Questions are a valuable tool in our language.  Through questions we prompt responses that help reveal what someone else thinks or feels about a particular subject.  Great interviewers have learned how to use the question to bring out the inner-most thoughts of the person being interviewed.  Answers to well-thought-out questions can often expose good or evil in someone.  Detectives utilize the questioning of suspects very effectively to often lead to clues or even confessions of crime.

In the Bible, questions also can be very telling.  I am thinking tonight of a couple of questions recorded in Scripture.  I believe they are perhaps the most important questions we find in the Bible.  Let me set the scene for the first question.  Adam and Eve have rebelled against God’s will and have exposed themselves to sin and evil.  In their determination to “do their own thing” they have discovered that they are naked (Gen. 3:1-7) and are ashamed.  They anticipate the daily visit from their Creator and, unlike in times before, they attempt to hide from God’s gaze (Gen. 3:8).  In Genesis 3:9 we find the first recorded question asked by God, “…Where art thou?”  I find it interesting that in the aftermath of man’s sin, God is the one initiating the search.  God is looking for Adam, the first man and since all of us are dead in Adam’s sin, in reality, God is searching for us.  It was He who initiated the first call for our salvation.  Man was sinful, lost, burdened and confused and it was God, the Creator, who went looking for him.

The second question I find interesting is in Matthew 2:2 and is perhaps the first question asked in the New Testament: “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?”  Of course, this question was being asked by the wise men as they arrived in Jerusalem following the star in the East.  It is this question, juxtaposed against the first that makes them so interesting.  In the first, God is seeking man and in the second, man is seeking God.

The lesson is clear.  God has intitiated a search for man in spite of his sinfulness.  God has responded by providing the perfect answer; His own Son, Jesus Christ.  Today, in the day of grace, it is up to you and I to respond to God’s proffer by now seeking Jesus.  As the saying goes, “wise men still seek Him.”  I hope this Christmas season you will seek Jesus more than anything else in life.  May God richly bless you and yours….

Pastor Chuck Gentry