A Wise Approach to Life. [Part 1 of 3]
(Genesis 2: 1-3)
There are several ways to approach the Story of Jesus. One way would be to spend too much money or to make matters worse, you could spend too much money on Christmas and then put it on a credit card and think of it as just that, a story. Spend your life, spending money having a good time, and then hoping you can pay it all back on the credit cards next month. But as far as the Jesus goes you can seek him, approach him, investigate him and then ignore him. That’s if I may be so bold suggest that that’s not the smart way to approach life.
Another not so smart way approach this story might on the surface appear more spiritual that is to live a religious life to go to church and take part in churchy religious stuff and that is to turn what shouldbe holy days into holidays, you know, substitute Santa Claus for Jesus and there are a lot of people who approach it that way.
These are two ways you can approach the Christian life but, in my estimation, neither of them are a very smart ways to do it, but if that’s the case, what is the wise way to approach the story of Jesus is there a wise way we can seek the Messiah?
What I’d like for us to do is look at a very familiar story, one that I’m sure you all know, but one that poses a lot of questions, some of which I want us to talk about, because this is the story of some men who were said to be wise and also sought the Messiah.
This story illustrates, it seems to me, how we should seek the Lord in a wise way, and I take that from the fact that this is the way the wise men in the Gospel of Matthew did it. But also interwoven in the story are a number of questions that the story naturally presents. For example, who were the wise men? Where did they come from? And what about the star business? What’s that about? Was that a natural phenomenon, or was it a supernatural phenomenon? So, I’d like to tell you the story, and I would like to move through these verses and do two things all at once. One thing I would like to do is move through the story and I’d like to answer some of these questions that often come up when the story is told, but beyond that, I’d like for us to find out if any of the spiritual truths these men sought still apply to us today. With that in mind, let’s move through the story. It begins with verse one, that says.
Behold, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem.
(Matthew 2: 1)
I want to focus on this first verse for a second. Notice it says, “Behold, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea”. Did you know there were two Bethlehem’s at this time. One was about 7 miles north of Nazareth where Jesus grew up, and then there was Bethlehem of Judea, which was about 5 miles from Jerusalem. So, Matthew is being careful to point out which Bethlehem he’s talking about, only he’s not only doing this just to tell us there were two Bethlehem’s and this is the one next to Jerusalem, it’s Bethlehem of Judea. He does that because it means he is telling the reader that this is the Bethlehem about which the Old Testament prophesied the Messiah would come from. So that’s more important than the fact that there were simply two Bethlehem’s. He begins by saying, behold, pay attention to this he is saying. Behold, wise men from the east, he says, and by use of the word, behold, which appears in most good translations Matthew draws attention to the fact he wants us to focus on these wise men. He wants us to stop and consider them for a moment. He wants us to carefully examine these men and think about who they were and where they come from.
He says they are wise men from the east. What is that about? Well, the Greek word that is translated wise men in this verse? Actually, is a single word that means magicians so they were magicians of sorts, if you will, meaning that they were involved in some kind of a religious ceremonies, so to speak. It says they were from the east. Now, to try and explain what this means exactly is a little elusive. Where is the east? As you can imagine, there all kinds of speculations. Some say it’s Persia, because back in those days in Persia astrology was part of the religious system. Some other experts suggest they were from Arabia, but other say that is more South than east. Other traditions, for which there is little real evidence, not only give them names, but say they were from three different locations.
Probably the best guess in my estimation is they were from Babylon. Babylon also had an astrologically based religious system and they obviously were interested in the stars. There are some other reasons why they probably came from Babylon. For one thing at this particular time in history there was an idea that the Messiah was about to come, and it was felt across many cultures . Let me quote a few scholars who studied this. One said, “the idea of some kind of a Messiah was in the air throughout the whole civilized world”. Another said, “the evidence for an expectation of a coming universal king was abundant”. And other records that the ancient authors said that “the world was in eagerness of expectation for the coming of the Messiah”,
However, from the east could be anywhere east of Jerusalem. And the truth of the matter is that the whole known world had sort of an expectation that a Messiah, a universal king was coming and by examining some ancient writings we can determined that there was an expectation of what historians used to call it the “Messianic hope”. There’s another bit of information that I think is particularly significant, and that is this. When the children of Israel were exiled, they were taken to Babylon. One of those was a man named Daniel. Now we are told in the Book of Daniel, and I quote, that he was given the role of, and I quote, “chief administrator over all the wise Men of Babylon”. Isn’t that interesting? Daniel was the chief administrator over the “wise men”. That’s in Daniel, chapter two, verse 48, and the exact same term in the original language used there, is used there.
Now that is a theory and that’s all it is, we can’t be dogmatic about this, but some traditions and experts say that these wise men were from Babylon. They were astrologers, and that fits, but there is little to no information in the book of Daniel about what they did. Daniel Chapter 9, points that a Messiah would one day come. So, while it’s a guess, and I have no absolute proof, I am of the opinion that it’s a pretty good guess that these wise men were from Babylon. They book of Daniel, and Daniel himself very much planted the seed of the Messianic Hope prophesying about a time when the Messiah would come and that had spread to become a sort of a universal feeling throughout the civilized world. Then on top of all of that there was a star. These wise men see the star and recognise it as a sign of the coming Messiah, and they know from the book of Daniel that they’ve got to get to the Palestine region in general and they have got to get to Jerusalem in particular. At this point, that’s all they knew. Now that of course brings us to what verse 2 says.
And they asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’
(Matthew 2: 2)
This brings up the whole question of, what’s the star about? Well, there are all kinds of speculations about that. One is that what the star they saw was a comet. Experts say that there was actually a comet that flew by earth in approximately in 10 BC. However, that’s a little too far out for it to a reference to the birth of Christ. Another theory is that it was a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, they came together in the sky and produced what looked like an extra bright star, and that was the star that they saw. And sure enough, we can figure out from astronomy that those two lined up, but the date is 7 BC and that’s also a little far out for it to be a reference to the birth of Christ. Experts have also calculated and we now know that our calendars are a little off today and that Christ was not born in year one or year zero. It’s more like maybe as far back as 3 or 4 BC. But none of these explanations quite fit the facts. So whilst on the one hand it is entirely possible that God could have chosen to bring forth the Messiah to match these pre-ordained astronomical events, I personally don’t believe they are the explanation. We do know that a star appeared and these wise men new that, perhaps from knowing the book of Daniel, so the move towards Bethlehem near Jerusalem. But apparently the star temporally disappeared at that point.
So, they meet with Herod, it will appear again, and they follow it again over to Bethlehem. So, there’s an appearing, a disappearing, and a reappearing. Furthermore, the fact that it could stand over a city suggest that this is not just be some general sort of astronomical phenomenon but leads me to the conclusion that this was no ordinary event. It seems to me that this was a supernatural phenomenon and they’re calling it a star that is guiding them from the east, perhaps Babylon to Jerusalem, and then later from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Verse 3
When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
(Matthew 2: 3)
So, they come to Jerusalem, and they say to Herod, where is he that is born king of the Jews. Notice they’re going to a king and asking where this new king is born. Do you see any possible potential tension here? Well, let me just tell you the rest of the story. This is only the beginning. What you need to know is about this fella Herod and it backed up by the text when it tells us that when Herod the these things he was troubled, and all of Jerusalem with him. Now we might understand why her is troubled, but why was Jerusalem trouble? The Greek word that’s translated trouble means disturbed, stirred up, confused and fearful. This is describing a rather serious situation, and for good reason. Let me explain.
We know a quite a bit about Herod, and what we know from secular sources as well as the scriptures is that this was one cruel character. One nonbiblical scholar of his day calls him an ill-tempered tyrant, another said he was continually agitated with jealousy and fear of a competitor. Another one said he was almost insanely superstitious. Let me tell you how bad it really was, he was so superstitious that he had his wife mothers murdered. He also murdered his eldest son, then two other sons, in case they plotted to usurp him. As matter of fact, he was married nine times. One ancient author called, Macrobius, said, and I quote, “you were safer being Herod’s pig than his son”. Now what you have to understand is that Herod was half Jewish and the Jews didn’t eat pig. So, the conclusion was, even if you were pig, you were better off being his pig instead of his son. So, for somebody to come and say where’s the new king? To a suspicious murderous king, that would have made the whole city nervous….
We will pick up the story next time and see where this drama will lead.