Wise Men, Wicked Men . . . and Us, Part 1

Remember the game you played as a young child? One person would whisper a sentence into the ear of another, and that person would discreetly repeat the sentence to the next, until the statement made its way all around the circle.

By the time it reached the last participant, the final statement sounded nothing like the original. Well, sometimes that happens with far more important information, such as Biblical history. And today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll exposes some of the false narrative we've adopted about the very first Christmas. We begin by reading from Matthew chapter 2. I was thinking while sitting here with you that it is a wonderful thing to be connected to something that will go on forever and ever. The kingdom of our God is one of those few things that we can say will last forever. It's going on now in our hearts, it will become for us a reality in the future. How grateful all of us are, therefore, that what we do and how we do it has everlasting ramifications. Really only two things are eternal on this earth today, and that's the word of God and the souls of human beings.

It will last forever. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away. It will be interesting to know how God will use his word in eternity when we will then know as we are now known.

There will be no classes, there will be no one teaching, for we will know then everything there is to be known. We will know how his word will be of paramount importance as we spend our time with the one visible member of the Godhead, and that is Christ himself. It was his birth in Matthew chapter 2 when this eternal Son of God took upon himself a form of human nature and was born in a stable placed in a manger, a feeding trough next to an inn in Bethlehem.

An unobtrusive entrance could not be imagined, so much so that even in his day, most people looked with skepticism on the possibility that he would be the Messiah. Nevertheless, the truth is here and prophecy is revealed. But when we turn to the Scriptures, we turn to the source of truth, and in doing so, it frankly may mess up some Christmas carols for you.

Just a little warning in advance, I love the carols, some of the best theology in all of our hymnody is in the carols, but some of them have missed it. This tradition has taken the place of truth, and today we will read the truth of those known as the wise men. Matthew 2, 1 through 12.

I'm reading from the New Living Translation. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod. At that time, some wise men from Eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, Where is the newborn King of the Jews?

We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him. King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?

In Bethlehem in Judea, they said, For this is what the prophet wrote, And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah, For a ruler will come from you, who will be the shepherd for my people Israel. Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. Then he told them, Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child, and when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too. After this interview, the wise men went their way, and the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod. May the Lord open our eyes and help us see the scene as it originated as best we can from what we read. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scripture studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now let's resume the message titled Wise Men, Wicked Men, and Us. Isn't it amazing how often we can think we're right, but we're not? Isn't it amazing how often we can think we're right, but we're wrong? We can be convinced that we've got our facts straight only to find out that they were crooked.

They weren't straight. Josh Billings, a humorist of yesteryear, put it well. He once wrote, it's better not to know so much than to know so many things that just ain't so. Professor Jamie O'Neill decided to put that to the test. He was a university professor and he had a class, an English class, that was made up of approximately 30 students. And he had been regularly surprised at the answers they gave regarding just basic facts that they thought were true, and they said them with all sincerity, but in fact they were not.

But they were unaware of how wrong they were. So he decided to put a test together, not a trick quiz, but long enough to determine the truth. In fact, 86 questions that would be asked to his class of almost 30 students that range in age from late teens all the way up to the mid-50s. And so these are students who have been in the university about a quarter of their education.

They're not novices, they're not brand new to the school, they've been around, they've gone through high school, and they've now begun their work at the university. After giving them the test and grading the test, he realized, in fact, he was shocked at their ignorance and decided that he would write what came to be an article in one of our periodicals a number of years ago, which is where I found it. He found the sampling of things that just ain't so.

Among them, Ralph Nader is a baseball player. Charles Darwin invented gravity. Christ was born in the 16th century. J. Edgar Hoover was the 19th century president. The great Gatsby was a magician who lived in the 1930s. Franz Joseph Haydn was a songwriter who lived during the same decade. Sid Caesar was an early Roman emperor. Mark Twain invented the cotton gin. Jefferson Davis played guitar for Jefferson Airplane. Benito Mussolini was a Russian leader of the 18th century. Dwight D. Eisenhower came earlier, serving as a president during the 17th century.

Socrates was an American Indian chieftain. He added, my students were equally creative in their understanding of geography. They knew, for instance, that Managua is the capital of Vietnam. Cape Town is actually in the United States. Beirut is in Germany. Bogota, of course, is in Borneo, unless it is in China. Camp David is in Israel. Stratford-on-Avon is in Grenada, or Grenada, or Ganoda.

As one student wrote, wherever. Gdansk is in Ireland. Cologne is in the Virgin Islands. Mazatlan is in Switzerland. Belfast was variously located in Egypt, Germany, Belgium, and Italy.

Leningrad was transported to Jamaica, Montreal to Spain. And on and on and on it went. Most students answered incorrectly, far more often than correctly. In fact, several of them meticulously wrote, I don't know, 62 times, several 80 times, and some of them all 86 times. When I read about that test, it occurred to me that it would be fascinating to give you a similar test on stories surrounding the birth of Jesus. I would think you would know the facts. But when I did my own study, beginning here in Matthew chapter 2, I realized there were a number of things I hadn't learned. It happens every time I dig into the Scriptures. Someone has put it well, but your intuition is nothing more than going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of your ignorance. You realize what you don't know, or the things you thought were so just ain't so. So what have we heard about the story of the arrival of the wise men? Well, stop and think. Wise men came from the East.

Well, we've learned all our lives. We've been told there were three of them. Nothing in the Scriptures ever says here or elsewhere that there were three of them.

It's assumed because they brought three gifts, but there may have been ten or two or twelve. We know that there was more than one because of the plural. How many kings appear in this biblical account of their visit?

Well, we've learned three kings of orient are, when in fact they're never called kings, except in the carol. But there were two kings in the story, both of whom were there when the wise men arrived. One was a child, the other a monster.

We'll learn about both today. And when they arrived, where was the baby? Oh yes, Bethlehem, but where in Bethlehem? In virtually every nativity scene you will see not only Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger, you will see shepherds and you will see three sitting on camels who have come from afar.

Now, what does the Scripture teach? Were there three? Were they kings? Was the babe still in the manger? Was he still a baby?

He's never called a baby when the wise men arrived. Here's what we read. First, there's an unknown number of wise men. We don't know how many there were. And I might add, there might have been with them an entourage of soldiers. In light of the expensive gifts they carried over that many miles, they certainly would have been robbed without protection. So there were those who were armed who must surely have traveled with them or they took the biggest risk of the first century.

Surely they would not travel alone. I would imagine it was an entourage of a number of wise men and that many, if not more, soldiers who guarded them. And there were only two kings.

As I said earlier, according to what we read, one is called the King Herod and the other is the baby, the newborn King of the Jews. How about when they arrived at the place where they saw him for the first time? We have only verses 10 and 11 to guide us in the Scriptures.

No other place covers that subject in that particular detail. For example, move ahead to verse 10. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy, and they entered the house. Not an inn. The word for inn is kataluma. This is the word oikos. In Greek it means a house. So they're not at the inn, they're not in the stable. And we read that they saw the child, paidean, not brephos for baby or infant.

This is a specific Greek term for a child. Of course, he's gained some age because from his birth, until it took them the time to get there, he's grown older. How old? Eight months? Twelve? Eighteen months?

Maybe almost two years old? Since they traveled, according to the best we can tell, from an area certainly somewhere around the kingdom of Persia, or maybe Babylon, maybe Arabia, we're never told they're of origin, only they've come from the east. Now, the carol tells us they're from the Orient. We three kings from Orient are.

That rhymes better than those two kings from wherever they were. So you've got to put together the lyric so that it fits the song if you want to sing about it, but you have to live with the fact that it isn't the truth. Let me pause here and say to all of you men and women, teenagers and boys and girls hearing my voice, it's always important to allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves. Thankfully, we have the Bible in our language. Thankfully, God has communicated most of it that can be understood by anyone who can read and who's willing to think and do some research. Admittedly, some parts of it are unclear, uncertain, but I will acknowledge that as we get to the star. But let me remind you of the truth.

It's better not to know so much than to know so many things that just ain't so. So with that in mind, let's see what we're able to find by looking into the Bible and reading it for ourselves. First, let's become acquainted with the two kings. The first one is Messiah.

He is portrayed in words called, verse 2, the newborn king of the Jews. They're wondering about his whereabouts. They're asking about him, and they know him to be the king.

I'll cover that part in a few moments. How would they know way over in Persia if there was a king born in Jerusalem or near there? How would they know where to go? Since we're never told the star was with them all the way, only that it was there to announce his birth, and later when they're trying to find the specific location, it appears over Bethlehem. So now you're looking like I look when I first look into the passage.

You realize even though it seemed to be familiar to you, there are many things we can't say for sure. So let's not try to make it walk on all fours if it's not that clear. We know that this is the Son of God in light of what we have learned in other sections of scripture. God gave his son to this earth. It was from Luke 1 that he was to be born from the womb of a virgin. The birth would be miraculous, that is, the conception would be miraculous. The birth would be normal. She would have the child within her by the miracle of the Holy Spirit, which was a surprise to Mary, and certainly was a shock to Joseph, as we learned last time, who must believe her story, even though she told him quickly and left for three months to be with Elizabeth. So with all of that as a background, we know that this child is in fact the promised Messiah. But we know that he isn't a baby because he's not called a baby when the Magi first look at him.

I'll get back to that in a moment. How about the monster? He's called King Herod in verse 1, and later, Herod the King. What do we know about King Herod? Well, it's fascinating to do a study about him. There are several Herods mentioned in the New Testament.

He's the first one of the group. He came to be known as Herod the Great. He gained the trust and the respect of the Romans in his leadership in more than one civil war in what the Romans called Palestine. If you travel today in Israel, don't call it Palestine. It's insulting to the Jew to hear that. Call it Israel. The Romans gave it the name Palestine knowing that they were not using the word Israel, which is another story. But this man gained the trust being half Jew and half Gentile.

He wanted their trust because he wanted a promoted position. He was promoted to governor of Galilee in 47 B.C., Herod was. Later declared king of the Jews by 40 B.C.

You're running B.C. so the numbers go backwards as you come closer to the turn of the centuries. The Roman Senate declared him king of the Jews in 40 B.C. He loved that. Herod gave new meaning to narcissism. He was a man of enormous ego and insane suspicion and jealousy. He was a builder, which endeared him to many of the Jews because he built a number of places that would entertain them. He built theaters. He built racetracks.

He built other structures for their entertainment. He built a temple that came to be known as Herod's Temple. When you travel to Israel you can still see the foundational stones and they are massive. Hundreds of tons of one stone will weigh, all built by slaves, under the leadership of Herod. The most remarkable thing he built was the impregnable fortress known as Masada, which is located in the wilderness of Judea.

Always remember when you go to Israel to make a trip down to the desert area and visit Masada that stands high above all other places. It was his retreat. It was his place of escape when others would turn against him. It was his, if you will, summer resort.

It was the place where later numerous Jews died rather than to be conquered by those who had come to control them. A word about his jealousy. Hold on tight. You'll know now why I call him a monster. He was afraid for his position and power. Fearing his potential threat, that is the threat of others who were growing in power, instead the high priest Aristobulus, who was his wife's brother, drowned.

Interestingly, after that he provided a magnificent funeral for the now dead high priest where he pretended to weep. You see, even back then politicians cared about their image more than the truth. It's fascinating to feel the tension mounting between these political forces.

And there's much more we can learn from their struggle. We're on a fact-finding mission of sorts as we let Matthew tell us the truth about the birth of Christ. You're listening to the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. He's in the second chapter of Matthew today and he titled his message Wise Men, Wicked Men, and Us. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. If you're just now joining us, you'll want to know that this is the first time Chuck has presented a verse-by-verse study through all 28 chapters of Matthew. And as you take this journey alongside King Jesus and his birth in Bethlehem to his great commission, we're confident your love for Jesus will grow deeper. Along with the roll out of this new series, Chuck's commentary on Matthew was recently released as well. Actually, the commentary comes in two hardbound volumes and they're ready for purchase right now. These two reference books will serve as a natural complement to what you'll be hearing on Insight for Living in the weeks and months ahead. To purchase Swindoll's Living Insights commentary on Matthew, go to insight.org slash store or just give us a phone call.

If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888. Chuck's personal mission is to help you learn more about the Bible and its relevance to your life. It's all made possible, of course, because people just like you give voluntary donations. And we're grateful for those who've internalized this mission and made it their own as well. Through your gifts, you're providing a constant source of reliable Bible teaching for people who've come to rely on Chuck's daily presence. To provide for someone else what was once provided to you, we invite you to give a donation today by calling us. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or give online at insight.org. Chuck Swindoll's study in the book of Matthew continues tomorrow, Tuesday, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Wise Man, Wicked Man, and Us, was copyrighted in 2014 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.