Matthew 2, 1-12, the visit of the wise man. There's a lot of tradition isn't there about this episode?
! There's a lot of tradition which necessarily the Bible doesn't tell us. We don't know for sure that there were three Magi.
I like to think there were about 300 of them. It's just an inference isn't it from the three gifts of gold, incense and myrrh from verse 11.
We don't know that they came on camels like it is on your Christmas card. They certainly didn't come to the manger.
You might think they came to the manger but verse 11 tells you they came to the house.
And if the star first appeared to them at Jesus' birth it would seem that it took them a number of months to make the trip.
And it's likely that it was a year to a year and a half after Jesus had been born.
So they arrive in Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary are apparently still living in Bethlehem.
And they go to the house. Not the manger. Probably a toddler by that time.
And of course they don't have names. Casper, whatever the other two are called.
That started in the 6th century.
And it came into vogue then.
And we're not sure that they were kings or not.
So there are some things that we know are not true just that they've come to us through tradition.
But we have this passage in Matthew's Gospel.
And Matthew wouldn't have put it in his Gospel if it was important.
And so why is this important?
And I think Matthew would say something like this.
It is most important.
It's a most important visit because of four Ps.
First of all the place that's involved.
You see that in verse 1.
And in verse 2.
And in verse 5.
And in verse 6.
Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Bethlehem.
When the Magi come to choose them.
They say where is the one who is born king of the Jews?
Where?
We don't usually pay attention to small towns, do we?
Very much.
I like Bethlehem.
Think of small towns.
You haven't thought of them this week, have you?
Unless we need something from them.
Or we find someone from there.
Probably most of us didn't think this week of
Gretem.
Or Denham.
Or Merthyr Tidbert.
We don't think of those towns, do we?
It doesn't consist.
You don't pay attention to small little places.
Unless there's someone or something that you need to find out.
And so Bethlehem.
This little tiny place comes to be on the map.
And so when Herod finds out the inquiry that's been made, he calls, doesn't he, the chief priests and the theologians.
And he says to those chief priests and theologians, he says to these scholars, where is the Messiah?
Where is the one who is to be king of the Jews, to be born?
And they say, oh, the scripture tells us, Micah 5 tells us, that it will be Bethlehem in Judea.
And then they quote it to him.
Bethlehem.
That is the birthplace, or at least the hometown of David.
1 Samuel chapter 16.
And David was the king who'd received that great covenant promise in 2 Samuel chapter 7.
That was, your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
God had said, your throne, David, will be established forever.
There'll always be someone sitting on your throne from your family.
But in the time that Micah prophesied, it's about 700 years before Christ.
He was prophesying when the kingship of David, when the line of David, those kings was going to be eclipsed.
And there wouldn't be a Davidic king on the throne.
And it looked like God's promise was going to be eclipsed.
But he prophesied.
Micah says, from your hometown, David, there will come a new David.
A new Messiah.
And he will arise from the very same place where David was from.
And so Bethlehem was David's town.
A little town of Bethlehem.
And the theologians knew that.
And they told Herod, it will be in Bethlehem, in Judea.
Now why does Matthew bang on about this point?
Why does he labour at it?
That Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem.
A few years later, Matthew didn't write his gospel right at the time this took place.
I think he wrote his gospel 20 to 30 years after the time of Jesus.
Some people would want to put it later.
But I would say 20 to 30 years later.
And there was a problem about where Jesus was born.
John chapter 7 verses 41 and 42.
Some Jews are debating about Jesus.
They'd seen some of his works.
And some of them made the statement, look at what he's doing.
He must be the Messiah.
He must be the king of the Jews.
And others said, you know nothing.
You don't know anything.
The Messiah, does he come out of Galilee?
No he doesn't.
Jesus is from Nazareth in Galilee.
The scripture says, he is from the seat of David.
He is from the little village of Bethlehem.
That's where the Messiah comes from.
Don't you know anything?
He can't be the Messiah.
You don't get a Messiah from Galilee.
You don't get a Messiah from Nazareth.
The Messiah will be from Bethlehem.
And there were misconceptions.
Some people knew that Jesus was from Nazareth.
And they never searched any further.
He is Jesus the Nazarene, isn't he?
And the logic went like this.
A Messiah will come from Bethlehem.
The king of the Jews will be born in Bethlehem.
But Jesus is not from Bethlehem.
He is from Nazareth.
He is from Galilee.
Therefore Jesus cannot be the Messiah.
But they were wrong.
And so there is a reason why Matthew in the writing of his gospel
wants to realise that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
Just like Micah, the prophet, had said he would be born 700 years before.
It's important to know that.
And what Matthew is implying here, and it's saying to you and I,
he's saying don't take a superficial view of Jesus.
Especially in this matter of his birth.
Don't say, oh he came from Nazareth.
Search a little deeper.
Check out the details.
He was born in Bethlehem.
The place of David's birth.
The place is important.
Don't take a superficial view of Jesus.
There are some people, they do that, don't they?
Some people have problems with the accounts about Jesus.
The virgin birth.
Or the miracles he did.
Or his resurrection.
And so lots of people have problems with Jesus.
And yet they've never looked at the evidence.
They haven't even looked at the source documents.
They've not taken one of the four gospels
and read them through slowly and carefully.
And asked, what do the sources say?
About this Jesus.
Let me look at the data.
Let me expose myself.
And sometimes we as Christians,
we can very easily take a superficial view.
And when we do that,
we are bound to get a wrong perception.
That's why I think it's important,
even though you may have no problem
in believing what the New Testament says about Jesus,
we can still have a very superficial knowledge of him.
That's why it's such a good exercise, isn't it,
for Christians to take the four gospels paragraph by paragraph
and read it through slowly.
And as you walk your way through, at each point say,
what is this telling me about the sort of Lord I have?
What is this teaching me about Jesus here?
What does it encourage me to believe?
What does it shock me?
How does this disturb me?
Try to hear him.
Don't let the familiarity with you throw you off.
Ask yourself, what does he mean?
How close is he striking?
Do I really believe that about Jesus?
And so on.
Don't take a superficial view about Jesus.
That's why you mentioned the place.
Now secondly, Matthew says to us,
this visit is important to us
because of the people involved.
You see the people in verses 1 and 2?
There's one set of them.
There are wise men, magi, we used to call them.
We don't know where they came from.
They are from the east somewhere.
May have been from Babylon.
May have been from Persia.
May have been from Iran.
Perhaps.
All we know is that they are Gentiles.
They are pagans.
And they may well have been pagan astrologers.
And they are coming to worship the king.
Whom they believe has been born.
So on the one hand, you've got pagan Gentiles
who've got no light at all.
Or very little from the Jewish scriptures.
And then you've got another group in verses 4-6.
You have the chief priests and the theologians.
The scribes of the people.
And they are the ones that have the scriptures.
They know the prophecy.
And they are the ones that answer the question
that Herod pops to them.
And you see something of a contrast.
And Matthew is deliberately contrasting.
On the one hand, you have pagan Gentiles
who have very little knowledge of God's truth.
And yet they are here to worship God's king.
And on the other hand, you have God's professing people.
The clergy.
The Bible students.
The people that know the answers.
And what does the scripture say?
They don't go to worship him.
Or at least they don't seem to have any inclination to do it.
It's interesting, isn't it?
In Matthew's Gospel in chapter 2, verse 4
you have this group of priests and theologians
who answer the Bible's questions
about Jesus' birth and the place of it.
You have the same group at the end of Matthew's Gospel.
Chapter 27, verse 41 and 42.
And they mock.
And they scorn.
The Saviour has been born.
So you have these two groups.
Do you see the contrast?
On the one hand,
you have some who knew
the facts about Jesus.
And you have the others
who adore him.
You have some who study about Jesus.
You have others who bend the knee to Jesus.
It doesn't mean that you can't have both.
But it is interesting, isn't it?
That the contrast is here very deliberately.
It's quite interesting.
The Magi, the wise men,
did not get connected with Jesus
apart from the scriptures.
The Magi needed the Bible
to lead them
to worship the king.
But Matthew also shows us
a group of people
that have the light of scriptures
and yet it didn't lead them
to worship the king.
And that is a great warning
for you and for me.
Because we immediately
put ourselves into the shoes
or the sandals
of the Magi, don't we?
But actually, by analogy,
we are the ones who stand
in the sandals
of the chief priests and the scribes.
We are the ones we meet today
as the professing people of God.
Like the Jewish nation was
at that time.
And here is the warning.
You can have a certain amount
of knowledge about God,
can't you?
You can have a certain amount
of knowledge about God's truth.
You can have the scriptures.
You can answer questions
about the scriptures.
And somehow your sensibilities
have become dull.
And it doesn't move you.
They don't bring you
the rest of the way
to fall down
and worship
the one of whom
the scriptures speak.
Somehow it's like
we can get almost
overexposed to Jesus.
We know a lot about him,
but it doesn't lead us
to know him.
Let me give you
a stupid illustration.
I don't think,
I'm the first one
to think of it,
but I can't word out
who the author was.
Suppose you came in
to this building
this morning
and sitting on the
back left hand side
was a polar bear.
It's a different
kind of polar bear.
It was a massive polar bear.
It had orange stripes
all over it.
It was wearing
Adidas trainers
on its back feet
and it was eating
a massive ice cream.
It was a great polar bear
sitting at the back.
When you came in
you took your service sheet,
you picked up a Bible
and you looked across
and you jumped
out of your skin
and you went to grab
one of the deacons
or one of the leaders.
What is going on?
He shouted.
But the bear
just sits there
eating his ice cream
and he doesn't sit.
He doesn't move.
Doesn't stir.
He just sat there
as bears do.
Stood for the hymns,
opened the Bible reading,
sat down.
Didn't bother you.
You were all a little bit
nervous during the service
but the bear
didn't inflict any harm.
It just sat there
licking its ice cream.
You would have
all sorts of problems
with that.
And all of you
would crowd
into the front rows
although you have
vowed as Presbyterians
never ever do that.
But you would leave
very tentatively.
Come back the next week.
You walk in.
The bear is there.
The polar bear.
And you've got problems.
Again.
You nervously go
through the service.
The following week
you come again.
You might tremble
a little bit
but gradually
you get used to it.
And if the bear
kept coming for
four weeks,
six weeks,
ten weeks,
eighteen weeks,
six months,
eight months
and that bear
was still there
and never harmed anyone.
He was just always
there at eleven a.m.
And when he left
he just quietly
shook my hand
on the way out.
In the end
you wouldn't give it
any thought.
That is until you
brought your friends
to church.
And as they came
into Drake Manor
High School
they're a bit nervous
coming into church
anyway.
They enter the hall
and they grab your sleeve
and they say
what is that?
And you say
don't worry.
It's just a polar bear
eating ice cream.
Comes here all the time.
Doesn't bother us at all.
Don't give it a second thought.
Don't worry about it.
Now that is a ridiculous
illustration isn't it?
But that is the danger
sometimes with our
knowledge and our
relationship to the
Lord Jesus.
Maybe we've become
so familiar with him
that it may be
difficult to know him.
And the edge
of Jesus' word
the sharp edges
of Jesus' word
may cease to cut us
like they ought.
And we need to be
aware of that.
We can stand
in their sandals
and we need to ask
the Lord Jesus Christ
don't we
for a soft heart.
That all our
exposure to his
word would not
just cause us
to have knowledge
of him in our heads
but we would have
leased a bend
to adore him
because of the
word he gives us.
Now thirdly
this visit was important
because of the
politics involved.
Now you see those
politics in verse 3
and verse 7
and verse 8.
It's the trouble
of Herod.
So look at verse 3
it says
when Herod the king
heard this
he was troubled
and all Jerusalem
with him.
King Herod was
troubled
and all Jerusalem
was troubled
and all Jerusalem
was troubled
because Herod
was troubled.
You see this
Herod that is
mentioned here
is Herod the Great
as he's called
he began to reign
in 40 BC
and he was
almost at the
end of his reign
at this point.
He was a very
very able man
a very able king
but a very cruel king
and especially
towards the end
of his reign
he got more
and more suspicious
and paranoid.
Paranoid of any
rivals that might
be raised up to him.
In fact during
his reign
he either arranged
the murder
or had executed
three of his
brother-in-laws
and one wife
who was his
passionate favourite.
One mother-in-law
and three sons
among others.
And that prompted
Augustus to remark
that it would be
better to be
Herod's pig
than his son.
And that is why
when Herod was
troubled
all of Jerusalem
was troubled.
And Herod was
troubled because
there is another
king.
A king of the
Jews.
Herod was not
a king
of David's
life.
He was a
Roman
appointed king
but Herod
smells trouble.
And some of us
think Herod
is being irrational.
Some Christians
think
that they think
well if only I
could have
half an hour
with Herod
I'm sure I
could calm him
down.
I'm sure I
could explain
to Herod
there's no real
conflict here.
Some Christians
would want to
say if only
Herod you
understood the
sort of king
Jesus is.
And if you
just realise
the kind of
kingdom that
Jesus is trying
to bring in
if I could
just tell
Jesus
if I could
tell Herod
Jesus isn't
interested in
establishing an
earthly and a
political kingdom
but Jesus
kingdom is
spiritual and
heavenly
whatever that
is.
Jesus only
wants to
change the
hearts of
men Herod
and he's
got no plan
to undermine
your regime.
Some people
would like to
say that to
Herod.
Some Christians.
But actually I
want to argue
with you that
Herod is
right.
That Herod
has understood
something very
profound.
Some Christians
would be dying
to say to
Herod there's a
lot of truth in
what you say
but a lot of
error.
Sometimes when we
say Jesus came
to establish a
spiritual kingdom
and a heavenly
kingdom.
very often
those words
are used in
the sense that
Jesus' kingdom
doesn't really
have any
connection with
the real
world.
Where there
are despots
and tyrants
and so on
but that is
not what we
believe.
Is it?
It's not what
we pray.
It's not what
you have
prayed.
Because we
have prayed
this morning
and said
your kingdom
come.
Your will
be done.
On earth
as it is
in heaven.
And what
does it
mean for
God's
kingdom to
come?
What does
it mean for
God's
kingdom to
come in
its fullness?
It means
what the
next phrase
is, isn't
it?
Thy will be
done on
earth as
it is in
heaven.
It is that
spiritual
certainty
because it
is God's
kingdom.
Is it
spiritual?
Yes, of
course it
is.
Is it
political?
You bet
it is.
Because
eventually it
is going to
come.
God's
will is
going to
be done
on earth
as it
is in
heaven.
And that
is very
political.
And we
need to be
aware.
Because there's
a sense in
which even
reformed
Christians can
make Jesus
a religious
figure, a
very safe
religious figure.
And we
don't say
he is
political.
But he
is.
The earth
shall be
filled with
the knowledge
of the
Lord as
the waters
cover the
sea.
And if we
don't believe
that Jesus
kingdom is
political, then
we've got to
turn the
psalm to him,
we've got to
rip it out of
our Bibles.
My concern,
and my point
is that there
is a sense in
which Harold
is right on
target.
He's right on
target about
the political
situation.
What is
that going
to be?
When is
that going
to be?
The point
is that
Jesus did
not come
in his
first coming
to establish
that kingdom
to be sure
that these
are not
just figures
of speech.
When the
Bible says
kings will
bow down
before him
and pay
homage to
him,
when it
says all
nations will
serve him,
the Bible
speaks of
that as
truth.
there is
this political
aspect.
The time
will come
when Jesus'
kingdom will
come and
his reign
has to do
with real
nations and
real kings
and real
despots.
Why do you
think political
powers persecute
the church?
They know,
don't they?
They know
that the
church is a
body that
prays subversive
prayers.
we come
and meet
subversively
this morning.
We pray
prayers like
your kingdom
come,
your will
be done
on earth
as it
is in
heaven.
So I
think
Herod has
got his
words about
it.
He may
not have
realised the
whole pattern
of Jesus'
kingdom,
but he
knew that
if there
was another
king,
he himself
was not
the king.
And that
troubled him.
And that
is something
that we
must continually
remind ourselves
of.
And it's
something that
we must
remind the
world's
rulers of
when we
get the
opportunity.
Whether it's
Theresa May
or Donald
Trump,
or Kim
Yomain,
or Vladimir
Putin,
whoever it
is, they
are not
the ultimate
king.
The politics
comes home
to us.
Each of us,
doesn't it?
Each of us
has a
Herod nature
in ourselves.
none of us
like the
idea of
someone else
reigning in
our place.
And when we
hear that the
Lord Jesus
Christ is
just that,
he is
Lord,
and he
is the
king,
and that
the custom
of kings
is to
rule,
and if
Jesus is
the king,
well that
means I'm
not.
And he
will rule
my life.
And that
means I
don't have
sway anymore.
more.
And that
can make me
just as
troubled.
Herod
gets Christmas
right.
Herod
realises
someone's
got to
die.
Someone's
got to
die.
That's
another
sermon.
These are the
politics that are
involved.
And then
Matthew says
this visit is
important because
of the
providence
that's involved.
Do you see
that?
The providence
that's involved.
Look at
verse 12.
Sarat says
of his
scheme,
verse 7
and 8.
He told
those magi,
are you
sending them
to Bethlehem?
And he
says,
you fellas,
you come
back to
me.
When you
search for
this child
and you
find him,
bring him
backwards so
that I
can go
and worship
him too.
It's
pious
sounding
gobbledygook.
But that
was his
plan.
His plan
was that
these men
would do
his bidding.
He schemes,
he plots.
And when
they finally
come to
report to
him the
location
of the
child,
he would
proceed to
go and
not worship
but liquidate
his newest
rival.
A little
mole blood
never upset
Herod's
stomach.
So this
was his
plan.
I will
wait for
these weird
astrologers
from the
east to
come back
and then I
will proceed.
And it's
interesting,
verse 12,
it says,
doesn't it,
I'm being
warned in a
dream not to
return to
Herod.
They departed
to their
own country
by another
way.
And it's
interesting,
isn't it,
that the
most well
laid plans
by an
earthly
tyrant,
the most
cunning,
crafty
ways by
the rulers
of this
world are
stood on
their head
by the
God of
heaven,
by a
mere
dream.
And that
is what
happens,
God's
providence
is operating.
this
mysterious
and yet
clear manner
of his
working,
in order
to preserve
his
kingdom
and his
people.
And we
know,
don't we,
we know
that it
doesn't
guarantee
each one
of us
that we
will have
immunity
from every
distress.
But it
does say
here,
it does
imply that
no earthly
tyrant,
no matter
how powerful
he may
seem,
can proceed
to destroy
God's
king and
God's
kingdom.
It only
takes a
dream to
upset the
leaders of
the world.
Don't be led
away by the
quietness in
verse 12.
Don't be led
astray by that.
There's no
trumpet and
fanfare,
there's no
earthquake,
there's just
being warned
in a dream.
And some
of us need
to learn that
in the
providence
that God
works in
our lives,
it is very,
very often
undramatic
and unspectacular.
And so
carry this
over into
your own
life,
God's
providence.
That God
is only
present in
your life
if there
is noise
that's
rubbish.
Or if
there's
something
dramatic.
God
works out
his plans
very quietly.
And you
need to
have your
ears
turned,
tuned,
and your
eyes
strange.
Or you
might miss
the quiet
working of
the God
of heaven
working on
behalf of
his people.
It is a
most important
visit because
of the
place,
and because
of the
people,
and because
of the
politics,
and because
of the
providence
of God.
And Matthew
hopes that you
will never
forget it.
Let's pray.
of the
little
of the
people.
tell you
a
little
Let's
a
little