I was on staff at a church that hadn't seen a first-generation Christian in 25 years. Let that sink in just for a minute. For over a quarter of a century, there wasn't someone from outside the church, someone who hadn't grown up in the church, that came to know Christ, that received the power of the gospel. Before I continue, I want to introduce myself a little bit more. I'm Pastor Mitchell. If you guys notice that this is the same passage that Ryan preached on Christmas Eve. I think he did it for two reasons. One, it's the story of this Sunday is Epiphany Sunday, where we remember that the gospel went to the Gentiles.

I think that's what we remember on this Sunday. The second is, I think it might be a little bit of a compare and contrast. He wants you to remember how good you guys have it. I mean, Ryan is a really good preacher, so I'll give him that. He's really good.

Yeah.

But we're going to be in Matthew 2, 1 through 12. So if you guys want to open your Bibles to that, back to what we're talking about, 25 years. Unfortunately, this isn't rare in churches that churches see non-Christians transformed by the gospel. I think the root of this is navel-gazing. I think the root of this is looking inward. We care often too much, we put too much emphasis on the noise coming from inside the church. I think oftentimes there's grumbling, there can be complaining, there

can be problems within a church, and that noise of that seems to be deafening. But the truth is, if we could see reality like God does, if we could see all of eternity, the noise of lost people in our own community, the noise of them in eternity would drown out, would be deafening compared to the noise that we hear on the inside. Oftentimes, we only look inward,

only caring about the people who are inside the building. I bring this up for two reasons. One, I want us to understand what God is doing here. God is doing an amazing work at Peace Church, amen?

Amen.

If you haven't been to a baptism service, one, you need to go to one, and second, if you have, you'll see story after story of God transforming not only people's hearts to dedicate, to baptize their children, to make sure that they are raised in a Christian home, stories of people who have been baptized professing their faith, but you'll see people who have, first generations, being transformed by the gospel.

The first time I saw that, the first time I was here, I'll be honest, I got teary-eyed. It's been the first time in a long time that I'd seen that, because it's rare, and God's doing something amazing here at Peace Church. The second reason is I want to implore us

not to lose our hearts for the outsiders. If we're a Christian, if you're a Christian, your faith isn't your own anymore. What I mean by that is, if you're a disciple, part of your job description means being a discipler. You have to pass this faith on. Oftentimes in churches there can kind of be an older generation that clings to some things that are a

little bit tertiary, that are maybe less important, and oftentimes what they're saying is this church needs to be about me, what I like, and the things that I'm comfortable with. The beautiful thing about peace is that we have an older generation here who love the next generation. They want to see that faith passed on because they know, they've experienced God, and they can't wait for another generation to experience that same thing.

It's a great example. That's for all of us, whether we're young or old. If we're a Christian, our faith isn't about us. It's about passing it on. I'm 30, whether you think I'm old or not, my faith isn't my own.

It doesn't matter what songs I like, it's about passing my faith on to the next person. We can't lose our heart for the outsider. And that leads us into our big question, who does God love? Is there a type of person that God loves?

Can we identify a formula? Can we sort out some sort of demographic sweet spot of the kind of person that will come to know Christ?

Who does God love?

Maybe let's ask that in the negative. Are there people, are there types of people who are beyond the love of God? I think we know our Sunday school answer, that's no, but deep down in our heart, if we examine ourselves, are there people that we think

can't come to know the gospel?

What about them?

What about the people who don't act like us, that do things that we don't approve of, that don't look like us, that don't dress like us, I don't talk like us. Who does God love? The good news is the Bible has an answer for us,

so if you would, open your Bibles, keep them open to Matthew 2, 1 through 12. Let's read God's word. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came from the east to Jerusalem saying,

where is he who is born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all of Jerusalem with him. He assembled all of the chief priests and scribes,

the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written by the prophet. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.' Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child

was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. This is God's word. Let's pray and then we'll get into it. Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you that we can be here this morning. God, I pray that you would open our hearts to your word and that through it we would find your heart.

God, I thank you that you are a God who's brought the gospel to us, that there is no one that is too far gone to be saved. God, we love you, we love to do your will, so help us do that. It's in your name we pray, amen. There are two units of thought in this passage. The first is the King of kings has come, and the second is that we see good news to wise men.

This first unit of thought, verses 1-6, we see in verse 1, Jesus is born, right? To give context to this, Jesus is now out of his cradle, he's out of the manger, and he's in a house, right? We see that later on in the passage, he's in a house. Jesus is probably at least a couple months old at this point. He may be up to two months old, depending on what commentaries you read, but he is, the point of this is that the wise men aren't rubbing

shoulders with the shepherds, they weren't there when Jesus was born. One more note about context, a note about the star. There are so many theories about what the star is and we don't have time to get into them, I've only got 21 minutes left so we got to keep going, but if you want to know more about it, Pastor Ryan has written an amazing article on resoundmedia.cc. I would encourage you to read that. It's great if you want to learn more about the star and what it is. The point

of the star, though, is that God is totally sovereign and in control of everything in the universe, and that should drive us to worship him even greater. John Piper has a great quote. Anytime you can quote John Piper in a sermon, that's a great, great move for a young preacher, so I'm gonna do it here. God wields the universe to make his son known and worshipped. I think this is a beautiful thing and seeing the star, seeing what the star is, I think we should, it should propel us to worship even more. Again, today is Epiphany Sunday.

We're talking about the wise men. So who are these wise men? These wise men are counselors to kings. They're not kings themselves. They are people who are trained to give wisdom to kings. That's why they're called wise men. But the most important thing about the wise men is that they are not Jewish people. They're not Jews, they're outside of the covenant. They're pagans and they worship pagan gods.

They're natural enemies, both to God and to Israel. Remember that for later, it's going to be important. So as they arrive on scene, they get to Jerusalem, and Herod hears the news about this coming king. And Herod is afraid, and he should be. You see, Herod is only half Jewish,

and he's seen as an outsider by the Israelites, by people. He's not really a favorable king. Herod's threatened by him. So Herod gets the Bible nerds together and they figure out where this king is going to be born. And they quote Micah chapter 5 verse 2. It says this, from ancient days. The Messiah would come from Bethlehem. Why does this matter?

Maybe you're wondering that at this point in the message. Why is this important? This is important because this Messiah, this ruler, had been prophesied, had been waited for. This is something that everyone was looking for. It goes back to the start of the story in Genesis. Adam and Eve sin, they fall, and God gives Eve a promise that says, from her descendants will come one who will crush the head of the serpent. What that means is Adam and Eve had just ushered sin and death into the world,

and this person, this one who would crush the head of the serpent, would make wrong what they just screwed up. So all of the rest of the Old Testament, all the rest of this arc, is looking forward to this person. Is it Cain and Abel? No, they screw stuff up. Is it Noah? No, it's not him. It's not Abraham. It's not Isaac. It's not Jacob. It's not Moses. It's not the judges. It's not the kings. It's not even King David.

And then there's 400 years of silence Everyone was waiting for this moment was waiting for this King this snake crushing King He's not just any King But he's the king of Kings Herod's response to this. They are ambassadors of kings.

And they come and they see that this baby is greater than their boss. In this next section, we see good news to wise men. This miraculous star points them to this new king. Something big is about to happen. Every man has been looking forward to this King. And the wise men, they get to be the first,

some of the first people to witness this. And as they arrive, they are joyful, right? Not just joyful, but with great joy, exceedingly joyful. A better translation of that would be deliriously happy. They fall down and worship him. Jonathan Edwards has this really great quote explaining what happens both to us when we

encounter Christ, but to these wise men. It says this, there's a kind of infinite power in the light of this heavenly star to fill the heart with gladness and rejoicing. Its light in the soul is holiness and happiness itself. Let not anyone seek or expect to see the star in there as though we saw something up in the air

shining with an outward light. The star that I speak of is Christ held forth in the doctrine of the word of God and in the glorious gospel, which is to be seen not with bodily eyes, not with the imagination,

but with an understanding and sense of heart. What he's saying here is that when the wise men, when we encounter Christ, we see something not with our eyes, but with our heart. We see holiness and happiness itself, and it compels them, and it should compel us

to fall down in worship. This is significant because they fall down in worship. They are the first non-Jewish people to do this. This would have been so strange. The first rulers to recognize the new king of Israel were not Jewish rulers but pagan ones outside of God's covenant.

They would have been leaders who wholeheartedly practiced false religions, practiced in the occult, again, natural enemies of Israel and Yahweh himself. This story shows us this. This is our main idea, that no one is beyond the good news of the gospel. No matter who you are, no one is beyond the good news of the gospel. As a pastor, it hurts my heart when I hear people say things like, pastor, if you only knew what I've done.

Pastor, oh, I can't come into church. I'd probably catch on fire if I came in. It kind of hurts my heart when I hear that. Because they've missed something. They have such a wrong view of what the gospel is. So the good news of the gospel isn't that

I have to do anything. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it for me. It's not my salvation isn't based on what I've done, good or bad. The good news of the gospel is based on what Jesus has done for me on the cross. No one is beyond the good news of the gospel and the wise men are prime examples of this. This was the design all along.

The first Jewish person, Abraham, he's given a covenant. This covenant is not just for him, it's for him to be a blessing to the nations. This has been the plan all along. God's desire to save the Gentiles. All throughout the Old Testament we see God including the outsider, the stranger. The book of Ruth is all about this. It's one of my favorite books around Christmas time. We see a waiting for a king, but God uses Ruth. She's a Moabite. She has no right to be a

part of this story. From her lineage comes King David and then Jesus. She has no right to be a part of this and yet God uses her. It's beautiful. And then we see Jesus's ministry. Jesus's ministry, he says this, for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Luke 10, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Mark 7, Jesus heals the Syrophoenician's daughter. Matthew, at the end of his gospel, records the Great Commission, right? Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Christianity is the only religion that is bigger than a region, a group of people, or a language?

If I were to ask you, what's the official language of Christianity? It's probably a hard question to answer because there isn't one. There isn't an official language. When the church is instituted at Pentecost, what language is spoken? All of them, right? That's why we can read our Bible in English.

We can read this and say this is God's Word. Right? If you're Muslim and you want to read the Quran, you have to read it in its original language. You can't read it in English. Otherwise it's a translation. It's not the real thing. Christianity is the first one that breaks this mold. At the end of history, this is what we're going to see. John captures this in Revelation, and they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for

you are slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe, language, people and nation. This is what we will experience the rest of eternity, celebrating with people who don't look like us, who didn't speak the same language as us. This beautiful, beautiful thing of including the outsider, the stranger, this is what God has been leading us towards.

Who does God love? Every kind of person. No one is beyond the good news of the gospel. And this leads us into our application. Our first point, if we lose our heart for the lost, we will forget them.

We can never forget that we are sinners saved by grace. I think oftentimes as Christians, as church people, we can kind of get this air of superiority. And sometimes it's propagated from some of the messages we hear. Not here, but I've heard this in other churches where pastors will get up and say,

culture is evil, look at all the evil things that they do. They're bad because they do this. It's us versus them. Look at us. We aren't evil because we don't do those types of things. I think that every pastor has a right to get up in the pulpit and say and call out things

that are evil in the world. But the moment that we forget that we are just as despicable, we are just as evil as the people out in culture, we've forgotten something. We've made our humanity somehow greater than theirs,

and we've made our sin somehow less. Sin is the great equalizer. Everyone naturally is born running directly towards hell. When we forget this, it impacts so much more than you would believe. It impacts how we evangelize. When we believe that there are people who cannot be saved, when it's us versus them, we just don't do it. We don't evangelize. And that's my

challenge to you today. Some of us, we just need to start. We aren't doing it and we need to. Some of us, maybe you've got the misconception that if we're discipling our children, that that kind of counts as our evangelism. I want you to hear me.

This is being recorded, so don't send me an email. You can come back and look at it. I want you to disciple your children. Please, don't stop doing that. You need to do that. But if we swing on this pendulum too far and say, well that counts and we just don't do

any evangelism, what we're doing is we're just looking inward again. Pastor John, in a sermon in Wayland, used this application. I'm just gonna steal it because it was really good. We need to start praying for our for specific people. We need to evangelize. I think that's the first way to do is to pray. We need to pray for specific people and not just pray that they would come to know Christ, but pray something like this, God give me an opportunity to witness to whoever it is.

I hope that you would do that. I hope that you do that because God, He answers those prayers. The second point of application is that the gospel draws us to rejoice in Jesus. When we see Jesus, just like the wise men, we see holiness and happiness itself. Are you allowing the good news of the gospel to truly affect you? Sometimes in Reformed West Michigan, we can kind of be a little bit,

you know, during worship, just a little bit boring. I don't know if you've ever looked around. I'm not saying that everybody needs to raise their hand or dance, but do you see clearly in your heart, do you see it in your actions that you are deliriously happy

about the good news of the gospel? Have you lost your luster? It's the reason that we call this series, Go Tell It on the Mountain, because this is good enough news to proclaim to everyone. One kind of side tangent is,

be willing to be inconvenienced for Jesus. The wise men, they traveled a long way. They traveled a long way to find Jesus. If you're here and you're not a Christian and somehow, you know, this message, something in this message has offended you or something in the the worship you didn't like or you couldn't find a parking spot fast enough, I pray that you would allow yourself to be inconvenienced for Jesus.

That wouldn't be a deterrent for you. And for us as Christians, be inconvenienced in our own spiritual journey. Oftentimes we can come to church or we can come to whatever and there can be one minor thing that throws us off and it's like, oh, I'm not going to participate or I'm going to zone out. Don't let yourself be, don't let yourself stumble over something so small. Be inconvenienced for Jesus. Allow yourself to be inconvenienced. The last thing is the wise men show us how to worship in our work. The wise men, part of their job was to look up at the stars.

And when they did, they found Christ. In each and every one of our jobs, you don't have to be a pastor, you don't have to work in ministry to see Jesus in your job. If you have a job that isn't a prostitute or drug dealer, you'll be able to see Jesus in your job. You'll be able to see God in and through it. So I pray this week or next week or whenever you go back to work or school, look for it. He's there. Don't miss what he's doing. As we come to

a close, I want to remind us that we must have a heart for those who maybe we think in the deep parts of our soul that can't respond to the gospel, that are too detestable. Because the truth is, we are the ones who are detestable. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came and he was detestable for us. When Jesus went to the cross, he was treated like us, so that way we could be treated like him. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says this,

for our sake he, the father, made him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus became detestable for us. He became unlovable. He became the outcast, the outsider, the stranger,

so that way we could be folded in. Jesus became sin for us, so that no one Jesus became sin for us, so that no one is beyond the good news of the gospel. Let's pray.