Seasonal

There's a there's a little verse I like very much. It's like a little poem. It's called psycho. Have a listen to it, see whether you, like it like I do. It says this.

As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there He wasn't there again today. I wish. I wish. He'd go away. Now, 1 of the reasons I like that is because I think it does sort of illustrate the the dilemma that many people have with god.

We sort of wish he was there and We wish he wasn't there. We meet him. We don't want to meet him. 1 half of us finds it very difficult perhaps. To believe in god and perhaps it's because we're living in a rather cynical and skeptical age and yet there's the other half that is intrigued about the possibility that there might be someone there on the stairs.

There might be a god, perhaps he does exist. 1 half of a seems to be searching for him in real personal terms that would touch our lives and our hearts. And yet there's another half of us that, you know, declares independence and prizes our independence, and we don't want a god interfering with us. At 1 moment, we want god. The next moment, we're anxious to flee from him.

Perhaps that's the sort of thing that you have in your life when it comes to god. We protest. Leave me alone, god. Leave me alone. And yet, we're really fearful of being alone and we don't want to be alone.

So is there anyone there? As I was going up the stairs, I met a man who wasn't there, he wasn't there again today. I wish I wish she'd go away. Is he there? Is he not?

Is there anybody out there? Is there anybody out there? And that question haunts us I was watching the little video of Pink Floyd, the song in their in their amazing album called the Wall. Is there anybody out there? I was thinking of playing it tonight.

It is a little scary. You've got a man creeping along a wall and then you have this sort of hushed but sort of loud at the same time. Is there anybody out there? And it's it's quite frightening, to be honest. Is there anybody out And human beings is, you know, 1 of the things that you can you can say about us is that we are seekers.

We're searching. We want something bigger than ourselves to orbit our life around. Sometimes, you know, it might be money, something bigger that we see more powerful than us. Sometimes it might be people, relationships, travel, experiences, Netflix shows that when we come to the end, we just don't know what to do. You know, but there's something to orbit our life around.

Now in the reading, the the reading we had before that last song in Matthew chapter 2, we see a number of people that are sort of coming or being confronted on the stairs with someone there. And some don't want them, don't want someone there, and others do. And then we see what they orbit their life around. So I just want to have a look at them. I've called them seekers, if you like, and perhaps that's what you are.

Perhaps you're seeking. Perhaps you're unsure. Here's seeker number 1. It's what we often call the wise men or in our reading was called Demayshay. They're a group of seekers, these people as I say, they're often called the wise men, but we actually don't know much about them.

Actually, we don't even really know that they are men. They may have been wise men and women. Or wise women, but, I mean, there almost definitely were a mixture, and a whole group come. We're told they're called Maijai, And when you investigate that word, they're basically the scientists of the day. They're the observers of the world.

They're looking out to see if there's meaning in the universe. They're the watchers of the sky. The watchers of heaven, the watchers of the stars and the planets. If they were on TV, they would have present presented sky at night. Or 1 of those programs about saturn's saturn's rings or or something like that.

They would discuss philosophy and they would want to learn about what is true and how do you know what is true? They were observers seeking answers to questions, not just asking questions, but wanting answers. And we're told they came from the east to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the city of the great king of the Jews King David and Jerusalem means peace. They come from the east to another world under another king and there's peace.

It's interesting if you read the Bible, you'll you'll see that from Genesis in the Garden of Eden when men and women sinned and fell away from god They're thrown out of the garden and they always move east. And if you read through the bible, you'll see that moving east is a sort of description of people getting further and further away from god, but these come from the east to the city of peace, to the city of another king. And it costs them a great deal. Clearly, in time and money to make a journey like that whether they came on camels who knows, but it would have taken a long time and when they come their foreigners, they're in the minority, their language is different, their they're not the people of the the the city of Jerusalem. They're they're like the tourists.

They can't speak the language so well. Or they speak with a heavy accent. They're in the faith minority, this group, but they are so serious about getting answers to questions that when they see a star in the sky, They wanna know the answer. Something's happened. They wanna find out more something has caused them to go on a long journey.

They are not happy just to leave the question. What's that all about? They're not happy to carry on in their own lives and contented in their own world. What was that about? Oh, it's quite interesting.

No. No. No. This this this star says something. Our observations are scientific research.

There's something bigger. There's something more more than us more than our world would go on a journey. And then they come humbly. This is what I love about these people. They are prepared to say they don't know everything.

They go on a journey to find out They don't have all the answers and they turn up at herod's palace and they start asking where is this king to be born? That's what makes them wise men. That's why we could call them wise men and women. They're not paired to see evidence to be stirred to say, is there someone on the stairs and then just carry on going up to bed. They want to find out.

They come seeking and knocking and asking. They're active seekers. They're not academic theorists, and I think that's what makes them interesting. They knock on the door. And when they come to herod and they come to Jerusalem, they're pointed to scriptures ancient writings from another world for them that tells them to go to Bethlehem.

An extraordinary thing Now this is the thing just before I move on to the next seeker because of their seeking, their world expands They come into a whole new world. They're not just settled in their own country, with their own language, with their questions that they don't care to be get answered. Everything changes. They're bigger than they were when they started. They know more.

Their questions are being answered on the way. They have more questions answered. In the reading, I don't know whether you noticed, but it says in in verse 10 of that reading in Matthew chapter 2 which is in the Bible that they were overjoyed. You see some things come from outside of them and they're overjoyed. There's something bigger in their life.

We're told in verse 11 that they worshiped again. Something bigger to orbit their life around that's brought joy and now they're orbiting around something bigger than themselves. We're told they bring gifts, and those gifts show us they understand something of this baby, gold for a king. Franking sense is all about worship, something bigger than yourself. Mur is all about death and the afterlife.

So they understand something that this baby to be born well, they didn't know at first. They just saw a star, and now they're understanding. He is a king, and now they're understanding. He is bigger than a king. He is to be worshipped and now they're understanding that there's something about his death that's going to bring them into more joy, something bigger in their world, that they could orbit around.

That's seeker number 1. I wonder if you're there. I wonder if you've sought god and found him. I was talking to a lady at our international cafe on on Tuesday it bolled me over her experience in her life. She's from North Korea, and she told me about her escape over the Chinese border.

It was an extraordinary story. She had never thought of running away She was just asked to go to the Chinese border from her village to get hold of a to Tire. And on the way from her village, she had to go through another village. Now she said, you've got understand in North Korea, we don't even know what's going on in the next village. And as she walked along the road, she saw 1 person dead after the other lying on the side of the road, and they had were dead through starvation.

And she realized that that starvation was gonna come to her village Although she hadn't planned it when she got onto the border, she ran. And got grabbed by the hare and pulled down and beaten and put into a little cell and but they didn't lock the door. And so she opened the door and ran And I said, what was this like? You didn't understand China. You didn't know what they were like.

You thought that some people would eat you, she told me, but she ran And then I said, well, what is this like? She said I went from hell to heaven. When I was in hell, I thought it was heaven. But when I came out of hell and saw heaven, I realized that it was hell. It's an amazing world view.

Everything's changed for her and she came to hear about the lord Jesus Christ and has become his follower. This is what they're like. They're prepared to get up and walk and run for a border and see something different. But here's the next seeker, if you can call him that. His name is herod.

He's the evil monster of the Christmas story. He's not open at all to anything. He's not an honest seeker. He's a poser. He pretends to seek when the wise men or the magi come to town, he pretends to be interested in where the king is going to be born He's a poser.

He's an imposter. He's a pretender. He has all the eyewitnesses. He has this community of humble, honest quest genres that have come from the east seeking this king. He can observe the the uh-uh star in the sky.

He understands that there is biblical prophecy in the ancients pictures. He's got all the witnesses and it's not that he doesn't believe them. He believes them all that a king is going to be born. It's what he does with the information that is the horror. His actions are 1 of violence He kills babies to destroy anyone that would have a bigger story than his He wants to orbit around himself.

He doesn't want to orbit around a bigger king. Than King Herrod. He's all about his small, tiny, little world, and anyone that gets in the way of his tiny world anyone that would interfere, anyone that's a bigger planet to orbit around, he wants to destroy and he'll kill the babies. Have you ever done that with god? God called CS Lewis, that great intellectual is the is the great interferer.

God comes to your little life. And you say I don't want that. I don't wanna change. I don't wanna go over the border. I don't want a new world.

I'm happy where I am. I wish I wish he'd go away. Is that how you treat god perhaps? Herrod was angry. He wanted his story, his kingship.

He wanted to orbit around himself you know, he only lasted a few months after this. He died a few months later. So all of that was a nonsense. But there's a third seeker or third seekers. I don't know whether you noticed it in the reading.

They're called the chief priests and the scribes. They're actually the Bible experts that when the Major come to herod, herod says, well, let me ask a Bible question of the Bible expert and they come out with with the quote that Bethlehem is the place to be going to. They're interesting because they seek a bible passage, an ancient scripture, but they don't do it if you're about it themselves. They know where to find it. I mean, it's quite an extraordinary thing actually.

I wonder what the scholars did that evening. I mean, herod was hardly known for asking bible questions, but they don't seem to be any excitement. You know, herod ask a question about the bible, about life, other than himself, but they don't bother. They seem to be in their own little academic world. Their expertise in this tiny world of religion, but it doesn't affect them.

It doesn't change them. It doesn't cause them to orbit around something bigger than themselves. They all bit around their own little area of expertise. They give the answer and carry on with life as if the answer wasn't radical. They stay in North Korea.

They don't run for it. It's extraordinary. And there are people like that. They orbit around their small academic understanding, the biologist who investigates the world of biology and sees a designer, but never looks up. I wish I wish she wasn't there.

Even though they see it in design, the religious person that sings all the songs and knows the Carols at Christmas, but it doesn't affect them. They just know it. Have you ever seen yourself there? Are you more like the magi, the wise person, gonna orbit around something bigger, or are you like herod that It's you. It's all about you.

The world's all about you, and it can orbit around you. Or are you like these religious people? Never really look up in wonder, love, and praise But there's a fourth seeker here, and I'll finish with that. It's the unseen seeker of the passage. It's the unseen seeker, if you like, of the whole of the Bible.

It's god. And he seeks us. In fact, of course, at Christmas time, he wasn't unseen, that god was somehow big enough to seek us, even though we may not have been seeking him. This is a love affair 1 way that god was big enough to become small and strong enough to become weak that he became a baby, immanuel, god with us Why? To seek us so that if we find him, we find joy, we find a star to move around a king to worship, someone to guide us, someone bigger than ourselves, someone who loves us so much that he was prepared to rescue us to come in and invade the hell and drag us to the heaven.

That's what this little baby eventually did on the cross. Emmanuel god with us, a king to orbit round, a joy to know someone to worship bigger than myself. What is wonderful about Jesus when you read the new testament? Is that Jesus is 1 of those blokes that is a very open person. Do you know you do you know them?

They're very easy to come and talk to. They're very easy to ask and to seek and to knock. They're very happy to open the door and to answer questions. There are some people that are closed people, aren't they? You speak to them and they're prickly and they They take it the wrong way and, get irritated and very prickly people.

But Jesus was never that. You know, people that were were very far away from him, love to come near him. Even the enemies love to be around him. He says, ask, seek knock. He was an open person, and god has come down, seeking us and saying to us, Hey, ask.

What is it you wanna know? What is it you wanna know about your life? What is it you wanna know about eternity? Seek. I've come here to seek and to save the lost, seek me.

What is it you're seeking? What is it you're afraid of? Knock on the door. What door is close to you? Jesus is there.

He loves to answer and open the door because he's a manual with us. And it's an extraordinary thing when you seek him and ask of him, and he opens that door because suddenly life is bigger and grander and more beautiful, and your tiny little world orbits around the big world of a god that loves us. So this Christmas, Which 1 of those do you think you are? Which seeker would you be? Wise, Mayjoy, herod, me.

Academics don't move on from your own little area of expertise or come to know that Jesus who says ask, seek and knock, and you will find.