Wise Men’s Delight - Part A

We want to look at, first of all, their identity, the identity of these magi, these wise men. Look at verse 1. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.

It's not a lot of information. That's all we got. Who were the wise men who appeared on the scene after Jesus' birth, having followed a star to Jerusalem? Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip shares a message about the men from afar who came to worship the king. We're glad you've tuned in today. Connect with Skip is all about helping listeners like you strengthen your walk with Christ and grow strong in His word. And as we prepare to close out the year, we want to invite you to connect others like you to the life-changing power of the gospel with a gift to help keep these teachings you love on the air as we step into 2024. Your support helps keep this broadcast going and growing for you and many others in the year ahead. Just call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate.

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We're going to be in Matthew 2. There was an older man, a Scottish man. He lived in Edinburgh, Scotland.

And he and his wife had two adult children that lived down in London, so pretty far away down south in England. And a few days before Christmas, the old man got on the phone and called his son down in London and said, I've got terrible news. Your mother and I are getting a divorce.

Been married to her 40 years, tried to change her, kind of do it. I'm giving up. And he said, his son said, Dad, don't do it. Don't do it.

Please, don't do it. I'm coming up. We've got to talk about this. And then the old man said, it's too late. I've tried. Call your sister.

I'm tired of talking about it. And he hung up. So brother calls sister, says, Mom and Dad are getting a divorce. Horrible news. Bad, bad, bad news. She calls Dad and says, Dad, please don't do this. I'm coming up.

We've got to talk about this. So then when the old man hung up the phone, he turns to his wife with a big smile, grabs her hand and says, they're coming for Christmas and we do not have to pay a thing. Good Scotsman there. You know, what's terrible news for some people is good news for other people. What was terrible news for Herod the Great, a baby has been born the king of the Jews when he heard that news. Not good news for him. For the wise men, it was great news.

And for the world, it continues to be great news. We have been talking about a single theme the last few weeks. The theme is Into the Night. And the first message on that was found in Luke's Gospel Chapter 2, Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem. They were turned into the night by the innkeeper. And we followed that up with the shepherds who were watching their flocks by night. They went out into the night to come to Bethlehem to find Jesus. After they found him, they went back out into the night to tell everybody about the event. Now, we look at this very famous story of a group of travelers who are from the east and they're following a star.

It's in Matthew Chapter 2, the story of the wise men. Now, you know the night sky has been a source for navigation for centuries. In fact, most of world history, people have found their way around by looking at the stars. Technology that we enjoy like satellites, GPS, all that's recent. But for generations, people looked up at the sky, found the North Star, observed the movement of constellations, figured out latitude and longitude, and took their journey. So caravans and ships and armies have all used the stars to find their course for travel. But this star is markedly different.

This star is very unusual, as you probably already know, and at least you will see. Now, a couple of preliminaries about this Christmas story. And the first thing you need to know is it did not happen at Christmas. It must have happened several months later because it says in Chapter 2, Verse 1, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

We're not giving a time signature here, so we don't know how much time. But after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. Then go down to Verse 11 and notice that in Verse 11 that Jesus is no longer in a stable. He's not out in the caravansary where he may have been born. But it says, And when they had come into the house," so he's in some kind of abode, some kind of a house, some rented house that they're enjoying in the city of Bethlehem.

And he's no longer a baby, for it says, When they had come into the house, they saw the young child. So because of this, most scholars, most commentators believe that it has been about 13 months to 24 months later, that the wise men show up in Bethlehem. Well, what that means is we should be singing, We three kings of Orient are, like in a year or a year and a half or something like that. And perhaps we shouldn't be singing it at all because there weren't necessarily three kings. We say three. Why do we say there's three kings?

Because of the what? The gifts, because there's gold, frankincense, and myrrh. So somebody just came along and said, Well, there's three gifts, three kings. But it doesn't say there were three kings.

That's number one. Number two, they weren't kings. They're looking for a king. We want to find the one who has been born the king of the Jews, but they themselves are not kings. And then third, they're really not from the Orient as we know the Orient, like China or Japan or Myanmar or any of those Oriental places.

They're from the Middle East, but they are from a place east of where Israel is. So to really understand the story, I want to fill in some historical blanks, if you don't mind today. And to do that, I'm going to have to strip away some of the baggage.

Sometimes we don't like that. You take away the baggage from the Christmas songs and from the Christmas cards, and you get down to really what happened. So we want to look at this, and we want to look at, first of all, their identity, the identity of these magi, these wise men. Look at verse 1. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.

It's not a lot of information, but that's all we got. We have this plus a little bit of ancient history plus some texts in the Old Testament that will help us get a composite of their identity, who they were. They seem to come out of nowhere. They get an audience with Herod, and they scare the snot out of everybody in Jerusalem. By just showing up, it moves Herod.

It troubles him and everybody else with him. So over the years, traditions have developed, myths have developed. And, ladies and gentlemen, for a second appearance, we have from my nativity set the three wise men. I picked them up and looked at them. I looked at them really close.

I've looked at them all my life, but I really examined them, and I could see by looking at them the myths that we have developed over time. So somebody came along in history and said the three wise men are three representatives of the sons of Noah, sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So that is why you have one that looks brown, one that looks black, and one that looks white. That's how the nativity set shows them. In the Middle Ages, somebody came up with their names. Their names are supposedly Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior from Arabia, Ethiopia, and Tarsus. Marco Polo came along, not the guy who invented the game in the swimming pool. There was an actual Marco Polo around the 1300s. And he claimed to discover the town from which they began their journey and to which they came back and were buried. Now, I'm looking at these figures here. Two of them have crowns, and one looks like an English king or a French king of some kind.

So I'm just going to chalk this as being very, very inaccurate. In the 12th century, in Cologne, Germany, a guy by the name of a German bishop named Reinhold of Cologne claimed to have found the skulls of the three kings. And if you go to the cathedral today, they still claim the skulls are in a repository in that church. He knew, he said he knew they were the three magi because he said their eyes were still in their sockets and they were fixed toward Jerusalem. See, this is all myth. Nobody really knows how many there were.

Nobody knows their names. Nobody knows how they got to Jerusalem, what they rode on, probably not camels. All we know is they came from the east. It says, wise men from the east. Now, those words, wise men, it's one word in Greek, magoi, magoi.

That's where we get our term magi or magi. History tells us that the magoi, the magi, came from Medo-Persia, or present-day Iran, that part of the world. The Greek historian named Herodotus said they were a priestly cast of Medes from Parthia or Persia and Mesopotamia. At one time, they tried to overthrow the Persian Empire.

They were unsuccessful. Instead, they became priests, advisors to royalty, advisors to kings. Get this, they were a hereditary priesthood. Very similar to Judaism where you have a single hereditary priesthood, the Levites. You had to be a Levite to be a priest, and you pass that on generation to generation.

So it was very similar to that. Also, they were monotheistic. They believed in worshiping one god, not a multiplicity of gods like so many other religious systems. They were monotheistic. They saw fire as their principal object of worship or element for worship, so they had one altar that had a perpetual flame burning, and they had another altar on which they conducted animal sacrifices.

Again, very similar to Judaism. But for all intents and purposes, they were pagans. They believed in sorcery. They believed in both astronomy and astrology.

They didn't really see a difference between those two disciplines, and they practiced divination. Our word magic and magician comes from the term magi. It's simply a corruption of the word or term magi. Also, our word magistrate comes from the term magi because of the influence that they had on governments. The code of the magi was known as the law of the Medes and the Persians, and you may have read that phrase in the Old Testament book of Daniel. It shows up three times, the law of the Medes and the Persians.

That was the code of the magi. We know that they were living in Babylon, and they were in Medo-Persia in both of those empires as high-ranking officials. In fact, you know the story from your Bible that Nebuchadnezzar invaded different parts of the world, and in 586 B.C.

he invaded Jerusalem and brought a group of captives to Babylon and one very famous Jewish kid by the name of Daniel, as we know Daniel the prophet. Now, Daniel was important to the magi because Nebuchadnezzar one night has a dream, doesn't remember what it was, or at least he says he doesn't remember what it was, and so he says to his court of magicians and Chaldeans and magi, I had a dream last night, I need the interpretation. They said, no problem, tell us what it was and we'll tell you what it meant.

He goes, nope, that's too easy. You tell me what I dreamed and what it meant or you're dead. So they get all up in their pajamas over that, and in Daniel chapter 2 it says the Chaldeans answered the king and said, there's not a man on earth who can tell the king's matter. Therefore no king, lord or ruler has ever asked such things of any magi, magician translated here, astrologer or Chaldean. It is the difficult thing that the king requests and there is no other who can tell it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh.

Well, we know the story. Daniel comes along and goes, there's a God in heaven who knows the answer and he's going to tell me what it is and I'm going to tell the king. He does and he saves the bacon of the magi, right? They're very grateful to Daniel for saving their lives. Nebuchadnezzar makes Daniel the head over them all. Daniel chapter 2 verse 48, Nebuchadnezzar made him ruler over the whole area of Babylon and put him in charge of all the wise men of Babylon. So Daniel exerted influence on the ancient hereditary priesthood known as the magi. Fast forward now to Bethlehem when their descendants show up in Jerusalem saying, where is he who's been born king of the Jews? We've seen his star in the east.

We've come to worship him. When they showed up in Jerusalem, I'm guessing far more than three most commentators and historians think it was a large entourage They were not on camels. They would have been on fine Arabian steeds or Persian steeds. And get this, the magi were known by their hats. They wore these tall conical hats with long ear flaps that went down past their chin. They were quite a sight to behold.

Coneheads coming into Jerusalem and everybody got stirred up when they saw them. And yet here we are still singing we three kings of Orient are bearing gifts we traverse afar. When actually we should be singing we huge entourage of Parthian astronomers are from Iran bearing gifts we traverse afar.

But that would never pass the songwriting committee so we're stuck with we three kings. That's their identity. What I want you to notice now is their inquiry. Verse 2, they said, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? Interesting, they're not Jews. They're not from Judea. They are Gentiles but their question is where is he who has been born king of the Jews?

For we have seen 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. When he had gathered all the chief priests and the scribes of the people together he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him in Bethlehem of Judea for thus it is written by the prophet but you Bethlehem in the land of Judah are not the least among the rulers of Judah for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

It's always fascinated me. They didn't even have to think or check on their little computer or iPhone. Where's that text? Where's that scripture? They just knew it, top of their heads, memorize it. Micah 5, 2, quoted it. But they're so legalistic and religiously indifferent that that's all they do is quote the scripture and turn over and do their thing.

They don't go looking for him. So they come to town, they ask the question and it says Herod was trouble. Trouble, the word trouble means agitated.

Think of your washing machine, agitated. It means deeply shaken, deeply perturbed and all Jerusalem with him, everybody's troubled. You know why everybody's troubled? Because Herod's troubled, sort of like mommy ain't happy, nobody's happy. If Herod ain't happy, nobody's happy. And if Herod is troubled, everybody is troubled. Why is Herod troubled?

Because the question is where's the king? How is Herod introduced here? Herod the king. In fact, Herod was called king of the Jews. So when they come to town in these conical hats with this huge entourage and they go, we're here to worship the king of the Jews, do you know where he is?

He goes, what? I'm the king of the Jews. Now, let me give you a little bit of history about Herod, Herod the king, Herod the great. When Herod heard this question, he was threatened, obviously, because not only is another king born, but a Jewish king, a Jewish king. Now, something about Herod, Herod was not Jewish.

Herod was Idumean or Edomite. He came originally from peoples that were neighbors of the Jewish nation. How did he get to the position?

He got to this position by his father. His dad was a guy by the name of Antipater. Antipater once did Rome a favor, and the Caesar at the time, Julius Caesar, gave him Judea to rule over. And when his son, called here Herod the king or Herod the great, when his son gets to the throne, he was given the title by Rome king of the Jews, and he loved that title.

And history remembers Herod as a very wicked tyrant, killing anybody who would rival him or mess with his title king of the Jews. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Into the Night. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now we want to tell you about a resource package filled with inspiring teaching from influential leaders.

It's a fact. Many people look forward to regular Bible teachings on Connect with Skip Heitzig. If you benefit from this program, we'd like to ask you to consider an end-of-year gift to support the costs and expansion of this program. As we roll toward the end of 2023, there is still time to make a tax-deductible gift to Skip Heitzig, and for this final week of the year only, we're offering a special resource package to thank you for your gift. This set includes 10 of the most popular guest speaker messages that Skip has invited to fill his pulpit, such as Joel Rosenberg, J. Vernon McGee, and Tim LaHaye. This end-of-year collection also includes five excellent books, such as Is God Real by Lee Strobel. Here's Lee to explain what motivated him to write this book. I listened to a guy I know who's a real techie, you know, and he said, Lee, I've discovered something really fascinating. I said, what? He said, I've learned that 200 times a second around the clock, someone on planet Earth is typing into a search engine, basically the question, is God real? That's fascinating.

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Call 1-800-922-1888, or go to connectwithskip.com. Come back tomorrow to hear the conclusion of Skip's message, Wise Men's Delight, and learn more about these strange men who came seeking Jesus. Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way. Whatever sort of wise men they were before, they're really wise now because they bowed down and they worshiped Jesus. I believe, my belief, these aren't just Gentiles.

These are God-fearing Gentiles. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.