Following the Star

In the past I’ve usually preached from Luke’s accounts of the birth of Jesus where we see Mary encountering the angel, the drama of Zechariah the priest and Elizabeth having a parallel miraculous conception. The journey to Bethlehem and the shepherds arriving to worship the new born Jesus, saviour of the world.

More likely is the fact that the planets Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction with each other three times in 7 BC. Since Jupiter was the ‘royal’ or kingly planet, and Saturn was sometimes thought to represent the Jews, the conclusion was obvious: a new king of the Jews was about to be born. We cannot be certain if this was why the ‘wise and learned men’ came from the East. But, even if it wasn’t, nothing is more likely than that thoughtful astronomers or astrologers (the two went together in the ancient world), noticing strange events in the heavens, would search out their earthly counterparts. If, as it appears, they were also wealthy, they would have no major difficulty in making the journey.

So this year, I’m excited to explore Matthew’s account. I believe each is completely true and accurate, after all it’s been given to us by God himself. Luke and Matthew just speak of the birth of Jesus from two different perspectives.

And this passage leaves us with many questions

Who are the Magi?

Why would Herod want to hunt down a child?

What was the star of Bethlehem? A meteroite or commet? An astronomical occurrence? Something burning in our atmosphere?

How did it lead them to Bethlehem? It’s a star, in space, how can this lead to a place?

What about the gifts? What weird gifts to give to a baby. Why would the wisemen bring these gifts.

Who is this child to be given all this attention?

What does this passage even mean to me today?

So many questions

So before leaping in, let’s root it in our experience.

I want you to think about something amazing which you have seen in your life.

Is there a moment where you saw pure beauty.

Was it a sun set, was it the grand canyon, the derbyshire sales, or Yorkshire Moors?

...

For me, it was when I went on tour in a Jazz band to Austria. It was the first time I’d ever seen such an incredible sight. I remember turning to my atheist friend and saying “and you tell me your looking for proof of God’s existence - just look at those mountains. How could they have ‘just happened’?

Have you ever seen something amazing in the night sky? Perhaps it was one of the blood moons we’ve had over the last decade, or spotting the international space station.

I remember my Dad taking me out into the back garden when I was about 10, and we used his rotating star map to locate each of the stars. I did it with our josh this Summer, but I used an app displaying the nights star above us

There’s something mysterious about creation. So many questions, so much beauty

So let’s look at some of those questions. I’m focusing on the second part of our reading today.

Who are the Magi?

in fact nothing suggests to us here that they are Kings. There are many legends which have grown up around the wisemen, but the word Matthew uses is the Magi which means magicians or astrologers. We usually refer to them as wisemen because they were considered wise because they could read the stars, and interpret the world at a more spiritual level. And they probably came from the capital of Magi and mistics in the known world, that being babylon, or persia, modern day Iraq.

Do you remember the two prophesies in this passage. One from Isaiah and one from Micah. Both of them were prophets 740 years before Jesus was born. They both prophesied about the exile of the Israelite people, about the destruction of Jerusalem, being made slaves and forced to work in Babylon. They also gave God’s promise of then being brought back by God many years later.

These prophesies were passed down from generation to generation, and when the exile happened, a young jewish man who’d been torn away from his home and his family, called Daniel ended up being trained as a magi.

Yes, I’m talking about the same man Daniel who later thrown into the Lions den. He survived and was made the chief of the Magi. So the Magi here, knew the prophecy because of Daniel.

Why would Herod want to hunt down a child?

Of course, Herod was the King of the Jews, although he himself wasn’t born a Jew and was made King by the Romans, so in many ways he already had limited power.

The people didn’t respect him properly, they only feared him because of the Romans.

Now, a prophecy from before the exile which tore the Jewish nation apart, looked like it might be fulfilled. Whether he believed the prophecy or not is irrelevant, because he knew that the people believed the prophecy, and that was enough for him to rally an army to kill all boys up to the age of 2, in the hopes of squashing the rumour of fulfilled prophecy which challenged his kingship

What was the star of Bethlehem?

Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15 The Magi Visit Jesus (Matthew 2:1–12)

More likely is the fact that the planets Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction with each other three times in 7 BC. Since Jupiter was the ‘royal’ or kingly planet, and Saturn was sometimes thought to represent the Jews, the conclusion was obvious: a new king of the Jews was about to be born. We cannot be certain if this was why the ‘wise and learned men’ came from the East. But, even if it wasn’t, nothing is more likely than that thoughtful astronomers or astrologers (the two went together in the ancient world), noticing strange events in the heavens, would search out their earthly counterparts. If, as it appears, they were also wealthy, they would have no major difficulty in making the journey.

Matthew Contrasting Responses to the New King (Matthew 2:1–12)

The star is perhaps intended to remind the reader of the Balaam prophecy of Num. 24:17: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” That this was viewed as a messianic prophecy is evidenced not only by the Dead Sea Scrolls

How did it lead them to Bethlehem?

Without having seen it, we can’t really know. However as men who dedicated their lives to reading the stars, they knew the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah, of numbers and many of the other prophecies which Daniel had passed onto the Babylonians. The location in the Old testament is clear. That the messiah, the anointed one chosen by God to save the world, had to be born in Bethlehem, the small town associated with the greatest King Israel had ever seen, King David. His heir to the throne, who was to be ruler of the Jews, and the world for the rest of time.

What about the gifts?

If you knew where the Messiah, the Lord of all, the saviour of the world was - would you go to see him. I wonder what you’d bring?

The wisemen brought gifts of Gold, Myrrh and Frankincense

Gold - the symbol of his kingship, that Jesus is born to be King.

You may remember that to save Jesus from Herod’s plot to assassinate him, an angel tells Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt. How could this poor family afford that journey? Perhaps it was with this gold.

Myrrh - is an expensive fragrant oil used mostly for anointing bodies. Not your usual gift to give a baby. But it points to the death of this man, the death of Jesus which would change human history forever

Frankincense - is a mineral, a fragrance burnt on the alter to God. It represented the communication and offering to a distant God. The God, Yahweh, who had loved and created the world, but who had been rejected by his creation and who had been distant from the world for hundreds of years, only speaking through a few prophets. Frankincense represented a bridge between heaven and earth.

Of course, that is exactly what Jesus came to do. We reject him every time we mess up, every time we say ‘not your way God, but mine’. It’s like we walked so far from God that a chasm formed. A chasm we could never cross, a distance we could never jump.

This side of the chasm, we can’t live in true freedom, we can’t live the way we were created to live.

I believe God created the world and made it good

And as the creator, if we’re looking for truth, for the best way to live, the Bible tells us that it’s in him.

The truth is God’s opinion. Let me w say that again. Truth is God’s opinion.

What he thinks about how I live my life matters.

Jesus came to be a bridge. but not just another prophet who came to point the way to God.

Not, in Jesus, God himself came to earth. God himself pays the penalty for our wrong. God himself becomes the bridge between us and him.

For when we were still far off, he met us in his son. God met us in Jesus.

The

Who is this child to be given all this attention?

What does this passage even mean to me today?

Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15 The Magi Visit Jesus (Matthew 2:1–12)

More likely is the fact that the planets Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction with each other three times in 7 BC. Since Jupiter was the ‘royal’ or kingly planet, and Saturn was sometimes thought to represent the Jews, the conclusion was obvious: a new king of the Jews was about to be born. We cannot be certain if this was why the ‘wise and learned men’ came from the East. But, even if it wasn’t, nothing is more likely than that thoughtful astronomers or astrologers (the two went together in the ancient world), noticing strange events in the heavens, would search out their earthly counterparts. If, as it appears, they were also wealthy, they would have no major difficulty in making the journey.

; (NIV)

Matthew Contrasting Responses to the New King (Matthew 2:1–12)

The star is perhaps intended to remind the reader of the Balaam prophecy of Num. 24:17: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” That this was viewed as a messianic prophecy is evidenced not only by the Dead Sea Scrolls

; 6-7; (NIV)

Wright, T., 2004. Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-15, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15 The Magi Visit Jesus (Matthew 2:1–12)

The arrival of the ‘Magi’ (that’s the word Matthew uses for them; it can refer to ‘magicians’, or ‘astrologers’, or experts in interpreting dreams, portents and other strange happenings) introduces us to something which Matthew wants us to be clear about from the start. If Jesus is in some sense king of the Jews, that doesn’t mean that his rule is limited to the Jewish people. At the heart of many prophecies about the coming king, the Messiah, there were predictions that his rule would bring God’s justice and peace to the whole world (e.g. Psalm 72; Isaiah 11:1–10). Matthew will end his gospel with Jesus commissioning his followers to go out and make disciples from every nation; this, it seems, is the way that the prophecies of the Messiah’s worldwide rule are going to come true. There are hints of the same thing at various points in the gospel (e.g. 8:11), though Jesus himself did not deliberately seek out Gentiles during his ministry (see 10:5–6). But here, even when Jesus is an apparently unknown baby, there is a sign of what is to come. The gifts that the Magi brought were the sort of things that people in the ancient world would think of as appropriate presents to bring to kings, or even gods.

There is another way as well in which this story points ahead to the climax of the gospel. Jesus will finally come face to face with the representative of the world’s greatest king—Pilate, Caesar’s subordinate. Pilate will have rather different gifts to give him, though he, too, is warned by a dream not to do anything to him (27:19). His soldiers are the first Gentiles since the Magi to call Jesus ‘king of the Jews’ (27:29), but the crown they give him is made of thorns, and his throne is a cross. At that moment, instead of a bright star, there will be an unearthly darkness (27:45), out of which we shall hear a single Gentile voice: yes, he really was God’s son (27:54).

Listen to the whole story, Matthew is saying. Think about what it meant for Jesus to be the true king of the Jews. And then—come to him, by whatever route you can, and with the best gifts you can find.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Matthew 1. The Visit of the Magi, 2:1–12

Wise men are not people endowed with wisdom in general, but p 36 students of the stars: “a (Persian … then also Babylonian) wise man and priest, who was expert in astrology, interpretation of dreams and various other secret arts” (BAGD). REB renders the term “astrologers.”

6For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Worship

5Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Matthew 1. The Visit of the Magi, 2:1–12

The worship of the Christ was important to Matthew, and he refers to this worship 10 times (2:2, 8, 11; 8:2; 9:18; 14:33; 15:25; 20:20; 28:9, 17).

Matthew Contrasting Responses to the New King (Matthew 2:1–12)

The star is perhaps intended to remind the reader of the Balaam prophecy of Num. 24:17: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” That this was viewed as a messianic prophecy is evidenced not only by the Dead Sea Scrolls

6For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

My Friends, there is no brighter star to live under than the morning star of Bethlehem - and I don’t mean the star the wisemen followed. I mean the true light of life, born in a manger - a feeding trough to be the saviour, the bridge, the rescuer and the restorer of us all.

There is not truer purpose in life, than to follow him in all we do, say and think.

This Christmas, let’s welcome Jesus into our lives.

9All the people will know it— Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria— who say with pride and arrogance of heart,

10“The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars.”

11But the Lord has strengthened Rezin’s foes against them and has spurred their enemies on.

12Arameans from the east and Philistines from the west have devoured Israel with open mouth. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

13But the people have not returned to him who struck them, nor have they sought the Lord Almighty.

14So the Lord will cut off from Israel both head and tail, both palm branch and reed in a single day;

15the elders and dignitaries are the head, the prophets who teach lies are the tail.

16Those who guide this people mislead them, and those who are guided are led astray.

17Therefore the Lord will take no pleasure in the young men, nor will he pity the fatherless and widows, for everyone is ungodly and wicked, every mouth speaks folly. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

18Surely wickedness burns like a fire; it consumes briers and thorns, it sets the forest thickets ablaze, so that it rolls upward in a column of smoke.

19By the wrath of the Lord Almighty the land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire; they will not spare one another.

20On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied. Each will feed on the flesh of their own offspring:

21Manasseh will feed on Ephraim, and Ephraim on Manasseh; together they will turn against Judah. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

Following the Star

The star of Bethlehem