The visit of the wise men

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus – our greatest gift of all. And we thank you for the Gospels from which we have heard again and again of those extraordinary and wonderful events surrounding his birth. Help us never to grow weary of them, and never to take them for granted. Speak to us now, we pray, and draw us closer to him, who is our Saviour and our King. In his precious name we pray. Amen.

Please take a seat. Well, whether you’re one of those who likes to take the opportunity of some peace and quiet on Christmas Day to get their online tax form submitted, or you’re still glowing from a rich and sumptuous Christmas feast, today is a good day to take a deep breath, stand back a bit from the festivities, and reflect on the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. It is, after all, feasting on the Word of God more than feasting on turkey that’s going to sustain us through the long year ahead. We’re working through the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, and we’ve come to The Visit of the Wise Men, which is in Matthew 2.1-12. You can see that on page 807 in the church Bibles.

I wonder how often you’ve heard or read this account. And how many times have you sung the old familiar carol:

We three kings of Orient areBearing gifts we traverse afarField and fountain, moor and mountainFollowing yonder star

We even have names for the three kings; Melchior, Balthasar and Casper. But these are the layers of varnish added over the centuries that obscure the plain text of what we’re told. No names, no number (although there were three gifts) and not kings but magi, or wise men, from the east. So my prayer is that we can clean off the varnish and get a fresh view of a familiar narrative. And as you can see on the outline at the back of the service sheet, I’d like us to open our eyes and see, first, God’s complete sovereign control of events; and secondly, the multiple contrasts here. So:

1. SEE GOD’S COMPLETE SOVEREIGN CONTROL OF EVENTS

It’s easy to miss how comprehensive is God’s ordering of events here. We don’t see God, of course. Or rather, we don’t see God the Father. We do see God in the face of Jesus. As John says (this is John 1.18):

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

But there is an unseen and loving hand at work here – the hand of our heavenly Father. And we don’t even have to read between the lines to see the work of God here. We just have to read the lines with care. When our eyes of faith are wide open, and we’re alert to the signs, they’re not difficult to spot. So let me draw our attention to six signs of the unseen hand of God the Father working out his purposes here:

(i) A promised salvation. We don’t need to go beyond the first five words of our passage for this. Matthew 2.1:

Now after Jesus was born…

The name Jesus means ‘God saves’. From the time when God promised to Abraham that he would bless all nations through him, the Lord had made it plain to any with ears to hear that he was going to save humanity from self-destruction. As the angel told Joseph (Matthew 1.21):

[Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

A plan established in the heart of God before the beginning of time, and promised two thousand years before and repeatedly since, was coming to fruition, in the flesh and blood of this birth.

(ii) A promised Messiah. No doubt the wisdom of these wise men from the east was severely limited in its scope. If we’d interviewed them at the time, they wouldn’t have had a clue of the full extent of what had been unleashed through that birth in the barn. But somehow (presumably from a long-exiled Jewish population living around them in their eastern home) they had picked up that a divinely anointed King of the Jews had been promised. And so he had. A thousand years before, God had told King David of an eternal dynasty in his line, and then God had made clear that this promise would be fulfilled in one eternal King. God had been agonisingly silent for centuries. But he hadn’t forgotten his promise. And here was the King (the Christ) in the arms of Mary.

(iii) Angels. ‘Now after Jesus was born…’ That’s the opening phrase of Matthew 2, and it points us straight back to what the angel has told Joseph – that Mary would give birth to a boy who should be called Jesus. So there’s a reminder there of the supernatural realm that these angels inhabit, under the rule of God, who sends them on missions such as this and makes them visible to us when they need to be. Generally we don’t see the angels, but they’re there. Not humans but living and real and able to speak to us when God says so.

(iv) Prophecy. We mustn’t take for granted the familiar but astonishing fact that centuries before this, God told his people, through the prophet Micah, the town in which he would be born. Verse 6, quoting Micah 5.2:

And you, O 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.

Bethlehem it would be. It was there in plain sight for over 700 years, waiting for the day. God knew. God made it happen.

(v) The cosmos. From Matthew 2.1:

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 again in Matthew 2.9:

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.

There are multiple theories about exactly what kind of star it was that the wise men saw. Don Carson discusses them in his commentary, and sums it all by saying:

What they saw remains uncertain…the evidence is inconclusive.

So we don’t know. But it was some kind of star. And it was under God’s control, marking this momentous birth, in such a way that it could be seen by those who were on the look-out. By extension, the whole vast empty cosmos is under God’s control. Which is not surprising to the eyes of faith. After all, he made it.

(vi) The human mind. God bends the human mind to his will and his purposes, without violence or violation. Two examples. One, Herod. Even though he was the deadly enemy of Jesus, God used him to organise a Biblical seminar for the wise men, at which they learned that it was Bethlehem they were after – five miles up the road. God wanted the wise men to get there. He used Herod to make it happen. Two, the wise men. Not only did he use their astronomical studies. He also used their dreams. Matthew 2.12:

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Over millennia God fulfils his promises of salvation through the coming Messiah. He orders angels; speaks through prophets and makes what they say happen; he commands the cosmos; and he manages the minds of people. By natural and supernatural means, his purposes prevail. His Son is born, and the where, the when, the how, the why and the who are all as he plans. So God is in complete sovereign control of events – even when we can’t see him at work. We need to know that’s true in our own lives, and our own world. Russian soldiers may be massing on the Ukrainian border. Omicron may be building into a wave and waiting to break over the world. Your life may not be turning out as you want, with a litany of seemingly unanswered prayers. But we need to know that underneath all of it, God is working out his good and loving purposes. He uses everything at his disposal. And at his disposal is everything. And he will not be thwarted. So whatever is happening, we can be at peace. God is in control of events. We need to look with eyes of faith, and see that. Then:

2. SEE THE MULTIPLE CONTRASTS HERE

We’ve seen six examples of God’s control. Here are six contrasts from this visit of the wise men:

(i) There are two kinds of king. There’s Herod, made a king by the Romans. Instead of leading like a shepherd of his people should, he wasn’t even a hired hand who fled at the first sign of the wolf. He was a wolf. All he wanted to do was steal and kill and destroy, but he would soon be dead. Then there’s Jesus, made King by God his Father, to rule forever, as the Good Shepherd, who was ready to lay down his life for the sheep.

(ii) There are two kinds of character – the foolish and the wise. Maybe these Magi weren’t always wise but they were certainly wise here –listening to God’s word, obeying it, seeking out Jesus, falling in worship before him. That’s as good a demonstration of wisdom as you can imagine. On the other hand, Herod gives about as good a demonstration as possible of being a fool. Don Carson skewers his character with this word sketch:

Herod was wealthy, politically gifted, intensely loyal, an excellent administrator, and clever enough to remain in the good graces of successive Roman emperors…But he loved power, inflicted incredibly heavy taxes on the people, and resented the fact that many Jews considered him a usurper. In his last years, suffering an illness that compounded his paranoia, he turned to cruelty and in fits of rage and jealousy killed close associates, his wife Mariamne, and at least two of his sons.

Herod tries to override God’s word because he doesn’t like it. He hates Jesus. He thinks he can overrule God’s plans to his own ends. But he’s a fool to think so.

(iii) There are two kinds of people. There are the wise men, eager to worship Jesus – despite their limited knowledge and Gentile, non-Jewish descent. And there are those around Herod – apathetic about the promised Messiah or hostile to him in turns despite their privileged knowledge of the Scriptures.

(iv) There are two kinds of place. There’s Jerusalem. For all that it was the great city made famous as the capital of King David, Jerusalem was turning its back on its Lord and Saviour, and before long the greatest city in the land would be laid waste. The greatest became the least. Then there’s Bethlehem. It looked of little significance - an outlying village. But it had hidden depths that connected it to the long history of God’s promises. Here Jacob had buried his beloved wife Rachel. Here King David’s great grandmother Ruth met Boaz who would become her husband. Here the boy-shepherd David grew up. And now here the eternal Good Shepherd, the Son of the living God, was born. The least became the greatest.

(v) There are two kinds of reaction to what’s going on. Matthew 2.3:

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him…

And on the other hand Matthew 2.10:

When [the wise men] saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

Anguish in some. Joy in others. And both in response to the same birth. Finally and:

(vi) There are two kinds of worship. The first is a lie and a sham. Matthew 2.8:

And [Herod] sent [the wise men] 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.”

Beneath a façade of worship was a murderous heart. Herod read the Bible in order to reject it. He said he wanted to worship Jesus but in truth he wanted to know where to find him in order to kill him.

The second kind of worship was genuine, and joyful. The wise men paid homage to the one whom they knew to be the King of the Jews – the title they gave him, that was to find its way on to the cross on which he was to give his life for the sins of the world. Their gifts providentially pointed to just who it was they were kneeling before. Gold suggesting royalty, incense divinity, and myrrh his death and burial. Not that they would have realised that. To them, these were just expensive gifts, given from the heart. Matthew 2.10-11:

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 worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

So what’s it to be for us? Who will rule my life? Will I? Or will Jesus? What will be the final verdict on our character? Will we be wise or foolish? What will really be our reaction to Jesus? Will we be troubled by him and want to get rid of him out of our lives? Or will we rejoice that we have found him – or rather that he has found us? What kind of worship will we offer? Will it be a veneer that others might find convincing, but under the surface is a lie and sham? Or it will it be genuine, deep and from the heart? Will we fall down before him, and offer him in thankful praise all that we are and all that we have? Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, help us to see with the eyes of faith what we can’t always see with our physical eyes that you are in complete control. Lord Jesus, please help us to see with the eyes of faith, as those wise men saw and more that you are our King, and that you are our saviour. Teach us, we pray, to be wise, and to worship, and to rejoice. For your glory. Amen.