Dr Mark Turman: Good morning.
Dr Mark Turman: Hope you're doing well.
Dr Mark Turman: I wonder how many of you are stargazers?
Dr Mark Turman: Any of you?
Dr Mark Turman: Okay.
Dr Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr Mark Turman: Any of you have the little app on your phone that if you point the phone at the sky, it starts telling you about the star.
Dr Mark Turman: So some of you know what I'm talking about.
Dr Mark Turman: If you need education from those of us who are stargazers, be sure to follow, find us afterward.
Dr Mark Turman: All right, so to set the, uh, theme of what I want to talk to you about, the Bible says in Philippians chapter two, do everything without grumbling or arguing.
Dr Mark Turman: We could just say, Lord, I'm gonna need a lot of help this week.
Dr Mark Turman: Do everything without grumbling or arguing so that you may be pure and blameless children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation among whom you shine like stars in the world by holding firm to the word of life like stars in the world.
Dr Mark Turman: Star power.
Dr Mark Turman: I don't know if you paid attention to the Grammys last Sunday.
Dr Mark Turman: There was at least a few notable things like Cher getting a Lifetime Achievement award and Jelly Roll.
Dr Mark Turman: Who, if you haven't discovered Jelly Roll, you might wanna check that out.
Dr Mark Turman: Not something you eat in this case, but somebody you need to know.
Dr Mark Turman: Star.
Dr Mark Turman: In a crooked world, we use this idea of a star in a lot of different ways, not just star gazing.
Dr Mark Turman: We talk about the North Star as a fixed point for our direction, our navigation, but we also talk about it in terms of, you know, figuratively following the purpose of our life.
Dr Mark Turman: That becomes clear to us.
Dr Mark Turman: We talk about star power.
Dr Mark Turman: We talk about both literally and figuratively.
Dr Mark Turman: Things like falling stars and shooting stars and rising stars.
Dr Mark Turman: We even talk about young star crossed lovers at times.
Dr Mark Turman: It's so much a part of our fabric.
Dr Mark Turman: It's not surprising that, well, people write songs and poems about our love of the stars.
Dr Mark Turman: Little more than 200 years ago that an English poet by the name of Jane Taylor, no relation that I know of to James Taylor, but Jane Taylor wrote a poem that you probably instantly recognize if you do say it with me.
Dr Mark Turman: Twinkle twinkle little star.
Dr Mark Turman: How I wonder what you are up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky, twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Dr Mark Turman: How I wonder what you are.
Dr Mark Turman: That question could get you into a lot of trouble or a lot of blessing.
Dr Mark Turman: How I wonder what you are.
Dr Mark Turman: I was a little disappointed to be honest with you, because before I went to bed last night, I do what I do every time I come out here.
Dr Mark Turman: I went out onto the porch to look at the stars and there weren't any, they all took the night off.
Dr Mark Turman: Well, it had something to do with those clouds probably.
Dr Mark Turman: But asking that question, what are you.
Dr Mark Turman: When it comes to a star, can get you into a lot of adventure, possibly a lot of trouble.
Dr Mark Turman: I wanna talk to you this morning about three things that have been bugging me for a while now.
Dr Mark Turman: One of those is anger, my own and others.
Dr Mark Turman: I've also been troubled by the constant reports of apathy, of indifference in our culture.
Dr Mark Turman: The, you know what, I just give up attitude.
Dr Mark Turman: The other thing that's bugging me these days is that there is a serious famine of awe.
Dr Mark Turman: Let me talk to you about what that means.
Dr Mark Turman: You ever get, um, you ever get earworms?
Dr Mark Turman: You know what an earworm is.
Dr Mark Turman: I'm not talking about an actual creature.
Dr Mark Turman: I'm talking about what songwriters love to find, which is some little phrase, what songwriters call a hook.
Dr Mark Turman: That just gets in your ear and won't go away.
Dr Mark Turman: You might have had one this morning or yesterday.
Dr Mark Turman: You might have one tomorrow.
Dr Mark Turman: You wake up and the first thing that really is conscious in your brain is that phrase over and over again from a song that you heard or that you love, or that you despise.
Dr Mark Turman: Well, I, I caught an earworm 60 days ago during Christmas season.
Dr Mark Turman: I was at church, at the church I attend when we're not here, and the pastor shared a story that's familiar to all of us, but it's been an earworm just staying in my consciousness for the last 60 days.
Dr Mark Turman: Let me read you the story and out of honor for God's Word and just to get your blood flowing a little bit more.
Dr Mark Turman: Why don't you stand while I read the story and try to not let the familiarity of it.
Dr Mark Turman: Lose you after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod.
Dr Mark Turman: Herod wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born?
Dr Mark Turman: King of the Jews, for We saw his star.
Dr Mark Turman: Come on, stay with me.
Dr Mark Turman: People here for, we saw his star at its rising and we have come to worship him.
Dr Mark Turman: When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed and all Jerusalem with him.
Dr Mark Turman: So he assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Christ would be born in Bethlehem of Judea.
Dr Mark Turman: They told him because this is what was written in the prophet and you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.
Dr Mark Turman: Because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.
Dr Mark Turman: Then Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time The star, star appeared, thank you.
Dr Mark Turman: Just like you were at a hockey game.
Dr Mark Turman: He sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the child.
Dr Mark Turman: When you find him report back to me so that I can go to go, I too can go and worship him.
Dr Mark Turman: After hearing the king, they went on their way.
Dr Mark Turman: And there it was the star, star they had seen at its rising.
Dr Mark Turman: It led them until it came and stopped above the place where the child was.
Dr Mark Turman: When they saw the Star, star, they were overwhelmed with joy entering the house.
Dr Mark Turman: They saw the child with his mother and falling on their knees.
Dr Mark Turman: They worshiped him when they opened their treasures and presented him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Dr Mark Turman: And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they to their own country by another route.
Dr Mark Turman: You may be seated.
Dr Mark Turman: God help us to understand what you want us to understand today.
Dr Mark Turman: What happens when people.
Dr Mark Turman: Hear about meet, encounter Jesus in all of the claims that he makes as Lord, what happens to us and to them?
Dr Mark Turman: For some people, they respond and react with anger.
Dr Mark Turman: You would agree with me, wouldn't you?
Dr Mark Turman: That we are living in a profound age of rage, A profound one.
Dr Mark Turman: All I have to say to you.
Dr Mark Turman: Our familiar names and places, Minneapolis Pereti, even a well-known broadcaster, Savannah Guthrie, these stories and many more.
Dr Mark Turman: Ukraine, Gaza, Greenland.
Dr Mark Turman: You name your place, you name your person.
Dr Mark Turman: There is so much anger all around us, seemingly all the time.
Dr Mark Turman: I heard a terrible story a couple of weeks ago about the death of a child, and I thought to myself as I got up from the couch after seeing the story on tv, I thought, Lord, I was a lot happier when I didn't know everything going on in the world.
Dr Mark Turman: It's an angry, often violent world, but unfortunately it's not new.
Dr Mark Turman: It seems new to us and we are concerned that it's getting worse, rightly so, but it's not new.
Dr Mark Turman: Herod the governor of this region.
Dr Mark Turman: When Jesus was born, he hears about this new baby king from strangers who have come a long way off, that they had seen a strange star because they had been watching, and that this star signaled to them that, well, the God above that they were seeking to know was up to something and that there was a new king, a new authority coming.
Dr Mark Turman: And notice what it says, that when Herod heard about this, he was deeply.
Dr Mark Turman: Deeply troubled.
Dr Mark Turman: He was scared.
Dr Mark Turman: And that fear led to anger.
Dr Mark Turman: Do you know that that's one of the predominant faces that fear likes to wear?
Dr Mark Turman: I learned this in a season of parenting when I was trying to raise teenagers.
Dr Mark Turman: I found out that when we get to get afraid, we do sometimes freeze up or we do sometimes run away.
Dr Mark Turman: Some of us have a natural reaction to just get angry and look for a fight, and sometimes that pattern that starts with being afraid that then moves to being angry, turns into violence, and I think that's a pretty good explanation of what's going on in our world because.
Dr Mark Turman: We all think that we are king at times, but he was intimidated here.
Dr Mark Turman: It was, and that fear that welled up into anger, overflowed into violence, into disruption, into disturbance among all of the people of Israel, and would create a conspiracy.
Dr Mark Turman: Now we're not sure why he didn't just call for his soldiers and march them down to Bethlehem, but Herod didn't do that.
Dr Mark Turman: He decided he would be more crafty.
Dr Mark Turman: He decided that he would call in the Jewish leaders'cause he didn't know anything about a potential king coming out of their group.
Dr Mark Turman: And so he called for the leaders and got information.
Dr Mark Turman: He then synced that up with information from these strange travelers from the east.
Dr Mark Turman: He found out about timing that would become strategic to him later when he gets thwarted by these wise men and he decides, you know, somewhere in the last 8, 9, 10 months.
Dr Mark Turman: This potential threat has arrived near me and he plans an attack.
Dr Mark Turman: He must stop whatever is going to attempt to take over his place of prominence and power.
Dr Mark Turman: Many people are driven to these kinds of plans.
Dr Mark Turman: Herod is not the first person nor the last.
Dr Mark Turman: To be really great at projects and lousy with people.
Dr Mark Turman: I've told you that before.
Dr Mark Turman: You go to Israel today and you see astounding remains of some of the things that Herod the Great Built, one of the most impressive is a place called HEROs.
Dr Mark Turman: A mountain that Herod built on his own and turned it into a castle.
Dr Mark Turman: That has both inner chambers in the mountain and incredible features on the outside of the mountain.
Dr Mark Turman: One of the most amazing places that you can visit in Israel today.
Dr Mark Turman: And he built places like this all over Israel and the surrounding region.
Dr Mark Turman: But he was terrible with people.
Dr Mark Turman: He had three of his own children executed because he feared them as threats and many more as well.
Dr Mark Turman: Fear is a powerful breeding ground for anger.
Dr Mark Turman: Anger that often becomes destructive and violent.
Dr Mark Turman: I don't know why he was angry.
Dr Mark Turman: Maybe he learned it from his parents and his grandparents and his culture.
Dr Mark Turman: Maybe he was like all of us thinking that he needed to be in charge of his own life and not really excited about the idea of letting someone else be over him.
Dr Mark Turman: Do you realize that that is the core sin that the Bible begins with in Genesis three?
Dr Mark Turman: That the very foundation of all of our sin and rebellion against God is really what teenagers and young people called fomo, the fear of missing out that we would miss out on something the devil suggested if we let God be God instead of letting us be God and we get afraid.
Dr Mark Turman: Sometimes we run away, but more oftentimes we get mad.
Dr Mark Turman: As a philosopher, many years ago named Nietzsche said, we all have our own struggle with a will to power to be in charge of our own life.
Dr Mark Turman: I have news for you today.
Dr Mark Turman: Every one of you is a control freak, and it is the thing that we most need to repent of.
Dr Mark Turman: The thing we need to stop being angry about so that we can actually be free.
Dr Mark Turman: The second thing that people do when they hear about Jesus is sometimes they just don't care.
Dr Mark Turman: They're apathetic.
Dr Mark Turman: It says All Jerusalem was disturbed with Herod.
Dr Mark Turman: If you ever wanted to know the biblical basis of that phrase, when mama ain't happy, nobody's happy, it's right here.
Dr Mark Turman: Except it didn't start with mom.
Dr Mark Turman: It started with the king.
Dr Mark Turman: When the king ain't happy.
Dr Mark Turman: Nobody was happy, and so he made his anger known.
Dr Mark Turman: Calls in these religious leaders from the Jewish elite gains information about where this new potential king is going to be born.
Dr Mark Turman: Well, he's going to be born just 25 miles down the road.
Dr Mark Turman: King Herod, it's gonna be born in Bethlehem.
Dr Mark Turman: Interesting enough, that word, Bethlehem, it means breadbasket.
Dr Mark Turman: It literally was laying the prophetic foundation for when Jesus would later declare as a 30-year-old rabbi, I am the bread of life.
Dr Mark Turman: That same bread that's reflected back to us every time we take communion together, that he is the very essence of life and the life giver that he would be born in the bread basket of the nation of Israel.
Dr Mark Turman: But then the interesting thing to me here is that.
Dr Mark Turman: That's the last comment about the religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees.
Dr Mark Turman: In this part of the story, this is the very first encounter of a very long story that plays out in Jesus' life.
Dr Mark Turman: This is the very first time that the religious leaders who should have been the first ones to recognize the Messiah, this is their first encounter with him.
Dr Mark Turman: And notice what's what it what it doesn't say.
Dr Mark Turman: These religious leaders who knew the Bible, the Old Testament better than anyone, apparently do not have their curiosity peaked in this conversation.
Dr Mark Turman: There's no indication that they had their own one-on-one conversation with these strange men from the east.
Dr Mark Turman: There's no indication that they asked the king.
Dr Mark Turman: Hey King, why are you wondering about this?
Dr Mark Turman: Why do you want this information now?
Dr Mark Turman: What's going on that has stirred all of this?
Dr Mark Turman: Instead, they just disappear from the story until three decades passed and Jesus becomes an adult.
Dr Mark Turman: Wonder what happened there?
Dr Mark Turman: Put on your holy imagination with me for a moment.
Dr Mark Turman: You can easily imagine, right?
Dr Mark Turman: That they were afraid to ask this brutal governor from outside of their nation who was considered by them to be a half breed.
Dr Mark Turman: You could understand why they would be afraid to ask him, Hey King, why do you want to know?
Dr Mark Turman: What's this all about?
Dr Mark Turman: They probably feared some retribution from him.
Dr Mark Turman: Probably possibly.
Dr Mark Turman: I, I wonder if it was.
Dr Mark Turman: They might have been arrogant.
Dr Mark Turman: What I mean by that is this, as religious leaders, they faced the temptation that all religious leaders like me face, which is if God is going to be up to something, especially something new, then he's gonna tell me first before he tells you the in the pew.
Dr Mark Turman: I mean, I am a religious expert.
Dr Mark Turman: Don't you all know that?
Dr Mark Turman: I have these wonderful little initials in front of my name that make me every time uncomfortable.
Dr Mark Turman: But you know, the longer people say it, the more comfortable I get.
Dr Mark Turman: Dr.
Dr Mark Turman: Mark.
Dr Mark Turman: I'm a religious expert, so surely if God is gonna do something, he's gonna let me in on it before he lets you in on it and our day and in theirs, it's what's called the spirit of fundamentalism, the spirit of.
Dr Mark Turman: I know more and first and better and deeper than you do, and maybe they were standing there with the king going, I don't know why we've been drug in here today.
Dr Mark Turman: This guy doesn't know a thing about God.
Dr Mark Turman: He's trying to be his own God.
Dr Mark Turman: Why would we have to come and talk to him?
Dr Mark Turman: If God is gonna be up to something, it's gonna be up to God to tell me and start it with us.
Dr Mark Turman: Can I tell you the most disturbing thing about being a preacher for 40 years?
Dr Mark Turman: It's the realization that the people that were most responsible for putting Jesus on the cross were the people who should have recognized him first.
Dr Mark Turman: The people who should have been on their knees before everyone else pointing to him, and instead, Jesus had to be announced.
Dr Mark Turman: By Angels to shepherds and not the people who knew the Bible the best.
Dr Mark Turman: At Dentist and Ministries.
Dr Mark Turman: We love to say that what we're trying to help people with, we're trying to help them think critically and live faithfully and serve intentionally by giving them biblical resources.
Dr Mark Turman: I love doing this work, but I also know this.
Dr Mark Turman: The devil would be totally satisfied with you and me knowing the Bible really well, as long as we miss Jesus.
Dr Mark Turman: And if you don't think it can happen to us, just read John chapter five where Jesus says to the religious leaders when he's an adult.
Dr Mark Turman: You search the scriptures because you think that in them there is eternal life, and basically what he's saying to them is you are missing the very point of the Bible.
Dr Mark Turman: You are missing not only the message, you are missing, the Messiah that it was written to proclaim.
Dr Mark Turman: Make sure that that doesn't happen to you by a simple and slow slide into apathy.
Dr Mark Turman: I hope you'll watch the Super Bowl.
Dr Mark Turman: It is a spectacle like no other.
Dr Mark Turman: One of the people that sometimes calls the Super Bowl is a sportscaster by the name of Al Michaels.
Dr Mark Turman: You know the name.
Dr Mark Turman: When Al Michaels was starting and broadcasting some 30 or 40 years ago, he had a mentor, another name.
Dr Mark Turman: Some of you will recognize, a guy by the name of Kurt Gaudy.
Dr Mark Turman: Kurt Gowdy became a mentor to Al Michaels, and at the beginning of his career he told Al Michaels the greatest challenge to your career is that you will lose your enthusiasm.
Dr Mark Turman: That's a challenge for all of us, especially in our relationship with God.
Dr Mark Turman: One last thing and we'll be off to lunch.
Dr Mark Turman: It's the lack of awe in our society.
Dr Mark Turman: A WE we get all excited when AWS goes out and our computers don't work or the AWS truck pulls up to deliver us some new thing, but we don't have enough awe in our lives.
Dr Mark Turman: You know what awe is?
Dr Mark Turman: Awe is that sense of wonder, a sense of of astonishment.
Dr Mark Turman: A sense of reverence, what some of our spiritual friends would call veneration.
Dr Mark Turman: It is that thing.
Dr Mark Turman: Wells up inside you and takes your breath away.
Dr Mark Turman: I was disappointed.
Dr Mark Turman: There were no stars last night and God knew about my disappointment.
Dr Mark Turman: So when I woke up, it was a stunning red sunrise, wasn't it?
Dr Mark Turman: Yes.
Dr Mark Turman: It was stunning.
Dr Mark Turman: And if you didn't see it, I've got pictures on my phone.
Dr Mark Turman: It was amazing.
Dr Mark Turman: Awe, is that thing that you feel.
Dr Mark Turman: When you see the ocean for the first time or for the hundredth time after you've been away for a month or a few years, it, it's that feeling you feel when you see see in the stars or you witness an incredible sunrise or sunset.
Dr Mark Turman: It's the thing that captures you that.
Dr Mark Turman: Holds your attention when you see the mountains or stand on them when you see a baby for the first time.
Dr Mark Turman: Or you watch your grandchild take his first step when you see an amazing athlete on the ice or in the air, or even curling, maybe, maybe.
Dr Mark Turman: When you see these kinds of beautiful, awesome things and it just captures you and you hear it, you see it, you know what awe is, and yet we are living in a famine.
Dr Mark Turman: You see, God's glory is literally and figuratively, but quite literally written in the stars, is it not?
Dr Mark Turman: The psalmist said that the heavens, the stars, the creation, declare the glory of God.
Dr Mark Turman: It is all around us.
Dr Mark Turman: If we will have the humility and the intentionality to look for it, to listen for it.
Dr Mark Turman: Seek it.
Dr Mark Turman: Aren't these strange men a great example of how awe around the activity of God and around the Messiah of God can stir in your heart and completely change the direction of your life?
Dr Mark Turman: Think about these guys for just a minute in the.
Dr Mark Turman: In the midst of the very trivial lives that we sometimes lead, this awe that captured them was really expressed first as curiosity.
Dr Mark Turman: We don't know where they were from.
Dr Mark Turman: We just know that they came from the east.
Dr Mark Turman: Some scholars think they might have come from what you and I today called Iran.
Dr Mark Turman: Wouldn't that be wild?
Dr Mark Turman: What would it be like if before you and I step into heaven.
Dr Mark Turman: We saw a spiritual awakening in the country of Iran.
Dr Mark Turman: Do you know that God may be stirring that even today, and it may have its roots all the way back to these men who came following this star that they had curiously seen in the sky?
Dr Mark Turman: Curiosity is a really great indicator of awe and a really great preparation.
Dr Mark Turman: It's a really great preparation for worship.
Dr Mark Turman: Be curious about what God is doing in the world.
Dr Mark Turman: Be curious about what God is doing in the lives of other people.
Dr Mark Turman: Be curious about what God wants to do in you.
Dr Mark Turman: They also were people of pursuit.
Dr Mark Turman: It's estimated they might have traveled eight or 900 miles by Camel.
Dr Mark Turman: Did, don't you want to travel?
Dr Mark Turman: Sign up for that trip.
Dr Mark Turman: Eight or 900 miles on the back of a camel.
Dr Mark Turman: I don't know how many days that would've taken.
Dr Mark Turman: I don't know what that would've cost.
Dr Mark Turman: I don't know how much beef jerky or camel jerky you would've eaten over eight or 900 miles, but just imagine the kind of pursuit and commitment that these men commit themselves to because of this a, this thing that has captured their attention.
Dr Mark Turman: They will spend whatever amount of time they will travel however long it takes.
Dr Mark Turman: They will spend whatever it takes.
Dr Mark Turman: The other thing that strikes me here is that they did this together.
Dr Mark Turman: I wonder which one of them.
Dr Mark Turman: I wonder which one of them said, Hey, we gotta go figure out what that's about.
Dr Mark Turman: And the others two were like, or the other three.
Dr Mark Turman: Oh, by the way, we don't know if there were three legend has it that it was three because the three gifts.
Dr Mark Turman: But it might've been 13, it might've been 30, it might've been 300.
Dr Mark Turman: We don't know.
Dr Mark Turman: But one of them had to have been the first one to suggest, wow, that's new.
Dr Mark Turman: We gotta go check out where that is.
Dr Mark Turman: And you can imagine the reactions.
Dr Mark Turman: I don't know about that.
Dr Mark Turman: That's a, that looks like it could be a long way.
Dr Mark Turman: I need to, you know, I got other things to do, but they finally commit together.
Dr Mark Turman: Haven't you noticed that when you see something that just takes your breath away, it's even better when somebody shares it with you?
Dr Mark Turman: Judy would tell you that she's irritated, that I make her come out on the porch to look at the stars before we go to bed.
Dr Mark Turman: You know what the greatest compliment I've had as a grandfather here at PK was about a year ago when my granddaughter, seven years old, was here with us, and she came into my room early on the morning.
Dr Mark Turman: She woke me up and she said, tpa out on the porch.
Dr Mark Turman: We gotta go see the sunrise.
Dr Mark Turman: She wanted to share that moment of awe that I had taught her about a few years ago.
Dr Mark Turman: Is it always better?
Dr Mark Turman: Some of you were here just a few months ago when Catherine led us in our Christmas Eve service.
Dr Mark Turman: It was a breathless moment of joy.
Dr Mark Turman: It's always better when we're doing this together.
Dr Mark Turman: Their humility is a sign of all, a sign of worship, a sign of wonder.
Dr Mark Turman: That when they see this star and they are finally led to this home because Jesus, by this time might have been a few months, might have even been a few years old, and they finally find the exact house.
Dr Mark Turman: He's no longer in a stable apparently, and he's in a house and he's growing up as a young toddler.
Dr Mark Turman: That when they come in full of joy because they have finally reached their destination, they can't help but just fall to their knees in excitement to celebrate, and they open up their gifts.
Dr Mark Turman: Oh, by their, by the way, that's the next characteristic They.
Dr Mark Turman: They are eager to offer not just their attention, not just their pursuit, but they're offering financial, intangible things that express the feelings of their heart about what God has been stirring them toward.
Dr Mark Turman: Offering is the very best word to use to define worship as a disciple of Jesus, and they celebrate.
Dr Mark Turman: One last characteristic that might even be pointed out here is it's clear that their all led them to an allegiance to this baby king, toddler king over every other allegiance because they are so filled with awe, so filled with joy, so filled with commitment that they are willing to defy the very king that they know is currently ruling over this region, and they go home another way.
Dr Mark Turman: It's clear where their allegiance is.
Dr Mark Turman: All of those things, all of those things are the reason why we are still talking about them.
Dr Mark Turman: You know, in a military sense, we talk about gold star families, families that have lost a loved one and meritorious service to our country.
Dr Mark Turman: That's what a gold star means.
Dr Mark Turman: It means something honorable.
Dr Mark Turman: These guys are gold star examples of what it means to be worshipers and followers of Jesus.
Dr Mark Turman: Full of awe.
Dr Mark Turman: And guess what?
Dr Mark Turman: When you are full of awe and it is overflowing from you, it becomes contagious to the people around you.
Dr Mark Turman: You know, sometimes wonder when I'm studying the Bible, what would happen if this story were not here?
Dr Mark Turman: What if you just took this and just cut out these few verses out of Matthew chapter two.
Dr Mark Turman: And you just took this part out, how would the story read?
Dr Mark Turman: What would it be like?
Dr Mark Turman: What would we miss?
Dr Mark Turman: Would we even notice if this story were not here?
Dr Mark Turman: Because here's the thing that I just can't get over.
Dr Mark Turman: It's verse nine in this story.
Dr Mark Turman: After hearing the king to have this conversation with Herod wasn't easy for a bunch of men to stop and ask for directions.
Dr Mark Turman: Never has been.
Dr Mark Turman: Never will be.
Dr Mark Turman: Guys.
Dr Mark Turman: Ladies, sorry.
Dr Mark Turman: It just that way.
Dr Mark Turman: After hearing the king, they went on their way and there it was the star they had seen at its rising.
Dr Mark Turman: That makes me wonder, did the star disappear?
Dr Mark Turman: Is that the reason that they had to make a left turn and go have a conversation in Jerusalem with Herod and whoever else might have been in?
Dr Mark Turman: Why in the world did they have to stop and have this encounter with Herod in the first place?
Dr Mark Turman: Us what had happened to the star and why is it when the conversation with Herod is over, they step back out onto the street, they look up in the sky and apparently there's the star again.
Dr Mark Turman: What is going on here?
Dr Mark Turman: I don't really know if that's in fact the way it happened, that it was there and then it disappeared for a time.
Dr Mark Turman: This conversation unfolded and then they step out and it reappears.
Dr Mark Turman: Why did God possibly do it that way?
Dr Mark Turman: Lemme just tell you straight up, I have no idea, but here's my best guess.
Dr Mark Turman: God created this conversation as an invitation, an invitation to religious leaders who had grown in different numb.
Dr Mark Turman: And apathetic.
Dr Mark Turman: It was even possibly an invitation to a scared, angry regional king who needed a new king in his life.
Dr Mark Turman: It was an invitation, I think, and it is an invitation to you and I as well.
Dr Mark Turman: God committed himself way back in the early pages of history to a guy named Abraham and he said, I love you.
Dr Mark Turman: Will you follow me?
Dr Mark Turman: And if you will follow me, marched him out into the open space in the middle of the night sky and said, Abraham, if you will love me, if you will trust me, if you will follow me in faith, I will make you as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Dr Mark Turman: You and I have become the recipients of that inheritance.
Dr Mark Turman: We are a part of that legacy.
Dr Mark Turman: So let's be stargazer a little less than 200 years ago, another poet picked up the pen right after the worst chapter in our history as a nation, that thing that we call the Civil War.
Dr Mark Turman: And the very first time we ever find it in print is in 1866.
Dr Mark Turman: The year after the end of the Civil War.
Dr Mark Turman: An unknown poet picked up a pen and wrote another poem.
Dr Mark Turman: Let's see if you remember this one.
Dr Mark Turman: Star light, star, bright, first star I see tonight.
Dr Mark Turman: I wish I may, I wish I might.
Dr Mark Turman: Have this wish.
Dr Mark Turman: I wish tonight.
Dr Mark Turman: Don't you know those first wise men went home thanking their lucky stars.
Dr Mark Turman: Father, thank you for this great day and for this great example.
Dr Mark Turman: Lord, may we be people of all.
Dr Mark Turman: Lord, may we turn away from all apathy, indifference.
Dr Mark Turman: God, may we be willing to bring our fears into subjection.
Dr Mark Turman: To faith that trusts you, that God, we might be people who are shining as bright lights in an angry, often twisted, dark and broken world.
Dr Mark Turman: Lord cause our awe to take our breath away as we see evidences and indications and glimpses of you even today.
Dr Mark Turman: And God may it overflow to the people and the generation around us.
Dr Mark Turman: In Jesus name, we pray and everyone said together.
Dr Mark Turman: Amen.
Dr Mark Turman: Thanks.