Fools And Wise Men, Part 1
Matthew 2:1‑12
Tonight we come back to the Book of Matthew, and I'd like you to take your Bible and turn with me to the second chapter of Matthew, Matthew chapter two, and ah, we're looking, we began our little glimpse last week at the Biblical story of the visit of the wise men to the birth of Jesus Christ, to Bethlehem. And we spent a lot of time last time introducing to you the wise men and who they were and something about them in some detail.
And I don't want to take the time to go over that all, let me just remind you that what we basically saw was that these men were Persian king makers who were coming because they were aware of the birth of the anticipated king that they had no doubt heard about from such as Daniel and others of the Israelites who had lived in their land since the time of the Babylonian captivity, and these Persian king makers were very anxious to look for a king because they did not have a king, the king at the time was deposed and they wanted a great monarch to rise to the throne of the east in order that they might pose a threat to the great Roman Empire of the west, so their feelings were both political and spiritual, and we saw that they came into town and they were immediately confronted with a most Interesting character by the name of Herod, and we're going to see more about him tonight.
But I shared with you that the reason that Matthew includes this particular part of the birth of Jesus Christ, is because Matthew presents Christ as King, and what could be more fitting in a presentation of Christ as King than to have some king makers come to crown Him as King, and not only were they king makers but they were Gentile king makers. We saw how almost paradoxical it was that the Jewish people who should have been looking for their Messiah didn't even bother with the birth of Christ, whereas these Gentiles who were a no people at that time, apart from the covenants of God did seek to acknowledge this King. So He was a King then we saw in Matthew's presentation by virtue of His lineage from David, we saw that.
And here we see that He is a King by virtue of the fact that there were those in the world who were official king makers who recognized Him as such. You might say that in chapter 1, Matthew says, Jesus deserves royal honor‑and in chapter 2 He gets it. And He indeed even here was being recognized as King of Kings and Lord of Lords in some sense by these Persian king makers. This is a reinforcement of the Kingliness of Christ, His right to reign. And as I told you last time I can't help but stop and think about the fact that the true King was not known in Jerusalem, His own city, in His own royal residence, the place where of all places He should have been hailed as King, He was not. They didn't seek Him, they didn't care about Him; they never even bothered to come to Bethlehem to see Him. Instead it was some strangers from a distant land, seeking Him to worship and adore. And besides the common people, the leaders and the rulers and the theologians and the priests of Israel were totally indifferent. Or else as Herod, filled with bitterness and hatred and envy and jealousy. And so right here at the very beginning of Matthew's Gospel we see the way it's going to be, there are going to be those people who are indifferent, there are going to be those people who are antagonistic, and there are going to be those people who are worshipful. And we'll see more about those three groups as we move on. So the Magi represent the first fruits of the Gentile nations, and show us really that God always had them in His heart.
Now as we look at verses 1 to 12, and we're going to look at it now specifically viewing the text, last time we just talked about introduction, but as we view the text I want you to see five acts in this incredible drama that is played out in chapter 2. Five separate acts. And we'll just title them with a simple word so we'll remember them, arrival, that's act one. Number two, agitation. Number three, acting. Number four, adoration, and number five avoidance. Now that's not a very brilliant outline but it's just a few hooks to hang your thoughts on.
First of all we come to arrival. Let's look at verses 1 and 2, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod, the king, behold, there‑came Magi (and you'll remember I told you that that really is an untranslatable word that has reference to a certain hereditary priesthood line, a tribe of people who came originally apparently from the Medes, but through the years had risen to place of great prominence in the kingdoms of Persia ah, the Median kingdom and the Babylonian kingdom as well, and so it became synonymous in many ways with being a wise man. To be a Magi was to have a place of the wise man in a society. So there came these Magi) 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." Now obviously we have the arrival right here. Shortly after Jesus' birth the Magi arrive in Jerusalem.
Now there are two things we want to note in the very beginning in verse 1. First of all the phrase, "in Bethlehem of Judaea." Now Bethlehem is a quiet little town, approximately five or six miles south of Jerusalem. It was once called Ephrathah, and is so designated by the prophet of the Old Testament, Micah.
Now the name Bethlehem is interesting it means house of bread. Beth is house, lehem is bread, house of bread a fitting name for the place where the very bread of life was born. Now this little village sits in a fertile countryside, and it was very productive. In fact if I can give you a brief description it might help you to visualize it, I've been there a couple of times and ah, I'll do the best I can. Jerusalem as you know sits on a plateau, some two thousand plus feet above uhm, the valley beneath. It just sits a top a high hill, and slightly to the south.
An interesting thing about where Bethlehem sits, on one end of it is a high ... higher ridge, and ah, on the other end of it is a higher ridge, and it's just almost like a saddle, and Bethlehem sort of cradles itself in the middle. The area is for the most part kind of a gray limestone, in fact that's all you ever see there because there's a zoning regulation now a days in Jerusalem in that area, that you cannot build any edifice unless you build it out of Jerusalem stone. So that what ... the buildings simply rise out of the ground and look exactly like the ground looks. It's a limestone grayish color, and it looks like a little town ‑‑ sort of set in an amphitheater. Very striking.
Now the little town of Bethlehem has had a long and very interesting history, if you go all the way back to the Book of Genesis you will find that in Bethlehem Jacob buried Rachel, and set a pillar or a marker by her grave, and even today as you take a Mercedes Benz taxi down to Bethlehem some guy will point and say, that's Rachel's tomb, off to the right of the road.
We find also that when Ruth married Boaz in the Book of Ruth, she lived in the town of Bethlehem, and from Bethlehem Ruth could see clear across the Jordan Valley, and that's true, you can stand in that little saddleback and you can look way across the Jordan Valley, across the Dead Sea and see Moab's hills on the other side and Ruth was a Moabitess, living in Bethlehem she could have stood and seen her own homeland.
But above all, the town of Bethlehem was the home and the city of the great king of Israel by the name of David. And that is what is characteristically known about Bethlehem, it is ever and always the city of David. In First Samuel 16 and First Samuel 17 and First Samuel 20, we find indications that this was David's city. In fact in Second Samuel 23, when David was a hunted fugitive, he cries out and he says that he longs for the water of the well of Bethlehem. That was his hometown. In later days Rehoboam, after the splitting of the kingdom in Solomon's time, Rehoboam fortified the town. But uniquely it stands ... many little things happen in history but uniquely it stands as the city of David.
And it was really there, this is important, it was really there in that little place, that little village, it isn't really a city, it was in that little village that the people of God had long expected their Messiah to be born. And there was reason for that, and the reason is the Old Testament prophecy. They waited for David's greater Son to come out of David's city, they waited for the Messiah to be born there, and when He was born there they couldn't bother to take note of it.
Now just a little more about Bethlehem to help you get a little visual picture of it. The houses of Bethlehem are built all over the slopes, in fact it's very difficult to find a flat place unless you go up into the square right by the Church of the Nativity. It seems to be just a whole lot of slopes, and the houses are built all over the slopes. And very frequently when a house would be built on the slope beneath that, because the limestone was not that hard and because there were some natural indentations anyway in the mountain, people would build out a hollowed cave which they would use for a stable. And it is very likely that it was in such a hollow cave that our Lord Jesus was born. Even today uh, the Catholic church believes that it has found the right cave. Of course they always find somewhere where they can stick up a church, everywhere but in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, haven't been able to build one there where Jesus walked on the water, but every other place Jesus ever put His foot, they put a church. And this particular cave uh, that they think they've found in the side of the hill, they have built a church on top of it, right on top, so you go in the church, you go down the stairs, way down and you go into a little tiny cave and you have to bend your head and bend your shoulders to kind of crawl into this little cave and that's the place they say Jesus was born.
Now by the way, this isn't any Johnny come lately thing, they, they go all the way ... it goes all the way back to the Emperor Hadrian uh, he first recognized that Christians felt that this cave was the sacred place, so he thought held desecrate it real good, so he built a shrine to Adonis, a false god right on it. And Constantine came through in about the fourth century and smashed the temple to Adonis, and built a church there, and that has continued to be thought to be the site. And so, it's just a little village built on a pile of slopes, where houses usually had beneath them, if they had a stable a little stab ... stable made out of a hollowed place in the hill.
Now this is Bethlehem of Judaea, not significant, and maybe it's fitting, so that whenever anybody thinks of Bethlehem they only think of one thing, and that's the birth of Jesus Christ, and maybe that's the way God wanted it and so He picked a very obscure place. And yet a place close enough to Jerusalem that it should have commanded the attention of the entire population when the King was born. Had they been as sensitive to God as He would have wished.
Now you'll notice that there is no doubt some time that has passed. Between chapter 2 and verse 1, when the wise men arrive and the birth of Christ there is a time gap, and I hinted at it last time and I'm not going to go into great detail about it but, it seems to me that there are several months, at least that have gone on. There is a good period of months ... Jesus being born, something near the end of the year and then Herod dying sometime near the front of the next year, we know that he died, or at least we believe that he died somewhere around the end of March, the beginning of April in a lunar eclipse in 4 B.C. it couldn't be more than 4 or 5 or 6 months at the very most, at least in my judgment, after the birth of Christ.
And also you will note this, that it tells us in verse 11 that, "When they were come into the house, they saw the young child." Christ is no longer in the manger, He is no longer in the stable, He is in a house, and I told you last time that very likely they had already been to the temple for purification, when a Jewish lady had a baby there was a certain period of time, she had to go and be purified and offer a sacrifice, and I told you that they offered turtledoves, which was the offering of somebody who was in abject poverty and had it, had it been any great length of time after the birth of Christ they no doubt would have taken the gifts that the wise men brought them, and they would have purchased a greater sacrifice, so it seems to me that they had not yet received the gifts of the Magi, which they would have used in that sacrifice which means the purification happened before that which puts it at least a forty day period before the wise men ever got there. So the child has grown at least a little bit, maybe a few months old.
There's another note of interest here, and I'm just giving you some data to kind of set the stage. You'll notice that it says, "in the days of Herod, the king." Now we could spend literally hours discussing this person, and all of his background and where he came from, but that's really not totally germane to our point, let me just give you enough history so you'll get the picture.
This man was not really strictly a Jew, he was an Edomite. He was an Idumaean, there's another word for it, Edomite and Idumaean being the same thing, coming from an area to the east and uh, to the south a little bit of Jerusalem. He had made himself available to the Romans.
Now remember this, the Romans came in and sort of took over that area. And people who were smart sort of played uh, footsie with the Romans a little bit, right? People who wanted to gain something sort of played up to the Romans, and this man was one of those kinds of people. During the civil wars in Palestine and during the time when Rome was trying to establish itself, prior to the birth of Christ, Herod played games with Rome and made himself sort of winsome to them, and they trusted him. He gained their favor. And once Rome had finally conquered the land of Judaea, they set up a procurator, a procurator was like a governor, sort of a, an official ruler of that little country. And his name was Antipater, Antipater, and he was an Edomite, alright? He was an Edomite, and Herod was his son. When they wanted a ruler they found this guy Antipater, and Herod was his son, but Herod had played up so much to the Romans that they appointed Herod as the, as the tetrarch of Galilee. In other words, they needed one guy to handle Jerusalem and Judaea, and somebody else to kind of control the rural area, it was a lesser position in significance but none the less it was a position of honor among the Romans. So they put Antipater in Jerusalem and Judaea and they stuck his son Herod up in Galilee, and so in 47 B.C. that's before the birth of Christ, Herod was made the tetrarch of Galilee.
Now seven years later in 40 B.C. that eastern Parthian Persian Median area that we've been talking about from where the Magi came, started a civil war, and they came across and attacked that area of Palestine and Syria and so forth, and Herod took a quick boat to Rome. He took off, he could see the handwriting on the wall and he went to Rome to tell 'em what was goin' on. The east was beginning to disturb that little buffer area, so Herod took off and fled to Rome, this is Antipater's son, now he gets to Rome, and he starts laying it on the Roman Senate, and he really plays up to the Roman Senate, and he convinces the Roman Senate that he is pro‑Roman, but that he's also from that part of the world and he knows how to handle situations over there etc, etc, etc. He wants absolute authority. So, in 40 B.C. or about, the Roman Senate made Herod the king of the Jews, now remember that. They made Herod the king of the Jews, and they said, you take an army and they gave him an army, they gave him some crack troops and they said, you go and you carve out your own kingdom over there, and you run your own show. Well, you know it took him three years to do it, it took him three years to finally gain the power he had in title. Finally in 37 B.C. he won, and he became king of the Jews, and that is a title that he maintained until he died. He always tried to maintain the title king of the Jews.
Now, do you see the question that the Magi asked in verse 2? "Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" Well that was enough to panic Herod. I mean he had sought this thing like a political plum. He had traveled all the way to Rome and played his game before the Roman Senate, he had gotten the right to be the king of the Jews took an army back and fought for three years to gain the right to make that a reality, and then he had held onto that thing right on down till this time and now all of a sudden, here comes a whole pile of Persian king makers, they come streaming into town asking all over the place, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" And Herod is afraid.
Now a little of the shock of this whole scene is indicated in verse 1 again, "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod, the king, behold, there came Magi." Not just there came Magi, but can you believe this there came Magi? Or if you're Herod, yikes!!! There came Magi. Or whatever. Unexpected, lo, startling, shocking, amazing. There came Magi, from the east, asking where the King of the Jews was born.
Now frankly, it shouldn't have been so shocking, really, if those Jewish people had carefully analyzed the Old Testament they no doubt would have had good indication that the time was right. Historians reiterate for us, that at that time there was in the world, now watch this, this is fascinating to met that at that time there was in the world a strange kind of expectation for a coming king. The people in the east had it, and that's partly why the Magi came. People in many places were anticipating the arrival of a king, it was the mood of the day.
Even the Roman historians acknowledged this, for example, Suetonius wrote, "There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the world." That's Suetonius, and Suetonius would have written later on about particularly the days of Vespasian, and Vespasian conquered Israel in 70 A.D. so maybe Suetonius wrote a little after that, but he looked back and said, that was a day when there was an expectation for men coming from Judaea to rule the world, they were looking at that place. Tacitus, the famous Roman historian tells of the same belief, quote, "There was a firm persuasion (says Tacitus in his histories) that at this very time the east was to grow powerful and rulers coming from Judaea were to acquire a universal empire." So says Tacitus. The Jews, according to Josephus in his volume, Wars of the Jews, says Josephus says, that about that time the Jews believed that one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth. At a slightly later time we find Tiridates, King of Armenia visiting Nero at Rome with his wise men along with him, according to Suetonius. We find the Magi in Athens sacrificing to the memory of Plato. At the same time Jesus was born we find Augustus the Roman Emperor being hailed as the savior of the world. And we find the Roman poet Virgil writing about the golden age which has just dawned. You see the Romans were looking for a golden age, the east was coming to the west with their wise men, there was a tremendous feeling that somewhere, from someplace there was going to come a great savior of the world, a great leader, a great ruler.
I don't know where all that anticipation came from, it's just interesting that it all came at the same time. The time was ready. And there came wise men or Magi from the east to Jerusalem. Maybe it was that they recognized what Paul wrote to the Galatians, "That in the fulness of time, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made unto the law." There was a sense in which time was full, and some people could feel it. These Magi based on information from Daniel, and other information that they had received from the Jews who were now living in their land since the captivity, and based on their own sense of faith in the true God, and based on their own expectation that God would fulfill His Word, and based upon what they saw in the sky which is called a star here, they came to Jerusalem.
Now people always say, how many were there? We don't know how many there were, at all, we don't know what their names were, and so that's pure speculation.
But they had a reason for coming, look at verse 2, "Saying," and apparently by the Greek construction here, they were saying this all over the place, they kept on saying, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his astēr in the east, and are come to worship him."
Now, they kept asking, where is He that is born King of the Jews? You know it must have shocked them a little bit everytime they asked that question, to get a kind of a, huh? From everybody. They must have assumed that these people would have known that. I mean after all, they were the Jews, and certainly they would know when their King was born, and where He was born. But two things hit me out of that verse as I read it, and I want to answer those questions cause they were the two ones that struck me.
Question number one, what was the nature of the star? "We have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." What was the nature of the star? So I did some reading this week a