The account of the wise men in Matthew 2 reveals that God reaches into human understanding to reveal His Son. Their journey, prompted by a star and perhaps strengthened by Scripture, illustrates both natural and special revelation working together. The story is not a seasonal legend but evidence of God’s purposeful action in history, calling all people to acknowledge Jesus as King and Saviour. Christmas invites us to move beyond tradition and culture towards personal faith in the One who came to bring forgiveness and everlasting life.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] You know, the Christmas service is usually one of our shortest services and yet is one that people love to come to. The carols night we had during the week was surprising because normally we have activities outside and try and draw people in from the district and we did none of that. But I think we had the biggest carols night we’ve had for a long time, just this during the week. But it does show how much Christmas matters to us and we’re here today to celebrate Christmas. I’m only going to concentrate on one point this morning. On that, during the week meeting, I went through all the different characters in the Christmas story and I’m not going to continue a multifaceted message like that this morning but just pick on one item of the Christmas heritage.

[00:00:51] and the one I want to pick on is because it’s a mysterious one where folk from outsiders, outside the Christian religion are not sure what to take of it. It’s the story of the wise men who come. They’ve seen the Star of Bethlehem in the east and they’ve come, they’re in the west of that and they’re coming across to see if they can find the newly born King of Israel. And the story of the wise men coming is something that is a very miraculous story and a lot of people wonder how much of this is just the storyline that is put together for Christmas or has developed across the years but how much can we trust that that actually happened? Do you know people have measured how often folk outside the church become Christians and have compared Easter to Christmas and actually I think more people make a decision

[00:01:53] to become a Christian at the Easter time than people necessarily by our Christmas services make a decision to become a Christian at Christmas time. There are some of course but one of the reasons I think is because at Christmas time there is just so much in our culture which is cultural and folk are happy to join in whatever is the cultural aspect of the community in which they live but they don’t take it necessarily as seriously true. And when it comes to one reason it is because some say this story of the wise men from the east is something that is really a very nice story rather than something that actually happens. And this morning I want to talk about the wise men and the fact of why some people think that it’s just a bit of the colouring of Christmas is because

[00:02:49] indeed in our culture we have added to the story we say there on the Christmas carols or Christmas cards that we send to our relatives you see 3 wise men the story doesn’t tell us that there are 3, it only tells us of three gifts that they brought. And maybe it was that there were three and that’s why there’s three gifts but that’s just something people have concluded and sometimes names are given to the wise men. We don’t necessarily know their names. And so there is a bit of an accretion to the story that our culture has made and that is why some people say well, we like going along with the Christmas culture but it doesn’t move them to see that there’s something sincere and real that’s in the middle of the story that is calling them to become a Christian.

[00:03:41] My job this morning is actually to deliver that call from the Christmas story, but just concentrating on the storyline of the wise men coming. Now, the first thing we see is the scriptures speak about this. Let’s read in the book of Matthew, chapter 2 and 1 to 3, just three verses there. We’re reading here, 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 saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. All right, so we’ll talk about Herod maybe another time, but what we have here is the statement of the wise men that they have back where they come from. We’re not sure exactly how far east they are. Some only hypothesize around what we now call Iraq

[00:04:41] or some of those areas to the east of where the land of Israel is. But wherever it is that they are, they are people who are known to be wise men. Now the thing is that this business of being a wise man, they are a sort of philosopher type of person. Some of them might even be kings, which some people think they’re kings coming to greet another baby king. But they’re philosophers and they may have been leaders of their local nation. We don’t know that at all. We also, people hypothesize that when you have a wise man back in those days, it’s quite a while back earlier than the enlightened age that we now live in. But back then when people were leaders, often they were also priests. So they may have been kings or they may have been priests.

[00:05:35] We only know that the tale, the storyline tells us that they were wise. And probably that was because they were those who studied the stars. Their wisdom was in their studying of the stars. Now there’s something we need to understand that back in the days where this is being talked about, there was no distinction made between someone who was an astrologer and someone who is an astronomer. And it’s because much later than this, many centuries later, in fact, when the Enlightenment happens, people begin to understand that astronomy is a scientific exercise to understand the workings of the heavens. But astrology is really a semi-religionist, a faith to be believed, or it’s even a sort of semi-science, but you be it by believing rather than necessarily having convincing evidence.

[00:06:32] But astronomers and astrologers are two different things these days. But this is back before that division came due to the Enlightenment. And these are people who are understood as wise because they get their wisdom out of the stars and they read in. And that’s why some people thinking about Christmas has this storyline of the wise men, that they were reading all sorts of things into the stars and maybe this is just a fancy story that’s been attached. Or maybe it’s true that something happened in the stars and they read a meaning into it and they came and they found Jesus. And it’s become a storyline like that. And so people lose a little bit of the significance of this story and the accuracy with which those wise men had something in their minds.

[00:07:23] And because of that doubt, some people don’t take the storyline seriously enough. However, when they do arrive and make the announcement, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? They go, although the whole storyline of Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, they do the most sensible thing. They go to where there is a king already in Israel and Jerusalem would be the main city. So they go to Jerusalem and they cause a bit of a stir with their question that they ask. And a lot of people are a bit afraid by that question because not because of the whole issue of how true it is. I think those people back then probably took it to be a very significant sign that has happened if these people from the east who are meant to be very intellectuals, they’ve all come along and they said,

[00:08:11] where is he who has been born king of the Jews? they were believing it because that was how people thought and did back then. But what made them afraid was because they knew the present King Herod was a murderer and he had caused a lot of problems wherever he got jealous and insecure and some of them would get killed. And so for these people to come and go down to Jerusalem and they get to talk to Herod and his inner core of people about this question this fear spread through Jerusalem that another lot of murders are going to happen. They weren’t wrong. And there were murders of little kids two years old and under according to the time that the wise men had seen the star and had taken to travel. There were the murders that happened because King Herod believed it.

[00:09:03] And my first point this morning is that this is not just a story that is a fiction that has come up from our generation and from our culture to make a very fancy detail in our Christmas celebrations about the wise men. Just about every time there’s a celebration of Christmas there’s often a scene about the wise men coming. We’ve done it here. I’ve seen it on this stage year after year about the wise men and about the shepherds and about the baby Jesus. In one of my previous churches they made me Joseph and there was a baby born. I don’t know whether that was one of our kids or not, no, but it was a little baby because we hadn’t started on the kids. But I was Joseph and I had to sing a song, Joseph’s Child, I forget how it goes. Anyway, it was a song but it was all about the storyline

[00:09:55] with all the mixing in of this business of the wise men coming. How do we know that there really were wise men? Well, that this has not been an accretion to a central core of beliefs that are Christian beliefs but somehow there’s been added in. How do you know? And if I have a role to say to somebody this morning, Christmas is a time for you to become a Christian. Don’t just be a worshipper of a tradition but come to know the person who was born on Christmas Day who grew up and became the Lord Jesus Christ who fulfilled a mission to go to the cross and die for your sins, to rise again by the Father from the grave and be taken to heaven where right now he is King of kings and Lord of lords and one day our scripture tells us he’s coming back again to judge the world. This is serious business.

[00:10:48] The reality of Christmas is the coming and the centre of history. It is the greatest miracle there’s ever been when God himself in the person of his Son, that’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but listen, in his coming he came to represent all that God was and come into a human being, little baby Jesus, and he became the God-man. Not just a lovely man, not just someone to show us how to be nice, someone to come with a divine mission that he might eventually go to the cross and there bear the sin of the world and turn the heart of the Father to be toward us in forgiveness because he’s totally paid for our sins and there to be a gospel, a gospel that gives you a call to come, become a Christian by getting right with God through Jesus when you ask him to be your Lord and Saviour. That’s when it happens.

[00:11:43] Where is he who is born King of the Jews? But there isn’t that question, born to be the king, that does make some intellectuals say all of that is because maybe the Christian groups have added it to the story. Well, I want to show you something. I’m not going to be too much longer. I want to show you something in the Old Testament that is a part of the Jewish tradition which I wouldn’t be surprised if these were people who were philosopher kings or if they were priests. We don’t know exactly who they were in the original place in the east. But there’s something in the Jewish tradition that’s written in their early documents And I’m asking us now that we’ll turn to this spot in the book of Numbers. The book of Numbers, chapter 24 and verse 17. And there is an unusual prophecy that’s there.

[00:12:34] If you go through that story, it gives you a bit of a confusing thing because the fellow who’s the prophet is one who’s on and off as far as being truthful for God. Balaam, I think his name was. And he’s not trusted to try to do the right thing. But when he tried to prophesy for money that someone was offering him, he would get to go and give the wrong prophecy and he was meant to curse the children of Israel. And when he went to curse them, the spirit came on him, wouldn’t let him do it, and he gave them a blessing. And the king that was providing the money was annoyed at him. This is Balaam. But he gives this what is a prophecy because he was known to be a prophet who came out with things that God was making him say. And it says here in Numbers 24, verse 17.

[00:13:18] I see him but not now I behold him but not near a star shall come out of Jacob Jacob is one of the father names of Israel and a scepter shall rise out of Israel there’s very a great certainty what that’s talking about there’s going to be a king born and it shall crush the forehead of Moab some of the enemies of Israel and break down all the sons of Shef and goes on in a similar vein about the victory that this leader, king, mighty one, is going to become and is to be born and to rise out of Israel. Israel, Judea, names referring to the very heart of the people of Israel. Now, this was in the literature of the Jewish people and these kings. It is possible, I don’t have any more knowledge to know whether they did or not, but it’s quite possible that they had read that and God had put it together for them

[00:14:20] in their own understandings of watching stars. It’s one of the features of God that he finds ways to reveal himself to people and sometimes, it’s interesting as you listen to testimonies and people tell you about how they were going to be having this to do on the Christmas Day, but they went instead to the church. Or they were doing something else and somehow or other something moved them to change their mind. They don’t know why. And it’s because God is the expert at knowing that we need to have a revelation. We need to have him break into our lives. The Bible calls it revelation. The theologians, they call this natural revelation. If God just uses the stars, there’s many a person who’s gone for a walk and seen the beauty of the world. David the psalmist was one. But seeing all that God had made and filled,

[00:15:11] somehow it spoke to them. That’s natural revelation. Revelation that comes through what the natural world is. And it’s very much the case that these wise men who studied the stars, and maybe they had some philosophy attached to it that we might not agree to, but that God spoke to them. And they got this deep conviction that something was happening over there in the land of Israel, further to the… from them, if we get a right, to the west. They’d been over in the east when the star appeared to them. The language of Matthew, I was never sure whether they were in the east or whether the star was in the east. But anyway, they see the star and they follow it. And it moves. So this is not just an appearance of something that you sometimes can’t see, but it’s the fact of some moving constellation body

[00:16:00] that moves and they get on their camels and they ride and they follow. and as they follow the star comes and hovers over Jerusalem which is why they believe it’s to be a King over Israel even though they’ve come to worship the fellow born in Bethlehem. They do the most natural thing. I think the reason why they come to Jerusalem is because if I were a wise man, don’t answer that, if I were a wise man and I heard there’d been a King born in Israel I’d go straight to Jerusalem too. and I’d ask who is the ruling people there and they might tell me where I can go particularly. Where is he who is born king of the Jews? It was Bethlehem and they got told that by the people. How did the people who told him? They were all the leaders of the Jewish nation who were meant to know the scriptures

[00:16:54] and be able to give answers to such questions and they read it in the Old Testament about the prophecy of their being. Someone born in Israel, born in Bethlehem and they point them in that direction. So out go the wise men and the star moves over Bethlehem. I believe this story but I want to tell you I don’t believe it because I think the wise men necessarily were so wonderful to get it right first go. I think it is because God broke in in a natural way to them because he’s in the business of showing himself to people. He does that again and again. The folk that you run into and you ask them how they become a Christian and although you get a variety of stories in answer sometimes those stories are such that it shows you that there is a God who steps into human lives

[00:17:44] and there’s all sorts of strange things that occur sometimes and there’s also a lot of normal things that occur. but somehow woven behind the normal and woven behind the natural is this interest of God which is a revelation. We call it when we see it in the stars, when we see it in nature, natural revelation. We call it when we read it in the scriptures like this passage would have been if the wise men got it back in their early times. This is special revelation. Natural revelation is when something happens just in the nature of things and special revelation is when the word of God comes. What I’m here to do today is to give you pointers to what the natural revelation can be understood to do and say but it is also because I know for a fact

[00:18:33] that whenever this message, it’s called a gospel in the book of Matthew. In fact, if you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it’s fascinating that they’re all different in varying respects but they all are talking about the gospel. Mark makes it the most succinct. He says, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You couldn’t reduce it down to the bare minimum than that. That’s Mark. Matthew, his emphasis is not so the same as Mark but his emphasis is that Jesus comes as King of Israel and that would be the reason why he’d want to include this story. Luke is someone who’s interested in the historicity and some of the development and the fact that Jesus came to be a universal saviour. And so Luke is very keen. I think he was a Gentile, is that right?

[00:19:26] I’m not sure exactly but his master was someone who had him as a slave and he led his master to Christ and his master gave him his reading. So he spent his time going around and preaching this gospel, wrote the gospel of Luke and he’s interested in the fact that Jesus is the saviour of all the worlds. And I think it is that he’s a converted Gentile. He travelled around with Paul a lot and saw some of the things that Paul did and he’s actually the writer of the book of Acts which is a history book of the church early formed. Then there’s John. What is the emphasis of the gospel of John? But it’s a spirituality of the offer of the gospel. It’s a spirituality of the presence of the Holy Spirit on Jesus and that’s what John is all about that we need to have a spiritual rebirth

[00:20:17] and that wonderful happening in the first chapters of John that the saviour came in order that we might get born again. And when we come to Christ and find him as saviour, when we answer the call and realise that revelation is happening when you read the gospel of John and you answer the call, then Jesus becomes your Saviour and his Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes to live in you and brings the presence of Christ into your person and then you have the capacity just to know and know that you know. That assurance is something the Gospel of John tells us we can have by the Holy Spirit in our lives. Four Gospels, they’re all different, but the one we’re looking at in Matthew is that Jesus came to be King of Israel. And that’s a part of the Gospel as well and there’s some future the book of Revelation

[00:21:07] tells us of Jesus’ return. Not only the book of Revelation but the Bible, the New Testament tells us of Jesus’ return and He is going to look after His people Israel and that they’re actually going to become many of them Christians too. That’s some of the things in the book of Revelation. Now this morning this storyline might be something that you’ve only come across as a part of the wrapping of Christmas. But that’s not the centre of it. Where is he who is born King of the Jews? And by the way, when you become a Christian, you take Jesus as your King. You become, in a sense, in the New Testament description of what makes a Jew, a Jew. Not a Jew by being circumcised. Not a Jew by being born in Israel. Because the New Testament tells us of the new covenant God promised for Israel.

[00:22:08] And in that new covenant, anybody who comes to Jesus gets in as a part of the people of God. So this Christmas story is for you. Where was he born, the one that was to become King of Israel, available to be your King, when you let him be your Saviour? That’s the deep spiritual meaning. Don’t miss it. By just thinking of Christmas as Christmas presents. I’m looking forward to some Christmas presents, but I’m not putting any great stake in that. The stake may come afterwards for lunch, I don’t know. But I want to say that this story, if you examine it, is a very strong reason to take serious that God breaks into people’s understandings. That’s revelation. That’s revelation. And he perhaps did it to the wise men by that them having that numbers, that storyline in Numbers, which is chapter 24, verse 17.

[00:23:15] If you want to think about this a bit more, go home and read the book of Numbers. My verse will stand out to you, and especially how it’s said by a prophet who was up and down and back and forth, and God used him, but he was a rebellious person interested in making money out of his prophecy. But he spoke the truth in this occasion, and maybe perhaps the wise men had come across it, and that was included in how they interpreted through their astrology, not the same as astronomy, but their astrology they interpreted. The difference, of course, is that astrology is when you think whatever happens to stars is moving us down here. Or maybe on one occasion, the star of Bethlehem that was in God’s hands, true. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning for the Christmas story.

[00:24:10] Oh, it’s a magnificent one. Thank you, Father, for how you guided these men from the East, these astrologers slash astronomers, these maybe priests, maybe kings in their own right, and we don’t know, we don’t even know if there are three of them. It’s just that there’s three gifts they bring. It could mean that there were three of them, but it doesn’t have to mean. Lord, there’s quite a lot about the story which is an accretion from our culture. Help us not to be lost in the culture of Christmas and to miss the one who was born. We thank you for this in Jesus’ name. Amen.