Finally, the way of the Lord is the only way. By that, I don't mean that there are no other ways that contend for our attention. But Jesus did say that he is the way, and that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). He is the only way that will get us to our goal. What is our goal? Our goal is to be with God and to have fellowship with him forever and ever. He made us in his image, and our goal is to be molded into the image of Christ that we might be all that he intends us to be, and to be made like Christ perfectly in the life to come.
Let me share with you a few things about this narrow way that God’s people follow. First, it's a definite way. I'd like to give you a verse that teaches this clearly. Isaiah 30:21 says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” We need a definite way in which to walk in the midst of a confusing world. Apart from God’s definite way we don't know where we're going, and so we wander in this direction or that.
The question I want to ask at this point is whether you've had an experience similar to that of the wise men. Was there a time in your life when you looked for the solution to your own problems from a secular answer? Whether your problem was insecurity, guilt, or lack of direction, you thought that you would find the answer by secular success, wealth, sex, pleasure or whatever it may be. Perhaps you looked for these things and yet like the wise men, you found them to be unsatisfactory.
The story doesn't tell us a great deal about the change that must have taken place in them. The story breaks off, and we're not told what they did differently once they got back to their own country or even what they talked about on the way. God, who revealed the birth of Christ to them by a star, and then later spoke to them directly in a vision or a dream, no doubt gave them enough illumination to understand that the one whom they had seen and worshiped was indeed God's Son, the Savior of the world.
A number of years ago, I came across a Christian tract that was entitled Famous Last Words. It contained in it the last words of a number of well-known men. The point of the tract was that what the men said at the very end of their lives was significant. For those men who were not Christians, it revealed the weakness of their philosophy in the face of death, and in the case of Christians, their last words testified to the strength of the Christian gospel.
