December 30, 2018
The star of Bethlehem was more than a cosmic wonder; its presence compelled the magi to undertake a journey of eternal significance. Their destination, though, was not a place but a person. Just as the wise men knelt before the Savior, Alistair Begg reminds us that a genuine encounter with Jesus will result in praise and glory to the Father. God is seeking worshippers from all nations and will use any means, including the created order, to draw us to His Son.
Sermon Transcript: Print
We read once again, this time from the New Testament and Matthew chapter 2, reading from verse 1 to verse 12.
Matthew 2:1:
“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’ When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: “And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.”’
“Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.’ After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”
Amen.
And as we turn to the Bible, we read the collect, or the prayer, for today:
O God, who revealed your only Son to the gentiles by the leading of a star, mercifully grant that we, who know you now by faith, may after this life enjoy the splendor of your glorious Godhead through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Well, I gave a title to our study this morning: simply “A Journey to Jesus.” “A Journey to Jesus.” Here we have the record, as given to us by Matthew, of the arrival of the magi—the magi, a word that is translated variously here in our text the “wise men.” And it is the record of how they had made a journey to seek out the one who was born the king of the Jews and found themselves face-to-face with the Lord Jesus.
Now, the whole purpose of God is to bring men and women face-to-face with his dearly beloved Son so that we then may come to know him as a Savior, Lord, and Friend. And that’s why in the Bible, we read consistently of those whose journey to Jesus was life-changing, whether short or long. So, for example, if you had occasion to bump into Peter the apostle and say, “How did that come about in your life? What was the journey that brought you to Jesus?” Peter would have said quite straightforwardly, “Well, actually, my brother brought me.”[1] If we had asked Paul, he would have said, “Well, I was on my way to Damascus when I met Jesus.”[2] If we’d asked the jailer in Philippi, he would have said, “Well, it was on that evening when Paul and Silas were singing those songs and praying, and then that dramatic earthquake—that was when I met Jesus.”[3] “Zacchaeus, how about you?” “Well,” he would have said, “I didn’t really need to go very far. In fact, I met Jesus, I was up a tree.”[4] And the Samaritan woman: “How about you?” And she said, “Well, I was at the well as I routinely found myself, and when I got there, Jesus was sitting there. It was almost as if he had been waiting for me.” And she might have gone on to say, “And what struck me so forcibly was the fact that he said that God the Father was seeking worshippers, and then he went on to explain that we cannot, in our natural state, worship God—that we need the Holy Spirit’s power to be able to know God and to see Jesus and to worship him and that the Father is seeking those worshippers throughout the whole world.”[5]
Now, that may help us to understand just why it was that so far away from these events in Jerusalem, something was brewing, if you like, in the hearts and minds of these people. There they were, the “three kings,” as Hopkins gives them to us in his Christmas carol,[6] which is a wonderful Christmas carol but full of a lot of things that we can’t be confident about. For example, we have no way of knowing whether they were kings, and there’s no way of knowing that there were actually three. The fact that there were three gifts—they could have all brought the same gifts. There could have been twelve of them, all bringing the same gift. We don’t know that either. We don’t know what their names were. And yet, of course, we’ve been given the names on expensive Christmas cards with very nice pictures.
I think James Taylor, in his little song “Going Home by Another Way,” helps us a little more. He begins his song,
Those magic men, the Magi,
Some people call them wise,
Or Oriental, even kings—
Well, anyway, [these] guys…[7]
I like that: “these guys.” Who were these guys? There’s so much mystery that surrounds it, and yet there is so much clarity that is given to us, which takes us, you know, into the realm of conjecture. For example, even in the carol that we have just sung, we have these men bowing at a manger bed, when clearly, as the text makes clear, they were some distance now from the manger, and it’s highly unlikely that this little boy, who was close to two years of age, would have actually been snuggled up in a kind of manger scene. Anyway, I don’t want to disavow you of all your happy thoughts and feelings—and you’re feeling bad now, because you gave one of those dreadful Christmas cards to people, with the kings on the front. But that’s okay. You can fix it next year. This year is over.
I want to just make three simple observations. I’m not going to delve into this text in the way that we’ve done before. I want just to consider with you what I’m going to refer to as an unexplained compulsion, and then an unexpected destination, and then what we might refer to as an unrestrained reaction.
An unexplained compulsion: We’re not told what compelled these individuals to make the journey that they did. I’m thinking now about an inner compulsion. I’m thinking about that which is going on inside of a person. The Bible says, you know, “Who knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man that is in him?”[8] And so it is difficult for us to say just exactly what it was that moved them and drove them in terms of internal conviction and compulsion. What we do know is what we’re told, and that is that they had a fascination with the cosmos. Such was their background and their setting. And their interest in this star, as it is referred to… And if I may say: I take this as a miraculous phenomenon, provided by God for a specific context involving these individuals. I know what is written about “It could have been this, and it could have been that, and it could have been the next thing.” It’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t add anything—at least for me, for my simple mind—to the story. I see it much along the lines of the shining light that was brighter than the noonday sun[9] to which Saul of Tarsus refers—that it was “a light shone on me that just made a radical impact.” So, you know, pursue it as you wish. But I’m thinking that this particular phenomenon provided by God was in order to guide them on their way. We’re told that.
Who are these individuals? Strictly speaking, they’re not astrologers, nor are they astronomers. I think the best thing we can say about them is that they are scientists in the best kind of science. They are scientists, if you like, with a theological bent, with a philosophical interest. They’re scientists along the line of, for example, Sir Isaac Newton. If you read of Newton, you know that he was a godly man. He was devout. He was interested in the Bible and concerned how it would be that his own convictions regarding faith would then manifest themselves in his scientific investigations and discoveries. And these particular individuals, along those lines, were apparently combining their interest in, if you like, the cosmos, with a knowledge that they had received from somewhere of messianic expectations, so that because of the way their minds worked, they saw that the movements of the spheres were directly related to events that took place on the earth, so that these cosmic manifestations governed, in their minds—or at least influenced—human life and history.
Now, we needn’t step back from that unduly, because God, giving to us by way of creation a revelation of himself, uses creation in order to guide and to direct our steps. The psalmist tells us that “the heavens declare the glory of God,” that “the firmament [shows] his handywork.”[10] So here are these individuals, gazing up, as it were, into the skies. They are putting together the pieces of the puzzle in their own mind. And if the general perspective is accurate—namely, that these individuals hailed from, in modern-day geography, Iraq or, in ancient geography, Persia or Babylonia or even possibly Babylon, the city of Babylon itself—then that will help us at least to get an inkling of how it might be that out of that kind of context, they would have this kind of interest, that this compulsion would begin to form within them.
Because you will remember that it was to Babylon that Daniel and his friends were taken when the invasion had come and hauled away many of the brightest and the best and put them in captivity. In that environment, you will remember, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, along with Daniel, were then reschooled. They were reprogrammed. They were reeducated. They were renamed.[11] And coming out of that process, Daniel emerged as essentially the brightest of the group. And when we read that in the book of Daniel, we realize that he was head and shoulders above his peers in being able to interpret dreams and to explain riddles.[12] And in that great scene, he explains to Nebuchadnezzar, who had been destabilized by this vision that he’d had of a kind of crumbling kingdom that was impacting him dreadfully, and Daniel had explained to him that the God who created the cosmos was the God who was going to set a king on the throne. That king would rule over an everlasting kingdom.[13]
And Daniel, you see, brought to that his own knowledge of the Bible, his own knowledge of the Old Testament. After all, being brought up as a Jewish boy within the home, and his mom and dad presumably must have wondered, “What in the world will have happened to him, now that he’s been taken away? They’ve reeducated him, and they’ve given him another name. They dress him in different clothes. He’s no longer in the safety and the security of the world that we created for him.” But Daniel was able to draw on that which had been given to him in his boyhood. And he knew the oracle of Balaam, which in part conveyed the fact that “a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.”[14] And so when he spoke in his day, he spoke concerning these things.
“Well,” you say, “so far, so good. But that was a long, long time before these fellows arrived on the scene. Because Daniel was what, 600, 605 BC?” Yes, but you know, things have a way of lasting a long, long time, don’t they? I know that you can—we can only go so far back in this country. (That was a good catch there by me.) But it is possible to go further back. One of my Christmas gifts was a book, and inside the book it says, “And the first owner was given this book in 1703.” And I held it in my hands, and I thought, “What a wonder, that somebody for their birthday received this over three hundred years ago! It’s quite remarkable.”
Well, so you think about the impact of what Daniel and his friends had done and the lingering aspects and benefits of that in the kingdom. I actually was allowing my imagination to wonder—and it is just my imagination—I was wondering whether there was actually a course being offered in the University of Babylon at the time of these magi and that they had been part and parcel of it. They were dealing in contemporary studies, but they said, “You know, we’re going to offer this course once again. It’s called The Science, the Sovereignty, and the Signs of Daniel and Their Contemporary Relevance.” And perhaps they signed up, and they paid attention, and perhaps that was part and parcel of what triggered it for them. Of course, they wouldn’t have been in the class themselves. There would have been others there. It’s hard to imagine that they were the only ones who understood these matters.
How do we come to this inner compulsion, then, that causes them to take the coalescing of these notions of messianic expectation and cosmic interplanetary activity and say to one another, “You know what? I think we should follow the star.” And someone says, “Well, we don’t know where it’s going to take us.” “Yes, but I think it would be a good idea to go.” Everybody else stayed at home.
What’s happening here? You see, God is a great God. God is seeking worshippers. God is able and willing to employ all kinds of situations, circumstances, signs in order to move those upon whom he has set his love in the direction of his dearly beloved Son. And what you really have here is God accommodating himself to these individuals’ scientific quest, their intellectual curiosity—at the same time, their limited understanding.
You see, when a journey towards Jesus begins, it may begin way, way, way far away from Jesus as the person. It may begin not with a star in the sky, but it may begin with a blood test report. It may begin with the achievement of a great objective that held such amazing prospect, and yet, when taken hold of, there was nothing actually there. It was like grasping a bubble. God uses all kinds of things, creates within man an inner compulsion, unexplained.
Secondly, in the text itself, we realize that they arrive at what we can legitimately refer to as an unexpected destination. An unexpected destination.
Right up until this week, I have always imagined that the wise men rolled into town, as it were, and headed immediately for Herod’s palace. And that may well be the case. But as I read it again, I realized it is possibly not the case, because they’re not summoned until verse 7. Now, of course, they could have been present, gone away, and were resummoned. Of course. This is not a main or a plain thing. But it is equally possible that what had happened was they had arrived now in Jerusalem, and their presence would have been felt, and their inquiries would have been reported, and the word would have reached the royal court that “there are a group of folks here, magi, and they’re going around Jerusalem, and they’re asking, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?’ They’ve got some story about a star that they’ve been following for quite a while.”
Response to this on the part of he who is the king, King Herod, who has been put in position by the Romans (although he is not from the line of David; he’s Idumaean)—he’s paranoid. He’s already had one of his wives killed, a couple of his children too. He’s not a person to be toyed with. He lives in the fear that accompanies such paranoia, and as a result of that, when he hears this, Matthew tells us, “He was troubled.” The verb actually means he was inwardly shaken, and he was upset. Well, after all, if you think about it, if this was to take hold, if this notion was to spread, if there were to be an uprising, then his own position would be in jeopardy.
So he needs to get to the bottom of it and assembles all the chief priests and the scribes of the people—verse 4. His question is straightforward: “I need to know where the Christ was to be born.” He’s not asking the question “Do you think there’s going to be a Messiah? Does anyone have any ideas about the possibility, the idea, of a Messiah coming?” No. No, no, no. He says, “I need to know where the Messiah is to be born. How do we know the answer to this?” “Well,” the fellows said, “it’s straightforward. Micah gives us the answer, with a little piece of 2 Samuel thrown in there: ‘in Bethlehem of Judea.’ This is what was anticipated by the prophets.”
Quite interesting, isn’t it, that the star could get them so far, but it couldn’t get them all the way there? Whatever started you off on your journey or wherever you are on your journey—you tell me you had a dream or something happened like that—I’ll know whether God is at work in it if and when he brings you to the Bible and brings you to his Son. If he doesn’t bring you to the Bible and bring you to his Son, then it’s probably more to do with pizza the night before than it is with any kind of divine intervention. Because the purpose of God, the Spirit of God, is given to God’s people to draw God’s world to God’s Son. That’s how it works. So the star may lead them along the way as it does, accommodating himself to their scientific endeavors, but eventually, it brings them here. And the answer that is to be found is the answer that is found in the Scriptures and the answer that is given by the people who know. These are the theological scholars of the day, these are the ones who study the law of God, and they are the ones who give a definitive answer.
Now, don’t let’s miss the contrast that is here. Here we have these fellows that we’re regarding as kind of theological scientists, who are arriving with a great concern to get an answer to this search. And here, in the precincts of the palace, we have the scholars, and the scholars don’t seem remotely concerned about it. The scientists, if you like, care, but they don’t have the answers. The scholars have the answers, but they don’t care! The magi travel eight hundred miles in search of an answer. The scribes aren’t interested in going six miles down the road to Bethlehem to meet the answer.
What does this tell us? Well, it tells us a number of things but at least this: the fundamental mistake for these individuals—the theological boys, the biblical boys—the fundamental mistake lay in confusing a knowledge of the Scriptures with saving faith in the one of whom the Scriptures speak. Okay? So the fact that we know certain things about the Bible, the fact that we may become orthodox in our convictions regarding things, that we may be able to answer questions by going chapter and verse to somebody who says, “Well, where was the Messiah supposed to be born?”—“Oh,” we can say with the scribes, “well, it was Micah 5:2, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it was spoken,” and so on. The people say, “What does that mean to you?” Say, “Well, nothing much.” “Oh, you mean you know all the answers, but you’ve never met the answer?” That’s what we find here.
Herod, having received his answer, then sends for the wise men. He does it secretly, as we might anticipate. He wants to know when the star appeared. What an interesting question, isn’t it? “Can you tell me when you started with this star business?” Now, we know by reading on in the text just what he has in mind. We know, from verse 13 on, that he has a murderous plot to deal with this supposed king of the Jews that has emerged. Therefore, he needs to know what the window is in terms of a time frame when he executes his murderous plan to deal with these children, these boys, that have been born during this period of time.
So presumably, what they’re saying is “Well, we started this project with the looking up two years ago or so, and it’s been a long time coming.” “Okay,” he says. “Well, thank you. That is very, very helpful. I appreciate that. And you know, if you could go and make sure you find this child and then bring me word that I, too, may come and worship him…” What he’s doing is he’s actually fulfilling the plan of the Evil One from the very beginning: to destroy, to kill, to murder. And he spreads, if you like, a hellish net out, and unwittingly, he includes these magi in his plan. They don’t know that he’s a flat-out con man, and off they go. God is going to intervene once again in their lives to make sure that doesn’t happen, because he’s sovereign.
But they leave the palace—the palace, which spoke of might and wealth and stature—and they arrive, you will notice, at the house: “the place where the child was”—verse 9. “And going into the house”—verse 11. So, from a palace, which would seem a most likely place for a king, to a house, which seems the most unexpected place for a king. There is no might here; there’s only frailty. There’s no wealth here; there’s only poverty. There’s no stature here; there’s only lowliness. It makes me think of last Sunday again, when we were talking about the fact that many people turn away from the story of Jesus because it just is an insult to their intelligence. It’s an offense to our pride. “Oh, come on!” they say. “All this stuff—and some house in Bethlehem.”
Joseph had obviously upgraded from the manger, and time had elapsed. And as is true in the Gospel records, what is quite striking is the absence of description. Verse 11: “And going into the house…” What was it like? We don’t know. Did it have three rooms, two rooms, a roof on the top? We know nothing. Did it have wall coverings? A fireplace? Was it cozy? Was it spartan? Nothing. “Going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.” Didn’t worship them. “Worshiped him.” And they proceed accordingly.
Now, we have to be careful when we read the Bible that we don’t deviate from course, when considering the person of Jesus, in one of two ways: either thinking of Jesus and conveying the truth in a way that is insufficient in relationship to his divinity, so that we have a Jesus who doesn’t appear to be completely divine; the flip side of it is that we convey a Jesus who doesn’t appear to be completely human. And what we actually have here is he who, in the words of the creeds, is fully God and fully man. Therefore, as fully man, he is fully boy; and as fully boy, if he is twenty-two months, you’ve got an idea of what you’re dealing with.
There was no throne. There was no beatific vision. There is nothing in the outward circumstances to say to anybody who shows up, “Oh, look! Here is the king of the Jews! Here is the king who will rule a kingdom forever and ever.” There was nothing there to say it. In fact, the reverse. Says Lenski, the Lutheran commentator, he says, “Their hearts must have beheld what their eyes did[n’t] see”[15]—because what they saw was a wee boy with his mother and with Joseph. And their response, dramatically, is an unrestrained reaction. Unrestrained! It just speaks of the spontaneity of it all. “And going into the house, they saw,” “they fell,” they “worshiped,” they opened, they left—in that order. Now, we read earlier—or Dan read earlier—from Isaiah 60: “[The] nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”[16] There’s something of that there, isn’t there?
But what could the child understand of their prostrations? What could the child make of their gifts? I mean, isn’t it fair to say that Mary would have said to Jesus, “Now, Jesus, are you going to say thank you to these nice men?” And Jesus would have occasion to say, either then or later, “Who were they? Why were they lying on the floor? What are we going to do, Mom, with all this stuff?”
Now, presumably, in the interchange that took place, which is not recorded for us, Mary and Joseph would have filled in the blanks. Inevitably, they would have said, “And what is his name?” And they would have said, “Jesus.” And they would have said, “What usually happens is he’s named after this or named after… Is there significance in the name?” “Oh yes,” says Joseph, “there’s significance.” He says, “You know, you tell me that you showed up here by a star. My encounter was via an angel. An angel came to me and said, ‘And his name will be called Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins’[17]—that this little boy that’s in here is the Savior of the world. That this little boy here is the Savior of the world!”
This is Christianity, dear folks. This is what you believe, if you’re a believer. You believe that in this encounter, in this house, in this Bethlehem scene with those who had set off on an inexplicable mission, they are now confronted with the Savior of the world. And what is Matthew doing? Well, he’s making it clear—making it clear—that the plan of God from all of eternity to put together a people that are his very own is unfolding here right in the very beginning of things: that all the nations will come. Here you have the gentile kings. He came to his own; his own did not receive him.[18] The scribes had the answer to the question but weren’t interested in him. The magi came eight hundred miles because they longed for something. If you’re interested in the Bible as just academic disputation, arguing about this and that and the next thing, coming up with intriguing notions of things and ideas, bits and pieces to fiddle with, I feel badly for you. You cannot see the wood for the trees. The main things are the plain things.
Matthew begins here in 2 with the nations of the world are beginning to come. Matthew ends his Gospel in the words of this little boy, now in his manhood. What does he say? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”[19] Who? Who in all of humanity can make such a statement save the Christ, the Messiah of God, the one who finally, in the book of Revelation, is to preside over a multitude that nobody can count,[20] the light for all of the nations, the kings of all of the earth? The awareness that one day, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, every tongue confess[21]—that “there is one mediator between God and [man], the man Christ Jesus.”[22]
Yet this doesn’t play today, does it? I know the thoughts of some of my friends. I’m saying this to them. They’re going, “You are totally out of your mind, Begg. Why would they have to come from Persia? They’ve got good gods in Persia. They got spirituality in Persia. They got a way to make sense of their existence in Babylon. Why would they need ours?” ’Cause there is only one name “under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”[23] Only one! That’s the significance. There is no other name.
Can I end by asking you—’cause I don’t know this congregation in detail, but: How about you? Have you started on this journey? Has God been using something recently in your life—an event, an occurrence, something that just kind of knocked you a little sideways or left you wondering? Somebody said to you, “You ever read the Bible?” You said no. You’ve started. You haven’t quite found your way all the way through the story into Bethlehem. Do you know what the prophet says? “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.”[24] “You will seek me and [you will] find me, when you [search for] me with all your heart.”[25]
You see, this is really the whole story of the unfolding drama of Christmas: seeking, finding, trusting, worshipping. Have you come to Jesus? Have you opened up your treasures? You given him your life? You said, “You know, this is where I am. This is who I am. This is the gifts you’ve given me. This is my intellect. This is me.” Have you ever fallen down and worshipped him?
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give him: give [him] my heart.[26]
Final Lord’s Day of 2018. Perhaps someone on this journey has reached the destination, and it suddenly dawns on you: “The reason I have begun to seek him is because he had previously begun to seek me.” “I met him at the well, and it was almost as though he was sitting there waiting for me.” He was. He waits. He will not wait indefinitely. That’s why the Bible always says today is the day of salvation.[27]
Father God, for your Word we give you our humble praise. We thank you that it is a story of amazing grace—that although humanity, mankind, we, despite all that you made known of yourself, turned our backs to you, choosing to worship substitute gods, to fill our minds and our lives with things that do not, that cannot satisfy, when you had every legitimate right to be done with us, yet again, in your mercy you forbear, so that it is your loving-kindness which leads us to repentance.[28] God grant that this day we might meet you at the place where you keep all of your appointments: at the cross of your dearly beloved Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.
[1] See John 1:40–42.
[2] See Acts 9:3–5.
[3] See Acts 16:25–34.
[4] See Luke 19:1–10.
[5] See John 4:7–26.
[6] John Henry Hopkins Jr., “We Three Kings” (1857).
[7] James Taylor and Timothy Mayer, “Home by Another Way” (1988).
[8] 1 Corinthians 2:11 (paraphrased).
[9] See Acts 26:13.
[10] Psalm 19:1 (KJV).
[11] See Daniel 1:1–7.
[12] See Daniel 1:17; 5:12.
[13] See Daniel 2:1, 27–45.
[14] Numbers 24:17 (ESV).
[15] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Columbus, OH: Wartburg, 1943), 70.
[16] Isaiah 60:3 (ESV).
[17] Matthew 1:21 (paraphrased).
[18] See John 1:11.
[19] Matthew 28:18 (ESV).
[20] See Revelation 7:9.
[21] See Philippians 2:10–11.
[22] 1 Timothy 2:5 (ESV).
[23] Acts 4:12 (ESV).
[24] Isaiah 55:6 (ESV).
[25] Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV).
[26] Christina Rossetti, “In the Bleak Midwinter” (1872).
[27] See 2 Corinthians 6:2.
[28] See Romans 2:4.
Copyright © 2025, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.