Wise Men, Wicked Men . . . and Us, Part 3

For 2,000 years, well-meaning people have been writing songs and telling stories about the very first Christmas. In doing so, sometimes the artists and writers have taken liberty with the facts.

And over time, traditional renditions of the Christmas story have actually morphed into fallacy. In this building, Chuck Swindoll helps us set the record straight, especially as it pertains to false ideas about the guiding star, the three kings, and even the journey to Bethlehem. Chuck is teaching from Matthew Chapter 2. He titled today's message, Wise Men, Wicked Men, and Us. Let's focus now on the Magi. Who were these Magi? They were not kings, though they were people of great respect. They represent, says the legend and myth, that they were the three sons or representatives of the three sons of Noah. Hence, what is often pictured in nativity scenes as dark-skinned, as an Ethiopian. The truth is, all we know for sure is what we find here in the second chapter of Matthew. Everything else is assumed, is not based on the Scriptures. We're never told there were three.

They are never called kings. And by the way, it is never revealed the mode of transportation, though they're always shown on camels. Most likely they came from the Persian Empire. They were skilled in philosophy, ancient medicine, and natural sciences. They were keenly interested in the stars. Most of the Magi were students of astronomy, which often led them into astrology. Notice they saw his star from wherever they were. I'm intrigued about this star because they saw that star when they first became aware of the birth of the King of the Jews.

But they don't see the star again until they're wondering where he is and it appears, notice, over Bethlehem. Nothing in Scripture says they followed it all the way to Jerusalem. Then how did they know to come to what the Romans called Palestine?

Which I think is a crucial question. How would they know in Persia that a king of the Jews is born way over there in Israel? During that period of time in history, you'll find this fascinating, there was widespread expectation of the coming of one who would be a great deliverer, a great king. All of that is fascinating information, though it is not set forth clearly in the Scriptures.

It doesn't make sense. It helps explain how those living in the East would be aware of a king born west of them and would explain their reason for interpreting the brightness of the star. Perhaps I should return and tell you what I believe about the star. I believe it is evidence of the glory of God. I believe it is in the heavens and evidence of the glory of God that finds its appearance at the time of his birth and then later at the place of his location when they go looking for him. Now then, look at the passage of Scripture. They wanted to know where is the newborn king of the Jews. Herod didn't know. He was not aware of this information. He didn't know the Scriptures. But he had with him counselors who did study the Scriptures and so he was deeply disturbed when he heard this.

Why? Because he's insanely jealous. He's suspicious of anyone who would become king in his place. So King Herod calls for his counselors and says to ask them where is he supposed to be born. Notice they knew. They knew their Bible, that is the Old Testament, and they quote from Micah chapter 5 verse 2.

Look at this. In Bethlehem in Judea they said, for this is what the prophet wrote. Now they're the prophet. They're able to quote him. 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 of my people Israel. They knew the prophecy. And so they quoted.

Now watch closely. Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men. This is never discussed in any story about the wise men and their life.

It's a very important part of it. He calls them together. The public isn't invited.

It's a private gathering. And we notice he learned from them the time when the first star appeared. If you could read the sentence in the Greek, you would read words like exactly the time. He wanted to know precisely when did you first see that star. What's the big deal? Well, he's determining the age of the child or attempting to. They think back of when the star first appeared. They want to know where is the child now that we're here. He wants to know when did you see the star? He told them after they had answered when the star first appeared, he told them go to Bethlehem, which he had learned about from his counselors. Search carefully for the child. A similar sentence appears here.

In other words, carefully or exactly. Make sure you find the child. And once you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too. You and I know as we read this that that was a ruse, that was deceitful. If he wanted to worship him so greatly, he would have gone with them. But he doesn't. He's making his plans to kill him. And so he says to them with deceitful motive, you go ahead and you find him and then come back through here and tell me where he is and I too will then go and worship. Please observe now the star comes back that the one they had seen and he doesn't say it guided them throughout their journey, but says it guided them to Bethlehem. So I take it that the brightness appears and they went ahead of them, stopping over the place where the child was. Now this is a beautiful scene and I don't want to be pedantic about this.

I want you to let this land with full force. These are men who have traveled, some have said, over a thousand miles as they trekked the journey geographically. Certainly it was hundreds and hundreds of miles they traveled, believing that the king was born. They have come all the way.

They've gone through the interview with Herod. They've now come to the house. We don't know where the house is today.

It cannot be located. We don't even know where the inn is, though all kinds of traditional places are mentioned. We simply know that they arrived and, verse 11, they entered the oikos, the house. And they saw the child, Pydeon, not the infant, in a manger. Maybe he was by now walking. He certainly isn't an infant held in arms because of all the time it took between when they saw the star and the time it took to get there as they traveled.

So they enter the house. They saw the child with his mother Mary. Notice how carefully Matthew guards the birth of the Savior, not his father.

His father is God himself. The mother on this earth is Mary. And please observe, instantly realizing who he is, their response is they bowed down and they worshiped him. They didn't worship her. Mary is never to be worshiped.

The worship of Mary is called Mariolatry. It came as a part of religious teachings. Really, it can be traced back even beyond that to idol worship. To worship anyone other than God is an idol, is to worship an idol, whether the thing worshiped is living or dead or lifeless altogether. They do not worship her. They worship him. But following the worship for however long that lasted, they opened their gifts. And thankfully, tradition has maintained this correctly. First, they brought gold.

How much? We don't know. But this was of inestimable value. Practically speaking, stop and think, this is a gift for royalty. Most royal thrones have gold.

Most royal crowns are marked by gold. It is a precious metal, a metal, M-E-D-A-L, a metal for a king. A M-E-T-A-L.

I'm better in history than I am in spelling, aren't I? M-E-T-A-L. So we have the precious metal.

Stop and think about it. They will soon have to escape for Egypt because Herod is out to kill the children. We'll read that next time. They're peasants. They were barely able to make it to Bethlehem with his salary. How could they ever get to Egypt? It's a long ways from Bethlehem. They used the gift of the gold to help finance their trip there and their time as they stayed there. Please observe they also brought frankincense, costly oil, sometimes referred to as a nard. It's a lovely aromatic fragrance. Sometimes it comes in oil form, sometimes in a gum form. But they brought that to him.

How much? We're not told. But this is what a priest would use in the worship in the temple and back in the tabernacle. Incense would be used. Frankincense was one of the incense that they would use. It was for a priest.

Jesus Christ our king, gold. Jesus Christ our high priest, frankincense. And then they brought myrrh. It was used for the embalming of bodies. As you know, when a person died in that era, he was wrapped like a mummy in long strips of cloth.

And aromatic spices were tucked in to cover the smell of a decaying body until it's placed in the tomb. And even after that myrrh was one of those used, he was the one who came to die. Unlike all the rest of us who come to live, Christ's great goal in arriving was to reach the destination for which he was sent. And that was death on a cross, which explains, while hanging on the cross, he would utter the words, it is finished.

We would say, mission accomplished, goal reached. And now they give him myrrh, which was a reminder of the death that he was to die. Now there's something I've never seen written up and I've never read from anyone else.

So take it for whatever it's worth. Look at verse 12. When it was time to leave, we're not told when. We're not told how long they stayed. When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country in another route, by another route.

Why? For God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod. So they had spent the night there. That's why that seems humorous to me, but I've always seen them sitting on camels. Like they're there forever on camels, dumping the goods and walking away. No, they get down and they're worshipping, they're bowing down. They're with him for a period of time. They may have slept there in the house, they may have slept near the house, but they had to have slept to have had a dream. This is the first of other destination dreams that we'll read about next time that prove to be of great importance to the safety of the Christ child. I would love to go into this further, but I think that's far enough. Let's examine the responses, because they're the same responses today. First, I find in the account of these 12 verses, indifference.

Where is indifference found here? Well, how about these, whom Herod called together, the leading priests and the teachers. Yours may read high priest or Sadducees or whatever the official title. These are the religious teachers of law, teachers of religious law. They knew exactly where he was, but they didn't go to worship. They were busy about learning the scriptures, but it made no difference to them.

They were involved in all kinds of things. It was about as exciting as an afternoon yawn to them, as it is for some of you. Who have been through years of one Christmas after another, you could pretty well tell the story. But it's never made that much difference in your life. Maybe it's because so much is happening around us that occupies us and makes us indifferent. I came across the words of Dr. Bob Moorhead, a retired pastor near Seattle, who wrote of our times. We now have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We spend more but have less, we buy more but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences yet less time. We have more degrees but less common sense, more knowledge but less judgment, more experts yet more problems. We have more gadgets but less satisfaction, more medicine, less wellness.

We take more vitamins but we see fewer results. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, and we read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too little. No wonder we're indifferent. We've got all this other stuff to keep up with, none of which satisfies. If that has become your lifestyle, you're going to miss the whole thing for this next Christmas. It'll be just another season of the year, just another nativity scene, just another group of magi who've come for the purpose of worship. But the question is, will you worship?

And if not, why not? It may be you've gone a step further and it's not just indifferent. You may not be the monster he was but you may feel downright hostile regarding this whole message of Christianity.

There's a growing group of people like that and they're publishing more and more. Douglas Sean O'Donnell writes of one of them, Christopher Hitchens is his name, who has written, God is Not Great. In that book, he describes the four gospels as being full of contradictions. In fact, he makes the statement they couldn't agree on anything significant. I found that amazing because they did agree that Christ was born of a virgin, all of them. They did agree that his crucifixion was crucial. They did agree on the cross. They did agree that he was literally and bodily raised from the dead.

They did agree on these major things. In addition to his self-contradictory statements, many of his assertions seem to be driven by ungrounded hostility. Listen to this. Hitchens writes, the doings and sayings of Moses and Abraham and Jesus are so ill-founded and so inconsistent as well as so often immoral. He refers to the Christian practice of teaching our children these truths of our faith as child abuse.

There's a whole chapter given to that. At first, that kind of hostility is surprising. And then as O'Donnell writes, I thought to myself, if God doesn't exist, or if Jesus wasn't the Son of God, why make a big fuss? Why write a book against religion? People believe in far crazier things than our religion. Why attack Christianity?

Why do these so-called scientists, as many of them are, attack the faith that has thus far produced the world's greatest scientists and mathematicians, the likes of Newton and Pascal? But then I remembered that an intelligent person only attacks what he knows to be a real threat to his way of thinking and, more importantly, his way of living. And Jesus poses such a threat. Maybe you find yourself, and I know you're in the minority in this gathering, but you may find yourself hostile to some of this teaching because Jesus has become a threat. If he has his way, you're going to be dethroned from your own life. It won't revolve around you.

You will live your life continually concerned about those who will outdo you. And I would urge you at this Christmas season to set aside your hostility, let the facts speak for themselves, and come and, like the wise men, do what wise men and women still do. Bow down and worship him, who is the king above all who will call themselves king and lord over all who will try to make you think they're lords. Well then, have I ruined a great Christmas carol for you? You can change it to we two kings, but the poetry won't work because they're the other kings.

They're not the ones that arrived. You could sing we three magi, but we don't know it's three, so you could sing we dozen wise men, but it won't rhyme. So just stay with we three kings and understand that the pastor who wrote that meant well.

He was, after all, an Episcopalian. It's just a joke. It's just a joke.

Relax. Don't write me. I love that carol. I sing it every Christmas. We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts, we traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.

I'm not sure they followed it. Star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright, westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to an ancient light. Savior Christ the Lord. Bow with me, please. Let me address you who would yawn at a lot of this. You're feeling indifferent about it.

You've got so much to keep up to. After all, your big concern is buying that new phone or that next gadget or that whatever new car, new clothes, all of which will be burnt up when his kingdom comes. Turn to him now. You're surrounded by those who have trusted in him, even though there are more things we don't know than those things we do know. But the things we do know, we place our trust in him. We know he died for us. We know he lives to make our life meaningful and purposeful. We know that only he can take away our guilt and shame. Only he is worthy of our worship, not his mother, not the wise men. Only he is worthy to be praised.

Trust him now, won't you? Right where you're sitting, believe on the Lord Jesus. You will be born again. Accept our worship, our Father, as sincere as the Magi of ancient days. Give us the same curiosity they had, a willingness to go wherever he is and to seek him, whatever he may represent. And to release to him our treasures and to bow down, all before him and none other, as our Lord Jesus Christ. Help those today for whom this sounds strange. Wherever they may be, whatever may be their circumstance, bring them to their knees as they give their hearts to Jesus.

In his name we pray, everyone said, Amen. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Matthew, the New Testament writer, tells the story of Israel's king from his arrival in Bethlehem through his earthly ministry all the way to the great commission in which he commanded us to make disciples around the world. In order to make the most of this brand-new teaching series from Chuck, we're inviting you to add Swindoll's Living Insights commentary on Matthew to your personal collection. The commentary comes in two hardbound volumes, and they're written in a style that's easy to understand and the format is simple to navigate. Chuck's practical insight, conversational style and humor bring a warmth and accessibility rarely found in commentaries. And these are excellent reference books that belong in the library of anyone who's a student of the Bible.

You'll be pulling them off the shelf and looking up details for years to come. To purchase Swindoll's Living Insights commentary on Matthew, go to insight.org slash store. If you prefer, you can call us.

If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888. Insight for Living Ministries is a nonprofit organization fueled not by the purchase of commentaries, but through the voluntary donations of grateful supporters. And we're grateful for the loyal friends who've come alongside us with their generous donations.

Our friends and families are facing complicated cultural issues today. And men and women all over North America and around the world are looking to Insight for Living for biblical clarity and direction. To help us continue, you can give a donation today through our convenient mobile app. You can also give a donation 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 Matthew chapter 2 continues Thursday, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Wise Men, Wicked Men, 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.