Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12
I’ve entitled this sermon, “The Gospel According to the Wise Men,” and I want to explore what the magi—or the “wise men” as our ESV calls them—can teach us about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to make three points: Number One: The gospel is all about God’s grace. Number Two: the gospel is for everyone. And Number Three: The gospel changes everything.
Let me start by sharing a personal example of God’s amazing grace in my own life…
Back in 2007, I was serving a large church, Alpharetta First United Methodist, which is now, I’m happy to say, Alpharetta Methodist, because they disaffiliated. But I was one of two associate pastors at this large church. I had been out of seminary for less than a year—and as I’ve told you before, seminary was a rough time for me, spiritually speaking. I was ill-prepared to fight the spiritual warfare that came to me and to many of my colleagues who had decided to answer God’s call into pastoral ministry. So I experienced a long season of doubt. What I didn’t know back in 2007 is that I would soon emerge from this season of doubt, big-time… Among other things, God gave me a renewed confidence that his Word, holy scripture, really is telling the truth; that I really can trust it; that I really can build my life on its solid foundation.
And in a small way, the experience I’m about to describe played a role in the renewal of my faith. It makes me happy to think about this experience, which I always do when I preach on today’s scripture.
As I said, I was an associate pastor at a large church. The senior pastor gave me an assignment: He got a call the day before from a man who said he’d like for a pastor to visit him. He said he needed prayer and pastoral care. This man wasn’t a member of our church—in fact, he was Presbyterian. But his home church was in another state. He had recently moved to the area, and shortly thereafter he became very sick, and he’d spent several months convalescing at home, cut off from his former church family.
So he told Don, the senior pastor, that he wanted a pastor to come visit him. And so Don gave that assignment to yours truly. Larisa, the other associate pastor, had primary responsibility for “pastoral care.” She would normally be the one to make this kind of visit. But Don said, “I don’t feel comfortable sending Larisa. Frankly, I’m worried this man might be crazy. So I don’t think it’s safe for Larisa to go… So I’m sending you, instead… And by the way, do you own a gun?”
He asked me that! I did not own a gun. But I did have a cell phone. And I promise you, as I knocked on the front door of this man’s home, I had already pre-dialed 9-1-1, and I was ready to press “send.” I’m serious!
Anyway, my fears were unfounded, as it turns out. This man was a very sweet, deeply Christian man—if a bit eccentric… an absent-minded professor type. In fact, he literally had a Ph.D. from Harvard. And he had spent his career as an engineer with NASA. Now he was retired.
We became friends. One day, shortly before Christmas a few months later, I paid him a visit: He met me at the door, excited to show me what he’d been working on: He said, “I think I know the exact date of Jesus’ birth.” And on his coffee table lay astronomy journals, calculators, and star charts scattered around—not to mention a Bible open to today’s scripture!
My friend, it turns out, was an amateur astronomer, and while cross-referencing today’s scripture, he walked me, step-by-step, through his work, which led him to conclude that Jesus was born on such-and-such aday. Are you ready for me to give you the exact date of Jesus’ birth?
He said that Jesus was born on…
I don’t remember what he said. Sadly.
And I’m not even saying that this date was right, anyway. He admitted that his date involved a lot of guesswork based on various assumptions. But whether he was right or wrong about the date wasn’t important to me.
What was important to me at that time was this: Here was a deeply intellectual man whom I respected, who was much more knowledgeable than I was, who knew far more science than I knew… and yet here was someone who simply believed the Bible was telling the truth—including the truth about the Virgin Birth, about the angels and shepherds, about the magi and the miraculous star of Bethlehem.
If a man like him has no trouble believing the Bible, why do I? He’s the scientist, after all. Shouldn’t he, of all people, be skeptical of miracles. I’m the pastor… I’m supposed to believe the Bible. What’s wrong with me?
This experience made an impact on me. In a way, God was using my NASA friend the same way he was using this star—he was leading me to Jesus—or at least leading me back to him, back to believing wholeheartedly in him, back to trusting in his Word. To say the least, this experience was one important turning point in my life, in my faith, in my ministry.
This is God’s grace! God engineered events in such a way that I was the one who was sent to his house on that particular day. He graciously used this dear man to change the direction of my life and put me back on the path of renewed and revived Christian faith!
And God does the same thing for these wise men! Our ESV uses the traditional term “wise men”: The Greek word underneath those two words is magi, which is at the root of the word “magic.” The word could rightly be translated as astrologer but that’s misleading. When we hear astrologer—if we’re of a certain age—what do we think of? Jeanne Dixon… probably. At least I do! Back in the ’70s and ’80s, around Christmastime, the supermarket tabloids always featured her predictions for the upcoming year. Remember? I’d see them in the checkout line of the grocery store: “Jeanne Dixon’s shocking predictions for 1983!”
So when we hear the word “astrologer,” we think of this superstitious nonsense.
And of course, like Jeanne Dixon, these magi also believed in plenty of superstitious nonsense. Make no mistake: They were pagans. They were polytheists. They were idolaters. They literally worshiped the stars. They were very far from faith in the God of Israel, the one true God. But they were also the world’s foremost experts in the science of astronomy. So they would notice unusual astronomical events… the unusual movement of stars and planets.
So suppose that the conjunction of the the planets Jupiter and Saturn—which I think is what my NASA friend thought the “star of Bethlehem” was… suppose that was what the Wise Men saw. Here’s how the magi might have interpreted it. In ancient astrology, Jupiter was the planet associated with kings and royalty. Saturn was a planet associated with Israel. So… something having to do with royalty, something having to do with Israel… And since these magi were from Babylon, the Persian Gulf area, present-day Iraq, they would likely have interacted with members of the Jewish community whose ancestors had settled there after Jews were deported to Babylon 600 years earlier. Perhaps they even read their scripture, including the oracle of Balaam in Numbers 24:17, which spoke of a “star coming forth out of” Israel, which they knew had something to do with the Messiah.
So they put all these things together… Star, royalty, Israel, Messiah… and it’s not hard to see why this might lead these men to Jerusalem, to the capital of Israel, seeking the whereabouts of a the newborn “king of the Jews.” At least that’s how God possibly used this star to reach them with the gospel. For them, the heavens were announcing the good news of the birth of Christ.
And, by all means, they responded in faith. But as you can see, God did all the “heavy lifting” to bring them to the place where they could respond in faith. That is God’s grace. And that’s Point Number One about the gospel according to the magi: God’s grace goes to extraordinary lengths to save each of us!
Point Number Two: The gospel is for everyone!
It’s often said that Matthew’s gospel was written for a primarily Jewish audience. Well, that original audience would have been struck by something in today’s scripture that we ourselves often fail to appreciate: These magi were Gentiles… They were outsiders to God’s people Israel.
By including this account of the magi, it’s as if Matthew—who emphasizes Jesus’ connection to ancient Israel and the Old Testament perhaps more than the other gospel writers—it’s as if Matthew were showing us, near the very beginning of his gospel, that this good news that Jesus would save his people from their sins—was intended not only for God’s people Israel, but for the entire world.
Actually, though, Matthew has already tipped his hand and shown us this truth way back in chapter 1, verses 1 to 17. Matthew showed us that the gospel was for outsiders in his genealogy of Jesus. If you have your Bibles—and you should—flip back to chapter 1.
I know it’s difficult to read genealogies without having your eyes glaze over—because they can be awfully dry and dull—but I invite you to concentrate on the names listed there. If so, you may notice something strange…
The genealogy, like all genealogies of ancient Israel, includes mostly fathers’ names… except…it also includes four mothers: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah,” otherwise known as Bathsheba. Look at the rest of the genealogy. There are no other mothers mentioned, at least until Mary in verse 16. Why are these four women mentioned?
To say the least, they have interesting backstories. Tamar, in verse 3, slept with her father-in-law, Judah. Rahab, in verse 5, was a prostitute from Jericho who protected the two Israelite spies when they came to gather intelligence before Israel’s conquest of the city. Ruth was a Moabite—in other words, she was from a nation that was considered a hated enemy of Israel. And the wife of Uriah happens to be Bathsheba, the woman with whom King David had an adulterous affair, and whose husband, Uriah, David arranged to kill in order to protect their secret.
But why mention these women? It’s not simply because of what most people would consider their sinful past… fairly or unfairly… Good heavens, so many of these kings of Judah in the genealogy were deeply wicked, and of course everyone in the genealogy was a sinner in need of a savior!
But I believe Matthew mentions them in part because they’re Gentiles. Bathsheba was ethnically Jewish, but, through marriage, she was a Gentile.1 And God wants to remind us that these Gentile sinners—these outsiders, these former enemies of God—belong in the exact same family with God’s Son Jesus.
Matthew leaves it to Luke to include the Jewish shepherds who came to worship Jesus on the night he was born—we will look at the shepherds on Tuesday night—at 5:00 and 7:00. Don’t miss it!
But in Matthew’s gospel the first worshipers of Jesus are Gentiles—just like most of us!
The fact that Matthew’s first converts to Christianity are Gentile outsiders proves that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone.
So if we are followers of Jesus we can identify in a positive way with these magi! Jesus wants to save everyone… If there’s room for sinners, outsiders, and former enemies in Jesus’ family tree—and some of Jesus’ first worshipers and converts are people just like them, well… guess what? There’s surely room for someone like you—and me—in Jesus’ family as well! No one is disqualified from being in God’s family. No one is “too big a sinner” to have one’s sins forgiven and to receive eternal life. So that’s good news!
And that’s Point Number Two…
Point Number Three: If we are disciples of Jesus Christ, the gospel changes everything… or at least it ought to!
The prophet Elisha, in 1 Kings 19, would understand this truth… He was a farmer, like generations of farmers in his family before him. And Elisha was out plowing with a team of oxen on this particular day. Unbeknownst to him, his future mentor, the prophet Elijah—Eli-jah, with a “J”—the prophet Eli-jah was told by God to anoint Eli-sha as his successor. So Elijah does so by taking off his outer garment, known as a “mantle,” and throwing it over Elisha’s shoulders. This is literally the origin, from the King James Version, of the expression, “passing the mantle.” And Elisha understands exactly what this means. Because listen to what he does next, from 1 Kings 19:21:
So Elisha returned to his oxen and slaughtered them. He used the wood from the plow to build a fire to roast their flesh. He passed around the meat to the townspeople, and they all ate. Then he went with Elijah as his assistant.
Do you get the picture? Elisha slaughtered the oxen that pulled his plow, which enabled him to farm successfully… and as if that weren’t extreme enough, he burned his plow as fuel for a neighborhood cook-out… He was serving oxen steak and oxen burgers to his neighbors.
Do you see what Elisha was doing? He was making a symbolic—and prophetic—statement. He was announcing to the world this message: “There’s no going back now. My life will never and can never be the same.” We would say, using a different metaphor, that Elisha was “burning his bridges.”
And isn’t this the equivalent of what the magi are doing in Matthew 2:12? Herod had asked them to report back to him the whereabouts of this “newborn king of the Jews” they were seeking. He told them that he wanted to worship this child; but we know he really wanted to kill him. So these magi just got converted, and immediately their faith was put to the test: Would they do the safe, easy, risk-free thing and report back to Herod where Jesus was? Or would they do the costly, risky, dangerous thing and take their lives into their hands and defy a powerful king, disobey a dangerous king… because they really believed in Jesus?
Verse 12 tells us: “And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”
By another way…Having found Christ, the magi knew they could never return.
Indeed, they now had a new King… Jesus. Their lives now belonged to him. They would now direct their steps—and live the rest of their lives—“by another way.”
Jesus demands this of all of us! In fact, he says it’s his way or the highway. Remember Matthew 7:13? “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.” This highway that Jesus refers to will, tragically, lead to destruction.
So we, like the magi, must go another way…
By contrast, think of the chief priests and scribes in today’s scripture—in verses 4 through 6: Once the magi arrive in Jerusalem, they don’t know where to go. So they consult with these men, who were the senior pastors, the bishops, the deacons, the supervising elders, the Sunday school teachers, the Admin Board members, the church leaders of their day. These are people who believed the Bible. They went to church all the time. They knew that magi coming to town meant that the messianic prophecy might soon be coming to pass. So naturally these men, of all people—these Bible scholars, these believers in God’s Word, these “theological conservatives,” these “evangelicals”… surely these people would jump at the chance to go to Bethlehem and see the newborn king. Right?
Wrong… Whereas these wise men—Gentiles, pagans, idolators, and outsiders to God’s people Israel—whereas they traveled about 600 miles west from the Persian Gulf to Judea for the sake of Christ, the “insiders”—the ones who already believed in the Bible—weren’t willing to travel even six miles south to Bethlehem to see Christ for themselves!
Who are we more like? Whose example are we more likely to follow? What difference does following Jesus make in our lives? Do people look at our lives and see the difference Jesus makes?
Let me leave you with this… I know I referred to It’s a Wonderful Life a couple of weeks ago, but I promise I’m not repeating myself. This is a different illustration. You’ll recall that George is falsely accused of embezzling the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars, and if he doesn’t come up with the money—and fast—he’ll go to jail! His life will be ruined.
But we all remember the happy ending… All of George’s fellow townspeople are so grateful to George for the way that he’s helped them over the years that they express their gratitude by pitching in to raise the money for George. George is saved!
And that’s the happy ending… That’s how we all remember it, right?
But that’s not the happy ending. Or at least that’s only a tiny part of it. That’s just the maraschino cherry on top of the hot fudge sundae that is the real happy ending. The main “happy ending” takes place before that… after George has the encounter with the angel and sees the positive difference he’s made in the lives of his friends and fellow townspeople… the difference he’s made on the city of Bedford Falls itself.
Remember? Before George even finds out that he’s off the hook, he’s overjoyed! Running through the streets, wishing everyone—even the wicked Mr. Potter—a “Merry Christmas.” When he meets the sheriff at his house, the sheriff says, “George, I’ve got a little paper here…” George says, “I’ll bet it’s a warrant for my arrest. Isn’t it wonderful? I’m going to jail!”
What’s going on here? Is George crazy? No!
It’s just that he’s found something in life—he’s found a joy in life—that’s going to sustain him through thick and thin, through good times and bad… With that kind of joy, George can face anything… even jail… even financial ruin… even the mockery of his enemies… Doesn’t matter! George knows joy!
And joy is what a saving relationship with Christ offers us—except on a whole ’nother level than even George knows!
The wise men have found joy… Listen to verse 10: “When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.”
Rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Joy is nearly the best thing ever! It’s literally what every single person alive right now wants more than anything else. It’s far more valuable to these wise men than a fortune’s worth of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It’s far more valuable to them than the approval and favor of a powerful earthly king. It’s far more valuable to them than their own lives, which they’re risking by defying a king.
Doesn’t matter… They rejoiced exceedingly with great joy… They had just come to know, in and through Christ, the very source of joy…
And that, my friends, changes everything!