishness above service.

Even since the dawn of the human race and its fall from grace, mankind has looked for someone to follow in his search to escape the darkness.

Man was in dire need of a star to follow, a champion to save him.

He had lost his light and hoped that someone would come to take his hand in pity of his plight.

This has been a difficult proposition because none could ever be found who were truly worthy.

Each one who rose to the top of the heap still came from the ooze at the bottom and they were still colored by its scent of sin.

The hope of a new birth was dashed quickly even in the first generation with Cain's murderous madness against his brother, Abel.

But with the birth of Seth, at least then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

There was a glimmer of hope in God's prophetic words in Genesis 3 that the Seed of the woman would someday crush the serpent's head.

But the journey would be long.

By the time the light would become strong enough to entice the attention of men, many would succumb to the serpent's slither.

The Bible reads like a storybook account of this journey.

The line was drawn out in eternity past but traced by the generations of man at the last.

And so the line begins with Adam's dot and stretches out until it hits the spot of God's choosing.

You can read all about it in the generational summaries at the beginning of Matthew and Luke as they trace the divine hand that courses to Christ.

In case you never noticed, the genealogical record recorded by Matthew differs from that recorded by Luke from the time of David on to the birth of Jesus.

This is because Jesus is legally descended from King David as an heir to the throne of Israel through his "legal" father, Joseph, as Matthew records, even though Joseph wasn't his real father because of the virgin birth.

But he is also actually descended from King David as a blood relative through his mother, Mary, as Luke records for us.

Jesus is wholly and fully King as both God and man.

Little wonder that his birth was heralded by angels, and the heavens, and the wise and humble men of earth.

The whole Bible is the account of his coming, and of his coming reappearance, and of the weight of his cross upon the head of the snake that could not bear the burden of his superiority.

Finally the light of the generations of man was bright enough to see clearly for those who wanted to see what heaven revealed through the grace of God.

Man had used the stars for years to navigate the earth, but they were distant and constantly changed with the seasons.

Indeed, many men had come in similar fashion who were distant from God in their seasons of changeableness.

The birth of Enoch showed considerable promise because he "walked with God," but God took him for himself in sovereign service.

The line continues from his son, Methuselah, who lived 969 years, and finally to Noah in whom God found favor and through whom the Seed was saved during the Flood.

Noah too "walked with God" and was comparatively righteous and blameless among the people of his time, but ultimately revealed his own sin nature in his reenactment of Eden's transgression.

But Noah's son, Shem, continues the line and we see the beginning of the Semite clans and the dawn of the Hebrews with the birth of Eber in the third generation from him.

The line courses its way past the division of Babel's fallen tower to Abram whom God called from Ur of the Chaldeans in the tenth generation from the Flood.

And it is from Abram that the faint outline of a star begins to flicker in the darkness of the generations.

God spoke to Abram and gave him a promise.

Genesis 15:5  He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars— if indeed you can count them."

Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

You see, the promise was not just for One Star but ultimately for the many that would come through the One as they followed his light.

And we see the meaning of their stardom in the victory God would give over the darkness.

Since God was making them a people for himself, their enemies would be his enemies, and his enemies would be their enemies.

A victory over the darkness was in the making.

Genesis 22:17  I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.

Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,

 

And lest we think of this victory only for the Hebrews, we find that their light shall become the light for all nations.

Genesis 26:4  I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed,

 

The starlight was still distant, but at least it was now visible.

Only the hand of God could have traced the Seed from the dot of Adam to the bosom of Abraham and beyond.

It is a long line in the time bound sense of man, but timeless in the eternal mind of God.

For God, the eternal is immediate, but for man the immediate just might be eternal, for the line is traced upon the souls of those who believe him as Abram did.

And in the speck of dust that our life is, we only go around once.

The Bible teaches us most of what we know about God and our need of him.

We continue the line through the patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob, to the twelve tribes of Israel.

What stands out among them all and even those that follow is that this is all by grace, for the Bible reveals the shortcomings of them all in temporary failures of faith.

We see Abram and Sarai's sin in taking the promised birth of a son into their own hands by using Sarai's Egyptian maid Hagar as a surrogate childbearer.

The cause of the world's present trouble began right there with the birth of Ishmael who became the father of the Arabs and ultimately the Islamic religion.

But in the end the patriarchs trusted God because God gave them faith to do so, and they embraced what he revealed to them, and the line of the Seed continued.

The next place we see the starlight is in the dream God gave to Joseph, the eleventh of Jacob's twelve sons.

This dream affirms the brightness to come through the twelve tribes of Israel, since they are all called stars.

God's promise to Abram was beginning to glow.

Genesis 37:9  Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers.

"Listen," he said, "I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me."

 

Moses pleads God's own promise back to him in God's anger at the sin of the Israelites when they prostrated themselves to the golden calf idol they made while Moses was on the mountain while God was giving the Ten Commandments.

Moses valued the light of the Star to come through the seed of the nation and interceded to keep it shining, even if it was presently dim.

Exodus 32:13  Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’"

And God keeps his promise.

When the Moabites and the Midianites conspired with the pagan diviner, Balaam, to curse the Israelites as they were about to enter the Promised Land, he could only bless them.

And God speaks through him about the one Star to come who would lead in victory over the enemies of God and his people.

The light of the Star was beginning to become less distant and beginning to burn brighter.

This Star would be the One sent as the standard for the rest, a true Star to follow.

Numbers 24:17  "I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near.

A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel.

He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the sons of Sheth.

And indeed, as Moses speaks to the Israelites as they are about to enter the Promised Land, he reaffirms their calling as those who follow the light.

Deuteronomy 1:10  The LORD your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky.

Deuteronomy 10:22  Your forefathers who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

They have not only become as numerous as stars, but they are likened as unto the stars.