Jesus through the Wise Men’s Eyes

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Transcript:

Before we get to the passage in Matthew this morning, I want to share a story with you that I heard yesterday. And you all have probably figured out by now I’m a little bit of a scrooge. I enjoy Christmas for the meaning of celebrating Jesus’ birth, but I get irritated at how things have gone sideways a lot of times.

And I even get irritated at the Christmas music after a while. Not the hymns we sing in church so much, at least not by themselves, but I can only hear rocking around the Christmas tree a few times before, you know, some of the music, some of the radio stations will go to all Christmas music after Thanksgiving, and I can only hear some of the songs a few times before I want to just drive the car off the road. And unfortunately, that has bled over even to some of our songs about Christmas.

But yesterday, Christian and I were driving around, we had some deliveries to make, and we were in the car, and I told her, I said, I’ll listen to the I’ll listen to the music with you. I’ll listen to it with you today. As long as such and such song does not come on the radio.

It wasn’t rocking around the Christmas tree. There’s another song I won’t mention in case some of you like it. There’s nothing wrong with the song.

It’s not a Christian song necessarily. There’s nothing wrong. It’s not bad theology or anything.

It just annoys me. And I said, I’ll listen to the music with you as long as such and such doesn’t come on. And I’m going to have to change it.

And she said, okay. Not 30 seconds later, what song do you think came on the radio? And two measures into it, I had already hit the button.

I said, we’re done here. And we turned it over to the preaching station, which I’m sure makes her want to drive the car off the road sometimes, but I was driving. And there came on an interview with a pastor who writes about music, and he writes books about the history of hymns and things.

And I really enjoyed the history that he was given about some of the Christmas carols that we sing from our hymnal. And I do not put the hymnal, of course, on the same level as the Bible. but sometime even when we’re not at church singing, just thumb through the hymnal sometime. There’s a lot of good theology in there, a lot of good sound things that as much as I like some of the newer Christian music, notice I said some of the newer Christian music, as much as I like some of it, I think it’s our detriment if we forget these songs as well because there’s a lot of good teaching in them.

And there was one song in particular that they talked about and as they talked about the history of these hymns, it really got me more in the mood to hear Christmas music. There was one story in particular that touched me more than the others, and it was the story of this song, 531, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. And I’ve heard this song for years.

We don’t sing it a lot in church, even at Christmas time, but I’ve heard it, and it’s a beautiful song. It was written by a man named Longfellow who was a famous American poet. You may have read some of the things that he’s written.

I’ve read some of them. I couldn’t tell you offhand what any of them were because some of them start to blend in together in my mind. a famous poet back in the 1840s and 50s and 60s.

And he wrote this during the American Civil War when his son had been sent off to war. He was from Massachusetts, and his son had been sent off with the Union Army to fight, and they were fighting during Christmas time. And his son was wounded in battle and was sent back to Washington, to the military hospital there to recuperate.

And he, I almost said flew down. They didn’t have planes back then. As fast as he could go, he got down to Washington from Massachusetts to be at his son’s bedtime during Christmas.

And it’s said that he, as he was at his son’s bedside, he heard Christmas carolers, and he heard the bells of the churches on Christmas Day. And up to that point, because everything in his world was wrong at that time, with his son being injured in this conflict and him hating what was going on in the country, this civil war, that he had forgotten that it was Christmas Day until he heard the bells and he heard the carolers. And he wrote the first verse, I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar carols play.

And wild and sweet the words repeat, of peace on earth, goodwill to men. The most familiar line of the song. That’s the one we most know.

And he goes on in the second verse to write, I thought how as the day had come, the bell freeze of all Christendom, had rolled along the unbroken song, of peace on earth, goodwill to men. So he hears the bells on Christmas Day, as he said, and he’s reminded that it’s Christmas Day, and he’s reminded of the song, peace on earth, goodwill to men. And it occurs to him how through all the centuries, what he calls the belfries of Christendom, the bell towers of all the churches, had rung the bells on Christmas Day, what he calls the unbroken song from then up to now, of reminding people at this season, peace on earth, goodwill to men, just like the angel said.

Verse 3, talking about himself, he says, In despair I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said. He’s looking at his son who’s been injured in the Civil War and looking at the chaos and devastation in the country around him.

There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men. I believe it angered him that here the whole country was talking about at Christmas time, peace on earth, goodwill toward men, and yet by their actions they betrayed the very things that they were singing about. He said, hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

And I believe it made him angry. Verse 4, then peeled the bells more loud and deep. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men. He was reminded as he listened to the song that they were more than just songs. As he heard the bells and he heard the people singing, he was reminded that it was more than just a song.

And yes, we fall short of the ideal of Christmas, of peace on earth, goodwill toward men, but that doesn’t mean that God is dead. It doesn’t mean that God’s asleep, that He’s given up on what He set out to accomplish so many years ago by sending Jesus to be born. God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.

And he was reminded of that. And as a result, wrote the fifth verse, until ringing singing on its way, the world revolved from night to day. A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, a peace on earth, goodwill to men.

And this man was able then to, I won’t say that his faith, his beliefs were exactly as ours were. As a matter of fact, I don’t know that he would even be a candidate for membership in our church based on some of the things he believed. But he was a man who believed in God.

He was a man who believed in Christ and the meaning of Christmas and looked out and was disgusted by the mockery that society had made of this day that we celebrate, the Lord’s birth. And I bring that up to you not only because the story just struck me in such a way that I don’t tell it even as well as the man told it on the radio, but I still get kind of shivers down my spine thinking about it now. I don’t tell you just because the song made an impact on me, but because I think we all, to some extent, get irritated at the way the ideals of this holiday are mocked.

And it’s pretty well established that Christ wasn’t born on December 25th, and I’ve often wondered, should we celebrate Christmas at all because we don’t know He was born? But I heard another preacher say recently, you know, if you adopted a child from another country and they lost the birth papers and they didn’t know when the child was born, you wouldn’t bring the child home and say, well, because we don’t know what day it was, we’re never going to celebrate your birthday ever. He said, you’d pick a day.

And that’s what we’ve done. Whether it was right or wrong what they did years ago, we picked a day. And today’s the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth.

Problem is, it’s gotten sideways, as so many things do. As so many things relating to God, Christmas has gone sideways when people have really gotten a hold of it, when society as a whole has gotten a hold of it. And as people who love the Lord, as people who love Jesus Christ and what He stands for, that can grate on us.

It should grate on us. One of the issues is the commercialization of Christmas. And I don’t want to talk too much about that.

I’ve already talked about it some. But I read an article this week where it was titled, and I knew what it was going to be as soon as I read the title, What Have the Wise Men Wrought? What did the wise men do to us?

Because the tradition of gift giving started, they say, as inspired by the wise men that they brought gifts to Jesus. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. But what the wise men brought to Jesus was not just stuff.

It wasn’t just stuff for the purpose of giving stuff like the world tends to do now, like sometimes we even fall in the habit of. But they were gifts that represented who he was, who he is, and what he meant to them. Some of you have probably opened Christmas presents.

We opened presents with Benjamin last night and enjoyed it. It was great. And we gave him, I couldn’t even tell you what all we gave him.

Christian bought him some kind of little baseball, t-ball set, and she bought him some books and some other things because he likes books. But all he wanted was that baseball set. And I said, if I didn’t know any better, it would make me wonder if he was really mine.

I am not athletic at all. But we enjoyed doing that. I enjoyed this year going and shopping for Christian.

I know she enjoyed the shopping. There’s always that pressure that a lot of us feel that when we buy gifts, we have to buy just the right gift for that person that expresses what they mean to us. And we could complain about that as commercialism, but I think that with the wise men, the gift represented what Jesus meant to them.

I’m not saying that everything the world does, you know, tearing through Walmart and macing each other and knocking old ladies down. I’m not saying all of that’s good because you’re trying to go get the gift that expresses the meaning. But our gifts should express meaning.

They should express what people mean to us. You know, in other cultures, they have rules about what gifts they can and can’t give. For example, I think it’s in China.

You’re not supposed to give a clock to somebody. It’s either China or Japan, I believe. You’re not supposed to give a clock to somebody because it represents death or something.

You can buy one for yourself, but don’t give it as a gift. Certain colors of flowers you’re not supposed to give because they express different kinds of meaning. We give things to people based on what they mean to us.

And that, I believe, is exactly what the wise men did. We’ve been in this series about looking at the birth of Jesus through the eyes of the people who were there and what his birth meant to different people. This morning, I want to look at the wise men who started this tradition of gift giving that’s gotten so out of hand and often is a mockery of what it started out to be.

But the wise men started out by giving gifts to the king of kings that represented what he was to them. And I think we can learn about who he is based on what they brought him. Matthew chapter 2, verse 1 says, Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, and if this sounds familiar, we read it last week.

We talked about Herod and the rulers, but the rulers and Herod are intertwined with the story of the wise men, so we’re going to look back over it again. 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, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, the priests and scribes said unto Herod, In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah, For out of these shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel.

And that was written again in Micah, as we looked at a couple months ago. Then Herod, when he had privily or secretly called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. So the wise men have shown up from the east, and they’ve shown up in Jerusalem following this star.

And they showed up at Herod’s court. And somehow or another, these were men who probably dabbled in occult religions because they were looking to the stars for answers about things. and it’s well-known and well-documented that in Babylon and Palestine, Persia, that these people were, that the wise men over there were astrologers.

They looked to the stars and constellations and charted things, and that’s somehow or another they saw this star that led them, but they also were people who had some kind of knowledge of the Jewish religion, to know that something was going to happen, that a king of the Jews was going to be born. And somehow they put two and two together and said, this must be the time we’re going to go look for him. And that’s what leads a lot of people, and I think myself included, to conclude that these wise men were from Persia, modern-day Iran, because the Persians would have had knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The wise men would have had knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures because of Daniel and because of Daniel’s ministry 500, 600 years before this. And the Persians were, I like to say they were so open-minded, their brains would fall out. They just adopted whatever they saw as being worthwhile from anybody’s religions and teachings and made it part of their own.

And so these wise men probably had knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and the coming Messiah from Daniel’s ministry, that they didn’t know where exactly he was to be born. Micah had written that down. And so they show up in Jerusalem and they ask Herod, where is the one who has been born to be king of the Jews?

And as I said last week, that enraged Herod because Herod thought he was king of the Jews. Somebody’s being born that’s a challenge to his authority and to his throne, and he would have none of it. And so he calls all the priests and scribes together and said, where is this person born?

Where are they coming from? And these priests and scribes knew. They just knew.

Micah had written that he would be born in Bethlehem of Judah. They could take him back to the right scroll, back to the right book, and point it out to him and say, this is where he’s going to be born. And yet these are the same people who missed Jesus being the Messiah.

They pointed and they said, he’ll be born in Bethlehem. So Herod then hatches a plot. Herod was really good at hatching plots.

And he calls the wise men back in. It says, privily. We get the word privately from there.

Calls the men privately, secretly. And it says, inquired of them diligently. He kept after them until he could find out what time the star had appeared.

And we find out later on in the passage that they had said, apparently they’d been following the star for about two years, or it had appeared about two years before. Because Herod, based on the time that the star appears, said, Go into Bethlehem and kill all the children under two. Verse 8, and he sent them to Bethlehem.

Once he finds out the answer to his question from the wise men, he says, y’all go on to Bethlehem. I don’t think Herod said y’all. That’s my translation.

Y’all go on to Bethlehem. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search diligently for the young child. And when you have found him, bring me word again that I may come and worship him also.

Herod said, I believe I’d like to worship him as well. I believe I’d like to go and bow down before the king of the Jews. As I said last week, I imagine that a lot of what Herod’s saying now is through gritted teeth, as he pretends to be reverent toward the newborn king in order to gain the trust of the wise men, but he really had hatred and murder in his heart.

Go and find the child, and when you’ve found him, bring me word so that I can go and worship him also. And when they had heard the king, they departed. And lo, the star which they saw in the east went before them, until it came and stood over where the young child was.

So they followed the star on from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. And again, I have no idea what kind of star this was that they saw. Some have suggested, well, a constellation or a new star just appeared that caused them to realize it was the birth of a king.

That doesn’t account for what the Bible says, that it led them to the place and that it stood over where the young child was. Some people have said a comet, but they just kind of move in what looks to us like a straight line. It’s really more of an oval shape on their whole track.

I have no idea. There may not be a scientific explanation for what this was exactly that they saw, but I believe that they saw it. I believe that it’s recorded as the Bible.

You know, if they were trying to make things up to convince people that Jesus was the Messiah, make up some things that sound like they could have happened. I mean, understand what I mean by that. I’m not saying I doubt it happened.

I believe it happened. But make up some things that people go, oh, yeah, I could see that. That the people right then say, oh, we’ve seen that before.

That makes sense. They’re talking about things that had never been seen before. It’s one of those cases of truth being stranger than fiction.

This star that nobody can explain. Still to this day, I’ve not heard a satisfactory explanation. This star that nobody can explain comes and rests over the place where the child lay.

And I believe it happened exactly the way the Bible said. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. When they saw the star, they were so excited.

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother. It doesn’t sound from the passage like they hesitated for a second. They knew that they had found the king.

They saw the child with Mary his mother and fell down and worshipped him. They didn’t come and try to reason through things and say, well, we’ve got to make sure, are you really him? Are you the right one?

We’ve traveled all this way to see looking for a king and we’ve seen a baby that’s laying in a, maybe still laying in a manger. At the very least, very meager circumstances. Born to a carpenter.

Is this who we’ve looked for all this time? No, they didn’t reason with it. They didn’t argue with it.

They knew who they were looking for. And when they found him, they recognized it. And the Bible says they fell down and worshipped him.

What a lesson for us. So many times we feel like Jesus has to meet up to our expectations. God has to meet up to our expectations before we’ll give him the reverence he deserves.

But God doesn’t have to explain himself to me. God doesn’t have to make perfect sense to me. Jesus doesn’t have to sit me down and go through points A through Z of his plan before I submit and worship him.

No, I should fall down and worship him because he deserves it and because he is who he is. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And this is why people have traditionally assumed there are three wise men.

The fact is, we don’t know. There could have been two wise men. Could have been three.

Could have been 300. We don’t know. But they brought gold and frankincense and myrrh and they presented their gifts to him.

And the Bible says, in being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed unto their own country another way. God revealed unto them that Herod was not the reverent worshiper he said he was. He was not who he was portraying himself to be.

And they were warned, go back another way. And that’s what they did. But not before stopping to worship and present gifts to Jesus Christ. And these gifts were practical things.

They were valuable. And some have said that that’s all they mean was that they were practical gifts. They were expensive gifts.

Some have said, you know, these are the things that when they went into Egypt, starting in verse 13, when God revealed to Joseph to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, that the price of these things, the gold and the frankincense and myrrh, are what they lived off of during that time. That very well may be the case, although the Bible doesn’t say. But there’s very little in the Bible that doesn’t mean anything.

I mean, they’re just, God is deeper than we can even imagine. And I find it funny that some of the things that the Bible talks about Christ being are represented in their culture by the things that the wise men brought to Jesus. And I want to look at these three gifts in just the next few minutes and what I believe they tell us about who Jesus Christ was to these wise men, what He was to these wise men.

Again, it would be too much of a coincidence to say, well, I’ve looked at the writings about this time period and the things that different things represented outside of the Bible, excuse me, but just in their culture. And the things that these three things represent match up with who the New Testament tells us Jesus Christ is. And I don’t believe that much in coincidences.

I just don’t. And I believe God knew and directed these wise men and what they brought him. The first thing that they brought him was gold.

The first thing that they brought to Jesus Christ was gold. Now in that day and time, who had the most gold out of anybody? Anybody want to take a guess?

The king. I don’t know who said it. I heard somebody say it.

Usually, it was the kings who had all the gold. The kings were the ones with all the gold. And if you wanted to bring a gift that was befitting a king, you would bring gold.

And that’s what they did. They brought Jesus gold, a gift befitting a king. See, they recognized, say, well, that’s just coincidence.

They had recognized from the very beginning, the first thing they say when they show up on the scene is, where is he who is born king of the Jews? And in their gift, they recognized Jesus as a king. The Bible is clear that Jesus Christ is the king of kings and the Lord of lords.

He is the only lawgiver. He’s the ruler of the universe. The Bible says that by him all things were created and for him all things were created.

He came to be a king as we’ve talked about before with him being the Messiah. He himself even claimed to be a king. He just said my kingdom is not of this world.

Now this world one day will be brought into subjection to him. He will judge over the affairs of men and judge our actions and our words and thoughts. He will rule as king in a very real literal way I believe.

But even before that happens, Jesus is already the king. Jesus did not need our permission. We didn’t need a coronation for Jesus to be the king.

He is the king because that’s what he’s always been, the ruler and sustainer of the universe. I read a story just this last week. It’s not a story.

It really happened. I hate using the word story, even from the Bible or things from history, when it really happened because it makes it sound like a fairy tale. But I read just recently about King William IV of England, And if you’re not familiar with him, I don’t blame you because I wouldn’t until I read about it either.

His brother had died and suddenly he became king of England, but he was, he was, parliament was fighting and they were, there were all kinds of things going on. He was trying to reform the country. They hadn’t had his coronation yet, but his brother had died and so he was, he was king.

He was, he was the one slated to be on the throne. But some of the people in the country said, no, you can’t do certain things because you haven’t been crowned king. Parliament wasn’t getting along, so he put on the crown and he walked into the House of Lords and he demanded that Parliament be dissolved.

They would have to have new elections. And the Parliament had no choice but to do what he said because he had put on the crown and walked into the House of Lords. See, it didn’t matter that they hadn’t had the official ceremony yet.

It didn’t matter that the Archbishop of Canterbury hadn’t come in and put the crown on his head. See, he had taken the crown and he had walked in and done it because he was already the king. As soon as his brother died, he was the king.

The same is true for Jesus Christ. Not that he had to wait for somebody to die. But what I’m saying is it doesn’t matter whether we’ve made him king or not. It doesn’t matter whether we’ve given him the crown or not.

It doesn’t matter whether we’ve submitted to him yet or not. He’s already the king, whether we have the ceremony or not. And they were recognizing that even this child was already the king.

And they brought him gold as a gift befitting the king, because that’s who he was to the wise men. And that’s who he ought to be to us today. The second thing that they brought him was frankincense.

Frankincense. When I was little, and I say this in all seriousness, it’s not a serious story, but it really did happen, that when I was a little kid, I misunderstood the story and thought they brought him gold and Frankenstein and birds. And I’ve since heard people tell that as a story about things kids say in church, and I can’t help but wonder if somebody that used to work in my church wrote that down.

But I think a lot of us, when I was growing up, thought they brought him Frankenstein. Couldn’t figure out why they brought him that. Frankincense.

I had to look it up this week, find out exactly what frankincense is. Turns out it’s a resin. It’s like tree sap.

That they’ll slash these trees in the Middle East and they’ll let it bleed out the sap. And they’ll let it harden. And then they set it on fire and use it as an incense.

It’s an incense. And the funny thing about frankincense, this incense, is that it was used in worship. A lot of times today it’s still used in worship.

That people from various countries, and I think sometimes even in the temple in Jerusalem, they would take this frankincense and they would burn it for incense for worship. The Bible talks about the use of incense in the temple. And even from sources outside the Bible, we can go to history and look at the cultures around in that day and see that that’s what they used frankincense for.

They may have had other daily uses for it, especially if you were wealthy, but it was an expensive thing. And so not everybody could afford it to have it just around the house every day like we have candles and it’s nothing. This was something that they used primarily when they worshipped, that they used primarily when they worshipped.

And so when they brought him frankincense, They weren’t just bringing him something nice smelling. They brought Jesus frankincense, which was a gift befitting a deity. They recognized Jesus not only as a king, but as a god as well.

Now, they probably got it wrong based on their religion. They probably thought, as I said, that he was a god, but he was recognized as more than just human by them bringing him that frankincense. That’s a little bit of a stretch.

Not really when you consider the first thing they did when they saw him was to get down and worship him. They didn’t just bow before Him in an act of submission as before a king. They fell down before Him in an act of worship.

What I imagine is what people used to do in the Middle Ages called prostration, where you would lay down on your face. I’ve seen people do that before in prayer, even in modern days. Lay down on your face before God.

Get as low to the ground as you can in recognition of how high He is and how low we are in comparison. The Bible says that they worshipped Him, and they brought Him this frankincense, which is something that they would offer as an incense to a god in worship. So to the wise men, they’re not just visiting a baby.

They’re not even just visiting a baby who was a king or would be a king. They’re visiting a baby who was a king and also God in the flesh. And that frankincense represents so much more than just a pretty smell.

The third thing that they brought him was the myrrh. And I’ll admit I had to look this one up too. You’d think all the years preaching and growing up in church, I would know what these things are, but I had to look them up.

This myrrh was used even by the Egyptians as an embalming agent. Because apparently you could put it on somebody or with somebody, and not only would it mask smells, but I think something I read said that it has properties that keep things from decomposing. I only read that in one place, so I don’t know that that’s exactly true, but I know that they used it to cover smells.

They used it to prepare bodies for burial. Even the Egyptians from hundreds of years before this used myrrh when they were preparing bodies for burial. And if we know nothing about Jesus Christ other than the Christmas story and one other, it’s usually the Easter story. The fact that he would die on the cross and be buried and rise again. So they didn’t just bring him gifts befitting a king and gifts befitting a deity.

They brought him this myrrh, which was a gift befitting a sacrifice. Not in the sense that they used myrrh for their sacrifices. I don’t see any example of them sprinkling myrrh on the lamb or the goat or whatever they sacrificed at the altar.

But when Christ was sacrificed on the cross, he would be buried in that borrowed tomb from which he would rise. And the Bible talks about the women even going early that Easter morning. Yes, I know I’ve segued into Easter instead of Christmas.

I did that on purpose. Those women going out to the tomb on that Easter Sunday morning and they were going, we believe, to prepare his body for burial, to bring things like this. 

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