As the New Year approaches it’s important to evaluate our priorities and ensure that what is truly important becomes our first priority.
One aspect of being human that separates us from animal life is that we are creatures of worship. And the objects we worship reflect our priorities.
You are what you worship
Objects of worship provide purpose and direction. They sustain our emotions when we become discouraged or downtrodden. What we worship in many ways defines who we are. They become the focus of life. Objects of worship also reveal what we consider important in that they reflect our commitments. This was true of the wise men who visited Jesus shortly after his birth and it is true of us. These Ancient Magi provide us today with an example of what it means to set proper priorities.
Who is Wise?
Benjamin Franklin once wrote regarding the ability to be wise, “Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. If you and I can discover the most important object of worship it will spare us the embarrassment of being a nobody.
Finding the most important object of worship is the prize of the wise and the scorn of the foolish. In the story of the visit of the wise men, we learn what was their one most important thing in worship. They risked their wealth, reputation, and even their lives to travel across the country to find the one thing worthy of worship. Matthew tells us the Jewish leaders were not worshipping properly but that outsiders such as the Gentile magi from the east did. They sought after and found the most important object of worship.
From the east, a star was seen by a group of Persian astrologers. They embodied the wisdom of Babylon and were the king’s councilmen. Daniel, a Jewish prophet, who as a youth was taken into captivity when Judah fell to Babylon, was eventually promoted to the position of senior magus in Babylon.
Two types of Magi
There are two types of magi mentioned in the Bible. Both were considered magicians. One group practiced sorcery. Paul and Barnabas encountered a magician named Elymas who was a Jewish false prophet and a magus (Ac 13:6-12). Another group of magi consisted of royal advisors full of wisdom and understanding. This is the group the Old Testament prophet Daniel was a part of. They claimed the ability to predict future events by studying the stars. It was important that they were precise and errorless at what they did. If their predictions proved wrong it would cost them their lives (Dan 1: 20, 2:2-5).
While this second group was studying the stars, they noticed an unusual phenomenon in the western night sky. A cluster of stars aligned to create a bright light over Palestine.* We don’t know for certain if what they saw was a supernova or an alignment of a planet and star cluster. The Bible described a single unusually bright light rising from the east. From Babylon, it appeared to rest somewhere along the western horizon. Some type of astronomical light appeared each evening for months and set in Judea. It was so distinct from the other stars that it seemed to offer directions to a specific location (Mt 2:9).
A King is born
In the Ancient world, a common superstitious belief was that when a king was born a star would appear in the sky announcing his arrival. Interestingly, there are two biblical prophecies about a future star signaling the birth of a powerful king in Palestine. One of them is found in Numbers 24:17. The false prophet Balaam in a vision saw the Almighty coming to earth. The image of a star symbolized imperial greatness and splendor (also confirmed by the image of a scepter). Balaam, capitalizing on the ancient superstition, saw a star announcing the birth and accession of a great king rising out of Israel. From the distant future a divine king would come and defeat Israel’s closest and most notorious enemies (Moab and Edom (vs 18)).
When the Magi saw this unusually bright celestial configuration, their first thought was also, “The king of the world has been born in Israel.” They were so confident of their astrological interpretation that they gathered provisions, wealth, camels, and servants and caravanned for months and months to Jerusalem. Their assumption was that the king would be born in the Jewish capital city since he was royalty. So that became their destination.
Setting priorities for the coming new year
As we consider setting our priorities for the coming year, in order for them to become meaningful, we need to not only identify our goals but commit to them. The Magi were described has highly committed to finding the most valuable thing to worship. They committed months of planning and traveling just to spend a few hours in the worship of Jesus.
How committed are we to the worship of Jesus. It’s true that virtually everyone who claims to believe that Jesus is the Christ worships him. But it’s also true we take our freedom to worship and the person of Jesus as our object of worship for granted. We come to weekly worship with little to give and often we attend out of obligation. That’s not worship. David once said he would not give to God an offering that didn’t cost him (2 Sam 24:24). His view of worshipping the Lord implied that his worship would require a high level of commitment and involvement. It would be costly to him.
The place to start setting priorities that have lasting (eternal) consequences is to commit to coming to worship faithfully and regularly. And to worship the correct object–Jesus Christ. Additionally, we are to bringing what is costly to us. Offer all of yourself to your Lord and Savior in worship–body and heart.
The key to accomplishing goals
Faithful and proper worship of Jesus is key to accomplishing our other goals (health, financial, relational, and recreational). Our other priorities are placed into a healthy perspective in relationship to everything else we will accomplish throughout the coming year when the worship of Jesus comes first. That’s what the Magi did and they are good examples of what we need to do to make this next year the best ever.
- The “beehive cluster” of stars aligned next to Saturn on May 3, 2006. The planet and star cluster formed an unusually bright light in the sky that lasted for months. It was seen in the west at sunset and set in the eastern sky. No one knows for certain, but this may have been what the magi saw, or at least something similar to this modern phenomenon.
Picture atributions: The Wallpaper Database.com, Bob Smith @freeimage.com, Jimmy Westlake of Yampa, CO posted on Nasa.gov, Wikimedia. com.
