Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.
Matthew 2:1-2
We see the importance of having a heart that seeks after God. He wants to increase the fire of our pursuit because we need to seek Him now like never before. Whatever is the most valuable thing to us – that will be the thing that we seek. God wants us to seek Him. A matter of fact is that He is so good that He promises reward when we seek Him. For those who believe that He exists must also believe that He is a “Rewarder” of those who diligently seek Him.
In this passage above in Matthew we see the three wise men coming from the East to find Him. We can clearly see the goodness of God in this passage for the fact that He gave these wise men revelation of His coming. We see how God was pursuing them, how he was showing them things to come. He opened up the scriptures to them in a very small window of time to know that the Messiah was to be born in their day.
For the distance that these wise men traveled it could have been easy to not go the extra mile to “seek the Child”. The magi were wise men from “the East,” most likely Persia. This would be modern-day Iran. The wise men must have “traveled around 900” miles to find the Child. It is one thing to know something and another to pursue it. God shows us things as an invitation to come and seek Him with a greater intensity that we may see promises fulfilled.
These wise men saw the Star and knew the times and seasons. They went on a treasure hunt pursuit of the Lord coming in the flesh. The beauty of this passage as well is that they had a revelation of worship. They knew this was the King of Kings and was worthy of their worship. In the Hebrew language the word for worship means to bow down and prostrate ones self. In other words, lay it all down. They went to offer their gifts to the Lord of Glory and also their lives to follow after Him. God was guiding their steps as they had a sincere and pure pursuit of Him, so much so that He warned them in a dream to avoid going back to Herod who desired to kill the child.
This Christmas be reminded of the great salvation God has brought in your life, how it is He Who drew you to Him and that it is your glory and privilege to seek the Lord, as you offer your gifts to Him bowing in worship before His Presence.