It seems as if we've been dealing with this same story from a number of different points of view over the last several weeks. The transition from the ministry of John the Baptizer to that of the Lord Jesus himself. I want to notice one more thing about it before we move on this morning. Just last week we were remarking on the fact that Jesus' story doesn't really begin with the Incarnation. but that this was true God of true God, very God of very God. From eternity to eternity, this Lord Jesus Christ has shared all of Godhead.

Everything that God ever was and is, Jesus also has been from before the foundation of the world. The book of Colossians, Paul says, in him the whole fullness of deity dwelt bodily.

If there ever was a man of whom it might be said he didn't need anything more from God, it would have been Jesus.

And yet notice with me that at the outset of his ministry, he stopped and waited for an anointing from God's Spirit.

sometimes you hear people today say I don't need anything more I've been a Christian for years and years I might not even be able to remember when I became a Christian I was baptized, I was confirmed I taught Sunday school I served on the vestry I've been an Episcopalian all my life what more do I need?

and sometimes they get very angry when you start talking about a baptism or an anointing from the Holy Spirit.

Notice that at this point we are not talking about a need for salvation. Jesus certainly didn't need something more in order to be saved.

But before He began His ministry, He waited for a commissioning and empowering from the Father. to go out and do His great work. I think there's a message there for all of us. It's not a matter of salvation. It's not a matter of getting our lives right with God. It's not a matter of forgiveness or conversion. But there is a principle that runs from one end of the Scripture to the other. Call it what you will. An anointing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the release of the Spirit.

Call it what you will. There is a principle of empowerment, of commissioning.

And the Christian who would seek to serve, apart from that empowering from God, will of necessity make shipwreck.

I simply call that again to your attention this morning. This is one of the reasons why from time to time we run something here called the Life in the Spirit Seminar. We're going to do that again next month. We'll have a sign-up the last Sunday of this month, and then early evenings during February and March, we'll be having this very fine seminar exploring this particular matter, the empowering by God's Spirit for ministry and for service. If Jesus himself waited upon God for such an empowering, so also there should be a key here for you and me, as we would seek to do whatever God calls us to do within His body, the Church.

Well, I want to move on from that. The Gospels tell us that the Father poured out His Spirit upon the Son.

If you go back into the book of Isaiah, and in particular the 42nd chapter, which we heard a moment ago, you begin to discover why. Why did he pour out his spirit in this way? Isaiah says, I have put my spirit upon him to bring forth justice to the nations. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in all the earth.

And then, turning to Messiah himself, the Lord says, I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations. to open the eyes that are blind.

Two things I want us to notice this morning. First of all, he came to the nations, to the whole earth, not just to the people of Israel.

If the shock of John the Baptist's ministry was that it included Jews,

The shock of Jesus' ministry is that it included anybody but Jews.

Let me say that again.

The people would have been perfectly prepared to hear John say what he was saying to all those dirty Gentiles out there. You need to repent. You need to be baptized. You need to be converted. You need to change your way of life. That fit them.

But us? We Jews? We, the people of God, we need that? That was the shock of John's ministry. That it included the Jews.

The shock of Jesus' ministry was that it included anybody but Jews. They saw Messiah as coming to them in an exclusivistic way.

But all the way through Scripture, even though I don't think they really realized this until after the resurrection, all the way through Scripture, God is saying, I'm sending my Messiah, yes, through the Jews, but to the whole wide world, to the nations.

And that's what Epiphany celebrates. The coming of Messiah, not just to the people of Israel, but to everybody else as well. The event, of course, that we celebrate and identify is the coming of the wise men to worship this Lord Jesus Christ. We usually include that as part of the Christmas story. That really is something of an inaccuracy.

If you read the Gospels clearly, you'll see that, first of all, they didn't come to a little baby. They came to a young child. It was probably a good two years after Jesus was born that they arrived on the scene. They didn't come to a stable. They came to a house.

they probably did not in fact come to Bethlehem but to Nazareth which was his hometown

and though I sort of hate to tell you this there weren't really three of them

there were three gifts but it does not say three men there may have been a dozen, there may have been twenty we don't know how many

but the point is they as representatives of the pagan world the Gentile world, the aliens out there who have nothing to do with us, God's chosen people, they too saw his light and came to worship him and were included in the gift.

And so I suppose in that sense it's really not such a very big mistake to include it as part of the Christmas story Because in one sense, that's exactly the point. Epiphany is the extension of Christmas to the nations.

Praise God for that.

The point of all that, it seems to me, is this.

Sometimes you hear people saying something like, Jesus is my way.

Or Jesus is our way. but of course the Hindus have their way and the Buddhists have their way and the Muslims have their way and that's said in a spirit of humility and great charity and I want us to respect it for that but that's really a hopeless muddle.

Jesus said I am the way no man comes to the Father except by me.

And Peter sums up the whole of the apostolic witness in the book of Acts when he says, No other name has been given under heaven by which men may be saved but that of Jesus Christ.

If that's not true,

then the gospel itself is a lie.

And I don't know about you, but I am not about to make a lie into my way.

if he's not Lord of all then he's not Lord at all if he's not come to all the nations he's come to none of them

I need immediately to add an addendum here that scripture makes it very clear that God holds people responsible for what they do know about God what they do know about Christ not for what they don't know

and so in saying that his is the only name given under heaven that's not to say that everybody has equally to understand it but I think we back ourselves into a very untenable position sometimes it's almost as if we believed that the little pagan out there somewhere out in the jungle perhaps was doing just fine all by himself and then along came Jesus and now suddenly there was another hurdle that he had to cope with, another hoop that he had to jump through, another theology that he had to add to what was already perfectly adequate up to that point.

Completely backward. Jesus did not come to make it harder for those who had things perfectly well worked out already. Jesus came to make it infinitely easier for those who were in desperate trouble.

That little pagan

desperately hopes that in fact there is a good and loving God who will forgive him his sins, who will wash them away and give him a new start, who will somehow smooth over every difficulty and usher him into his presence and share eternity with him. That's what he hopes.

In Jesus Christ he discovers that's true.

So we have a responsibility to share that message. The old missionary hymn puts that we have a story to tell to the nations. That's a privilege and a responsibility. Jesus Christ has come to be Lord of all, Savior of all. Not to make it harder, to make it easier. But we've got to share that good news for people to get in on it. Well, that's the first point.

That he was empowered by God's Spirit to go to all the nations, all the people of the world.

And the second is that in going, he went to open their eyes. It says to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon and from the prison those who sit in darkness, to bring men out of the darkness of confusion and sin and lostness into the wonder of His dazzling light.

Epiphany, literally, the word literally means a great appearance or a showing forth, a manifestation of splendor. As John put it, we beheld His glory. We saw it.

Sometimes you hear people say that each one of us needs our own personal experience of Easter

when despair is swallowed up in joy.

Or we need our own personal experience of the Damascus Road when we encounter the living Christ and we finally stop kicking against His authority. Or sometimes they say each of us needs his own personal experience of Pentecost when we experience the power and the blessing of the Holy Spirit coming upon us. I want to suggest to you that perhaps above all of those,

what we really need is our own personal experience of epiphany. That we need to see who this really is. The mask has to come off and we need to see His splendor, His glory.

Paul's central most prayer for the Ephesian Christians was this that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened to see the immeasurable greatness of his power that the eyes of your heart would suddenly be opened and you'd see who this really is notice he's praying for Christians and he's saying that you might see something more deeply, more clearly, more fundamentally, more centrally, that you might see who this is.

Stop playing church.

And fall down before King of Kings, Lord of Lords, to the praise of His glory.

His prayer for the Colossians was that you might have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery of Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. You might suddenly understand in a flash of glory who this is. That you might have epiphany.

Maybe I can explain it a little bit this way.

Try to imagine

you can't do it but try what it would be like to suddenly have a sixth sense you can't do that what you do is you come up with an analogy it's sort of like seeing it's sort of like hearing it's sort of like smelling or tasting or touching you would interpret it as an analogy to one of the five that you do know you can't do it

I had a friend in college who was born blind

and we got close enough that I could talk about very personal things with him and I said one day Bob tell me when you hear people describing colors talking about red and violet and blue and green and yellow and gold and orange what comes to your mind?

He said, absolutely nothing.

He said, John, I can't imagine what light is. How do you expect me to understand color?

The best he could do is say, well, it must be something like hearing the difference between musical notes.

Something like tasting the difference between sweet and salt.

Doesn't even begin to touch it, does it?

Now, supposing that you were bombed, and suddenly the lights went on. Suddenly, for the first time in your life, you were flooded with the ability to see. Suddenly, not just light, but all of the wonder or variation of color filled your being, transformed your world.

Indescribable, isn't it?

Paul says, I pray that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened. Just exactly like that. Totally changes the world as you experience it. See, we muddle along. We think that, for instance, our destiny is basically shaped by heredity, environment, and luck. Most of us.

suddenly we're flooded with a whole new perspective those things are factors yes but our destiny is shaped by the Lord of life

we think that we have primarily to contend with power struggles amongst the cleverest and fittest who will survive

it's another factor

we see ourselves being manipulated by principalities and powers, be they political, economic, or sociological,

we have to deal with the Lord of glory.

Suddenly, suddenly,

when you have epiphany, when the eyes of your heart are opened, Suddenly, the world is no longer controlled by the CIA or by Tungsten Park.

The ultimate question is not, where's the oil?

The final reality is not some devastating medical diagnosis.

This Lord Jesus Christ says, I hold all of those factors and every other in the palms of my hands and those who would trust me, those who love me and are called according to my purposes. For them I will take absolutely every one of those difficult factors and I'll weave them together into a pattern of blessing. Will you dare to believe it?

You can't believe it until you have epiphany.

and then suddenly the whole world changes.

Oswald Chambers once said, the great life is knowing that your hero will get through.

Do you know that? Do you know who this is?

Or are you playing church?

A story in the Old Testament about Elisha going out one day with his servant.

Suddenly they find themselves surrounded. The whole little village is surrounded by the army of Syria. And the servant panics. And Elisha says, don't worry, it's okay. Those who are with us are more than those who are against us. And he prays for the servant that his eyes might be opened. Scripture says suddenly his eyes were supernaturally opened and he saw on all the hills and mountains surrounding them around the army of Syria an infinitely greater army of the Lord's host.

Angels and archangels and chariots.

And that little pitiful army of the Syrians was taken without a shot being fired.

Do you dare to believe it? One man plus God is a majority. Do you dare to believe it?

all things work together for good to those who know and love this Lord Jesus Christ do you dare to believe it

may God grant to each one of us epiphany this day