The right response
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There is a story my mother tells occasionally about me when I was just a few weeks old.
My father’s family was from Georgia, and he and Mom were taking me there to meet the family. We didn’t have much money then, and we certainly didn’t have a car, so the only option for transportation was something that some of you here have never experienced: the Greyhound bus.
Now, Virginia to Georgia is a long trip, no matter what mode of transportation you take, but a bus trip is a special kind of torture, because — especially in those days — buses tend to stop at every little village and crossroads along the route in order to pick up and drop off passengers.
So, as you can imagine, this was a long and arduous trip for my mother and father. Possibly not so much for me.
Well, as the story goes, Mom had been holding me for hours and was very tired, so Dad suggested she get some sleep and let him hold me for a while. Parenting is a team sport, after all.
Mom agreed, passed me off to my father and soon fell asleep to the bump-bump of the road beneath the wheels of the big Greyhound bus.
At some point, though, Mom came awake to the sound of a baby crying in the distance. As she shook the sleep from her eyes, she looked over at my father and found him fast asleep in his own seat beside her.
I was nowhere to be seen.
But she could hear my cries, and as she followed the sound of them, she found me under the seat in front of my father, where I had slid from his lap as he fell asleep.
I’m not sure if he was allowed to hold me again on that trip.
Everybody on that old Greyhound bus must have heard that baby crying from under the seat. Some had chosen to ignore his cries. Some, like my father, had slept through them, and one person, my Mom, had responded by pulling me out from under the seat.
The way each of those people on the Greyhound bus responded said something about their relationship to me at the time.
In a similar vein, today we will see how three different people or groups of people responded to the child Jesus, and I think we can find some parallels to how people respond to Him even today.
We’re going to be taking a look at the story of the wise men this morning, and you can find it in Matthew, chapter 2.
As you are turning there in your Bibles, let me warn you that you may want to go home and rearrange your nativity sets after you’ve heard this message, and I will apologize in advance for destroying some of the Christmas myths that some of you may have held as true since childhood.
Actually, I won’t apologize for that. The true story of God’s incarnation in human flesh is so incredible and so wonderful that it always bothers me a bit when Christians feel the need to dress it up in mythology, as if it somehow needs to be made more presentable for the world.
I suggest that we do well when we speak the truth of Scripture as it occurred in its historical, cultural, and linguistic context and leave the mythology to Hollywood.
So buckle up. For some of you, this might be a bumpy ride.
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, Are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; For out of you shall come forth a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ” Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.” After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way.
OK, ready to start having some assumptions challenged?
Historians have told us of the careers of four men known as Herod who are mentioned in the New Testament. Only the rule of the one known as Herod the Great could have corresponded with any of the probable dates of Jesus’ birth, so it must have been him that Matthew refers to here.
But Herod the Great died in 4 B.C., so the first myth we will debunk today is that Jesus was born in 1 A.D. Actually, it’s more of a mistake than a myth, because the sixth-century monk who calculated the date that was used as the basis of the BC/AD calendar system had incomplete information about Herod’s life.
If Herod the Great died in 4 B.C., and if, as we see here, Jesus had been born by that time, He could not have been born later than what we now know as 4 B.C.
In fact, based on verse 16, where Herod has all the male children of Bethlehem and the vicinity killed who were two years old or younger, we can assume that when he asked the magi about when they had seen the star, they had told him it had been two years earlier, so Jesus’ birth could have been as early as 6 B.C.
The important thing to understand here is that Herod the Great is the one Matthew writes about here, and that’s important, because we know quite a bit about his character from historical accounts of the time.
He was a wealthy and politically gifted Edomite — a descendant of Esau, and, as such, he was not one of the Hebrew people.
He sat on the throne as an illegitimate king, put there by the Romans as a puppet of the Roman empire.
And this is important, because his illegitimate throne was the fulfilment of Scripture that foretold the coming of the Messiah.
As Jacob’s days drew to an end, he gathered his 12 sons before him and prophesied to them about their lives and the lives of their descendants.
We see this in Genesis, chapter 49. And in verse 10 of this chapter, we hear Jacob tell his son, Judah:
“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Now, “scepter” in this verse speaks of the authority to rule. So Jacob is saying that the tribe of Judah will produce the rulers of the future nation of Israel.
And that prophecy came to be fulfilled in King David, and you’ll recall that God promised David that his throne would endure forever, so all legitimate kings of Israel would be of David’s line and therefore from the line of Judah.
So the chief priests and scribes of Israel — the ones whom Herod called on for information about the Messiah in verse 4 of today’s passage — would have had every reason to be on the alert for something important to happen when the scepter departed from Judah, when a foreigner came and took the throne in Jerusalem.
What should they have been looking for? According to Jacob’s prophecy, they should have been looking for Shiloh.
Now, Shiloh is a proper name meaning “bearer of rest.” This would be the one who would bring Israel rest from its enemies, the one who would bring peace to the world. In short this would be the Messiah, the anointed one of God promised in Psalm 2.
Hold onto that thought for a few minutes and we’ll come back to it when we talk about the response of the religious leaders of Jerusalem to news of Jesus’ birth.
For now, think of Herod. He knew enough about Hebrew theology to know that the people had been promised a Messiah who would be king.
The magi had asked about the one who had been born King of the Jews, and Herod had responded by asking the priests about the Messiah.
And Herod was intensely paranoid about those who might lay a claim to the throne that he occupied. He had killed wives and sons whom he had believed to be conspiring against him.
In fact, Caesar Augustus is recorded as saying that it would be safer to be Herod’s sow than Herod’s son.
So it was not at all out of Herod’s character to plot to use the magi to try to track down and kill this child whom at least some people considered even then to be Israel’s rightful king.
Herod ruled Israel by fear, and so fear was his normal response.
When Herod heard about Jesus, he feared this child. He feared that Jesus would come along and overturn his carefully constructed world of power and influence.
And even today, we see that such a response is common among people who hear about Jesus.
When they hear that they can be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, some folks just cannot abide the thought of such a world.
Their world is one that’s carefully constructed around karma — what goes around comes around; what you sow, that you shall reap.
As we saw during our study of grace this summer, most of the world’s religions are based on some version of the concept of karma. If I do enough good things, then I can be saved.
And so the message of the cross — the message that the innocent died in place of the guilty, the message that God reconciles sinners to Himself in Christ Jesus, because we could never reconcile ourselves to Him — this message is frightening and repugnant to them.
And so they respond to this child in Bethlehem with the same fear and loathing — if not with the same violence — as did Herod the Great.
But whereas Herod responded with violence born out of fear, the religious leaders in Jerusalem responded with ambivalence.
Remember that I said they should have recognized the significance of the fact that an illegitimate king occupied Israel’s throne.
Now, look at how they replied when Herod asked them where the Messiah was to be born.
They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, Are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; For out of you shall come forth a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ”
These were learned men. These were men who knew the Hebrew scriptures backward and forward. They didn’t even have to stop and think how to answer Herod’s question.
“In Bethlehem, just as the prophet said,” they had replied.
So they had reason to know the time was ripe for the Messiah’s appearance, and they knew where he would appear, and they had a group of magi from a distant country who had come to Jerusalem looking for the one who had been born King of the Jews during the reign of this illegitimate ruler.
Bethlehem was only about six miles from Jerusalem, and it was the source of many of the unblemished lambs used in temple sacrifices, so there’s even a pretty good chance that they had heard by now the shepherds’ tales of angelic choirs singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He his pleased.”
These religious leaders of Israel had every reason now to wonder if this child whom the magi sought were not the Shiloh promised through Jacob so many years before.
So, what did they do?
There’s no evidence in the text here that they did anything. We don’t read about them going with the magi on the short trip to Bethlehem to check things out. We don’t read that they went back to their sacred texts to see if they could find any other prophecies that might have been fulfilled in Jesus’ birth.
What we see is that they did nothing. Later in the life of Jesus, of course, we see them set themselves up as his opposition, demanding his crucifixion by the Romans.
But here, they do nothing. They are complacent. They are satisfied with their lives just as they were and, frankly, saw no real need for a savior, no real need for a Messiah.
And today, as we consider the different responses that people have when they hear about Jesus, I would wager that complacency and ambivalence are perhaps the most common responses.
“Why would I need a Savior?” they ask. “I’m fine the way I am. Maybe I’ve done some things wrong, but at least I’m not as bad as so-and-so. Besides, nobody has a right to judge me.”
We see this attitude come into its greatest expression in today’s postmodernist movement, one that says there is no single truth — all truth is relative. What I believe is true to me, and what you believe is true to you, and nobody can judge one truth to be more true than another.
This philosophy has brought us to the point as a culture where we are mocked for even believing that there are two genders, male and female, or that those two genders are fixed in biology.
What possible need, then, would such a person have of a Jesus who said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?”
Much of the world has no use for Jesus, because He doesn’t fit the social constructs that they hold so dear. He does not offer them a Truth that is in keeping with the “truth” they have chosen for themselves.
So, for much of the world, their response to Jesus is the same as that of the religious leaders before Herod in today’s passage: They just don’t care.
But there is a third group represented in this passage: the magi.
And here, it is time to smash a couple more myths related to this passage.
The magi were students of the stars from the east, possibly from Babylon. They were some combination of astronomers and astrologers, known as wise men because of their advanced education. There is no evidence in the text that they were kings.
There were magi during the time of Daniel, when he lived in exile with the Jews in Babylon, and there’s a very good chance that in his high position he had the opportunity to share portions of Hebrew scripture and prophecy with them.
In fact, when they said in verse 2 of our passage that they had seen “his star in the east,” there’s a very good chance that they were recalling a line from the prophecy of the pagan prophet Balaam, as recorded in Numbers, chapter 24.
“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; A star shall come forth from Jacob, A scepter shall rise from Israel, And shall crush through the forehead of Moab, And tear down all the sons of Sheth.
So what about the star? Was it a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, such as we saw this week — or didn’t because of clouds, in my case? Was it a comet or a supernova or some other celestial occurence? Was it the shekinah glory of God that led them to Israel and later to Bethlehem and to the house where Mary and Joseph and Jesus were living? Was it an angel who led them, since Scripture often uses the word “star” when it speaks of angels?
Nobody knows, and it’s not really important. What’s important is that God led them to the very house in Bethlehem where His Son was to be found.
Not a stable at this point, but a house.
And there, they fell down and worshiped this King and offered Him gifts fit for royalty.
Three gifts — gold, frankincense and myrrh — so three magi, right? Well, no, not necessarily. It could have been two, or it could have been 20. We just don’t know, and we don’t know, because God didn’t consider it important for us TO know.
What we know is that these Gentile wise men came to Jerusalem, the capital city of Judea, looking for the child who had been born King of the Jews, probably expecting He would be in the capital city or at least that such an event would be the talk of the town and that they would be met with people who knew all about what had taken place.
Instead, they met an illegitimate king who was afraid that he would lose his throne and a group of religious scholars who seemed that they couldn’t have cared less about the fulfilment of God’s promises to them.
These Gentiles responded in faith to God’s supernatural revelation to them. They responded with joy when He renewed that revelation by sending the star ahead of them to Bethlehem. They responded in worship when they found the Christ child. They responded by giving Jesus gifts that were fit for a king. And they responded in obedience when God warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.
In short, these pagan Gentiles responded more appropriately than even the greatest religious scholars of Israel.
Confronted with the news of Jesus Christ, these magi responded correctly.
We cannot press the thought into dogma, but I wonder if these wise men from the east were not the first Gentile converts to Christianity. I wonder if we will not meet them in heaven one day because of their faith in Jesus Christ.
Today, as we look back over more than 2,000 years of history to that house in Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph had begun to raise the very Son of God, each of us must choose how we will respond.
Will you, like Herod, lash out in fear that this Christ will overturn everything you have built, that He will unseat you from the throne of your own life, demanding that He be your Lord and King?
Will you, like the religious leaders in Jerusalem, shrug your shoulders and say, “Who cares? I’m happy the way things are, and I’m satisfied to declare my own truth.”
Or will you, like the magi from the east, recognize that something singular and fantastic has happened in history? Will you see this child as the fulfilment of God’s promise to send the rest-bearer to bring peace between we rebels and the rightful ruler of the universe?
Will you admit that you have failed to meet His perfect standard of righteousness? Will you believe that His Son died to pay the price for your rebellion and that He was raised from the dead so that we who follow Him in faith might also have eternal life?
Will you fall down and worship Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Will you offer Him the gift of your life, which He purchased with His own blood on a cross at Calvary?
The choice is yours to make. All will respond to Jesus in some way. I pray that your response will be like that of the magi: a response of faith, of joy, of worship, and of obedience.