Wise Men, Real Faith

We trace the Magi’s long road from Babylon to Bethlehem and show how belief turns into action and ends in worship. Daniel’s legacy, fulfilled prophecy, and the glory that leads hungry hearts reveal a King worth every mile and every gift.

• clearing myths about the Magi and timing
• reading Matthew 2 with Micah and Isaiah
• Daniel’s influence on Gentile wisdom traditions
• faith in Hebrews 11 as action, not talk
• Shekinah glory as the guiding “star”
• gifts that proclaim King, Priest, and Sacrifice
• the contrast between worship and Herod’s fear
• bowing every part of the heart to Jesus

Transcript

Setting The Record Straight On The Magi

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If you have your Bibles this morning, let me ask you to turn to Matthew chapter 2. Matthew chapter 2, and I want to read to you part of the Christmas story that didn't happen on Christmas. You say, John, Christmas is over. Well, this passage takes place after the birth of our Savior. In fact, some of our theology we've gotten from Christmas cards and from poorly written Christmas carols, such as, We three kings of Orient are traversed afar. There weren't three of them. They weren't kings. They weren't from China. So we should stop singing that song. But there were three wise men that came in pursuit of the Savior. They knew who he was. They knew whom they sought. They knew what they believed. And they knew what they beheld.

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They beheld the glory of God. Let's read our text in Matthew chapter 2.

Reading Matthew 2 And Herod’s Alarm

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Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, note his title, Herod the King. He was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had gathered all the chief priests and the scribes and the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet. This is a quotation directly from Micah chapter 5 and verse 2. And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people, Israel. This is the fulfilled prophecy of Christ's very specific birth location. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them at what time the star appeared. They saw the star. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go, search diligently for the young child, and when ye have found him, when ye have found the young child, bring me word again that I may come and worship him also. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. When they had heard the king, they departed, and lo, the star. There it is again, this star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. They were beside themselves upon beholding the star. We're gonna talk about what that was. When they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and

Prophecy And The Star: What Was It

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worshiped him. When they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream, they should not return unto Herod. This is God speaking through dreams again, they departed into their own country another way. The glory of God is all over this scene. The glory of God shown to the shepherds that night, that very night. And I believe it was the Shekinah glory of God that was bestowed on them, and they went after hearing the great message and found the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. They who had been raising sheep and swaddling lambs in swaddling clothes, for they were preparing lambs for sacrifice. That's why the angel said unto them, This shall be a sign unto you, you shepherds, you who raise lambs for temple sacrifice, you will see thee sacrifice wrapped in swaddling clothes, just as you wrap the lambs in sodomy clothes, because you've prepared them for sacrifice, so our Savior has come to be prepared for sacrifice.

Who The Magi Were And Why They Came

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A very simple and easy outline this morning. I want to talk to you about the magi, the wise men. This is where we get our word magician and also our word magistrate. Both come from the same word. And I have seen some magistrate judges work some magicianry. And I thought, well, that makes sense. These were wise dignitaries from the Medo-Persian Empire that had learned of who Jesus was and had come to see for him for themselves. Let me ask you this. Do you believe that our Savior, born in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, born to the Virgin Mary, is the Son of God alone who has come into this world to save sinners? You believe it with all your heart? Would you journey out? Would your actions display what you believe? It did for them. I want us to look at that this morning. And then I want to look at the unwise, both the wise men, the magi, and the unwise, namely Herod, that we find here in our text. Before we go any further, let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the anointed word. Your word is our highest authority. Lord, we bow beneath it today. We've not come to align your word to us, we've come to align ourselves to your word. We pray, Lord, that you would indeed bless us. And again, I pray that your word would have free course among us in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the whole church said, Amen. These men believed, these magi believed. They were, as I said, from the Medo-Persian Empire of Babylon. They were kingmakers, they were wise men. And to some degree, they were magicians. Where we come into this, where we find them, is in the book of Daniel. Raise your hand if you're familiar with Daniel. Daniel. The one in the lion's den, yes, before King Nebuchadnezzar, the guy that tried to cook the three Hebrew kids. Remember them? The Bible says in the book of Daniel, chapter 2, that King Nebuchadnezzar, he had a dream. It troubled him so much that he called all of the magi, the wise men, his magicians. His scrum to him, and he is so troubled, he said, I have got to know the meaning of this dream. You who tell dreams, you who interpret these dreams. And they said, Tell us your dream, and we'll tell you the meaning of it. He said, No, here's how we're gonna do this one. You tell me what I dreamed, and then you tell me what it said. And the magician said, What man could do this? There's nobody that's impossible. I mean, can you think of all the wild and crazy things that you have dreamed? And then tell someone, guess what I dreamed last night. One time my wife said, Guess what I dreamed last night? And I thought, What did I do? I did something that I should apologize

Daniel’s Influence And Generational Faith

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for now, in her dream. It's impossible to do, except there was a young boy who had been taken captive as a slave from Jerusalem when the Babylonians invaded, and they took the wisest and the best, they took the youngest basically, and the most handsome, and they made them from Israeli to Babylonian. They gave them new names, they gave them new clothes, and they sent them to Babylon University to train them in the ways of the Babylonians. Daniel was one such young man who was brilliant. He had a high IQ, he was handsome to look at. And they thought we shouldn't kill the part of a nation that we conquer, we should use their brightest and their best to make us better. And that's what the Babylonians did. It took Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his three Hebrew buddies, and they did the same with them. Unfortunately, they slaughtered the rest of their family, they burned their towns and took them to Babylon. These four young kids, they remained full of integrity, though they were far from home, though no one was watching, and they could have done whatever they wanted to do. But the Bible says in Daniel 1 and 2 that they purposed in their heart that they would remain true to God. And God blessed them for their sacrifice. Daniel said, I can tell you your dream, and I can tell you what it means. He's the only man in all the world that could do that. He said, Not by my might, but by the power of God Almighty. He tells Nebuchadnezzar his dream, tells him what it means. It was horrifying, by the way. Not what Nebuchadnezzar wanted to hear, but he was glad to know the truth. When he found it to be true, he bowed himself and said, There is no other God except the God of Daniel. Read it for yourself. The Babylonian king acknowledges on his knees, prostrate, that there is no other God except the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he he becomes converted in some sense, at least for a chapter or two. Because of this, Daniel is promoted, and you can see in Daniel chapter 2, he was promoted to be head of the wise men. That's what it says in the King James Bible. Others might call them the magi, the magicians. In the doing so, David spared the lives of all of the other magi wise men because he interpreted the dream. Nebuchadnezzar didn't extinguish them from the planet Earth. They liked Daniel. Daniel began to tell them all the things that he had been taught as a young boy about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had pieces of scripture that had survived the raid of the Babylonians on Israel. And he began to teach in Babylon the Bible, the Old Testament. He began to tell them the scriptures. He began to tell them the revelation that he received by Gabriel in Daniel chapter 9, where he's given the 70 weeks prophecy that says it's to the exact day that Christ will walk into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. It's to the exact day, church. Daniel told them all of this, and Daniel preached to them. And can I tell you something? They believed this good news. Can I just pause for a second and say to you, Dad, Grandma, and grandpa, your teaching of young children, Miss Jessica, what you do with our children, it is not in vain. It is planting seeds. These men believed because of what was told them. And if no one tells them, how can they know? They believed because Daniel was bold, and Daniel proclaimed, and Daniel preached to them, and the Magi believed. They were changed for I don't know how many generations it took, but generation upon generation upon generation, the stories and the scriptures were passed down in the Medo-Persian Empire. I mean, this is out of sight of the New Testament and the Old Testament. We hear nothing of this in the minor prophets of Amos, Obadiah, Joel, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zachariah. None of this. But on the other side of the world, the gospel's being told and the gospels being believed. And generation upon generation upon generation, this preaching

Hebrews 11: Faith That Acts

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was going on, and they believed it. What did they believe? They believed what Daniel told them from the book of Numbers. Numbers 24, 17 says this. I shall see him, but not now. I shall behold him, but not nigh. There shall come a star out of Jacob. That's Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel and shall smite and conquer the Moabites and destroy the children of Shetheth. It's saying that a light will rise out of Israel, the king will come. That's in Numbers 24, 17. And the Magi believe it. Isaiah's prophecy in chapter 9 and verse 2, it says, The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. This promise, and they're thinking, and you can say, well, this is metaphorical, they're taking this literally. Can I tell you? It should be taken literally. Because when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, there was a special light that happened in that place. They also believed in Isaiah 60 and verse 3, and the Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to thy brightness of thy rising. Maybe that's where we three kings come from. Right there, okay? If there's any validity, they weren't kings, they were kingmakers.

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They found themselves in Isaiah chapter 60 and verse 3.

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They are fulfilling prophecy by showing up to see the Savior as a baby. Well, we read here in Matthew chapter 2, this does not take place the night of Christ's birth. And I've gone off on my rants with you before about all the nativity scenes that have the shepherds on one side and the wise men on the other side. The wise men were not there, they came later. So if I see your nativity scene, just Pastor John be out in your front yard stomping on the wise men. Pastor John? I told you. They came, but they came later. In fact, it could have been as much as a year, 16 months later, because the Bible says in verse 1, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east, saying, Where is he that is born? Go all the way down to verse 11. When they were come into the house, so they're no longer in the manger scene, they are in some kind of permanent dwelling, and they are in a house. And he's no longer the baby in a manger, he is now a young child. He's some measure of a toddler at this point when they come. They believed. They believed, and they came. Would you turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11? I want to show you something about belief here that I think we need to know. That this generational teaching produced a mighty thing in their lives. In fact, if you go to Hebrews chapter 11, you'll come to what's called the Hall of Fame of faith. And it's simply a list of, well, Old Testament characters. I hate calling them characters, but they're real people at real places, at real times, who loved God and believed God. And the Bible commends their faith, which led to their action. By the way, faith that does not produce action is not faith. James says, faith without works is what? You're awful quiet this morning. That's why I got to ask you a question now and again. The Bible says that our belief must be accompanied by actionable steps. Behavior must follow belief, or it's simply lip service. You can go through, he says about these people that had faith. There's a definition of faith in verse one, a beautiful definition. It says in verse four about Abel. Abel, the brother of Cain, son of Adam and Eve. He had faith. And by faith, Enoch, verse 5. By faith, verse number seven, Noah. What did Noah do? Yeah, the boat. Thank you. Some of you went to vacation Bible school. That's good. Think about this. God told Noah in the desert. And by the way, it had never rained before. Ever rained. The dew came every evening and watered the land. It had never rained, that never cloud had condensed and precipitated upon the land. And God said, Noah, I want you to build a boat and put two of every animal on it. I mean, make it a bigon. I mean make her 700 foot long, and she's gonna be 120

Belief, Behavior, And The Journey’s Scale

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foot wide. And I want you to make her four decks tall, and I'm gonna tell you exactly how to do it. It's gonna take you 150 years to build it in the desert, not near water. And by faith, Noah got to build him. And they made fun of him and they pushed his buttons and they they ridiculed him and mocked him. And it was, but don't worry, it wasn't long. They only ridiculed him and mocked him for 150 years. And he believed God for 150 years. God told him with his incredible ingenuity how to build it, and he built it. And can I point out to you little Rahab? Little Rahab and Abraham. And they're in the same place here in Hebrews 11, verse 17. By faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac that had received the promise of the only begotten son, of whom it was said that in thee Isaac thy seed shall be called, accounting to God that he was able to raise him even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure. Abraham is counted faithful by his faith. You can go down to verse 29. It says, And by faith they, the children of Israel, passed through the Red Sea, as they on dry land, and the Egyptians a saying to do were drowned. Verse 30, by faith the walls of Jericho fell down, and they were accomplished, compassed about seven days. Verse 31, by faith the harlot Rahab, she's a Gentile girl and a prostitute, perished not with them that believed in Jericho, that believed not in Jericho, and when she had received the spies with peace. And I just want to say this because I think it's pretty marvelous. Here you've got Father Abraham, the father of the nation. You know Father Abraham. Father Abraham had many sons. I've also heard that many sons had Father Abraham, and I'm one of them. Okay, I'll stop. Here he was, the patriarch of the whole movement. God said, I'm gonna start with Abraham. And how does he sanctify Abraham? By faith. Abraham believes and he leaves his father's house in this incredible adventure, and he doesn't know where he's going, but he simply walks by faith and trusts the Lord. Well, he's Abraham, not just Abraham. Abraham, Rahab. Remember, we renamed her? What do we rename Rahab? Rahab the Great. We call her Rahab the prostitute. And I thought, yeah, we can do better than that. She trusts the Lord. And here she is. She's a woman and she's a Gentile. She's not even of the nation of Israel. And how does God? She's in the hall of fame of faith. She's saved the exact same way. By faith. She believes and she behaved. Well, what was her behavior? She lied. She lied. She says, I don't know where they were. She hid them. She hid the spies. She said, I'm on team Abraham. I'm on team Yahweh here. I want to get on the right team here. By the way, you got to get on the right team here this morning.

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There will be a losing team. Doesn't matter who you are. You've got to believe. And you say, Well, I know it, but that's different than believing it.

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Amen. They believed these wise men and they came. They believed and then they behaved. And their behavior was that they struck out. Now, we only think that there were three of them because there are three gifts mentioned. I'm thinking, in the study that I've done in the last two weeks, I'm thinking there may have been as many as a thousand of them. I mean, a massive entourage from Babylon. I mean, it was incredible. There was not just these three guys, Christmas cards, and they're on camels, right? And they've got their little boxes, their trinkets. This was a massive, I'm talking it would have, it would have taken you six months possibly to make this journey. And they would have had military and they'd have had supplies and servants. And I mean, it was a massive deal. So

Shekinah Glory Versus Astral Explanations

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much so that when they arrive in Jerusalem, they immediately get an audience with Herod. And they walk up and he is glad to receive them because they are another world power. He's the king of the Jews, and they are another, and they walk up and they say, Where's the new king that is to be born? And he doesn't know his Bible. And he says, What are you talking about? He calls his scribes, and you see them, he was verse 4, when he had gathered the chief priests and the scribes, he demanded, What are they talking about, this baby? And they go, Well, everybody knows. Micah chapter 5 and verse 2. Oh you, Bethlehem, though you are little, you're not going to be insignificant, for from you shall come a governor to rule my people. But Herod didn't care about the scriptures, he did not, and so he did not behave. You see, our belief steers our behavior. James will go so far as to say, someone who says that they believe something but does not do it, they have deceived themselves. They're like a man that looks in the mirror and walks away and immediately he forgets what he looks like. By the way, this is our mirror right here. This is our scriptural mirror. This is where we find out what is true and what is actual and what is reality. And we have to ask ourselves, do I believe what's in these pages? I'm telling you, I believe it now more than ever. And what did they behold? By the way, when you believe, God will let you see some things. They saw a star. And the Bible says here in our text. Verse 2. Where is he born, king of the Jews? We have seen his star. And think about it. This is Matthew trying to write down what they had seen. This is first century. This is as primitive as can be. And they're trying to describe what they saw. They saw something, they saw a light, they saw something luminous, something beautiful, something distinct that you could follow. Some scholars, and by the way, every Christmas time on the History Channel, there'll be some show about the star that the wise men followed, and what was the star, and you'll watch the hour-long program only to come to the end, and no one knows what the star was. There's a bunch of them. Some think it was, you know, a star, a literal star that burned out, some supergiant that burned out in some far distant galaxy, and it was uh the the light was special and unique and it was visible for weeks on end. I don't think that's what it was. Some say there was an alignment of Saturn and you know, Venus and Uranus or whatever, and it was a beautiful sort of. Can I tell you what I think it is? I think it was the Shekinah glory of God. I don't think it was a star per se, like we know these burning balls of gas billions of miles away. I think, and here's why I think it because when they believed and then they behaved, then they beheld. They beheld the star. It says we have seen his star, but Herod's in Jerusalem, five miles from Bethlehem. He didn't see nothing, because he wasn't looking for nothing. This was the glory of God overshining the birth of his only begotten son. I believe it's the same thing that Moses saw in the burning bush. It was burning, but not consumed it. It was the glory of God. That's why God said, Moses, take off your shoes, you're standing on holy ground. I think it's the same thing when Solomon built the temple and they dedicated the temple, and the glory of God descended upon it, and they couldn't go in. It was the Shekinah power and glory of God. It happened on Mount Sinai, and the power of God came down, and God told Moses, tell the people, don't even touch the mountain. I'm up here. If you touch the mountain, you'll die. I think it was the same thing that they saw for 40 years as they wandered in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. And it was the thing that separated them on that fateful night between the Egyptians who were coming out to get them as they were trapped against the Red Sea. And all night long there was this barricade, this burning fire. And apparently the Egyptians can't see it because they keep trying to get around it. Hear me now? I think it's the same thing that Jesus showed to Peter and James and John that evening on the Mount of Transfiguration, and he revealed his glory in some measure in his Shekinah, brilliance, and brightness. And there they saw Jesus and Elijah and Moses, and they knew them by name, and it was a revealing, a pulling back

Gifts That Preach: Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh

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of the veil to the glory of God. It was kind of what Isaiah saw in Isaiah 6. Isaiah says, I beheld and I saw the throne room of God, and smoke filled the temple, and the train of his robe filled the place, and the door post shook because the seraphims with six wings, two covering their face, two covering their feet, two fly. And they said, Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God. And what does Isaiah do? He falls and buries his face on the ground, and he says, I can't even look at it. Why? Because I'm sinful. I think they saw it, and I think that they started moving, and I think they came and they went and asked the king, Where's the new king to be born? Surely you're as excited about him as we are.

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Herod was terrified.

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And they looked back outside and they said, Yeah, we'll go find him for you. And when they looked back outside towards Bethlehem, they had to go find a map. Where's Bethlehem? It's five miles that way. They saw it again. Let me read it to you one more time. Verse 10, and when they saw the star again, first of all, they don't know where it's at. Between verses 2 and verse 9, verse 10, when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Then they could see it. The kind of glory that if God would let you in, you would burst with joy, and they are beside themselves with gladness to come into the presence of the Savior, and they do what is right and appropriate. The Bible says, and when they were come into the house, verse 11, they saw the young child and Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. He's the only one worth worshiping, church. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. These gifts are not random. By the way, some of you, you understand what you did this week in trying to get those last-minute gifts. I was in Kroger with you. I saw you buying those red lobster gift cards for people that you hadn't shopped for. This was not that. You see, Daniel had told them that the Christ would be the priest and that he would be the king, and that he would be the sacrifice. Unlike any other king, unlike any other priest, unlike any other sacrifice. So they bring to him gifts representative of his roles. They bring to him gifts of frankincense. That's what a priest would take into the temple. This is what the incense he would burn in his worship ministry. Here, because he will be the priest, the great priest. They brought to him myrrh. Can you imagine this? To a young mother. It will be the equivalent of bringing a gift certificate for a casket for your baby. We understand that this child is going to be executed. We've brought pounds and pounds and pounds of this ointment for his dead body. By the way, when Jesus was buried in Joseph's tomb, they said there was as much as 80 pounds of myrrh on him. And they brought gold. They brought gold because when the Babylonians had sacked Israel and David had put together all the gold instruments. In fact, he had made plates and cups

Bowing Every Part Of The Heart

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and instruments. And well, Belshazzar had come there in the book of Daniel. He had raided the temple and he had taken those things. And the Bible says, chapter 6 or 8, they're drinking, and they have this drunken, riotous, debaucherous party, and they're doing it with the sacred implements from Solomon's temple. Church, I don't, I just wonder if maybe these magi hadn't gotten some of that gold that was taken by the Babylonians on those days and had kept it to bring it back to Jesus to say, This belongs to you.

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I think that's where they got the gold. I know that's why they brought the frankincense and the myrrh. They believed, they beheld the glory of God, and then they bowed. Or behaved, however you want to say it.

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But here's the thing: if we believe, we should bow. If we believe, church, we've got to behave in a way that signifies we believe. We cannot acknowledge one thing on Sunday and another thing on Monday. We cannot. We must be at least as holy as these, as these pagan magi who seem to love God. And all they had was some scraps of the Old Testament, and it was enough to believe and to behave and to bow. We'll save Herod for another time. Let me ask you this. And it's going to be true in every one of our lives, so don't take it personal, but I mean it to be personal. What parts

Closing Prayer And Call To Worship

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of your heart have you refused to bow before King Jesus? Because we bring only what we have. And we say, Lord, have all of it. I mean, some people have said, I love the Lord, I go, I love the church, I write a check. I just hope my wife doesn't find out about my girlfriend. That's not any kind of faith that I recognize as saving faith. A person who comes to church but refuses to submit himself under the word of God and the authority of Christ is not a Christian. But only those who will like Rahab, who will like Isaac, who will like Jonah, who will like Moses, who will like Abraham bow before the Lord. In belief. And God counted it to them for righteousness. Church, I believe, I believe we're gonna see these magi one day in heaven. I believe we're gonna see it because of what they did here in Matthew 2. Let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word today. It has been meat for our souls. We thank you for the gifts rounded up in Babylon and brought to the Savior. He was so worthy of those gifts. Father, I thank you for a scripture that informs our belief that we might obey and we might bow. We love you, Lord Jesus. Like the wise men, we want to be wise. We want to bow. We want to give gifts of sacrifice to pronounce Jesus King of our life. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Would you stand as we sing a closing?