The Wise Men

the following message by Alistair beg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truth for we now turn to the New Testament and to the 2nd chapter of Matthew and I encourage you to follow along as I read from the first verse Matthew chapter 2 and reading from verse 1 the visit of the wise men 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 when Herod the King heard this he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born they told him in Bethlehem of Judea for so it is written by the prophet and you bethlehem in the land of judah are by no means least among the rulers of judah for from you shall come a ruler who will Shepherd my people Israel then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to Bethlehem saying go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him bring me word that I too may come and worship him after listening to the king they went on their way and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was when they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshiped him then opening their treasures they offered him gifts gold and frankincense and myrrh and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod they departed to their own country by another way thanks be to God for his word speak Lord in the stillness while we wait on thee and hush our hearts to listen in expectancy to hear your voice so that we might simply have information to ponder but that we might have a life-changing encounter with you the Living God through your word by the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ's name we pray amen well we're beginning this morning essentially where we left off last time last time we look together briefly but I hope helpfully at the prophecy of Micah the prophecy which is then in part quoted here in Matthew chapter 2 and we said that that prophetic word found its fulfillment in this section and we had turned to it by the time we were wrapping things up Matthew records for us what some of our Christmas cards depict I say some not so many now it would seem but nonetheless if you look hard you can find a Christmas card that has a scene of the wise men making their way towards or arriving in Jerusalem and that is the artists attempt at bringing if you like a simple phrase here in verse one to life wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and that's raising the question well who are they and where did they come from and one of the things that becomes immediately apparent is that the text provides us with no details at all there is nothing here that identifies them in any way along the lines of that which which many of us are become most familiar so let me say just a word concerning identity and then we will move from that to there inquire and then we will say something finally about their discovery so just those three words to hang our thoughts on identity inquiry and discovery we have to leave it up to legend and to tradition to fill in if you like the blanks and you may be surprised to realize just how much of that has filtered through into contemporary religious expression the journey of the wise men as described for us in the New Testament has been the focus of poets and painters throughout all of the ages that is why we have so many representations in art and also in literature and they are in those paintings routinely described as having ridden on camels and usually dressed quite spectacularly I think Ralph Lauren would have been very happy I just have put his name underneath as the flowing robes and the spectacular turbans on their heads or in some cases crowns upon their heads essentially speak to the magnificence of these individuals I always struck me as a very strange thing to wear if you're going to write a camel not that I've ever ridden a camel but if you're gonna write a camel hundreds of miles across a desert wasteland you might want to just tone it down a little bit but oh you know what do I really know about crowns and robes furthermore traditionally we've all been led to believe that there are actually three of them but it doesn't say there were three of them doesn't say how many of them there were at all so there could have been more I suppose there could have been less well that's because they brought gold and frankincense and myrrh well so what if somebody could have brought all three of them and the other two if there were two more they brought nothing at all so we've made these deductions it all fits is quite nice and then we've given it to us in poetic form in in hymnody so many of us have grown up singing we three kings of Orient are bearing gifts we travel afar well it's nice and it fits it scans one of my friend says well you know if you go down the other Road it'd be pretty hard to begin this song we three kings of indeterminate number of lurid ones from somewhere a fair way to the east site of Judea he said I don't think you're gonna be able to fit that into a decent Christmas Carol and he's absolutely right so we don't know the number and we don't really know very much at all and so what do you do with that you move on that's what you do you move on unless you are just wired in such a way that you don't really want to discover what the Bible says but you just want to fiddle around with things I was listening to the radio this week and somebody came on and introduced the program and they said in in promoting it and I'm going to be addressing a an important question this afternoon I don't want you to miss this I'm going to be I'm going to be addressing the question was Jesus born in Bethlehem or was he born just outside of Bethlehem and I said to myself I said I said out loud to the radio I said are you kidding me there you're gonna have a program on that see there's a peculiarity in some of us that just loves intrigue there are pain-in-the-neck these individuals at home Bible study groups because they will always go off they'll follow the star wherever it leads them hopefully it leads them next door never to never never to come back again or they'll give you this story of what they read in in the ancient literature of you know Abyssinia or something nobody knows nobody really cares the main things are the plain things so what do we know what we're told wise men came from the east now then we can do better instead of fiddling with our attempts at creating an identity for them by realistically thinking in terms of the enquiry that they may because actually their inquiry gives us something of a key as to their identity but not as a result of speculation what was their inquiry well where is he who has been born King of the Jews these wise men had come to the conviction that a significant King had been born that this King was directly related to the Jewish people and that this King had been born in Judea and that was their great question we have come a long way and we would like to find them him now they are described simply as wise men as wise men in some translations they are described as the Magi now the reason that that some English translations use Magi is because they're attempting to make it clear that what they are is what they're not so if that doesn't sound too convoluted in other words we read that there were wise men so we're tempted to say oh well that's there's just a group of people who did well on their SATs or or who managed to get into a good a good Jerusalem Persia or or in Babylonia or something like that no that's that is not it well then says somebody well well perhaps we should just view them simply as astronomers now what we can you view them as astronomers certainly not in terms of contemporary understanding so that wouldn't be a good translation well perhaps we should just describe the men as these astrologers who came no because in many cases astrology is simply superstition it is not actually hard or serious science so the translators are are are at pains to convey the nature of what it meant that they were wise men so let me let me tell you what it meant for them to be part of the Magi men that they were part of a group of individuals who studied the movements of the stars you say well that sounds like astronomy I understand that but they weren't astronomers they believed they believed such individuals that in some way cosmic forces had an impact a governing an influencing impact on both life and on history so that when they looked up into the night sky and when they pondered these things they made deductions on the strength of them they remember when when Hamlet speaks to Horatio and he says to him on one occasion he says you know Horatio there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in our philosophy these men were just like that but they weren't simply involved if you like in rudimentary science their science had a theological dimension to it so if you like they were sort of scientific theologians or they were theological scientists because they were making deductions concerning divinity itself incidentally when we think in terms of science our word for science as you know comes from science eeeh which is the Latin word it's the Latin word for knowledge for knowledge and so if you if you trace the role of science you realize that when we go back not too far in time scientists were involved in the consideration of all kinds of things because they were engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and in the best of science that scientific pursuit was not divorced from the realm of divinity or the realm of faith and that there was no sense in which those individuals in that era would have said science against faith would have said science deals in the realm of fact and faith deals in the realm of fancy no these individuals would have said no to that as well and that is how they ended up where they were they where if you like sincere individuals trying to figure things out now let's just take that phrase for a moment I'm sure there are some sincere individuals here trying to figure things out now you may be trying specifically to figure Christmas out but beyond that you may be trying to figure yourself out trying to figure life out trying to shake all the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of life and see if it doesn't form up in a picture that makes sense trying to understand just how it is that you happen to be on planet earth how it is that you happen to have an existence at all that you find yourself reaching back into time reaching forward through your hand out in front of you a serious soul concerned to follow where the evidence leads seeing yourself as you drive in the car old moody blues songs why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door with a thousand million questions that may be you this morning you're in good company that's the kind of thing these men were doing thinking if you're on the fringes of these things don't think for a moment that the key to discovery is it is in the disengagement of your thinking faculties as if some are another that what you need to do is is take your brain and set it down underneath the seat and wait for a feeling to hit you no it is rational it is thoughtful and these individuals were deadly serious deadly serious they would have to be deadly serious to do what they did if they came from Persia if they came from Babylonia perhaps they even came from Babylon itself the journey from Babylon to Jerusalem by the normal trade routes which they would have taken is a is a distance of some 800 miles 800 miles I don't know how fast you can go on a camel in or in a day but let's say you could go 220 miles a day that would take you 40 forty days and you be there forty days because of a star you imagine them their wife's saying excuse me what use I thought it was a business trip well it is kind of a business trip well what's the business well myself and a few friends you know we go to that meeting on a Tuesday and we have these conversations and a few errs have this absolutely decided that that that this phenomenon that we have seen this we have seen this as it has risen in the sky that we've we've combined us with some of the books we've been reading Oh since the wife you know I told you to stop reading those old books have you been have you been back reading that stuff that Daniel wrote yes well you've got no wonder you're in this mess now you're gonna have to go back and read Daniel for yourselves many of you who were so enthralled by their series that we did on Daniel will remember it what I would even have it to look at up I cannot class myself in that group because I recently heard some of the talks that I gave on Daniel on the radio and I couldn't understand a thing that was said and I was talking to the radio that occasion as well and and and says similar similarly you've got to be kidding and I just I just turned it off I just that was an after but if you take cosmic phenomena ancient books dreams and visions you've got to do this research for yourself incidentally don't be hijacked by the star if if we needed some detailed explanation on that we would have it it's not there because we don't need it those of you who like that kind of thing you can spend a pleasant afternoon in the library and it will probably be very helpful to you and you can give me a pretty of what you found but for the rest of us we're prepared to simply say there was something there that we do not fully comprehend that was enough of a sign to these individuals that combined with ancient truth that led them to do what they did that's that was the the result of their inquiry so for example if you read in the Book of Daniel you know that Daniel in the midst of all of the chaos of the exile in Babylon was receiving from God the clear insight that there was coming a day remember the great prophecy concerning memories interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and how eventually this this rock would come in and knock it down and eventually there would be a kingdom that would never pass away that's Daniel chapter two the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed that Daniel was constantly looking forward to a day when as he wrote the Saints of the Most High was a dis picture of God will receive and possess a kingdom that will be forever and ever so in the middle of all that chaos in Babylon he is saying to the people God is speaking to me that I might speak to you and tell you that although we are in the middle of all of this there is a day that will come when the when the kingdom of God will cover the earth as waters cover the sea and Babylon and and Daniel was able to see that not simply because he was receiving directly from God but also be he had read is it where his Bible to he knew the Oracle of the Prophet Balaam which surely ties in now you can find it in numbers 24 for your homework and there you will read the Oracle of the man whose eye is opened the Oracle of him who hears the words of God and knows the knowledge of the Most High who sees the vision of the Almighty I see him but not now I behold him but not near a star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel now you can see how these individuals with inquiring minds are endeavoring to put together these elements it is a reminder incidentally that people in their search for God start in all kinds of places they begin their journey from all points of the compass from all realms of the world that God who is the god of the universe uses in the minds and hearts of people elements which may be unusual to us but in order that that may begin in them as seeking after a longing for an investigation of that which he knows will ultimately in His grace lead them to the one place so from many points to one solution and these men are included in that a new star a new king and in Judea of all places there'd be one thing to be sitting around in the Babylonian bistros having a discussion but to do what these men did is striking remember the Shepherd says let us go and see this thing which has come to pass that the Lord has made known to us for the hem that was pretty easy they just said just a relatively short walk for these fellas to make to make the same decision with a journey of some 800 miles let's go and see and so they arrived in Jerusalem and it is then in Jerusalem where they make their inquiry I think it would be safe to assume that they were part of a much larger group that they had left behind a lot of people are prepared to sit around and talk in the cafes and Starbucks about heaven and earth and divinity and humanity and so on what is it that picks 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or half a dozen or a dozen out of the group and sends them on a quest that brings them directly to Jesus I cannot tell I cannot tell how he will reach the sinner and the sage but this I know you see that's why we sang to him and now having sung to him we look at the text what is it what is the Prophet Jeremiah say Jeremiah 29 and you will seek me and you will find me when you search for me with all your heart I'm thinking now of the Scottish group and I will walk 10,000 miles just to get to your door just to be with the girl and these guys are saying I'm will go 800 miles if we can find this King listen God will not pander to our intellectual arrogance whereby we say well but he will respond and cater to our intellectual integrity some have particularly investigative enquiring minds some if we had occasion to give testimony to one another would say you know the strangest thing began for me when in such and such an environment or whatever it was I began to think about these things but it wasn't casual speculation it was really sincere investigation and it leads to their discovery I want to jump all the way through the text I'm not I'm not going to deal with that with old grumpy Herod for now I may come back to him I've been thinking about in relationship to Christmas Eve and then I felt well nobody wants grumpy Herod on Christmas Eve but there might be purpose in it we'll have to distill have to see but if you allow yourself to go all the way down the texts they had they had arrived in in Jerusalem and they had begun to ask ask the questions and what did they discover well I let me tell you a number of things they discovered first of all they discovered that they were in the wrong place that was the first discovery they had they had clearly made a deduction that they would have regarded is entirely logical after all they were pretty smart fellows they were Magi they were Inquirer's they were doing scientific theology so you would think that when they put their heads together they would make a wise decision presumably the capital the capital of Judea Jerusalem and if we're looking for a king we go to the palace well they had eventually ended up there but before that presumably they had come into the community and they began to ask around some years ago Jeff Mills and I were traveling to the west coast and we were driving all the way and we were going on some road and I saw a sign to Winslow and I said oh pull off the road I want to go to Winslow and so he did and and as soon as we got into Winslow I said I want you to just to stop randomly because because I want to ask a question so he pulled up at the side of the street and I rolled the window down I said to some of these there's that excuse me can you tell me where the corner is the person said what I said okay it doesn't matter I said drive on Wayne again so excuse me I'm looking for the corner force I don't know what you're talking about about half a dozen times before somebody knew what I was on about cuz I want to find I was started standing on the corner of Winslow era in Winslow Arizona I had a mighty fine sight to see all right now I'm not gonna give you the rest of it but that's Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey that's the Eagles and that's what I was looking for and everybody should have known that goodness is Winslow nobody knew finally found somebody before I was arrested for you know it's a strange person in town that's what these guys were doing excuse me we've we've come to see the king of the Jews what yeah the he that is born King of the Jews I mean we we caught me 800 miles for goodness sake sorry some were clueless some were probably antagonistic most were probably indifferent they had come to the wrong place if you like the phenomenon of the star had set them off on their journey but then they decided I think we can get where we need to go on a basis of our deductions that's not how anybody comes to Jesus ultimately on the basis of deductions so they discovered number one they were in the wrong place secondly they discovered that the religious people the scribes who were able to give them the answer that those folks didn't actually care that the ones that Herod was able to bring around him and say these fellas are here and they they're trying to find out about this King do we have anything on that oh yes they said and they give the answer pronto yes of course the prophecy of of Micah it's not incredible they were scholars they were completely aware of what had been prophesied and yet they wouldn't make a journey of six miles to go and worship the king of the Jews religious professionals with a solid knowledge solid knowledge of the text who themselves were completely disinterested in worship I don't want to be unkind but that's one of the reasons for increasingly empty churches all across the United States of America because you have people in the pulpits who are intelligent religious people with a solid understanding of what the text says but no personal acquaintance with he who is the king of kings and the Lord of lords therefore since they do not personally know him they are entirely unable to introduce anybody to him and these men must have scratched their heads as they finally move off to Bethlehem and said to one another isn't that amazing you would think that the people who know the answer to the question would be the people who would be there leading the leading that right up to the front door thirdly what they discovered was that they actually needed the scriptures to point them in the right direction they needed the scriptures to point them in the right direction they had gone wrong and how were they going to go right you see whatever whatever extraordinary uses God employees as we as we sing in one of our songs to call through the night to save our distant souls with it whatever extraordinary uses he may employ he always brings us to his word the Bible in order that we might meet the Living Word his son there is there is no way to God except through the Christ of God who is delivered to us in the Word of God so they discovered they were in the wrong place they discovered that the scribes apparently didn't care they discovered that they needed the scriptures in order to get where they needed to be and finally they also discovered or realized that worship was then their only sensible realistic response now when you come back to those Christmas cards when it says when they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy the Christmas cards always have these little stars they're like about three feet above the camels head you know and as far as I know I never saw a star that was you know like three feet above a camels head but then again I haven't done much with camels heads to be honest so but but no the idea so again you know folklore and and everything just trying to help us like this star is like whoo here we go no we don't know we don't know how that all works out we do know that they were just and when they got there they went into the house the house thought it was a stable well it was a stable where he was born but it wasn't he didn't stay in the stable you see here's again the problem the way that we view Christmas for all kinds of reasons is it like the the angels came then the Shepherd's they showed up they were there six o'clock appointment and then the wise men they came in at 9:30 you know just before they were wrapping it up for the night no no we don't know now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea after he was born when a day after five weeks after two months after seven months after in some indeterminate period of time then when he and Mary and Joseph were in a house then these wise men showed up because think about it we know from the gospel record that Mary and Joseph took Jesus the newborn into the temple in order to do for him according to the custom of the law that's where you have the Simeon story so in other words there's all time necessary to be able to go and do that and come back and say you know Bethlehem's a pretty nice place and maybe the person who knows who gave him the chance to be in the manger once he cleaned out some of his relatives said you know you could stay here this would be a good place anyway they came to the house they saw the child with Mary his mother Joseph doesn't get a mansion standard pattern and well that's the way it goes so it should go and they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshiped him him not gonna preach on that but I want you to notice it doesn't say that they fell down and worshiped them they fell down and worshiped him Mary worshiped him - I saw rejoices in God my Savior Jesus Mary's Savior Jesus the only mediator between God and man and they fell down and they worshiped him somebody has said that if Shakespeare were to come into the room many of us would immediately stand to attention in recognition of the vastness of his intellect and all that he's left us but if Jesus were to come into the room we would fall down on our knees before him you see when whatever phenomena God may use to trigger our thinking and begin our investigation when he finally brings us to Jesus we don't come to Jesus as you know arrogant scientists or arrogant atheists Rutherford the Scottish theologian writes walk humbly walk softly down with the topsail stoop stoop it is a low entry to go in at Heaven's Gate one of the great pieces of sculpting in Scandinavia I can't just remember now from one of the pieces I've only seen it I've never been there to see it but it is it is a sculpting of Christ and the fascinating thing about it is you cannot look Christ in the face without actually kneeling down you cannot observe him from a distance and you're here today and you have back to me the moody blues song you're saying I'm looking for someone to change my life I'm looking for a miracle in my life these men are trying to put the pieces together and they opened up their treasures and they gave them these gifts that's all we're told they're warned in a dream not to go back to Herod they move on don't you long to get a hold of these characters and ask them I want to ask them look we got the part about you kneeling down and everything but did you ever ask Mary what that child's name was I mean because that would be natural you never just say oh there's a baby they said what's what do you call him did she tell you did you ask her why did you call him that did she tell you and you will give him the name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins and did you while you knelt on the turf confess your sins we know that you arrived in Bethlehem with the treasures of Earth in your hands but what I want to know is whether you left Bethlehem with the treasure of heaven in your heart that is the great question which each of us must give an answer to as long as God's grace remains and time as ours then if we hear his voice we should not harden our hearts father I thank you that your word is is light in the darkness thank you that we have to read it we have to think that you're not asking us just to have some kind of emotional breakdown and discover Jesus then we may have an emotional breakdown but that's by the point now we pray gracious Lord that as we ponder these things and as we take up the words of the poets and the heme writers and as we pour into a scene back there the elements of that which is now ours to experience we pray that through it all we might hear your voice and that we might bow down before you as did these moais men and that we might offer to you our very life itself for we pray in jesus name amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more 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Channel: Alistair Begg

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Keywords: Christmas, Christ's Birth, The Nativity, Biblical Figures, Alistair Begg, Matthew's Account of Christ's Birth

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Length: 38min 11sec (2291 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2017